People Like You PTY LTD (ACN 691 404 583)
Effective date: 18 October 2025
Introduction
People Like You Help Pty Ltd (referred to as “People Like You,” “we,” “us,” or “our”) is an Australian platform offering peer-to-peer support for individuals navigating painful health conditions. We are committed to protecting your privacy and handling your personal information with care and transparency. This Privacy Policy explains what information we collect, how we use and protect it, where it’s stored, and your rights regarding your data. We comply with Australian privacy laws, including the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and the Australian Privacy Principles, to safeguard your personal information. By using our services, you agree to the terms of this Privacy Policy.
Types of Data We Collect
We collect personal information and other data that you provide to us or that is generated through your use of our platform. All information is collected on a voluntary basis – you control what you share. The types of data include:
Account Information: When you register for an account, we collect basic details such as your email address, a username or display name, and a password. We do not require you to provide your real name or other identifying details publicly if you prefer to remain anonymous.
Profile and Health Information: You may choose to provide information about your lived experience with pain or health conditions in your profile. This can include details about your condition, symptoms, treatment experiences, or other health-related information. Providing such information is entirely optional and based on what you are comfortable sharing. Please note: We ask you not to include any personally identifying details (e.g. full name, date of birth, addresses) in the health information you share on your profile. This helps protect your privacy given the sensitive nature of health data.
Uploaded Content: Our platform allows you to upload content such as text, photos, or medical images (for example, scans or clinical documents). Users are required to remove or obscure any identifying information on such uploads before posting (for example, by cropping out or blacking out names, dates of birth, or hospital numbers on medical scans). This ensures that images and documents you share do not contain personal identifiers. We do not actively scan uploads for identifiers, so please double-check your content to protect your privacy. Any content you upload is stored on our secure servers (as detailed in the Data Storage and Security section) and is visible to other community members as described in this Policy.
Member Stories (your contribution): When you create an account, you may choose to publish a Member Story about your lived experience on your profile. This is the only user-generated content feature available at this time. We collect the text of your story (and any tags/topics you choose), optional media you upload (e.g. photos, scans, documents), and basic metadata (e.g. timestamps). We do not require your real name to be displayed publicly. Please consider using a display name/pseudonym.
Feedback and Communications: If you contact us for support, provide feedback through our feedback tool, or otherwise communicate with us (for example, via email or an in-app feedback form), we will collect the information you choose to provide in those communications. This may include your contact details and the content of your messages.
Automatically Collected Data: Like most online services, we automatically collect some information about your device and how you use our platform. This includes technical data such as your IP address, browser type, device type, operating system, and general location (e.g. city or state). We also log usage information like the pages or features you access and timestamps of your visits. We collect this data to help run the service, for security monitoring, and to understand and improve user experience. This usage data does not identify you by name, and we do not link it to the content you post in the community.
Cookies: We use cookies and similar technologies to support site functionality and improve your experience. For example, cookies help keep you logged in and remember your preferences. We may also use cookies to gather basic analytics on how users navigate the site (such as which pages are most visited), which helps us improve our services. These cookies collect only limited information and are not used for advertising purposes. You can control or delete cookies through your browser settings; however, note that disabling cookies may affect certain features (like staying logged in).
How We Use Your Information
We use the information we collect only for the following purposes, in a way that is compatible with this Privacy Policy and with your expectations for a peer support platform:
Providing and Maintaining the Service: We process your personal information to create and manage your user account, authenticate you when you log in, and enable you to participate in the People Like You community. Your profile information and Member Story are used to connect you with other members and to display your contribution to those members. For example, when you publish your Member Story, we display it to other logged-in members so they can read and learn from your experience.
Facilitating Peer Support: The core of our platform is to allow members to share experiences and help each other. We use the health and condition information you choose to share (as well as any images or content you upload) to facilitate this sharing within the community. This might include featuring Member Stories or helping members discover stories related to certain conditions. Importantly, you control what you share – we will never expose information you have not provided to the community.
Communication: We may use your contact information (e.g. email address) to send service-related communications. These include confirmations, technical or security alerts, and important updates about the platform. For example, if we update our terms or this Privacy Policy, or if there is a noteworthy change to the platform’s features, we may notify you via email. We may also respond to any inquiries or support requests you send us. We will not send you marketing emails or newsletters unless you have explicitly subscribed to them. If you do opt in to receive such communications, you can withdraw that consent at any time (see Your Rights and Choices below).
Improving Our Platform: We may use aggregated, de-identified information about how users interact with People Like You to help troubleshoot issues, perform analytics, and make improvements. Any analytics we perform will not identify individual users. We do not profile users or make any automated decisions that could affect you significantly.
