CurbWorth Support
Contact: [email protected]
CurbWorth is built and run by Heathrow Andrews in Portland, Oregon. One person reads that address, replies are not automated, and there is no guaranteed response time. Include your iPhone model and iOS version for anything that looks like a bug — it saves a round trip.
What CurbWorth is
CurbWorth watches publicly visible listings on public marketplaces including Craigslist, Facebook Marketplace, OfferUp, and Nextdoor for genuinely free ($0) items, ranks them by how new they are, how close they are, and what they are worth on the resale market, and links you straight to the original listing. It alerts you when a new free listing appears. CurbWorth is a discovery tool: it does not sell items, does not handle money, and is not part of the pickup.
Where CurbWorth works
Version 1 covers the Portland, Oregon metro area only. Listings from other cities do not appear, and there is no setting that changes the covered area. Coverage of another metro area is added server-side, not by the app.
Do I need an account?
No. CurbWorth has no sign-up, no password, and no login. Instead, your device holds one anonymous identifier — a random value in a cookie. Your saves, passes, and alert keywords are stored on the CurbWorth server against that identifier, not on your phone. Nothing connects the identifier to your name, email address, or Apple ID, and the identifier is the only way anyone, us included, can find those rows again. See "Delete your device data" below.
Alerts
CurbWorth sends alerts as local notifications from your own device. If they stop arriving:
- Check that alerts are switched on in CurbWorth.
- Check Settings › Notifications › CurbWorth on your iPhone and allow notifications.
- Open the app once. Alerts depend on the app being able to reach the CurbWorth service.
What the iPhone banners actually cover. The app checks the CurbWorth feed on a short timer for listings posted since its last check, and raises a banner for every new free listing it has not already shown you, capped at eight per check. The first check after the app starts is a baseline: it records what is already there without alerting you. Those banners do not use your keywords or your minimum value. Keywords and minimum value filter two other things: the in-app feed, when you switch the keyword filter on, and the Web Push alerts our server sends if you installed the CurbWorth web app to your Home Screen through Safari and enabled notifications there. Server-sent alerts also have a mode: "Only my words" pings you for your keywords, and "Everything new" pings you for every new free find, which the app itself warns is a lot. A free item that no source published, or that a source published without a usable timestamp, can reach you late or not at all.
Optional ntfy backup. Under Alerts › Advanced there is an ntfy topic field. It is empty and unused unless you paste a topic into it. If you do, each alert is also posted to that topic on https://ntfy.sh, which means the alert text and the listing link reach a third party you chose. A self-hosted HTTPS ntfy server can be configured on the instance itself, but the app offers no control that sets one. Anyone who knows a public ntfy topic name can read it, so pick something unguessable. Clear the field to switch it off. See the Privacy Policy for exactly what is sent.
Report a bad or unsafe listing
Email [email protected] with the subject "CurbWorth listing report" and include:
- The listing title and its source marketplace, or the link CurbWorth opened.
- What is wrong: it is not actually free, it is a scam, it is recalled or unsafe, it is a prohibited item, or the post is abusive.
We read every report. There is no button that pulls one listing out of the feed on request, and we will not pretend otherwise: what a report can change is the automated safety screen. Where the problem is a category that screen can cover, we add it, so posts matching it are suppressed from then on — for you and for everyone else. CurbWorth does not host the original post, so also report it on the marketplace it came from; that is the only place it can be taken down at the source, and once it is gone there it stops reaching CurbWorth.
If a listing or a meetup involves a threat to someone's safety, contact local law enforcement first. Never go alone to an unfamiliar address for a pickup, and treat used car seats, helmets, cribs, and recalled products as unsafe unless you can verify them yourself.
Delete your device data
CurbWorth has no account to close, and there is no delete button inside the app today. The only link between you and the rows on the server is a random identifier the server stores in a cookie on your device — you cannot read it, and we cannot look you up without it. That leaves two routes:
- Email first, then delete the app. Write to [email protected] with the subject "CurbWorth data deletion" and describe your settings: your alert keywords, your minimum value, and roughly when you started using CurbWorth. Those are stored per device, so they are what lets us find the right record and run the server-side delete. It removes your saves and passes, alert settings and keywords, any push subscription, your seen-item history, and the device record itself. We will not delete a record we cannot identify with confidence.
- Just delete the app, or clear its data. In Safari, clear CurbWorth's website data. The identifier goes with it, so nothing on any device you use points at those rows any more, and a fresh install starts over with a new identifier. The rows themselves stay on the server unless you asked us to delete them first — which is why the email route comes first if you want them gone. A device record that never accumulated anything is deleted automatically once it is seven days old.
Usage events already recorded keep only that random identifier and age out automatically 90 days after they were recorded. The shared listing feed is public marketplace data, is not personal to you, and is unaffected either way. See the Privacy Policy for what is stored and for how long.
Other questions
An item was already gone. Free items go fast, and the original poster does not always take the listing down. Always check the original listing before you drive.
The value estimate looks wrong. Estimates come from live eBay asking prices for comparable items, not completed sales. They are a rough signal, not an appraisal.
A listing is not free. Report it with the steps above. CurbWorth is meant to show $0 items only.