Privacy Policy

Last updated: October 21, 2026. Effective on publication at meltexchange.com.

This Privacy Policy explains what information Melt Exchange, LLC, a Delaware limited liability company (“Melt Exchange,” “we,” or “us”), collects through meltexchange.com and our related services (the “Service”), how we use it, who receives it, and what choices you have. It is part of our Terms of Service. The Service is for adults located in the United States and is not directed to anyone under 18.

1. The short version

We collect only what we need to run a bidding service for precious metal scrap: a seller’s email address and lot details, a buyer’s business and billing details, and basic technical data used to keep the service secure.

We do not sell your information, and we do not use data brokers. We may advertise the Service. If we do, advertising and analytics tools on our public information pages may collect technical data about visitors, as Sections 2, 5, and 8 explain. We do not use those tools on pages where you enter your email address or view a private thread. We do not use your information to train artificial intelligence models.

The one thing we deliberately share is this: when a buyer wins your lot and its fee is paid, we open a private message thread between you and that buyer and show you the buyer’s business name. We share your email address with that buyer, and the buyer’s email address with you, only when you accept the buyer’s proposed final price, so the two of you can complete the sale.

2. Information we collect

From sellers. The email address you enter; the materials, weights, and percentages you describe; any photographs you upload (we re-encode photographs in your browser to remove location data before upload); the single-use photo code we give you; your response to our email confirmation link; and your reports of how a sale ended (whether it was completed and at what price); the registered article number, postage receipt, and photographs of your package; the messages you send in the private thread with the winning buyer; and your acceptance or rejection of a proposed final price.

From buyers. Your business name and contact email; your employer identification number, state of formation, the names of your owners and officers, and your license information or the reason you hold none; the results and dates of our business-registry and sanctions-list checks, with a screenshot of each; the postage you reimburse to a seller; an access code we issue (we store only a one-way scrambled form of it, never the code itself); your bids and the lots you win; the fees we charge and credit; your confirmations of final prices; your reports about sellers, including reports that a seller did not respond; the results of test lots and other outcome confirmations; and the records you give us under the Terms showing the prices paid for lots you won, your quarterly price records, and Introduced Transactions. When we enable card billing, your card details are collected and held by our payment processor, Stripe. We keep a reference to the card and its type and last four digits, along with card-billing status, and we do not keep the full card number. We also keep the messages you send in the private thread with a seller and the final prices you propose.

From other users. A buyer may confirm a price or report that a seller did not respond. A seller may report the outcome of a sale. We record these reports and the date they were made.

Collected automatically. The network address (IP address) of your device when you submit a form or request an estimate. We use it only to limit abuse. We store a shortened, one-way scrambled form of it with a counter, and we delete those records automatically within about two days. We also send the network address to Cloudflare’s Turnstile service when you submit a lot, so that Turnstile can tell whether you are a person. If we run advertising, the advertising and analytics tools on our public pages may also collect your network address, device and browser type, the pages you view, and the advertisement that brought you to us. Our hosting provider keeps routine server logs (such as the page requested, the time, and the network address) for security and troubleshooting.

Stored on your device. Buyers who sign in have their access code saved in the browser’s local storage so that they stay signed in; signing out removes it. On our public information pages, if we run advertising or analytics, those tools may set cookies. Where the law requires your consent, we will ask first and will not set them until you agree. We do not set them on the sell page, the thread, or the buyer pages. Cloudflare Turnstile may use browser signals or its own cookie to perform its check, as described in Cloudflare’s privacy policy.

Email records. We keep a record of the transactional emails we send (such as the confirmation link and outcome notices) and whether they were sent.

3. How we use information

To run the Service: to show buyers your lot, run the 24-hour bidding window, host the private thread with the winning buyer, and introduce you to the winning buyer when you accept a final price.

To confirm that a lot is real and that the seller controls the email address, by sending a confirmation link and by requiring photographs and a photo code for every lot.

To charge and credit buyer fees, record card-billing status, and send receipts and notices.

To protect the Service and its users: to limit repeated submissions, detect fraud and abuse, enforce our Terms, block email addresses, and investigate complaints. To monitor buyer compliance with the Terms, we may confirm outcomes directly with sellers, including by asking a seller about a transaction or a test lot; submit test lots and deal with buyers as a seller; and record and use the resulting test results, prices, and other outcomes.

To measure and improve the Service in aggregate form, such as the number of lots and bids, and to measure how well our advertising works.

To decide whether to approve a buyer, by collecting and checking the business information described in Section 2, and to repeat those checks.

To comply with the law and respond to lawful requests.

4. Seller records and the summary buyers see

We keep a record of lots, outcomes, and reports for each email address. We treat variants of the same mailbox, such as different dots or “+” tags in a Gmail-style address, as the same address, so that one person cannot appear as many.

From that record we generate a short summary and show it to approved buyers next to your lot, for example “New seller,” “No completed deals yet,” or “2 completed deals, 1 no-answer.” A deal counts as completed only when the seller’s report and the buyer’s confirmation agree on the price to within one percent. The summary is not a verification or an endorsement.