Ensuring Safety and Legal Compliance: We use information as needed to maintain the security of our platform and users. This includes monitoring for fraudulent or suspicious activity, enforcing our community guidelines and Terms of Service, and protecting the rights, safety, and wellbeing of our members. If necessary, we may use personal information to comply with legal obligations – for instance, to respond to a lawful request by authorities or to fulfil reporting requirements under Australian law.
No Selling or Monetisation: Importantly, we do not sell, rent, or monetise your personal data or content. Your information is never used for advertising targeting, nor do we share or “monetise” insights from your data with any third parties. The content you provide is used solely within the People Like You community to support you and others – not for any commercial research or external profit. You remain the owner of the content and data you contribute; our role is to provide a safe platform for you to share it.
How We Share Your Information
Your privacy is paramount. We do not share personal information about you with third parties for their own independent marketing or business purposes. We share data only in the following limited situations:
With Service Providers (Our Data Hosting Partners): We use a few trusted third-party companies to help us run the People Like You platform. These service providers act on our behalf to perform functions such as application hosting, data storage, user authentication, and feedback management. When we share any data with these providers, it is only what is necessary for them to perform their services, and they are contractually obligated to keep your information confidential and secure. Our key service providers are:
Vercel – provides hosting for our application (the platform’s web interface). Your account data and content may be transmitted to and temporarily stored on Vercel’s servers when you use the site. Vercel maintains high security standards and is SOC 2 Type 2 certified, HIPAA compliant, and ISO 27001 certified.
Supabase – provides our primary database and user authentication system. When you register or log in, and whenever you publish or read a story, the underlying data is stored in our Supabase database. Supabase is SOC 2 Type 2 and HIPAA compliant (with appropriate agreements), and your data in the database is safeguarded by encryption and strict access controls, including row-level security.
Userback – powers our user feedback tool, which allows you to submit feedback, bug reports, or suggestions directly from the site. If you choose to send us feedback through Userback, the information you provide (and necessary contact info) will be processed by Userback on our behalf. Userback is hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS) infrastructure and is SOC 2 Type II certified and GDPR compliant.
All data shared with these providers remains under our control and is used only for the purposes of providing the People Like You service. We do not permit our service providers to use your information for any other purpose. In addition, these providers handle data in an encrypted and secure manner – for example, all data is transmitted over HTTPS (secure web connections) and encrypted at rest on their servers. (See the Data Storage and Security section below for more details on how your data is protected.)
Within the Community: Information that you choose to share in your Member Story will, by its nature, be visible to other logged-in members of the community, along with your display name. This is a core aspect of the peer support service (connecting you with people like you). You have control over what you disclose; please do not share personal contact details or anything you’re not comfortable being visible to other members. None of your story content is intended to be visible to unregistered visitors or the general public; access to stories is behind a login. We also take reasonable steps to discourage public indexing.
Legal Requirements and Protection: We may disclose your information if required by law or if we believe in good faith that such action is necessary to (i) comply with a legal obligation or government request, (ii) enforce our Terms of Service or community guidelines, (iii) investigate and defend ourselves against any third-party claims or allegations, (iv) protect the rights, safety, and property of our users, or (v) address emergencies. We will only do this after careful consideration and, whenever legally permissible, we would inform you of such disclosure.
Business Transfers: If People Like You Help Pty Ltd is involved in a merger, acquisition, restructuring, or sale of assets, your personal information might be transferred to the new entity as part of that deal. If this happens, we will ensure the new owner honours the commitments we’ve made in this Privacy Policy, or we will notify you and seek your consent if required by law.
Aside from the situations above, we will not share your personal data with any other third parties. In particular, we do not share or exchange data with advertisers, analytics companies (beyond the basic analytics we perform via our service providers), or any external companies seeking to use your information for profiling or research.
Data Storage and Security
Location of Data: People Like You is based in Australia, but the data you provide is stored and processed on secure servers located in the United States. In particular, the service providers mentioned above (Vercel, Supabase, and Userback) will host your data on servers in the U.S. or other secure locations. This means your personal information may be transferred from Australia to the United States (and potentially other countries where our service providers operate data centres). By using our platform or providing us with your information, you consent to this cross-border transfer of your data. We understand that storing data overseas requires extra diligence; we take reasonable steps to ensure any overseas recipients (like our U.S.-based providers) handle your information in a manner consistent with Australian privacy principles and this Policy.
Security Measures: We are serious about safeguarding your data. We employ a combination of administrative, technical, and physical security measures to protect against loss, theft, and unauthorised access or disclosure. These measures include:
Encryption: All communication between your device and our platform is encrypted using HTTPS/TLS, which protects your data in transit from eavesdropping. Similarly, our databases and storage systems encrypt your data at rest using strong encryption standards (such as AES-256). In simple terms, this means that whether your data is moving or stored, it’s locked with keys that only authorised systems hold.
