1. Who This Policy Covers
This policy applies to anyone who uses OwlCarTT — whether you're just browsing listings (no account needed) or you've created an account to post a vehicle for sale.
2. Information We Collect
Account information. To create an account, you sign in with Google or Facebook. We receive your name, email address, and profile photo as provided by whichever service you use — we never receive or store your Google or Facebook password.
Profile information. Before posting your first ad, we collect your name and phone number. This is required so interested buyers can contact you about your listings — it is not used for any other purpose.
Listing content. When you post a vehicle ad, we collect everything you choose to include: photos, description, and vehicle details (make, model, year, price, mileage, transmission, fuel type, and location where applicable). Location is a town/city you select from a fixed list — we do not collect GPS coordinates or precise location data at any point.
Photo editing data. If you use the in-app tool to blur a license plate in a photo, the photo and the region you select are sent to our backend for processing, and the result replaces the original on your device. We do not retain a separate copy of the unedited region once processing is complete, and this feature only runs when you actively choose to use it.
Push notification data. If you turn on an alert for a saved search, we store a device push token (issued by Apple/Google's own notification services) so we can notify you when a matching vehicle is posted. This is only collected if you opt in, and only used for that purpose.
Technical and diagnostic information. Our backend infrastructure and app-update service automatically log standard operational data — such as IP addresses, request timestamps, and basic device/app version information — for security, abuse prevention, and reliability purposes. We do not use this data to build advertising profiles.
What we do not collect. We do not use advertising trackers, third-party analytics or behavioral-tracking SDKs, and we do not sell, rent, or trade your personal information to anyone.
3. Legal Basis for Processing
We process your information on the following bases:
- To perform our contract with you — creating your account, letting you post and manage listings, and connecting you with interested buyers are all necessary to provide the service you've signed up for.
- Legitimate interests — securing accounts, preventing abuse of the free-listing limit, and maintaining the reliability of the service.
- Consent — anything optional, such as push notification alerts, which you can withdraw at any time (see Section 8).
Alignment with Trinidad and Tobago's Data Protection Act
Section 69 of the Data Protection Act, 2011 (Act No. 13 of 2011) requires anyone who collects, stores, uses, or processes personal information in Trinidad and Tobago to follow the General Privacy Principles set out in section 6 of that Act. We structure how OwlCarTT handles your information around those principles specifically:
- Accountability — we are responsible for the personal information described in this policy for as long as it's in our control.
- Identified purpose — Section 2 states why each category of information is collected before or at the point we collect it.
- Consent — covered above, and in Section 8.
- Limited collection — we only collect what Section 2 describes; we don't collect GPS location, and we don't run advertising trackers or analytics SDKs.
- Limited retention and use — see Section 7 for how long each category is kept, and Section 4 for the purposes it's used for.
- Accuracy — you control the accuracy of your own listing and profile data directly through the app, at any time.
- Safeguards — see Section 10.
- Sensitive information — OwlCarTT does not ask for or knowingly collect sensitive personal information (health, racial/ethnic origin, religious or political beliefs, sexual orientation, or criminal/financial records) as defined by the Act.
- Openness and individual challenge — this policy is that documentation, and Section 8 explains how to reach us with a question or concern about your data.
- Cross-border transfers — see Section 5 below, which mirrors the Act's requirement (sections 46 and 72) that you be told who is receiving your information and why before it's sent outside Trinidad and Tobago.
A note on enforceability: the Act comes into force provision-by-provision, by Presidential Proclamation (section 1(2)), and its private-sector enforcement machinery in Part IV (mandatory industry codes of conduct, approved by the Information Commissioner) applies once such a code exists for a given industry — we're not aware of one covering online vehicle classifieds. We're applying the General Privacy Principles as our own operating standard regardless of that status, but this policy shouldn't be read as a representation about which specific provisions of the Act are currently enforceable against any particular business.
4. How We Use Information
We use the information described above to:
- Create, secure, and authenticate your account
- Display your listings to other users browsing the app
- Let interested buyers reach you about a listing (see Section 6 — this is the core purpose of the app)
- Send you push notifications you've explicitly opted into
- Enforce the free-tier listing limit and other basic account rules
- Investigate and prevent fraud, abuse, or violations of these terms
- Maintain, secure, and improve the app
We do not use your information for automated decision-making or profiling that produces legal or similarly significant effects on you.
5. Third-Party Service Providers
We rely on the following providers to operate OwlCarTT. Each acts as a data processor on our behalf, bound by their own security and privacy commitments, and none are permitted to use your data for their own independent purposes:
- Supabase — hosts our database, authentication, file storage, and backend functions (including the photo-blur processing described in Section 2).