We also review these records ourselves. We may hold or remove a lot, limit submissions, or block an email address because of what they show. These are our own decisions, and they may be partly triggered by automatic rules, such as a limit on the number of lots per hour. If you think a decision about you is wrong, write to us at the address in Section 11 and we will review it.

We keep these records for buyers in a similar way, including wins, no-sale and no-response reports, price changes after a win, test-lot results, quarterly price records, and Introduced Transactions, so that we can identify buyers who retrade bids repeatedly and monitor compliance with the Terms.

5. Who receives information

The winning buyer. When the buyer’s fee is paid, we open a private message thread and show the seller the buyer’s business name. The messages sent in the thread are available to the winning buyer and the seller from that point. We send the seller’s email address to that buyer, and the buyer’s email address to the seller, only when the seller accepts the buyer’s proposed final price. No other buyer receives the seller’s email address.

Approved buyers. While your lot is open, they see the materials, weights, any photographs, the photo code, and the seller summary described in Section 4. They do not see your email address or your name.

Our service providers, who handle information only to provide their services to us: Vercel (website hosting); Supabase (database, file storage, and application functions); Resend (sending our emails); Cloudflare (domain name service and the Turnstile check); and Stripe (card payments, once enabled); a package-tracking provider that receives the registered article number (we have not yet chosen one); and, if we run advertising, the advertising and analytics providers whose tools we use. The U.S. Postal Service handles the package itself. These providers store data in the United States and are bound by their own terms and privacy policies.

Authorities and others when required. We disclose information when we believe in good faith that the law requires it, to respond to valid legal process, to report suspected unlawful activity such as dealing in stolen metal, or to protect the rights, property, or safety of Melt Exchange, our users, or others.

A successor. If Melt Exchange is sold or merges with another company, information may transfer to the new owner, who must honor this Policy for information already collected.

We do not sell personal information. If we use advertising tools on our public pages, some state laws may treat that as “sharing” for cross-context behavioral advertising. You can opt out as Section 8 describes.

6. Photographs

Photographs are stored privately. They are shown only to approved buyers while your lot is open, through links that expire. Please do not include faces, documents, house numbers, or other personal details in a photograph. We cannot control what a buyer does with a photograph it has viewed, but the Terms prohibit buyers from using seller information for any purpose other than completing the sale and meeting their own legal obligations.

7. How long we keep information

Network-address records used for abuse limits are deleted automatically within about two days. Buyer intake records, including the registry and sanctions screenshots, are kept for as long as the buyer has access and five years after. That five-year period applies to the buyer intake records described in this sentence; other records follow the retention rule below.

Lot details, photographs, seller and buyer reports, outcomes, fee records, thread messages, proposed final prices, test-lot results, quarterly price records, Introduced Transactions, and block entries are kept for as long as we need them to run the Service, calculate fees and credits, resolve disputes, prevent fraud, monitor compliance, and meet legal and tax obligations. We do not set a shorter automatic deletion period for them.

When you ask us to delete your information, we delete or de-identify it as described in Section 8. We may keep a minimal record, such as a block entry or a fee record, where we need it to protect the Service or comply with the law.

8. Your choices and rights

You may ask us to tell you what personal information we hold about you, to correct it, to delete it, or to give you a copy of it. We will honor these requests for every individual in the United States, whether or not a state privacy law applies to us.

To make a request, write to us from the email address the information is associated with, at the address in Section 11. We will confirm that the request comes from you by replying to that address, and we will respond within 45 days. We will not charge a fee and will not treat you differently for making a request.

We may decline part of a request when we must keep the information to comply with the law, to complete or account for a transaction, to resolve a dispute, or to protect the Service from fraud and abuse. We will tell you what we kept and why. If we decline, you may appeal our decision to us first by writing to us at the address in Section 11. We will respond to your appeal in writing within 60 days. If we deny your appeal and you live in a state that gives you the right, you may then contact the attorney general of your state.

If we use advertising tools on our public pages, you can opt out of them by writing to us at the address in Section 11, or by turning on a Global Privacy Control signal in your browser. We honor that signal on those pages by not loading the tools. We do not respond to “Do Not Track” signals.

You can stop receiving our emails about a lot by ignoring them. We send only transactional emails about your own lot or account. We do not send marketing email.

9. Security

We use access controls and encryption in transit, restrict who can reach the database, store buyer access codes only in scrambled form, automatically block contact details in thread messages until a final price is accepted, and keep sellers’ email addresses hidden until then. We store thread messages and may read them to enforce our Terms, investigate fraud, and resolve disputes. No system is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee that information will never be accessed or disclosed without authorization. If a breach affects your information, we will notify you as the law requires.

10. Changes to this Policy

We may update this Policy by posting a new version with a new date at the top. If a change materially expands how we use information we have already collected, we will notify the affected users by email before it takes effect.

11. Contact

Write to Melt Exchange, LLC at legal@meltexchange.com with questions, requests, or complaints about this Policy or your information.

Categories of information in the last 12 months

We do not sell any of these categories. If we use advertising tools, internet or device activity on our public pages may be shared for advertising. We do not collect sensitive personal information as the term is defined in state privacy laws.