Privacy policy

Version 30 August 2026 · draft for legal review · Mowie Pty Ltd

Mowie is an online marketplace, operated by Mowie Pty Ltd, that connects people who want their lawn mowed ("customers") with independent lawn mowing businesses ("mowers"). This policy explains what personal information we collect, why, who sees it, who we share it with, which decisions are automated, and how you can access or correct it. We handle personal information in line with the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and the Australian Privacy Principles (APPs), whether or not we're currently required to.

1. What we collect

Everyone

• Contact and account details - name, email address, a password (stored only as a salted hash - we can't read it), and a mobile number if you give one (required for mowers, optional for customers). The links we email you to confirm your address or reset a password expire and are single-use.
• Device and usage data - IP address, browser and device type, pages visited, and the actions you take in the app (listings, bids, jobs, messages, which listings a mower opens). We log these to run the service, keep it secure, investigate problems and understand what's working.
• Messages you send through the in-app chat between a customer and the mower they've hired, and anything you send us through the contact form or by email.
• Marketing preference - whether you've ticked the box to receive occasional Mowie news. It's off unless you turn it on.

Customers

• Property details - the address, its map location, the block outline and house footprint we look up from public land-registry and mapping data, any lawn outline you trace, and the size we calculate from it.
• Access details - gate type, whether it's locked, a gate code if you give one, whether there's a dog, obstacles, whether someone will be home, and any notes. A gate code and whether anyone's home are stored so the mower you hire can plan; they're never shown to mowers who are only bidding.
• Photos of your lawn, and the "after" photos the mower sends when the job is done. Photos are resized on upload and all embedded metadata, including any location tag from your phone, is removed.
• Payment details - your card is entered directly with Stripe, our payment provider. We store only the card brand, last four digits, expiry and a Stripe reference. We never see or store your full card number.
• Reviews you leave about a mower, and issues you raise about a job.

Mowers

• Business details - business name, ABN and the entity name and GST status returned by the Australian Business Register, years of experience, equipment, suburbs you cover, working days and hours, website and social links.
• Date of birth - to confirm you're 18 or over and because the ATO requires it in our reporting. It's never shown to anyone.
• Profile content - your photo, tagline, bio and the work photos you upload. These are public.
• Insurance documents if you upload a certificate of currency for the Insured badge, and its expiry date.
• Identity and bank details are collected and held by Stripe when you set up payouts, under Stripe's own privacy policy. We hold only your Stripe account ID and payout status, and we can retrieve the account you're paid into for ATO reporting.
• Performance data - jobs done, on-time rate, ratings and reviews, disputes, warnings.

Kids' first job page

The interest form on that page asks a parent or guardian for their own name and contact details and a teenager's age bracket - nothing that identifies the young person. We use it only to contact the parent when family crews open.

2. Why we collect it

• To run the marketplace: match your listing with mowers nearby, show bids, book jobs, and let the customer and hired mower coordinate.
• To send you the notifications the service depends on - confirmation and password links, new bids, "on my way", job-done photos, the reminder before a job approves itself, receipts and payout notices - by email, in-app inbox and, for one moment only ("you're hired", to mowers), SMS. You can turn off job emails and that text in your account; confirmation, password, receipt and safety messages always come.
• To take and pay out payments, and to keep records of transactions.
• To resolve issues and disputes, handle damage reports, prevent fraud and misuse, and enforce our terms fairly.
• To improve the service, including anonymised, aggregated statistics such as the average bid for a lawn of a given size in a suburb.
• To meet legal obligations, including tax reporting (section 5).
• Only if you've opted in, to send you occasional Mowie news and offers. Every marketing message has an unsubscribe link, and we never mix promotions into job messages.

3. Who sees what

• Mowers we haven't approved yet see only the suburb, the lawn size and what's asked - no map, photos or access details.
• Approved mowers who are bidding see your suburb, the lawn outline and size, your photos, the condition and access details you gave (except a gate code and whether anyone will be home), your first name and your notes. They don't see your street address, a street-level photo of your house, or your phone number. We record which mowers open your listing.
• The mower you hire sees your full address, name, mobile number, gate code, access notes, whether anyone will be home and a street-level view of the front, and can message you in the app. Mowers agree to use this only for the job.
• Customers see a mower's business name, photo, tagline, bio, work photos, suburbs, services, rating and reviews, Insured and Founding badges, and, if the mower turns it on, the registered entity name behind their ABN. A customer who hires a mower also sees their mobile number.
• Public suburb pages and mower profiles show job photos, prices and reviews without customers' names, addresses or locations.
• Mowie staff can see the above, and read messages, to support you and resolve disputes and safety concerns.

