Privacy Policy

This policy says what Rent Ratchet ("we", "us") collects when you use rentratchet.com, why, and what you can do about it. We have tried to keep it short enough to read.

What we collect

• Contact form: the name, email address, optional company and message you type in.
• Account: when you create an account, your email address, a username and a scrambled (hashed) version of your password. We never store the password itself.
• Signing in with X or Facebook (optional): if you choose "Continue with X" or "Continue with Facebook", or connect one of them to your account, that service shows you its own consent screen first. From X we receive your account id, name, handle and profile picture. From Facebook we receive your account id, name and profile picture. We read them once, when you connect: we use the name to suggest a display name, show the handle or Facebook name on your profile, and copy the picture to our server as your profile photo if you have none. We do not receive your password, your email address, your contacts or your posts, we never post anything, and we do not keep an access token.
• Legal acceptance records: when you accept the Terms or the Disclaimer, or confirm that you are 18 or older, we record which version, the date and time, the network (IP) address and the browser description (user agent) the request came from. That record is our proof that you agreed.
• Things you post: listings, photos, profile details, rental requests and ratings, once those features are open. What you post in a listing, profile or rating is public.
• Photos: uploaded photos are re-saved by our server, which strips the hidden data cameras add, such as GPS location and device model.
• Server logs: like every web server, ours logs each request: address, time, page and browser description. Logs are used to keep the site running and secure.

We do not collect payment details. No payment passes through the site, so there is nothing to collect.

Cookies and analytics

• A session cookie keeps you signed in, and a security cookie protects forms from forgery. Both are necessary and neither tracks you across other sites.
• When analytics is switched on, we use Matomo, which we host ourselves. It loads only after you press Accept on the cookie notice; your choice is remembered in your browser's local storage. We do not send your user id, username, handle or profile link to analytics: page addresses are reduced to the kind of page ("a profile", "a rental") before they are counted, and clicks on outside links are not recorded.
• Fonts are loaded from Google Fonts, so your browser makes a request to Google when a page loads.
• There are no advertising trackers and no social-media tracking pixels.

How we use it

• To run the site: show listings, connect an owner with a renter, send reminders about a rental.
• To answer you when you write to us.
• To keep the site safe: prevent abuse, investigate flagged rentals, enforce the Terms.
• To understand in aggregate which pages are used, if you accepted analytics.

What other users see

Your public profile, your listings and your published ratings are visible to anyone. Your email address is never shown on a public page. A pickup location is shown only as a general area until an owner accepts a request.

No selling

We do not sell your personal data, and we do not share it with advertisers.

We disclose data only to the service providers that host and operate the site for us, or when the law requires it, for example in response to a valid court order.

How long we keep it

We keep account data while your account is open, and remove or anonymize it as described under "Your choices" when you delete the account. We keep legal acceptance records, and records of rentals that involved other people, for as long as they may be needed to show what was agreed. Contact-form messages are kept for as long as needed to deal with them.

Your choices

• You can ask what data we hold about you, or ask us to correct it.
• Disconnect X or Facebook at any time under Edit profile. What it filled in on your profile stays until you change or clear it there.
• Facebook data deletion: if you remove Rent Ratchet in your Facebook settings and ask Facebook to have your data deleted, Facebook notifies us and we delete what we received from Facebook about you: the sign-in link, your Facebook name and a profile photo copied from Facebook. Facebook then shows you a confirmation code and a page on this site where you can check that it was done.
• Delete your account yourself under Edit profile. That removes your email, password, sign-in connections, profile, photo, listings and inbox. Records that another person relies on are kept without your name: rentals you took part in, and ratings you gave, which stay on the other person's profile signed "a former neighbor". We also keep the record that you accepted the Terms and Disclaimer (which version, and when), without the network address. An account cannot be deleted while one of its rentals is still open.
• Depending on where you live, the law may give you further rights, such as a right to a copy of your data or to object to some uses of it. We will honor the rights that apply to you.
• Send any request through the contact form. We may need to confirm that you are the account holder before acting on it.

Children

Rent Ratchet is for adults aged 18 and over. We do not knowingly collect data from anyone younger. If you believe a minor has created an account, tell us through the contact form and we will remove it.

Changes

Each version of this policy is numbered and dated at the top of this page. When it changes we publish a new version here.