Access Controls: Personal information is only accessible to a limited number of authorised personnel who need it to operate the service (for example, to provide customer support or maintain the infrastructure). Our team members are trained in privacy and security best practices, and we review access privileges regularly. Both we and our vendors use techniques like role-based access control and authentication tokens to ensure that each request for data is legitimate and permitted.
Secure Hosting Partners: As described, we use reputable hosting and backend providers that are certified for high standards of data security. For example, Vercel and Supabase are audited to SOC 2 Type 2 standards and are HIPAA-compliant, and Vercel also holds ISO 27001 certification. Userback is SOC 2 Type II certified and aligns with GDPR requirements. These certifications involve regular third-party audits of security controls.
Network and Application Security: Our platform benefits from built-in protections via our hosting providers, such as firewalls, DDoS mitigation, and other safeguards to help prevent malicious attacks. We keep our software and systems updated to patch vulnerabilities, and we utilise monitoring tools to detect suspicious activity. If we identify a security issue, we act promptly to resolve it.
Data Minimisation: We strive to collect only the information that we need to operate the service and support you. We also encourage you to share only what you are comfortable with. By minimising sensitive personal data on the platform (especially identifiable health information), we reduce the risk to your privacy. For example, by requiring that you anonymise any medical documents before uploading, we limit the exposure of your identity.
Regular Reviews and Improvements: We periodically review our privacy and security practices to adapt to new challenges. This includes reviewing our vendors’ practices, updating our policies as needed, and continuously improving the technical security of the platform. We also encourage feedback from our users – if you have security concerns or notice something, please let us know.
Despite all these measures, it’s important to note that no method of transmission over the internet or electronic storage is 100% secure. While we and our partners work very hard to protect your information, we cannot guarantee absolute security. However, we can guarantee that we will notify you in accordance with applicable laws if we ever become aware of a data breach affecting your personal information. We also promise to be transparent about what happened and what we are doing in response, as part of our commitment to your trust.
Your Rights and Choices
We believe in empowering you with control over your personal information. Under Australian privacy law (and other applicable data protection laws), you have a number of rights and choices regarding the data we hold about you. We outline those rights below and how you can exercise them:
Access Your Information: You have the right to request a copy of the personal information we hold about you. This includes your account details and any other personal data associated with your profile. We will provide this to you in a reasonable time frame, usually in a common electronic format. Most of your basic information is also accessible to you by logging into your account (for example, you can see your profile details and the story you’ve published). For anything not readily accessible, you can contact us to request it.
Correct or Update Your Information: If you believe any personal information we hold is inaccurate, out-of-date, or incomplete, you have the right to have it corrected. You can make certain changes on your profile or account settings (such as updating your email or display name). For other corrections, simply contact us with the details and we will promptly correct our records.
Delete Your Data / Account: You have the right to request deletion of your personal information. If you no longer wish to use People Like You, you can choose to delete your account. By doing so (or by requesting us to do so for you), we will delete or de-identify the personal information associated with your account. This generally means removing your profile information and credentials from our systems and either deleting or anonymising the content you have published. Keep in mind that in some cases we may retain certain information for a limited time after deletion, if required for legal reasons (such as record-keeping or resolving disputes), but we will inform you if that applies. Once those purposes are fulfilled, we will fully erase the data.
Withdraw Consent: In cases where we rely on your consent to process your information (such as if you opted in to receive a newsletter or chose to share optional profile details), you have the right to withdraw that consent at any time. Withdrawing consent will not affect the lawfulness of any processing we have already done, but it will mean we stop the specific activity you no longer consent to.
Privacy Settings and Preferences: Where available, you may use account settings to control certain aspects of visibility and preferences. We also respect reasonable browser or device settings that signal tracking preferences, and we limit our use of cookies as described earlier.
Anonymous Use: If you wish, you are free to use a pseudonym or nickname on the platform instead of your real name. We do not require identity verification for standard accounts, specifically to allow you a level of anonymity. Just remember that the content you share might still indirectly reveal information about you, so always use discretion in what you publish.
Exercising Your Rights: To exercise any of your rights listed above, or to ask a question about your rights, please contact us (see How to Contact Us below for details). We will respond to your request as soon as possible, and in any event within the timeframe required by law (typically within 30 days). There is no charge for making a request, though if your request is unusually complex or repetitive, we may charge a reasonable fee or need an extension of time – but we would discuss this with you. We may also need to verify your identity before fulfilling certain requests (for example, to ensure we don’t disclose your data to someone impersonating you).
