What we keep about you, and why

Version 2026-10-24 · Last updated 26 October 2026

rentedhere is built so that it needs very little about you: a mobile number to log in, and what you choose to post. This page says what we collect, who sees it, how long we keep it and what you can ask us to do, under India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 and the IT Rules, 2021.

Who we are

rentedhere decides why and how the personal data on this site is used, so under the DPDP Act it is the data fiduciary for it. Questions, requests and complaints about your data go to the grievance officer, at [email protected].

What we collect, and why

Your mobile number, to log you in. We keep it two ways: as a peppered hash (a one-way fingerprint made with a secret key only our server holds), to find your account when you log in; and encrypted with AES-256-GCM, so only our server can read it back, to show you its last digits in Settings and to pass it on in a conversation where you switch on “share my number”. It is never shown on a page.
Login codes. Only a peppered hash of each code is stored. A code expires after 10 minutes and allows 3 tries; the record of it is deleted after a day.
Your handle, four characters we make for you. We never ask for your name to use the site.
What you post: reviews (the deposit, rent, dates, ratings, what happened, photos), listings, room and “looking” posts, comments, answers, pings, your profile line, and messages. A listing may carry a separate contact number; it is encrypted like your own.
Proof documents: an agreement, rent transfers or a bill sent with a review, or a document an owner sends to claim a home. They go to a private store that only moderators can open; every opening is logged.
Photos. Every photo is re-encoded before it is stored: turned upright, resized, and stripped of all its hidden data, including the location your phone may have written into it.
Your agreement to these policies: the version, a fingerprint (SHA-256) of the words the login screen showed you, the time, and a peppered hash of your IP address, never the address itself.
Your devices: for each device you are logged in on, when it logged in, when it was last used, and the browser's own description of itself, so you can see and sign out devices.
Abuse limits: to stop floods of codes, searches or complaints, we count requests against a hash of your IP address, your number or your account, for up to two days.
Complaints you send the grievance officer: your email, your name if you give it, what you wrote, the links and any document you attach, and your account if you were logged in.
Counts of what people do: how many times a day each search was made and whether it found anything, and how many times a review, listing, post or login was started and finished. Only the counts are kept, with no account, number, IP address or device; search words that look like a phone number or an email are never kept.
Kept only in your browser, never sent to us: the move-in checklist, notes you write on a home, the compare list, and drafts of forms. Saved homes are kept in your browser, and in your account too when you are logged in.

An email, if you add one in Settings, is used only to send you the alerts you chose (through Resend, our email sender), and is kept encrypted like your number; nobody else sees it. You can remove it, or stop the emails from the link in any of them, at any time.

We don't use advertising trackers, and we don't sell or rent your data to anyone. The one outside analytics tool, Microsoft Clarity, runs only if you allow it (see Recordings).

What anyone can see

Your handle, your published reviews on each home's page (and on your profile only if you switch that on), your live listings and posts, your comments and answers, the areas you have lived in, and how long you have been on rentedhere.
Owners and PG operators appear as owner handles (like Owner M3), never by name.
Public text can't carry phone numbers, emails, links or Aadhaar-like numbers: the checks refuse them.
Proof documents, your number, your devices and your messages are never public.

Who sees your phone number

Nobody, unless you switch on “share my number” inside one conversation; then only the other person in it. Moderators are not shown it. Inside a conversation the two people can see each other's messages; a moderator reads a conversation only when one of the two reports it.

Your location

Roughly, from your IP address. Our host tells us roughly where a request comes from, so the map can open on the nearest city. Nothing is stored.
From your device, only when you press a location button and allow it. We use it once: to pick your city (we remember only the city, in a cookie), to show homes near you (the position is used for that search and not saved), or to put a new home's pin where you are standing (the pin you confirm is saved as the home's location, not yours).
When our own records don't have a place you search for, the words you typed and the part of the map you are looking at are sent to a maps provider. Its answers are kept for a day, or a week for the address at a pin.

