Privacy Policy

Last Updated: October 31, 2020

1.  Introduction

The privacy policy (“Policy”)  is applicable to the online interfaces of Sqmeterz Ltd (“Sqmeterz”, “us”, ”we” or “our”) including www.sqmeterz.com  and any related mobile application, (collectively referred to as the “Website/Platform”). The purpose of this Policy is to describe how Sqmeterz collects, uses, maintains, and shares information about you (“user”, “you”, or “your”) on account of you accessing and using the Website. This information may include but is not limited to any information you upload, email that you exchange with Sqmeterz and other users of the Website and any information submitted/provided by you to Sqmeterz.

We recognise the importance of your privacy and we are committed to ensuring that you are aware of how your information is being used. Sqmeterz will take reasonable steps to protect user privacy consistent with the guidelines set forth in the Privacy Policy and the provisions of the Regulation (EU) 206/679 on General Data Protection (GDPR). Your use of the Website is also governed by out Terms of Use. You are free to use the Website only if you agree with our policies and practices encapsulated in this Policy read in conjunction with the Terms of Use.

By using the Site and/or by providing your information to us, you consent to the collection and use of the information you disclose on the Website in accordance with this Policy. If you wish to contact Sqmeterz in connection with any matter relating to this Policy or privacy related issued you may send an email to privacy@sqmeterz.com and our privacy team or the Data Protection Officer, if applicable) will reply to your query at the earliest convenience.

By browsing, visiting, accessing and/or using the services on the Website, you consent and agree to the terms of Sqmeterz’s Policy as detailed herein. You also agree that the information furnished by you is lawful, true and correct and does not violate or infringe any laws. In case of any violations, infringement, furnishing of wrongful or unauthorized information, Sqmeterz shall not be liable to you or to any third party for the same.

2.    What information do we collect?

There are three (3) general categories of information we collect, a) Information you provide to us, b) Information we collect when you use of Payment Services, c) Information we automatically collect from your use of the Sqmeterz Website.

a)    Information you provide to us.

We ask for and collect the following personal information about you when you the Sqmeterz Website. This information is necessary for the adequate performance of the contract between you and us to allow us to comply with our legal obligations. Without it, we may not be able to provide you with all the requested services.

• Account information. When you register for a Sqmeterz Account we require certain information such as your first name, last name, email address, gender and date of birth
• Profile and Listing Information. In addition to the above and to use certain features of the Website (such as creating a listing or send a booking request), we may ask you to provide additional information, which may include your address, phone number and profile picture.
• Identity Verification Information. To help create and maintain a trusted environment, we may collect identity verification information (such as back and front images of your government issued ID, passport, or driving license as permitted by applicable laws) or other authentication information.
• Payment Information. In addition to the foregoing, in order to use certain other features on the Website (such as creating a listing or send a booking request), we may require you to provide certain financial information (like your bank account or credit card information) in order to facilitate the processing of payments.
• Communications with Sqmeterz and other Users. When you communicate with Sqmeterz or use the Website to communicate with other Users, we collect information about your communication and any information you choose to provide.
• Additional Profile Information. You may choose to provide additional information as part of your profile (such as personal description, gender). Some of this information as indicated in your account settings is part of your public page and will be publicly visible to others.
• Work with us. If you wish to apply for any of the job positions published on our Website, you shall provide us with your name, last name(s), phone number, email address, CV, cover letter and other optional information, such as social networks, promotional videos. 
• Other Information. You may otherwise choose to provide us information when you fill in a form, update or add information to your account, respond to surveys, post to community forums, participate in promotions, or use other features/functionalities of the Website.

b) Information that is necessary for the use of Payment Services.

Sqmeterz needs to collect the following information necessary for the adequate performance of the contract with you and to comply with applicable law (such as anti-money laundering regulations). Without it, you will not be able to use payment services offered by Sqmeterz on the Website:

• Payment Information. When you use the payment services on the Website, certain financial information may be required to facilitate the processing of such payments. You are to note that Sqmeterz engages with third party payment service providers in order to enable you to process your payments in connection with the use of Sqmeterz’s services and to comply with applicable law.
• Identity Verification and Other Information. In connection with the collection of payment information and processing your payment we may also require identity verification information (such as images of your government issued ID, passport, national ID card, or driving license) or other authentication information/KYC documents (such as your date of birth, your address, email address, phone number) in order to verify your identity, provide the payment service to you, and to comply with applicable law.

c) Information we automatically collect from your use of the Sqmeterz Website.

When you interact with the Sqmeterz Website or Services, we automatically collect personal information about the services you use and how you use them.

•  Registration as a tenant or landlord via Facebook/Google. When you register via Facebook or Google, we collect name, email, date of birth and gender directly from that platform.
• Log Data and Device Information. When you visit our Website, we automatically collect information about your log data and device information, even if you have not created a Sqmeterz Account or logged in. This information may include log data, usage information, location data, hardware and software information, browsing history, browser information, IP address, device information, unique identifiers, crash data, cookie data, page view statistics and the pages you’ve viewed or engaged with before or after the Sqmeterz Website.
• Ge-location Information. When you use certain features of the Website, we may collect information about your location. You can deactivate our collection of location data at any time within your mobile settings.
• Web Tracking Information. We or third-party providers may use web tracking information such as cookies, web beacons, pixel tags, browser analysis tools, server logs and mobile identifiers in order to operate the Website efficiently and to collect information of the usage of the Website.  We may store cookies on your device. We may also use web tracking technologies that are placed in web pages on the Website or in email communications to collect information about actions that users take when they interact with the Website or such email communications. You may be able to modify your browser settings to alter which webs tracking technologies are permitted when you the Website, but this may affect the performance of the Website.

3.    How We Use the Information We Collect?

We may use, store and process personal information a) to provide and improve our services to you and fulfill our contract obligations, b) to maintain a safe environment, prevent fraud and comply with legal obligations, c) to keep you updated about our news, promotions and other marketing communications.

a) Provide and improve our services to you and fulfill our contract obligations

• Manage the creation of your user account as a tenant or a landlord.
• Communicate with you in order to provide you with the relevant information about your booking request.
• Customize your experience and otherwise measure and improve the Websites services, as well as modify and update existing services and develop new services.
• Allow the payment of the booking via our Website, if you are the tenant; and to manage the collection, if you are the landlord.
• Enable both parties to easily sign the lease agreement online through our Website.
• Resolve claims, mediate in disputes and troubleshoot problems.
• Offer you the best service and provide you with such assistance our Support Team needs to have access to your personal information. 
• Connect you with third-parties that provide products or services that may be relevant to you.
• Facilitate your referral invitations and send your requests for references.

b) To maintain a safe environment, prevent fraud and comply with legal obligations.

• Help promote a safe service and detect and prevent fraud, spam, abuse and other prohibited or illegal activity.
• Verification or authentication of the information or identification provided by you (such as to verify your accommodation address or compare your identification photo to another photo you provide)
• Comply with legal obligations and applicable laws.
• Conduct security investigations and risk assessments.
• Enforce our terms and other policies.
• Conduct checks against databases and other information sources, including background or police checks, to the extent permitted by applicable laws and with your consent where require.

c) To keep you updated about our news, promotions and other marketing communications.

• Send you newsletters, marketing, promotions and products and services that may be of interest to you.
• Social media advertising through social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Google.
• Administer referral programs, rewards, surveys or other promotional activities or events sponsored or managed by Sqmeterz or any of its third-party providers.
• Prepare aggregated or deidentified data, including for general marketing and analytical purposes.
• To process their participation in competitions and deliver targeted and internet-based marketing and specific promotions.

4.   Who Do we Share your personal information with?

In order to provide, improve, customize, support and market our services, Sqmeterz may communicate the personal information of Users with the following categories of recipients:

a) Users Personal Information. To help facilitate bookings or other interactions between tenants and landlords, we may need to share certain information, including personal information, with other tenants and landlords, as it is necessary for the adequate performance of the contract between you and us.

b) Profiles, Listings and Other Public Information. The Website lets you publish information, including personal information, that is visible to the general public. Based on our legitimate interest to promote the Website we may display parts of the Website on sites operated by our business partners, using technologies such as widgets or APIs. If your Listings are displayed on a partner’s site, information from your public profile page may also be displayed.

b) Home Gurus. If you are a landlord, to schedule the visit to your property with our Home Gurus team (they record videos, take photos and create digital floor plans which are then displayed in our ads) it is necessary to share with them your contact details and full address of the property. All the members of the team have signed the pertinent contract for the processing.

c) Third-Party Service Providers. Sqmeterz uses a variety of third-party providers to help us provide services related to the Website. These providers may be located within or outside the European Economic Area (“EEA”). If they are located outside the EEA, we ensure that the country of destination is declared to have an appropriate level by the European Commission.

For services purposes, such providers have limited access to your personal information to perform these tasks on our behalf, and are contractually bound to protect the personal information and only use the personal information in accordance with our instructions. For example, service providers may help us with the following;

• To store information securely.
• To verify or authenticate your identity and residency.
• To prevent fraud and carry out risk assessment.
• To perform product development, maintenance and debugging.
• To allow the provision of the Website services through third party platforms and software tool (e.g. through the integration with our APIs)
• To process payments.
• To provide customer support services.
• To send commercial communications.

d) Advertising and Social Media. Where you have provided consent, we share your information, including personal information, as described at the time of consent, such as when you authorize a third-party application or website to access you Sqmeterz Account or when you participate in promotional activities conducted by Sqmeterz partners or third parties.

We may use certain limited personal information about you, such as your email address, to has it and share it with social media platforms, such as Facebook or Google, to generate leads, drive traffic to our websites or otherwise promote our products and services or the Sqmeterz Website. These processing activities are based on our legitimate interest in undertaking marketing activities to offer you products or services that may be of interest of your interest.