4. Who we share it with

We share personal information only with the service providers we need to run Mowie, and only what each one needs:

• Stripe (payments, mower identity verification, payouts and refunds).
• Resend (email) and Twilio (the one SMS).
• Google (address lookup, mapping and street imagery) and the Victorian land registry's public mapping service. Your address is sent to the mapping provider to find its location; imagery is publicly available satellite, aerial and street-level imagery.
• Anthropic (AI assistance). Text you write in listing notes and dispute descriptions may be processed to pull out access details, draft a bid message for a mower, or suggest how to resolve an issue. No card or bank details are sent, and the output is a suggestion that a person reviews before anything final happens.
• Hosting and infrastructure: Railway (application and database, Singapore) and Cloudflare (security, content delivery and backups, Australia and the United States).
• The Australian Taxation Office, under the Sharing Economy Reporting Regime: for each mower, twice a year, name, date of birth, address, contact details, ABN, payout bank account and the gross amounts and number of jobs paid through Mowie.
• A customer who reports property damage from a mower's visit receives that mower's name, business name, ABN, contact details and insurance certificate details so they can make a claim. Mowers agree to this in the vendor terms.
• Anyone else only if you ask us to, if the law requires it, or if it's needed to protect someone's safety or our legal rights.

We don't sell personal information, and we don't share it with advertisers.

5. Overseas disclosure

Some of the providers above are based in or process data outside Australia: Stripe, Twilio, Resend, Google, Anthropic and Cloudflare in the United States, and our application and database hosting in Singapore. Where we send information overseas we use providers that meet recognised security standards and are bound by contract to protect it. By using Mowie you consent to this and, to the extent permitted by law, we're not responsible for their handling of it under APP 8.

6. Automated decisions

Some things in Mowie happen automatically, using your information. Knowing which ones matters, so here they are:

• Which mowers hear about a listing - those covering the suburb, by distance; the radius widens after 6 hours without a bid, and a listing closes after 72 hours without a hire.
• The order bids are shown in under "recommended" - rating, reliability, whether the mower is insured, price and distance. You can sort by price or choose any bid; the order never hides a bid.
• Automatic approval and payment 48 hours after a completion photo if the customer takes no action, with an email reminder 24 hours before, and an issue window for 7 days after.
• Badges and gates - the Insured badge drops when a certificate's expiry date passes; once the insurance rule applies, mowers without a current certificate can't bid.
• Suggestions - price guides, suggested bids, drafted bid messages and dispute triage notes, generated with rules and AI. They're suggestions; a person decides.

Decisions that significantly affect a person - approving, warning, suspending or removing a mower, resolving an issue, refunds - are made by a person. You can ask us to review any automated outcome using the contact details below.

7. How long we keep it

• Transaction records (jobs, payments, receipts, ATO reports) for at least 5 years, as tax law requires.
• Your account and property details while your account is active. If you delete your account, we anonymise your name, contact details and addresses; job and payment records are kept in de-identified form for the period above.
• Photos are kept while the related lawn, job or profile exists, then removed on request or when the account is deleted.
• Confirmation and reset links expire within days and are single-use; messages, issues and dispute records are kept with the job they belong to; usage logs for 12 months.

8. Security and data breaches

Data is encrypted in transit (HTTPS) and accessible only to the people who need it; passwords are stored as salted hashes and never sent to us in the clear; card and bank details are handled only by Stripe; gate codes and "who's home" are shown only to the hired mower. We keep backups and access logs. If a data breach is likely to cause serious harm we'll assess it within 30 days, notify you and the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner as the Notifiable Data Breaches scheme requires, and tell you what to do. Mowers must tell us within 24 hours if a device holding customer details is lost.

9. Cookies

We set three cookies of our own: a session cookie that keeps you logged in (mml_session, HttpOnly), a one-minute cookie that carries status messages between pages (mml_flash), and, if you arrive with a founding-partner code, a 30-day cookie remembering it (mml_promo). Cloudflare sets a security cookie to tell people from bots. Pages with a map load Google Maps, which may set Google's own cookies under Google's policy. We don't use advertising cookies or third-party analytics; if we add website analytics we'll use a privacy-friendly tool and say so here.

10. Children

You must be 18 or older to hold a Mowie account, and we don't knowingly collect information from anyone under 18. Teenagers who want to mow do so through a parent's account when family crews open; see section 1 for what the interest form collects.

11. Your rights

• Access and correction - most details can be updated in your account. For anything else, email us and we'll respond within 30 days.
• Deletion - you can delete your account yourself from the account page (once no job is in progress), or ask us to.
• Marketing - unsubscribe from any marketing email, or turn "Mowie news" off in your account.
• Automated decisions - ask us to review any automated outcome (section 6).
• Complaints - contact our Privacy Officer first; we acknowledge within 2 business days, investigate and reply within 30 days. If you're not satisfied you can complain to the OAIC at oaic.gov.au.

12. Changes

We'll update this policy as the service changes and note the version at the top. Material changes are announced in the app or by email before they apply.

13. Contact

Privacy Officer, Mowie Pty Ltd · privacy@mowie.com.au · 0468 689 791 · contact page