Privacy Policy

Overview

Housey is a shared workspace for a house hunt. You save listings to a board, add notes, plan viewings, and invite the people searching with you. This policy covers the Housey website and web application. The browser extension has its own policy at housey.app/privacy-extension.

The short version: we collect what is needed to run the product, we do not sell it, we do not use it for advertising, and you can ask for a copy of it or have it deleted by emailing us.

What We Collect

Account information. You sign in with Google, which gives us your name, email address, and profile picture. We never receive your Google password.

What you put in Housey. Boards you create, listings you save (including the address, price, photos, and other details taken from the listing page or entered by you), your notes and comments, viewing plans, messages, and who you invite.

Usage information. Basic records of how the app is used, such as which screens are opened and which actions are taken, along with technical information your browser sends, like device and browser type. We use this to find broken things and to understand which parts of the product people actually use.

We do not ask for or store payment information, and Housey does not currently charge for anything.

How We Use It

• To run the product: showing your boards, syncing changes, and sharing them with people you invite.
• To send email you would expect about your own account, such as a welcome message, an invitation you asked us to send, or a reminder that your board is still empty.
• To keep the service working: diagnosing errors, preventing abuse, and improving performance.

We do not sell your personal information, we do not share it with advertisers, and we do not use the contents of your boards to target advertising.

Who Else Can See Your Boards

A board is shared with whoever you invite to it. Anyone on a board can see the listings, notes, and comments on it, and the names of the other members. If you invite a realtor, they see the same board you do. Removing someone from a board removes their access going forward.

Some notes are marked private when you create them, and those stay visible only to the people the product says they are visible to at the time you write them.

Where Your Data Is Stored

Housey runs on Google Cloud and Firebase. Your data is currently stored in the United States (a multi-region United States location for the database, and the us-central1 region for uploaded files), and the website is served by Vercel, which also operates internationally.

This matters if you are in Canada: information stored in another country can be accessible to that country's courts and law enforcement under its own laws, and we want you to know that rather than discover it. We are Canadian and intend to move storage to a Canadian region; until we do, the sentence above is the accurate one.

Services We Rely On

• Google Firebase and Google Cloud for sign-in, the database, file storage, and server functions.
• Vercel for hosting and serving the website.
• Google Maps to show property locations and plan viewing routes.
• An email delivery provider to actually send the email described above.
• Google Analytics for Firebase for the usage information described above.

These providers process data on our behalf under their own terms. We share with them only what the feature requires.

Email, and How to Stop It

Every email we send on our own initiative has an unsubscribe link at the bottom, and clicking it stops that mail immediately. You can also turn email off in your notification settings. Messages that exist because you acted, such as an invitation you sent someone, are part of using the product and are not marketing.

Your Rights

Under Canadian privacy law (PIPEDA), and comparable rules elsewhere, you can ask us to:

• Tell you what personal information we hold about you.
• Give you a copy of it.
• Correct it if it is wrong.
• Delete your account and the data in it.
• Withdraw your consent, which for most things means closing your account.

There is no self-serve delete button yet. To exercise any of these, email support@housey.app from the address on your account and we will action it. We aim to respond within 30 days, which is the PIPEDA timeframe.

One limit worth stating plainly: content you added to a board shared with other people, such as a comment on a listing, may remain visible to them after your account is deleted, in the same way a message you sent someone does not disappear from their copy. Tell us if you want that content removed as well and we will remove it.

How Long We Keep It

We keep your account and board data for as long as your account is open, because that is the product. When you ask us to delete your account, we remove it and the content you own from our live systems, and it then ages out of routine backups. Deleted cards are held briefly in a recoverable state so an accidental deletion can be undone.

Security

Access to your data is controlled by sign-in and by server-side rules that check membership on every read and write. Traffic is encrypted in transit, and data is encrypted at rest by Google Cloud. No system is perfect, and we would rather say that than imply otherwise.

Children

Housey is meant for adults buying property and is not directed at children. We do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 13. If you believe a child has created an account, email us and we will remove it.

Changes to This Policy

If we change how we handle your data, we will update this page and the date at the top. For a change that materially affects you, we will tell you directly rather than relying on you noticing.

Contact

Questions, requests, or complaints: support@housey.app. If you are in Canada and are not satisfied with our response, you can contact the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada.