Privacy Policy

HelperDoc is operated by HelperDoc Limited, a licensed Hong Kong employment agency. We are the data user under the Personal Data (Privacy) Ordinance (Cap. 486) for the personal data described in this policy. This policy covers the helperdocs.com website and the HelperDoc mobile apps.

Account data — your name, email, phone, role (helper / employer / agency), and locale. If you sign in with Google or Apple, or connect a Facebook account, that provider shares your name, email address and account ID with us.

Helper profile data — date of birth, nationality, contract status, work history, education, language abilities, identification photos and document scans, video introductions, declarations and signatures.

Employer profile data — household composition, address, contract preferences, household photos.

Job-posting data — duties, salary range, schedule, location, special requirements.

Communications — messages exchanged on the platform (including photos and documents you attach), support inquiries, hire-offer history.

Purchase data — the plan you bought, amount, currency, start and expiry dates, renewal status, and the payment references described under "Payments and in-app purchases". We never receive your card number.

Device data — if you allow notifications in our mobile apps, a push notification token together with your device type (iPhone or Android), device model, operating-system version, app version and app language. We do not store your device's name.

App feedback and error reports — what you send through "Send feedback" in the apps (a star rating, a topic and your message), your answer to the "Enjoying HelperDoc?" question, and, when the app runs into an error, a technical report (the error, the screen it happened on, the app version, device model and operating-system version). These are linked to your account when you are signed in and are read only by HelperDoc staff.

Technical data — IP address, browser/user agent, access timestamps, device identifiers, security audit log entries.

To deliver matching, messaging, hire-confirmation, and contract workflows between helpers, employers, and agencies.

To verify identity and contract eligibility — including WhatsApp verification, passport reviews, and government-form preparation.

To respond to support inquiries and to operate audit trails for security, fraud prevention, and dispute resolution.

To comply with Hong Kong employment-agency regulations, including record-keeping obligations.

To manage your subscription — checking App Store, Google Play, Stripe and FPS payments, unlocking paid features, and handling renewals, cancellations and refunds.

To send service notifications (for example new messages, application updates, hire offers and reminders) in the app, by push notification and by email, according to your notification settings. Marketing communications are sent only with explicit opt-in.

Featuring helpers in HelperDoc marketing ("Feature me"). This is separate from registering and entirely optional: it happens only if a helper chooses "Yes, feature me" (on the last registration step, or later under Profile → Feature me), and saying no does not change how her profile is shown to employers. If she says yes, we may use her profile photo, her introduction video (shortened, cropped or subtitled) and her first name, nationality, age range and work highlights in HelperDoc's own advertising and social media: the HelperDoc website and apps, Facebook, Instagram, Threads, TikTok, YouTube, Xiaohongshu, WhatsApp, Google and Meta advertisements and printed flyers, shown to people in Hong Kong, the Philippines, Indonesia, Singapore, Taiwan, Malaysia, Macau, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar. These services may store data outside Hong Kong, including in mainland China. We never use in marketing her surname, contact details, address, identity numbers, religion, marital status, children, health or background-check answers, exact age, or former employers. She can withdraw at any time in the app or by emailing the Data Protection Officer; within 30 days we stop advertisements that use her and delete our own posts (copies others have already shared may remain). We record when she answered, the version of the wording and the language she read it in. Anonymous statistics (for example the number of registered helpers) may be used in our promotion without consent because they identify no one.

Visitors who are not signed in see a profile card: photo, profile code (for example HD1234), nationality, skills, and age, salary and availability ranges. Signed-in employers without a subscription see the same card, plus gender, country and a summary of work experience.

Employers without a subscription who have a job posting open can also view a limited number of fuller profiles each day. These show her exact age, photos, religion, marital status, family details (such as the number of children and siblings), education, languages, height and weight, country, contract status, availability date, expected salary, skills, work history without previous employers' names, and her answers to the biodata questions (for example about smoking, pets, health and criminal record).

Without a subscription, employers and visitors never see a helper's name, city, self-introduction, video or contact details. In messages and notifications she appears by her profile code.

Employers with an active subscription can also see her name, date of birth, city, self-introduction, video introduction and the family details she has added. When a helper applies to one of their jobs, they can see her phone number and, if the number has been verified, contact her on WhatsApp.

A helper's email address, passport and HKID details, and identity document scans are never shown to any employer, paid or unpaid.

Once her profile has been approved, a helper can hide it from the marketplace at any time with the listing switch on the Profile tab.

Agency white-label viewers see the same redaction as a free employer; contact channels are routed through the agency.

Admin staff see full data only as needed to operate the platform, with access limited by role-based field permissions. Staff actions such as approvals are logged, and every change to a profile or case record is logged with who made it and when.

Our mobile apps can send push notifications. When you allow notifications, the app creates a push token (issued by Expo) and we store it with your account, together with the device details listed under "Information we collect".

Notifications are delivered through Expo, which passes them to Apple Push Notification service on iPhone or Google Firebase Cloud Messaging on Android. The title and text of each notification pass through these services.

We send notifications about: new messages (showing the sender's name and a short preview of the message — for employers without a subscription, the helper's name and the preview are hidden); job applications and their status; hire offers and job invites; profile review results; reminders, such as an unfinished profile, an offer or invite about to expire, a subscription about to end, or a profile about to be archived; and a daily summary of new jobs for helpers. Our staff also receive digests of items waiting for their review.

Reminders are not sent between 10 pm and 8 am Hong Kong time, and we send no more than three reminders a day.

You control notifications in the app under Profile → Notifications, where you can switch push notifications on or off for each type (applications, messages, jobs, matching, profile). We don't send an email for each notification: instead, about every two days we send a summary email when there is something new, which stops if you switch email off for the types it covers; the Profile email switch also covers our announcement emails. You can also turn notifications off completely in your phone's settings. When you sign out or delete your account, the push token for that device is deleted.

Website payments are processed by Stripe on Stripe's own checkout page, by card, Alipay or WeChat Pay. We send Stripe your email address and your HelperDoc account and plan references so the payment can be matched to your account. HelperDoc receives only the Stripe customer ID, subscription or payment reference and payment status; card numbers, CVV codes, and billing addresses never reach our servers. Stripe processes payment data under PCI-DSS Level 1 certification. For Stripe's privacy notice see stripe.com/privacy.

Subscriptions bought in our iPhone or Android app are processed by Apple (App Store In-App Purchase) or Google (Google Play Billing). Apple and Google handle your payment details; we never see them. We receive the transaction or order identifiers, the product you bought, price and currency, purchase and expiry dates, auto-renewal status, and notices of renewals, cancellations and refunds. For Google Play purchases we attach a coded account identifier so the purchase can be matched to your HelperDoc account.

App Store and Google Play subscriptions renew automatically until you cancel. You can cancel at any time in your Apple ID or Google Play subscription settings (the Subscription screen in the app links there); you keep access until the end of the period you have paid for. Deleting the app or your HelperDoc account does not cancel a store subscription.

Refunds for App Store and Google Play purchases are decided by Apple or Google under their own refund policies. If a purchase is refunded, we are notified and the paid features it unlocked are removed.

Hong Kong FPS / bank-transfer payments are recorded as ledger entries in our database; sales staff verify and confirm payments manually before the case advances. For an FPS subscription payment you enter your transfer reference number; we record the reference, amount and currency, and the subscription starts once our staff have confirmed the transfer.

Our news feed uses an AI service, Claude by Anthropic, PBC (US), to write short summaries and translations of public news articles. Only public article content — the headline, publisher and article text — is sent. No information about you or any other user is sent. News translations may instead be produced by DeepL SE (Germany), again using public article content only.

We do not currently send your profile, messages, documents or photos to any AI service. The automatic photo-quality check when you upload a profile photo on our website runs in your own browser; the photo is not sent anywhere for that check.

Data is hosted on Supabase (PostgreSQL) in a Singapore region with row-level security policies on every table. Document scans and photos are stored in private object storage and served via short-lived signed URLs.

Passwords are stored hashed (bcrypt) by Supabase Auth — we never see plaintext.

Database backups are encrypted at rest and kept by Supabase for a limited rolling period as part of its managed service.

We keep your account data for as long as your account is open. After that, or for specific kinds of data:

· Deleted accounts — 90 days after you ask to delete your account (see "Your rights"), we erase your name, contact details, identity numbers, date of birth, addresses, photos, videos, documents, self-introduction and work history, and your answers to health, criminal-record and other background questions. What remains is linked only to a profile code: the account's role and dates and non-identifying profile details such as nationality, skills and work preferences, so other people's records stay correct. We also keep the business records below.

· Messages — messages you sent are not deleted when your account is erased. They stay in the other person's conversation, with your name shown as "Deleted User".

· Business records — service cases, sales orders and payment records are kept as required by Hong Kong accounting and employment-agency law. When an account is erased, the personal details in these records are moved to a restricted archive.

· Unfinished guest sign-ups — a guest account with no email, phone or password and no submitted profile is deleted after 14 days of inactivity.

