Privacy policy

The consent this notice asks for

We ask for your consent when you create an account, and the request is separate from these terms rather than bundled into them. Consent under the DPDP Act has to be free, specific, informed, unconditional and unambiguous, given by a clear affirmative action — so continuing to browse this site is not consent, and we do not treat it as such.

You can withdraw consent at any time, and withdrawing it is as easy as giving it. Withdrawal does not make our earlier processing unlawful, and it does not release either of us from a contract already in progress: where we still need data to complete a project you have commissioned or worked on, or to meet a legal obligation such as tax record-keeping, we keep only what that requires and erase the rest.

Some processing does not rest on consent at all. Where you have voluntarily given us data for a specified purpose and not indicated that you object, the Act treats that as a legitimate use; the same applies where we must process data to comply with a law or a court order.

What we collect, and why

Each category below is collected for the purposes listed beside it and is not used for an unrelated purpose without asking you again.

• Account and identity data: Name, email address, phone number and password. Used to create and secure your account, to authenticate you, and to contact you about a project.
• Verification data (freelancers): PAN number, the name as it appears on PAN records, and an identity document. Used to verify that a freelancer is who they say they are before they can bid, and to meet our tax obligations when we pay them.
• Project and transaction data: Briefs, bids, deliverables, invoices and payment records. Used to operate the contract between us, to raise and settle invoices, and to keep the accounting records the Companies Act and the GST law require.
• Communications: Messages exchanged on the platform, and correspondence with our support team. Used to deliver the messaging feature, to resolve disputes, and to investigate conduct reported to us.
• Technical and usage data: IP address, device and browser information, pages viewed and referring URLs. Used to keep the service available and secure, to diagnose faults, and to understand which parts of the site are used.
• Advertising and attribution data: The campaign parameters and click identifiers attached to the link you arrived by. Used to understand which advertising brings people to the site. See “Analytics and advertising” below for who receives this.

How long we keep it

We keep personal data only for as long as the purpose it was collected for requires, and then we erase it. Where a period below is set by law, the law governs.

• Account data: For as long as your account is open. If you close it or withdraw consent, we erase your account data within 90 days, except where a period below requires us to keep a specific record.
• Financial and tax records: Eight years from the end of the relevant financial year, as the Companies Act 2013 and the GST law require. This is a legal obligation and is not affected by withdrawing consent.
• Verification records: For the life of the account and eight years after the last transaction, for the same reason.
• Project and message history: Three years after a project closes, so that a dispute raised within the window can be investigated against the record.
• Technical logs: Twelve months, after which they are deleted or aggregated so that they no longer identify anyone.

Who we share it with

We do not sell personal data, and we do not share it for anyone else’s marketing.

• The other side of your project: A sponsor and the freelancer working on their brief see what the project requires them to see. We do not disclose a freelancer’s verification documents to a sponsor.
• Processors acting on our instructions: Payment providers, cloud hosting, email delivery and customer-support tooling. Each is bound by contract to process data only as we instruct and to protect it.
• Analytics and advertising providers: Named individually in the next section.
• Legal requirements: Where we are required to disclose data by law, by a court, or by a government agency acting under a law, and where disclosure is necessary to establish or defend a legal claim.
• A change of ownership: If the business is merged or acquired, data may transfer to the acquiring entity, which would be bound by this notice until it tells you otherwise.

Analytics and advertising

We do not show a cookie banner. The DPDP Act does not require one, and a banner that asks a question we do not act on would be theatre. Instead this section tells you exactly what runs, which is what the disclosure obligation actually asks for.

The following third-party services may be loaded on our pages and receive technical and usage data, including your IP address and an identifier stored in your browser: Google Analytics 4 and Google Ads (Google LLC), the Meta Pixel (Meta Platforms), the LinkedIn Insight Tag (LinkedIn Corporation) and Microsoft Clarity (Microsoft Corporation). We use them to measure which advertising works and how the site is used.

Where we send a record of a completed registration to Google Ads, any email address in it is hashed with SHA-256 before it leaves our servers. We do not transmit your email address in plain text to an advertising provider, and we do not put it in a page URL, which is why our sign-up links carry it in the part of the address that browsers never send to a server.

You can opt out of analytics and advertising at any time by using your browser’s controls to block third-party scripts and storage, or by using the opt-out each provider publishes. The site works fully without them.

Cookies and similar storage

You can clear or block any of these in your browser. Blocking the essential ones will sign you out.

• Essential: Sign-in, session security and remembering which audience you last chose. The site cannot work without these.
• Functional: Preferences you have set, so you are not asked twice.
• Analytics: Set by the providers named above to measure usage.
• Advertising: Set by the providers named above to attribute a visit to a campaign.

Your rights

Under the DPDP Act 2023 you have the following rights over your personal data. To use any of them, contact us using the details in “Grievance redressal” below; we will respond within the period stated there.

• Access: A summary of the personal data we hold about you, what we are doing with it, and who we have shared it with.
• Correction and completion: To have inaccurate or misleading data corrected, and incomplete data completed.
• Erasure: To have your data erased, unless we are required by law to keep it or need it for a purpose you have consented to that is still running.
• Withdrawal of consent: To withdraw consent at any time, as easily as it was given.
• Nomination: To nominate another individual to exercise these rights on your behalf if you die or become incapable of exercising them yourself. Tell us the nominee’s details using the contact below.
• Grievance redressal: To complain to us first, and to the Data Protection Board of India if we do not resolve it.

Your obligations

The Act places two duties on you as well, and it is fairer to state them than to leave them in the statute. Do not impersonate anyone else when giving us data, and do not give us information you know to be false — particularly in verification, where a false document affects the person whose identity is used. Do not raise a grievance you know to be frivolous. The Act provides for penalties in both cases.

Security

We protect personal data with technical and organisational measures appropriate to the risk: encryption in transit, access limited to staff who need it for their role, and separation of verification data from ordinary account data.

If a personal data breach occurs, we will notify the Data Protection Board of India and every affected person, as the Act requires, without waiting to establish the full extent of it first.

Transfers outside India

Some of the processors named above operate infrastructure outside India, so your data may be processed abroad. Under the DPDP Act this is permitted except to a country the Central Government has restricted by notification, and we do not transfer personal data to any restricted country.

A previous version of this notice referred to standard contractual clauses. That is a European instrument and is not the mechanism Indian law uses; the sentence has been removed rather than reworded, because it described the wrong legal regime.

Where a sector-specific law requires certain data to remain in India, we comply with it.

Children

The platform is for people aged 18 and over, and we do not knowingly process the data of anyone under 18. We do not carry out behavioural advertising or tracking directed at children. If you believe a child has given us data, contact us and we will erase it.

Grievance redressal

Write to us at support@lancerscape.com, or by post at our registered office: 25, Floor, MBT Road, Ocheri & Post, Nemili Taluk, Ranipet Dist., Tamil Nadu, INDIA. 632531. We acknowledge every data-protection complaint within 24 hours and aim to resolve it within 15 days.

We are appointing a named Grievance Officer and their details will be published here. Until then, complaints reach our support team at the address above and are handled to the same commitment.

If we do not resolve your complaint, you may complain to the Data Protection Board of India.

Changes to this notice

We may update this notice. The date at the top changes when we do, and where a change materially affects how we use your data we will tell you by email or through a prominent notice on the platform before it takes effect.

Other sites we link to

Our pages sometimes link to sites we do not operate. This notice does not cover them, and we are not responsible for how they handle your data.