- Google — provides Sign in with Google, and Firebase Cloud Messaging for push notification delivery.
- Facebook (Meta) — provides Sign in with Facebook.
- Expo/EAS — hosts app updates and relays push notifications to your device.
These providers operate infrastructure outside of Trinidad and Tobago — specifically the United States and other jurisdictions where Supabase, Google, Meta, and Expo/EAS host their services. By creating an account, you consent to your personal information being sent to and processed in those jurisdictions for the purposes described in this policy. Each of these providers publishes its own security and compliance commitments, which is the basis on which we consider their safeguards comparable to the protections described in this policy.
If you choose to contact a seller via the in-app WhatsApp button, the app opens WhatsApp with a pre-filled message you can edit or cancel before sending — no data is transmitted to WhatsApp by OwlCarTT itself beyond what your device normally shares when opening that link.
6. What Other Users Can See
Browse is public — anyone can view active listings without an account, including the photos, price, and details of a vehicle.
A seller's name and phone number are only shown to someone who opens that specific listing's contact details — they are never included in the general listing feed and cannot be bulk-downloaded or scraped through normal use of the app.
If you update your phone number in your profile, that change applies instantly and automatically to every one of your existing listings — there is no separate copy to go out of sync.
7. Data Retention
- Listings expire 30 days after posting (or after a relist). An expired listing is hidden from public Browse but stays visible to you under "My Ads" so you can relist it.
- If a listing remains expired for 60 additional days without being relisted, we permanently delete it and its photos from our systems.
- Account and profile information is retained for as long as your account remains active, and deleted upon a verified deletion request (Section 8) except where we are required to retain limited information for legal, security, or fraud-prevention purposes.
- Push notification tokens are retained only while an alert is active and are removed when you turn the alert off.
8. Your Choices and Rights
- Edit or delete a listing at any time from "My Ads."
- Update your profile (name, phone) at any time — changes take effect immediately across all your listings.
- Turn off push notifications by removing your saved-search alert in the app, or by disabling notifications for OwlCarTT in your device settings.
- Access, correct, or request a copy of your data, or request deletion of your account and associated data, by contacting us using the details in Section 12. We will respond to verified requests within a reasonable time.
- Withdraw consent for anything based on consent (such as push alerts) at any time, without affecting the lawfulness of processing before that withdrawal.
Some of these rights may be limited where we have an overriding legal or security obligation to retain specific information — if that applies to your request, we'll explain why.
9. Children's Privacy
OwlCarTT is not directed at children, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 16. If you believe a child has provided us with personal information, contact us and we will investigate and remove it.
10. Security
We apply industry-standard safeguards to protect your information, including database-level row security so that sensitive fields (like phone numbers) are never exposed in bulk and can only be retrieved one listing at a time by a legitimate request. Photo storage and account credentials are managed through our infrastructure providers' own security controls.
No method of transmission or storage over the internet is 100% secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security. If a breach affecting your personal information occurs, we will notify affected users without undue delay and take reasonable steps to limit any resulting harm, as a matter of practice — and will additionally comply with any specific notification obligation that applies to us under Trinidad and Tobago law or the law of any other jurisdiction whose rules apply to the affected data.
11. Changes to This Policy
We may update this policy as the app changes. Material changes will be reflected by updating the "Last updated" date above, and where appropriate, we will provide more prominent notice (such as an in-app message). Continued use of OwlCarTT after a change constitutes acceptance of the revised policy.
12. Contact Us
For any question about this policy, or to exercise any of the rights in Section 8, contact us at:
13. Governing Law
This policy is governed by the laws of Trinidad and Tobago, including the Data Protection Act, 2011 (Act No. 13 of 2011), to the extent its provisions are in force at the relevant time — the Act comes into operation provision-by-provision, by Presidential Proclamation, rather than all at once. Nothing in this policy limits any rights you may have under that Act, or any other applicable law, that cannot be waived by agreement.
This document reflects OwlCarTT's actual features and data practices as of the date above, to the best of available knowledge, and cross-references the actual text of Trinidad and Tobago's Data Protection Act, 2011 (Act No. 13 of 2011) — specifically the General Privacy Principles in section 6, the private-sector obligation in section 69, and the cross-border disclosure rules in sections 46 and 72. It is intended as a strong, substantively-grounded starting point, not a substitute for legal advice: a lawyer should confirm which specific provisions of the Act are currently proclaimed into force and whether any industry code of conduct applies to OwlCarTT before this is treated as a final compliance document. No AI-drafted document can be guaranteed "airtight" without that review.