The social media platforms with which we may share your personal information are not controlled or supervised by Sqmeterz. Therefore, any questions regarding how your social media platform service provider processes your personal information should be directed to such provider.

e) Competent Authorities. We shall disclose your personal information to government authorities as requested by law or as strictly necessary for the prevention, detection or prosecution of criminal acts and fraud, or as otherwise required by law. We shall have to disclose personal information to the competent authorities to protect and defend our rights or properties or the rights and properties of our collaborators or users.

f) Aggregated Data. We may also share aggregated information (information about our users that we combine together so that it no longer identifies or references an individual user) and other anonymized information for regulatory compliance, industry and market analysis, research, demographic profiling, marketing and advertising, and other business purposes.

5.    How we protect your information

Our systems and networks use industry standard technology to protect all the personal information we hold and the processes we use are similarly geared. While we implement safety, measures designed to protect your information, no security system is impenetrable, due to the inherent nature of the internet and technology, we cannot verify that information, while in transmission through the internet or while stored on our systems or otherwise in our care, is absolutely safe from any interface by others.

a) Safeguards. We use commercially reasonable physical, electronic, administrative, and procedural safeguards to preserve the integrity, confidentiality, and security of all personal information collected through our products and services.

b) Your role. You have a major role in the security and privacy of your own information. For example, you should not provide us with personal information that we do not request. Additionally, you are responsible for controlling access to any personal computing device through which your information may be stored or access. You are also responsible for safeguarding any passwords or other log in credentials that maybe be used to access your information, including in the Sqmeterz environment. We recommend that you log out of any account when you done using it.

c) Third Parties. Please remember to review the privacy settings and security policies of third-party sites and services that you use, such as social networks. We are not responsible for the privacy or security measures of any third party.

d) Incident Response. In the event the security of any personal information under our control is compromised, we will take reasonable steps to investigate and mitigate the situation, including, when appropriate, notifying those individuals whose information may have been compromised and taking other steps in accordance with applicable laws and regulations.

6.    How long will we keep your personal information?

In general terms, information required for the provisions of the service shall be kept for as long as they are necessary for this purpose or until you expressly request us to delete them. Nevertheless, your personal information is kept for a period of (5) years at the disposal of public authorities, judges, and courts for determining and defend any possible liabilities arising from the processing.

We may keep some of your personal information to the extent necessary for our legitimate interest such as to detect and prevent fraud. Information collected for this purpose shall remain retained for a period of (10) year at the disposal of public authorities, judges, and courts for determine and defend any possible liabilities arising from the processing.

Beyond this time, we will delete or depersonalise any personal information we maybe have and use for research and statistical purposes. If, for some reason this may be possible (such as, for example, because the information was stored in a backup archives), we will store it securely and not sue it any further until deletion is possible.

If your personal information is being used with your consent for marketing and promotions purposes, we will only keep that information and use it until your consent for to us to so remain valid. Please note that you can request us to stop sending you news, personalised offers, and promotions at any time by simple clicking on the “Unsubscribe” link in any of our communications. 

7. What are your rights?

You can exercise any of your rights described in this section consistent with applicable law. To exercise any of your rights you must send an email to privacy@sqmeterz.com  Please note that we may ask you to verify your identity and request before taking further action on your request.

a) Manage Your Information. You have the right to know whether we are processing your personal information. You can access and update some of your personal information through your Profile settings. You are responsible for keeping your personal information up to date.

b) Portability. Applicable law may entitle you to request certain copies of your personal information or information about how we handle your personal information, request copies of personal information that you have provided to us in a structure, commonly used, and machine-readable format, and /or request that we transmit this information to another service provider (where technically feasible).  

c) Erasure:  You can request that your personal information be deleted. Please not that if you request the erasure of your personal information:

• We may retain your personal information as necessary for our legitimate business interests, such as prevention of money laundering, fraud detection and prevention, and enhancing safety.
• We may retain and use your personal information to the extent necessary to comply with our legal obligations.
• Information you have shared with others will continue to be publicly visible on Sqmeterz, even after your Sqmeterz Account is cancelled. However, attribution of such information to you will be removed.
• Because we take measures to protect information from accidental or malicious loss and destruction, residual copies of your personal information may not be removed from our backup systems for a limited period of time due to legal obligations.

8. Security

While no organization guarantees perfect security, we are continuously implementing and updating administrative, technical, and physical security measures to help protect your information against unauthorized access, loss, destruction, or alteration.

9. Changes to our Privacy Policy

We may change this privacy policy from time to time. We will post any privacy policy changes on this page and, if the changes are significant, we will provide more prominent notice on our website and/or by sending you a notification within the service or via your contract information. We will also keep prior versions of this policy in an archive which you can access. We encourage you to review our privacy policy whenever you use services to stay informed about our information practices and the ways you can help protect your privacy.