Privacy policy

16 October 2026

Flatsy is an iPhone app that watches rental adverts and tells you when a home fits your search. This page says what it keeps about you, why, who handles it, how long it’s kept and how to have it deleted.

Who runs Flatsy

Flatsy is run by Robbie MacInnes, who decides what it keeps and is responsible for it. Email hello@flatsy.co.uk about anything on this page; email is the only way to reach Flatsy.

No sign-in

Flatsy never asks for your name, email address or phone number, and has no account to sign in to. When you first open the app, your phone makes a random key and keeps it in its Keychain. Flatsy’s server keeps only a scrambled copy of the key and knows you by a random ID.

What Flatsy keeps, and why

On Flatsy’s server, so it can find homes for you and show them:

• Your search: your budget, bedrooms, furnishing, move-in date, whether student lets are included, what matters to you, and your Area.
• Your places (up to five): the name you give each one, its kind (such as work or university), its address and position on the map, how you travel there and the longest journey you want.
• Travel times from each home in your Area to each of your places.
• Your decisions: the homes you’ve saved or passed, and your progress with each saved home (enquired, viewing booked, going for it), with dates.
• Notifications: whether they’re on, your phone’s notification address, and which homes Flatsy has told you about and when, so it never tells you twice.

An address you type when adding a place is sent to Flatsy’s server to suggest matches, and kept only once you save the place.

Flatsy uses all of this only to run the app for you. It doesn’t sell it or use it for advertising.

What stays on your phone

Your details (your name, who’s moving, your work and your references) are used only to write enquiries and are never sent to Flatsy. When you enquire, Flatsy copies the message and opens the advert, and you send it on that site yourself; Flatsy doesn’t see what you send.

Share usage data

While Share usage data is on, the app tells PostHog, an analytics service, when:

• you view each step of the app’s opening, pick what’s hardest about your search, see how many homes fit, and answer whether to have notifications;
• you open a notification, and whether it was about new homes or a home no longer advertised;
• you change your search, and which part (such as budget or places), never what you changed it to;
• the app is installed, updated, opened or closed;
• the app hits an error.

Each comes with your random ID, the app’s version, and your phone’s model, iOS version and language. None carries your search, an address, a home or your location, and PostHog discards your phone’s internet address. Flatsy uses these to learn which parts of the app help and to fix what breaks.

Share usage data is on to begin with. Switch it off at any time in the app’s Settings: the app stops sending at once, and your phone remembers the choice.

Request logs

Every request the app makes to Flatsy’s server passes through Cloudflare, which keeps a log of it (such as what was asked for, when, and the answer) for up to 7 days, so faults can be found and fixed. Your phone’s internet address is also used to limit how often the app can be set up from one place.

The legal basis

• Your search, places, travel times, decisions and notifications are needed to give you the service you asked for (a contract, under UK data protection law).
• Usage data, request logs and backups are in Flatsy’s legitimate interests: keeping the app working and learning what helps, using data that doesn’t name you. UK law allows analytics like this without asking first, as long as you’re told and can switch it off.

Who handles it

Flatsy uses these companies to run. Each handles your data only to provide its service to Flatsy, under a contract that requires it to keep the data safe.

• Cloudflare runs Flatsy’s server and this site, and keeps the request logs. Its network is worldwide; Flatsy’s server runs in London.
• PlanetScale holds Flatsy’s database and its backups, in London.
• Netcup runs a server in the European Union that works out travel times from your places’ positions, and suggestions for the addresses you type.
• Expo passes notifications to Apple, given your notification address and the notification’s words, in the United States.
• Apple delivers notifications to your phone, in the United States, and runs TestFlight under its own privacy policy. Feedback you send through TestFlight reaches Flatsy.
• PostHog holds usage data, in the European Union (Frankfurt).

Where your data leaves the UK, it’s protected by the safeguards UK law requires for such transfers.

Your phone also loads map tiles from OpenFreeMap and home photos from the site that advertised the home. They see your phone’s internet address, as any website does; Flatsy sends them nothing about you.

How long it’s kept

• What’s on Flatsy’s server: until you delete your data. If you never set up a search, it’s deleted after 30 days.
• Backups: 2 days.
• Request logs: up to 7 days.
• Usage data: 1 year, by PostHog.

Deleting your data

In the app, Settings → Delete my data removes your search, places, travel times, saved and passed homes, progress and notification history from Flatsy’s server at once, and your notifications stop. Your phone forgets you too, and the app starts afresh. Backups and request logs holding your data expire on their own, as above.

Usage data already sent stays with PostHog for up to a year, linked only to a random ID that nothing connects to you once your data is deleted. To stop sending it at any time, switch off Share usage data.

Your rights

You can ask to see the data Flatsy holds about you, to correct it, to delete it, to limit how it’s used, to object to its use, or to have a copy to take elsewhere. Email hello@flatsy.co.uk; it costs nothing, and you’ll have an answer within a month. As Flatsy knows you only by a random ID, it may need something from the app to find your data.

Complaints

If you’re unhappy with how Flatsy uses your data, email hello@flatsy.co.uk first. You can also complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint or on 0303 123 1113.

Changes

When this policy changes, the date at the top changes with it.