With ATL Roll-Out, Delivery App Comes With Important Disclosures

An Austin, Texas, startup that encourages people not to provide it with any information they consider too personal is rolling out its service in Atlanta.

Favor, a smartphone app that bills itself as delivering anything, contracts with folks that go out and pick up food and other items from, for instance, Chipotle and other restaurants that don't deliver.

Just like couriers, "runners can see your address, first name, last name, phone number and photo. Individuals reading this information may use it or disclose it to other individuals or entities without our control and without your knowledge," the company says in its privacy policy, perhaps potentially warding off lawsuits.

“We therefore urge you to think carefully about including any specific information you may deem private.”

NeighborFavor Inc., which does business as Favor, employs a “general on-boarding process” for its workers that’s similar to Lyft and Uber, a spokeswoman said in an email.

Zac Maurais, the startup’s co-founder and chief marketing officer, declined to speak to the AJC in detail about its privacy policy despite repeated emails, phone calls and voice messages.

The startup was founded in 2011 and began catering to college towns in the middle of 2013, according to reports.

It has since expanded in the wake of a $2 million seed funding round announced in in the fall. In March, the company announced a $13 million Series A.

It operates in Austin, Boston, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio and now Atlanta.

Favor also receives and records information on its servers that includes a user’s location and IP address.

“We treat this data as non-Personal Information,” the policy read. That data may be aggregated and provided to advertisers and others about how customers behave.

Other similar services, including GrubHub and its subsidiary Seemless, also have policies of sharing such information with outsiders in order to allow those companies to make deliveries.