Privacy policy

1. What information do we collect?

The kind of Personal Information that we collect from you will depend on how you use the website. The Personal Information which we collect and hold about you may include:

account details (name, email, phone, address, login credentials); property and job data (property address, job descriptions, photos, Logbook entries); payment information (processed via Stripe, Apple, or Google); server logs; and for trades, business registration details.

2. Types of information

The Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) (Privacy Act) defines types of information, including Personal Information and Sensitive Information.

Personal Information means information or an opinion about an identified individual or an individual who is reasonably identifiable:

• (a) whether the information or opinion is true or not; and
• (b) whether the information or opinion is recorded in a material form or not.

If the information does not disclose your identity or enable your identity to be ascertained, it will in most cases not be classified as "Personal Information" and will not be subject to this privacy policy.

Sensitive Information is defined in the Privacy Act as including information or opinion about such things as an individual's racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, membership of a political association, religious or philosophical beliefs, membership of a trade union or other professional body, criminal record or health information.

Sensitive Information will be used by us only:

• (a) for the primary purpose for which it was obtained;
• (b) for a secondary purpose that is directly related to the primary purpose; and
• (c) with your consent or where required or authorised by law.

3. How we collect your Personal Information

• (a) We may collect Personal Information from you whenever you input such information into the platform or app, upload documents to the platform, submit information via a designated property or Trade Logbook email address, submit a Snapshot, or when a trade copies a client's email address into the platform.
• (b) The Website and app use essential cookies for session management and security. Google Maps may use cookies or local storage for mapping functionality in the Snapshot and Trade Portal. We do not deploy ad tracking pixels or third-party marketing analytics cookies. As a general rule, it is not possible to identify you personally from our use of cookies.
• (c) We generally don't collect Sensitive Information, but when we do, we will comply with the preceding paragraph.
• (d) Where reasonable and practicable we collect your Personal Information from you only. However, sometimes we may be given information from a third party, in cases like this we will take steps to make you aware of the information that was provided by a third party.

4. Purpose of collection

• (a) We collect Personal Information to operate the property management platform, provide you with the best service experience possible on the Website and app, process payments, provide the credits system (credits are earned only, have no cash value, are not transferable, do not expire, and are forfeited on account closure), communicate service updates, and keep in touch with you about developments in our business. Job posting and replying are free of charge.
• (b) We disclose Personal Information to: (i) infrastructure and service providers who assist us in operating the platform; (ii) trades who receive job postings and owner-shared documents (which may disclose property addresses or document filenames); (iii) property owners who see trade business contact details in connection with job postings; (iv) clients of trades who view documents on trade client pages; (v) subsequent owners of a property, who receive the property Logbook and associated historical records upon property transfer, except that documents marked as personal do not pass to the subsequent owner and the current owner may download those personal documents before transfer; and (vi) maintenance and support personnel acting in the normal course of their duties.
• (c) We may send direct marketing only in accordance with the Spam Act 2003 (Cth) and other applicable laws. We may send direct marketing to registered property owners, registered trades, and prospective trade contacts (including builders held in our CRM). We do not use sensitive Personal Information in direct marketing activity. Every marketing message will include a clear and functional opt-out mechanism (such as an unsubscribe link), and we maintain a suppression register to ensure opt-out requests are honoured promptly.

5. Security, Access and correction

• (a) We store your Personal Information in a way that reasonably protects it from unauthorised access, misuse, modification or disclosure. When we no longer require your Personal Information for the purpose for which we obtained it, we will take reasonable steps to destroy and anonymise or de-identify it. Account and transaction records are kept for 7 years to meet our record-keeping obligations. Other Personal Information is kept as set out in clause 12.
• (b) The Australian Privacy Principles:
  • (i) permit you to obtain access to the Personal Information we hold about you in certain circumstances (Australian Privacy Principle 12); and
  • (ii) allow you to correct inaccurate Personal Information subject to certain exceptions (Australian Privacy Principle 13).
• (c) Where you would like to obtain such access, please contact us in writing on the contact details set out at the bottom of this privacy policy.

6. Complaint procedure

If you have a complaint concerning the manner in which we maintain the privacy of your Personal Information, please contact us as on the contact details set out at the bottom of this policy. All complaints will be considered by the Manager and we may seek further information from you to clarify your concerns. If we agree that your complaint is well founded, we will, in consultation with you, take appropriate steps to rectify the problem. If you remain dissatisfied with the outcome, you may refer the matter to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner.

7. Overseas transfer

Personal Information may be transferred to and processed by third-party service providers located overseas, principally in the United States. These recipients include Anthropic, which processes the full text of documents and incoming emails using artificial intelligence models to extract data, generate summaries and answer property queries; Stripe, for payment card processing and fraud prevention; RevenueCat, for subscription management and trade billing; Google, including Google Maps and cloud infrastructure; Expo, for mobile application deployment and over-the-air updates; Cloudflare, for web traffic routing, DDoS protection and content delivery; Apple, for in-app purchases, sign-in and notifications; and Amazon. House Spek takes reasonable steps under Australian Privacy Principle 8.1 to ensure that each overseas recipient handles Personal Information in accordance with the Australian Privacy Principles, including through standard contractual terms and data processing agreements. House Spek accepts direct responsibility if an overseas recipient mishandles Personal Information.

8. Artificial intelligence and automated document processing

House Spek incorporates artificial intelligence features ('Speks') designed to assist users with property management. When documents, emails, or queries are submitted to a property Logbook or Trade Account, automated systems and large language model technologies (including Anthropic) read, parse, file, categorise, and extract data from those documents to populate property timelines, summarise technical specifications, and generate responses to user enquiries. Data processed for these purposes is handled in accordance with this Privacy Policy and is not used by our third-party model providers to train foundational machine learning models without authorization.

9. GDPR

In some circumstances, the European Union General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) provides additional protection to individuals located in Europe. The fact that you may be located in Europe does not, however, on its own entitle you to protection under the GDPR. Our connection to the EU/UK is incidental (not a primary market). EU/UK data subjects may exercise their rights under the GDPR by contacting House Spek as set out in clause 11.

10. US state privacy rights

If you are a resident of a United States state with its own privacy law (for example, California), you may have additional rights under that state's law, including rights to know, access, correct and delete your Personal Information, and to opt out of certain disclosures. These rights are in addition to the rights set out in this policy and apply where they are required by that law. To exercise them, contact us using the details in clause 11.

11. How to contact us about privacy

If you have any queries, or if you seek access to your Personal Information, or if you have a complaint about our privacy practices, you can contact us through: thomas@housespek.com or by phone on 0406 982 509.

12. Retention

• a. Logbook entries: retained for the life of the associated property
• b. Account data (owners and trades): retained while the account is active, then for 7 years
• c. Credit ledger entries: retained indefinitely for audit purposes
• d. Client page access records: retained for 90 days
• e. Trade correspondence: deleted at the end of the calendar month in which the relevant document or correspondence reaches 12 months of age; users receive an advance email notification before each scheduled purge, giving them the option to download their documents and correspondence; documents a client has saved into their own property Logbook remain in that Logbook and are not deleted as part of the Trade purge