Your Choices in the Community: Aside from formal rights, we want to highlight that you have control over what you share in the first place. If you are not comfortable sharing certain details about your health journey, you are under no obligation to do so. You can participate as much or as little as you like. If you choose to edit or delete your Member Story, you can typically do so from your account (and it will no longer be visible to others). If you need any assistance removing content, let us know.
Data Retention
We retain your personal information only for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes outlined in this Privacy Policy, unless a longer retention period is required or permitted by law. In practice:
Account Data: If you have an active account, we will retain the information associated with your account for as long as you remain a member of the platform. This is so that you have continuous access to your profile and your Member Story.
Inactive Accounts: If you stop using People Like You without formally deleting your account, we may classify your account as “inactive” after a prolonged period of inactivity. Even if inactive, we typically will retain your account data in case you return, unless you request deletion. We may periodically clean up or anonymise accounts that have been inactive for a very long time, to reduce any privacy risks. We will endeavour to notify you (e.g. by email) before doing so.
Deleted Accounts: When you or we delete your account, we will promptly remove or anonymise personal information. Some residual data (such as your story) might remain in our backups or archives for a short period. We have systems that periodically purge backup data – generally, any personal data that remains in backup form will be permanently wiped within a reasonable period (for example, within 30 days). During that interim period, your data is not accessible via the live platform and is protected by our security measures.
Communication Records: If you contacted us or provided feedback, we may retain those communications for a short time for administrative purposes (for instance, so we have a history of support requests to reference). These too will be deleted or anonymised over time if no longer needed.
Legal Requirements: In certain cases, we might need to retain some information to comply with legal obligations, resolve disputes, or enforce agreements. However, we will not keep personal data for longer than necessary.
International Data Transfers
As mentioned, your data may be stored or processed outside of Australia (primarily in the United States) due to our use of international service providers. Different countries have different data protection laws; however, we take steps to ensure your rights and protections travel with your data:
Our agreements with service providers include obligations that align with Australian privacy standards. We only work with companies that have demonstrated strong privacy and security practices (for example, holding internationally recognised certifications as detailed above).
Where required, we will seek your consent for transferring sensitive information overseas. By agreeing to this Privacy Policy and using our services, you are considered to have consented to the transfer of your information to our overseas service providers for the purposes explained.
If at any time we engage new service providers or transfer data to a new country, we will update this Privacy Policy to reflect that and ensure any new parties are held to the same high standards.
If you have questions about the international storage of your data, please contact us. We understand it’s an important aspect of your privacy, and we’re happy to provide additional information or assurances as needed.
Children’s Privacy
People Like You is a platform designed for use by adults and mature teenagers who are seeking peer support for health conditions. It is not intended for children under the age of 16. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 16 years old. If you are under 16, please do not create an account or share personal information on our platform. Parents or guardians should be aware that the content on People Like You relates to health and may not be appropriate for younger individuals. If we become aware that we have inadvertently collected personal data from a child under 16, we will take steps to delete that information. If you are a parent or guardian and believe your child has provided personal information to us, please contact us immediately so we can address the issue.
Changes to This Privacy Policy
We may update or modify this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect changes in our practices, ensure compliance with laws, or for other operational reasons. If we make material changes (meaning significant changes that affect how your personal information may be used or shared), we will notify you by reasonable means. This might include a prominent notice on our website or an email notification to the address associated with your account. The “Effective Date” at the top of this Policy will always indicate when the latest changes were made. We encourage you to review this Privacy Policy periodically to stay informed about how we are protecting your information. Your continued use of People Like You after any updates constitutes your acceptance of the revised Privacy Policy.
How to Contact Us
Your privacy and feedback are very important to us. If you have any questions, concerns, or requests regarding this Privacy Policy or how we handle your data, please reach out to us. We are here to help and will respond as promptly as we can.
Email: You can contact our privacy team at support@peoplelikeyou.help with any questions or to exercise your rights.
In-App/Website: We may also provide a contact form or support chat on our platform that you can use to send us a direct message.
Complaints: If you have a complaint about how we have handled your personal information, we would like to hear from you so we can make it right. Please contact us using the above methods and provide details of your complaint. We will investigate and respond to you within a reasonable time (generally within 30 days). If you are not satisfied with our response, you have the right to escalate your complaint to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC). The OAIC is Australia’s independent regulator for privacy. They can be contacted at www.oaic.gov.au or by phone at 1300 363 992. We genuinely hope to resolve any privacy concerns directly and amicably, as maintaining your trust is our top priority.
Thank you for taking the time to read our Privacy Policy. We value the opportunity to support you on People Like You, and we are dedicated to keeping your personal information safe, respecting your rights, and fostering a supportive community built on trust and transparency.
If anything remains unclear, or if you have suggestions for how we can improve this Policy or our practices, please let us know – we’re listening.