· Chat attachments — photos and documents sent in messages are deleted 2 days after they are uploaded. The message itself stays in the conversation.

· Security audit log — kept for 24 months, then deleted. Staff activity records on service cases are kept with those case records; the personal details in them are removed when an account is erased.

· Reminder log — the record of which automatic reminders we have sent you is kept for 180 days (the one-time "profile approved" record is kept so that notice is never sent twice).

· Push tokens — deleted when you sign out or delete your account. We keep tokens for at most 10 devices per account, and stop sending to a device that has not opened the app for 30 days.

· App feedback and error reports — feedback you send in the apps is kept for 24 months and app error reports for 90 days; to stop abuse, a scrambled form of your IP address is kept with them for 2 hours. When your account is erased, your feedback and error reports are unlinked from it and the text you wrote is deleted.

· Inactive helper profiles may be archived (hidden from employers) after a period of inactivity. Archived profiles are not deleted unless you delete your account.

You may request access to or correction of your personal data at any time by emailing the Data Protection Officer.

Download your data — in the app, go to Profile → Account → Download my data; on the website, open Account settings. You get a JSON file with your profile, applications, conversations, messages you sent, bookmarks, hire offers, job invites and service cases. Identity document scans are not included in the file; email the Data Protection Officer if you need copies.

Delete your account — in the app, go to Profile → Account → Delete account and type DELETE to confirm; on the website, use the "Delete your account" section of Account settings. Step-by-step instructions are at helperdocs.com/delete-account. You are signed out straight away, a helper profile is removed from the marketplace, and an employer's job posts are withdrawn. Your personal information is erased after 90 days; within that time you can contact us to cancel the deletion. Some records are kept as described in "How long we keep your data".

You can switch push notifications and our summary and announcement emails on or off under Profile → Notifications, or turn notifications off in your phone's settings.

You may withdraw consent for marketing communications without affecting account access.

HelperDoc is not intended for children. By signing up you confirm that you are 18 or older, and helper profiles are accepted only from age 23. We do not knowingly collect personal data from anyone under 18; if you believe a child has created an account, contact the Data Protection Officer and we will delete it.

Employers may describe their household, including the number and ages of children, and helpers may add family details to their profiles. This information is used only to describe the job or profile and is shown only as described in "Who sees what".

We use essential cookies for authentication and locale preference. We do not currently run third-party advertising trackers.

We count visits to our website ourselves, without cookies: we record the page, the website or advert you came from, your country, your device type, whether you are signed in, and taps on our app-download links, linked only to a code that changes every day and cannot identify you; we do not store your IP address, these records are deleted after 400 days, and we do not count you if your browser sends a "Do Not Track" or "Global Privacy Control" signal.

Your data is held or processed by the following service providers, each receiving only what it needs to do its job:

· Supabase, Inc. (US) — database, file storage, sign-in and server functions. The HelperDoc project is provisioned in the Singapore region (ap-southeast-1).

· Vercel, Inc. (US) — web application hosting, served from its Singapore region.

· Resend, Inc. (US) — email (account confirmations, password reset, invite links, and the notification emails you have switched on).

· Expo (650 Industries, Inc., US) — push notification delivery and mobile app updates.

· Apple Inc. — push notifications on iPhone, App Store purchases and, if you use it, Sign in with Apple.

· Google LLC — push notifications on Android (Firebase Cloud Messaging), Google Play purchases, Google sign-in if you use it, and address suggestions (Google Maps) when you type an address.

· Meta Platforms, Inc. — only if you choose to connect a Facebook account.

· Stripe — website payments.

· Cloudflare, Inc. (US) — a bot check (Turnstile) when you sign up, which receives your IP address.

· Anthropic, PBC (US) and, where used, DeepL SE (Germany) — summaries and translations of public news articles only; no user data.

· Telegram — a private chat our staff use for internal alerts. Alerts can include helper profile codes and counts of items awaiting review, and — for helpers who have given marketing consent — drafts of promotional posts (first name, age, nationality and profile photo). No phone numbers, email addresses or ID documents are sent.

· Our website also loads fonts and images from content networks such as Google Fonts and jsDelivr, which receive your IP address when your browser requests them.

By using HelperDoc you consent to these cross-border transfers as necessary for the service.

We may update this policy from time to time. We will post the new version on this page with a new date and, for significant changes, also let you know in the app or by email.

Data Protection Officer · privacy@helperdocs.com

HelperDoc Limited · Hong Kong

Hong Kong Office of the Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data (PCPD): pcpd.org.hk — you may lodge a complaint with the PCPD if you believe your privacy rights under the Personal Data (Privacy) Ordinance have been breached.