Effective date: [DATE] · Operator: BidLode LLC, 4030 Wake Forest Road, Ste 349, Raleigh, NC 27609, North Carolina ("we", "us"). BidLode is a business-to-business service for companies that bid on government work.
To match public bids to your profile, send your daily or weekly emails and deadline reminders, generate automated memos and drafts, provide support, bill you, keep the service secure, prevent abuse, comply with law, and improve the service. We do not sell your personal information and we do not share it for cross-context behavioural advertising [Lawyer: confirm this stays true if ad pixels are enabled, see section 4].
Memos and drafts are generated automatically from the public solicitation text and the relevant parts of your company profile. If we use an outside AI provider [NAME], we only use one whose terms [do not allow training on your data, CONFIRM], and we send it the minimum needed. Do not put classified information, CUI, or ITAR/EAR-controlled data in your profile or notes.
DRAFT – pending attorney review. Updated 25 Oct 2026 for sign-up measurement and the legal self-review.
First-party sign-up measurement. When you arrive through a link that carries campaign tags (for example utm_source or utm_campaign), a referral or partner code (ref, partner), or an ad click identifier (gclid, gbraid, wbraid, fbclid, li_fat_id), we store those values in a first-party cookie named bl_attr for up to 90 days. If you sign up, we save them with your account. We use them only to learn which ads, partners and outreach lead to sign-ups, and to connect your account to our own record of how we contacted your company, if we did. We also record product events in our own database (sign-up started, trial started, onboarding completed, a bid memo opened, a bid saved, an email link clicked, a purchase) to measure and improve the service. None of this is sent to advertising platforms. If your browser sends a Global Privacy Control signal, we don't store ad click identifiers.
Advertising tags (off unless we switch them on). [IF ENABLED] We may use Google Analytics and conversion tags from Google Ads, Meta and LinkedIn to measure sign-ups from our ads. They load only after you click Accept in our cookie notice, never when your browser sends Global Privacy Control, and you can change your choice anytime on our Privacy choices page. When they run, they receive the page visit, the sign-up event and an event ID, never your company profile, NAICS codes or notes. [Lawyer: confirm whether these tags count as "sharing" for cross-context behavioural advertising under California law and similar state laws, whether a "Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information" link is required, and whether opt-in consent is needed or opt-out is enough. Server-side conversion APIs that send a hashed email are not built and would need review first. Self-review note (25 Oct 2026): at launch we are below the California CCPA "business" thresholds (Civ. Code §1798.140(d): $26,625,000 revenue, 100,000 consumers, or 50% of revenue from selling or sharing), so CCPA duties likely do not attach yet; we still default to opt-in consent and honour GPC so the design already meets the stricter rule if thresholds are reached.]
To introduce BidLode to small businesses that already work with the federal government, we compile business contact information from public sources: federal award records on USAspending.gov, profiles that firms publish on the SBA's Small Business Search, state vendor directories (such as North Carolina's electronic Vendor Portal), and contact pages on firms' own websites. We collect only business details a firm has published (company name, location, industry codes, award history, and the business email or phone it lists), we record where and when each item came from, and we do not buy email lists, guess addresses, or use non-public SAM.gov contact data. We use this information only for our own one-to-one business emails about BidLode; we do not sell it, rent it or share it with others for their marketing. You can ask us where we got your information, or ask us to stop contacting you or delete it, by replying to any of our emails or writing to info@bidlode.com; we keep a suppression record so we do not contact you again. We refresh or delete prospect records that are not in active use within 12 months.
We send service emails (matches, deadline and amendment alerts, renewal notices, receipts) and, if you sign up, the free weekly digest. For the digest we keep your email, the trade and state you picked, when you confirmed, and the campaign that brought you (for example a utm_source tag). If you enter a UEI or company name during setup, we look up that company's public federal award records on USAspending.gov to suggest trades, states and agencies, and cache the result for up to 7 days; nothing is added to your profile until you confirm it. You can change match-email frequency or turn them off in Settings. Every marketing email identifies us, includes our postal address and a working unsubscribe link, and we honour unsubscribes within 10 business days (in practice, immediately).
We share data only with service providers that run BidLode on our behalf under contracts that limit their use of it: hosting and database [Fly.io, Supabase], email delivery [Resend], payments [Lemon Squeezy], AI [provider, if used] and analytics [Google]. On a Team plan, bid notes and statuses are visible to the other members of your account. We also disclose data if the law requires, to protect rights and safety, or in a merger or sale of the business (with notice to you).
DRAFT – pending attorney review. Updated 25 Oct 2026: the 90-day deletion after a trial or plan ends, what is kept, and profile pre-fill from public award records (section 1).
| Data | How long we keep it |
|---|---|
| Account and profile data | While your account is active, then deleted or anonymised within [90] days after you close it or ask us to delete it |
| Free trials or paid plans that end | Your company profile, private notes on bids and bid feedback (saves, skips and the outcomes you track) are kept for 90 days after your free trial or your last paid period ends, so you can pick a plan and pick up where you left off. After 90 days they are deleted automatically unless you have subscribed again. Ask sooner and we delete them sooner. What we keep after that: your login email (so you can sign in again and so we can honour unsubscribes), billing records (see below) and usage events, such as sign-up, onboarding and purchase events, which we use for security and aggregate reporting and which contain no company profile. Usage events are kept for [PERIOD, e.g. 24 months], then deleted or aggregated. Lawyer: confirm the usage-event period. The 90-day deletion runs automatically in the app (daily job). |
| Prospect records (section 4A) | Up to 12 months unless in active use; suppression records kept as long as needed to honour an opt-out |
| Sign-in links and sessions | Sign-in links expire after 20 minutes; sessions after 30 days |
| Email logs and unsubscribe records | Unsubscribe records are kept as long as needed to honour them; other email logs for [12] months |
| Billing records | As long as tax and accounting law requires (generally up to [7] years), largely held by Lemon Squeezy |
| Support emails | 12 months |
| Backups | Overwritten on a rolling basis within [30] days |
We use encryption in transit, hashed single-use sign-in links, access controls and logging. No system is completely secure. If a breach affects your personal information, we will notify you and regulators as required by law, including North Carolina's Identity Theft Protection Act.
You can edit your profile, export your bid list, unsubscribe, or ask us to access, correct, delete or provide a copy of your data by emailing info@bidlode.com. We will verify your request and respond within the time the law requires. Depending on where you live (for example California, other US states with privacy laws, or the EU/UK), you may have additional rights, including the right to appeal a decision about your request; we will not discriminate against you for using them. [Lawyer: confirm which state privacy laws apply at our size; many have revenue or volume thresholds.]
BidLode is a business service for adults and is not directed to children under 16. We do not knowingly collect their data.
We'll post updates here and email you about material changes before they take effect. Contact: info@bidlode.com, BidLode LLC, 4030 Wake Forest Road, Ste 349, Raleigh, NC 27609.