Privacy policy

1. What we collect

Account data. Your username and email address. The address has to be confirmed: when you register, and whenever you change it, we email you a code. The same address receives a welcome email and, if you ask for one, a password-reset link. We do not store the password itself: the database holds only its irreversible hash and a unique salt. If you sign in with Google or Apple, we receive your email address and a permanent sign-in identifier from them — no password is created in that case.

Account contents. The listings you add to favourites and your saved searches: the name of each search and its parameters — city, district, price range and the rest of the filters. It also covers the reviews you leave on listings — the text, the rating and the username the review is published under — and the notifications the service creates for you: new listings matching a saved search, and the decision on your request.

Requests on the noticeboard. If you post a request under “Rent” or “Let”, we keep what it says: the city and districts, the number of rooms, the term and the price, the text, and the contact details you gave for it — a phone number and, if you wish, a Telegram name. Your account has no phone number of its own: it lives only in the request and goes with it. A request is public: once a moderator has approved it, any visitor to the site or the app can see it for as long as it is on the board, and its phone number and Telegram name are shown to signed-in users only. Your username and email address are not shown on it. A moderator sees the whole request and may reject it with a note that only you will see.

Photos. Your profile photo and up to eight photos on a request — only the pictures you pick from your library yourself. The app never uses the camera or the microphone, and asks for access to your photo library only when you are choosing a photo. The files are stored in Cloudflare R2 (see section 5). The photos on a request are seen by everyone who sees the request; your profile photo is seen by you alone. Replacing or removing a photo deletes the old file.

Reports. If you report a listing or a request, we keep the reason, your comment, what you reported and which account it came from. Reports are seen by moderators only; the author of a request never learns who reported it.

Subscription. If you take out Homespot Premium, we record the status of your subscription and its expiry date in your account. Both come from RevenueCat, the service through which the stores report purchases. We need them to unlock the paid features and to show listings without the delay; we receive neither the amount charged nor any payment details.

Push notifications. If you switch notifications on, we keep your device’s push token, its platform and app version, and its language and currency — so a notification arrives in your language with the price in your currency; without the token the operating system cannot deliver a message. The token is deleted when you switch notifications off, sign out or delete your account, and on its own if you have not opened the app for two months.

Technical data. When you reach our servers, the service logs may record your IP address, the requested address and the time of the request — this is how any web service works. We use those records only to diagnose failures and to protect the service from abuse, and we do not match them against your account for any other purpose.

Sign-in days. Against your account we note the date of your last sign-in and the days on which you signed in or used the account — the date only, with no time, device or actions. Those marks are how we count how many people use the service.

Page speed — no identifiers. On the site, your browser measures how quickly a page opened: when the server’s first response arrived, when the main content appeared, whether the layout shifted while loading. When you leave the page, those numbers are sent to our server as a single record, together with the kind of page (“listing”, “search results”) and how it was opened: by following a link, by reloading or with the back button. The record carries no identifier, no address of a particular listing and no cookie — it cannot tell us who you are or which visit it came from, and it cannot be joined to any other record. That is why it does not count as analytics and is always collected. It exists for one purpose: to see where the site is slow and to check that our changes made it faster.

Analytics on the site: our own counter always, Google Analytics only with your consent. We count visits and the steps towards a subscription ourselves, the same way the app does: the browser stores a random identifier, once a day sends our server a single “visited today” mark and, as you use the site, events: a search, a listing opened, a phone number revealed, a listing added to favourites, a search saved, a tap on a locked Premium feature or opening one. An event carries that identifier, the day and a few short details from a fixed list — such as the town, deal type and number of filters of a search, or where a listing was opened from — with no address, no time of day and no link to your account. This counter runs for every visitor, whatever the answer to the cookie banner. Google Analytics is loaded only if you chose “Accept” in that banner, and collects anonymised visit statistics: which pages were opened, how long the visit lasted, the type of device and browser. If you chose “Decline”, or have not chosen yet, the Google Analytics scripts are not loaded at all.

The counter in the app. The mobile app has no Google Analytics. It counts visits and the steps towards a subscription the same way the site does: on first launch it creates a random install identifier, once a day sends our server a single “visited today” mark and, as you use the app, events: a search, a listing opened, a phone number revealed, a listing added to favourites, a search saved, a tap on a locked Premium feature or opening one, the subscription screen shown and closed, a purchase started and completed with its plan, and the answer to the notifications prompt. An event carries only that identifier, the day and a few such short details from a fixed list — no address, no time of day, no link to your account. The app shows no consent banner for it: these records cannot identify anyone, and they are joined to nothing else.

Location — it never leaves your device. The site and the mobile app may ask for access to your location so they can open the city nearest to you straight away. The coordinates are processed on the device itself and are never sent to our servers — all that leaves is the name of the chosen city. You do not have to grant the permission: the city can be picked by hand, and the rest of the app works without it.

2. What we do not collect

• Unique device identifiers and advertising identifiers.
• Contacts, camera or microphone access. The app reaches your photo library only when you are choosing a photo for your profile or a request, and receives only the pictures you picked.
• Payment details — card numbers, bank account numbers and other bank details. The subscription is charged by the App Store or Google Play, and payment details stay with them: they never reach us in any form.
• Anything about what you do on other websites.

3. Why we use the data, and on what basis

• Your account, favourites, saved searches, requests and photos — to provide the service you chose to use (performance of our contract with you).
• Emails with a confirmation code, the welcome email and the password-reset link — to make sure the address is yours and to get you back into your account (performance of our contract with you, and the security of the account).
• Reviewing requests before they are published, and handling reports — to keep fraud, spam and other people’s contact details off the board (our legitimate interest, and the protection of other users).
• The status of your subscription — to unlock what you have paid for and to show listings without the delay (performance of our contract with you).
• Your push token — to send the notifications you asked for (performance of our contract with you); you can stop them by switching notifications off.
• Replies to your support enquiries — at your request.
• Service logs and sign-in days — to find failures, counter abuse and know how many people use the service (our legitimate interest in keeping the service working and secure).
• The visit counter and events, on the site and in the app — our legitimate interest in knowing how many people use the service, whether they come back, which features help them find a home and what stands in the way of a subscription; these records are built so that they cannot identify anyone. Google Analytics on the site — solely on the basis of your consent, which you give in the cookie banner and can withdraw.

4. Cookies and local storage

Some data is kept in your browser — or, in the app, on your device — rather than with us:

• the theme you picked;
• your answer to the cookie banner (on the site);
• a random identifier used to count visits (on the site and in the app);
• the parameters of your last search, so you do not have to set them again;
• session tokens while you are signed in — they are removed when you sign out;
• in the app — also the position of the push-notifications switch and the date of the last visit mark it sent.

We use no advertising or tracking cookies. You can change your decision about Google Analytics at any time in your profile — the Google Analytics switch takes effect immediately, with no need to reload the page.

5. Who we share data with

We do not sell your data and do not hand it to third parties for their own benefit. Parts of the service run on third-party technology, and those parties receive a limited set of data:

• Google — signing in with a Google account, paying for the subscription in Google Play, push delivery on Android (Firebase Cloud Messaging), and Google Analytics on the site if you consented to it.
• Apple — signing in with Apple ID, paying for the subscription in the App Store, and push delivery on iPhone (APNs).
• Yandex — the maps on the site and in the app. The map is loaded from Yandex servers, so Yandex sees your IP address and which part of the map you opened.
• RevenueCat — subscription processing. It receives your account identifier from us and the purchase data from the store; it sees no payment details either.
• Expo — push delivery (the text of a notification and your device token pass through its service) and app updates: on launch the app asks Expo’s servers whether a newer version of its code exists, and Expo sees your IP address, platform and app version when it does.
• Cloudflare — photo storage (R2). You send a file straight to the storage, bypassing our servers, and Cloudflare sees your IP address when a photo is uploaded or viewed.
• Brevo — sending email: the confirmation code, the welcome email and the password-reset link go out through its mail service, which sees the recipient’s address and the text of the message.

Beyond that, we may disclose data where the law requires it, or where it is necessary to protect the rights and safety of Homespot users.

6. How long we keep data

Account data, your profile photo, favourites, saved searches, requests with their photos and the reviews you left are kept for as long as the account exists. When you delete your account, they are deleted with it and every active session is terminated.

An approved request stays on the board for 30 days and then leaves it — you can extend it by another 30 days. Requests that have left the board, been rejected or closed are seen by you alone, under “My requests”, until you delete them; deleting a request deletes its photos too.

Reports are kept for as long as moderation needs them and are not deleted with the account of the person who filed them: a report is a record about somebody else’s content. Once that account is deleted, the report is no longer linked to any user.

The status of your subscription is kept for as long as the account exists and is deleted with it. The payment history is kept by the store you bought the subscription from, and stays there.

Notifications delete themselves after three days. The push-device record is deleted when you switch notifications off or sign out, and on its own if you have not opened the app for two months.

Service logs are kept for 30 days, and page-speed measurements and events for 90 days, after which they are deleted. Visit marks and sign-in days are kept as visit statistics with no set term: they carry no address and no actions, and once an account is deleted its sign-in days are linked to nobody.

7. How we protect data

Connections to the site and the app are encrypted. Passwords are stored only as a hash with a unique salt — the original password cannot be recovered from the database, not even by us. Photos are uploaded through one-off signed links that expire within minutes. Access to data is limited to a small number of people and only to the extent the service requires; what moderators and administrators do is written to an audit log.

No system is completely secure, so we cannot promise absolute protection, but we undertake to notify you if a breach affects your data.

8. Your rights

• Obtain a copy of the data we hold about you.
• Correct inaccurate data.
• Delete your account together with all its data. You can do this yourself in your profile — the “Delete account” button — or by writing to us at support@homespot.by.
• Withdraw your consent to Google Analytics at any time.
• Object to processing carried out on the basis of legitimate interest.
• Receive your data in a machine-readable form to move it to another service.
• Lodge a complaint with a data protection supervisory authority.

We answer such requests within 30 days.

9. Children

The service is not intended for children under 16, and we do not knowingly collect their data. If you believe a child has given us their data, write to support@homespot.by and we will delete it.

10. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy. The date of the last update is shown at the top of the page. We will announce material changes in the app or by email — we will not swap the terms out quietly.