Cookies and browser storage

These are the only cookies rentedhere sets. None is for advertising; the Clarity ones exist only if you allow recordings. Your answer to the cookie bar is kept in this browser's storage, not in a cookie.

rh_session: Keeps you logged in. A random token; we store only a fingerprint (SHA-256) of it. Scripts on the page can't read it. Lasts 90 days from when you log in; deleted when you log out.
rh_city: The city you picked. Lasts 1 year.
rh_city_auto: The city your device's location put you in, when you allowed it. Lasts 30 days.
rh_filters: Whether the map's filter panel is open. Lasts 1 year.
rh_intro: That you have seen the map's introduction. Lasts 1 year.
_clck, _clsk: Set by Microsoft Clarity, and only if you allow recordings: an id that ties the pages of your visits together. Microsoft may also set its own cookies on clarity.ms and bing.com. Lasts up to a year (_clck) and a day (_clsk); removed when you choose No thanks.
rh_share: When you arrive from a link someone shared, which share it was, so that share is counted once if you then add something. No account, number or name is kept with it. Lasts 7 days, or until it is counted.

The map's pictures load in your browser from the map provider, which, like any website, sees your IP address when it sends them.

Recordings, only if you say yes

If you press Allow on the cookie bar, Microsoft Clarity records how you use the site: the pages you open and where you click, tap and scroll, so we can watch where a screen confuses people and fix it, and see which parts of a page get used. It also notes your browser, device and screen size, and roughly where you are from your IP address. It never sees what you type into a field, and we hide chats, phone numbers, login codes, your You page and Settings from it as well. Microsoft keeps recordings for 30 days (a few, kept as examples, for up to nine months).

It is off unless you allow it: nothing of Clarity's loads before then, and saying no changes nothing else on the site. To change your answer, use Cookie choices (also at the foot of every page). Choosing No thanks after Allow removes Clarity's cookies and reloads the page without it. Your answer is kept in this browser, so another browser or phone asks again.

Who processes data for us

A few companies run parts of rentedhere for us and handle personal data only to do that job:

Hosting: Railway Corporation (Singapore). It runs the website, the app's server and the database.
Login codes: Twilio Inc. (Twilio Verify) (United States). It sends the six-digit code to your mobile number (it receives your number, nothing else).
File storage: Cloudflare, Inc. (R2) (Cloudflare's network, stored in the Asia-Pacific region). It keeps photos, and proof documents in a separate private store.
Spam checks: Cloudflare, Inc. (Turnstile) (Cloudflare's network). It checks that a person, not a script, is logging in, reviewing, adding a home or posting (it sees your browser's address and how the browser behaves, never your account or what you typed).
Alert emails, if you add an email: Resend, Inc. (United States (Resend's default region)). It sends the alerts you chose to the email you gave (it receives that address and the alert, nothing else).
Session recordings, only if you allow them: Microsoft Corporation (Clarity) (Microsoft's Azure cloud). It records clicks, taps and scrolling so we can see where screens confuse people (see Recordings below).
Maps and place search: OpenFreeMap, Ola Maps (Ola Krutrim), Photon (Komoot), Geoapify (India and the European Union). It draws the map in your browser and looks up places our own records don't have yet (they receive the search words and your browser's address, never your account).

Some of them may store data outside India. When each is named, we will say where.

We share personal data with the police, a court or a government agency only when Indian law requires it, such as an order of a court or a lawful request under the IT Act.

How we protect it

Numbers are encrypted, and looked up only through peppered hashes. Login codes and session tokens are stored only as hashes.
Proof documents are kept apart from public photos, and only moderators can open them; each opening is recorded.
Every moderator's decision is written to a log that can't be changed afterwards.

No system is perfectly safe. If a breach affects your personal data, we will tell you and the Data Protection Board of India, as the DPDP Act requires.

How long we keep it

Your account: until you delete it. Then your number and sign-in are erased at once, your listings and posts come down and every device is signed out. The account record (the handle, its dates and what it posted, without your number) is kept for at least 30 days, in case of a dispute about something it posted.
Your published reviews stay on their homes' pages under your handle after you delete your account, because the next tenant relies on them. Your handle was never your name.
Proof and claim documents: deleted 7 days after a moderator decides.
Anything taken down, and the record of the account that posted it: kept at least 180 days after removal, as the IT Rules require.
Messages: kept so both people can read the conversation; they stay for the other person after you delete your account.
Photos stay with their post; a photo uploaded but never attached to a post is deleted after a day.
Daily counts of searches and of what was started and finished: 13 months.
Login codes: a day. Sessions: until they expire or you log out. Abuse-limit counts: two days. Place lookups: a day, or a week.
Complaints to the grievance officer, and your agreements to these policies, are kept as the record of what was decided and what you agreed to. The log of moderators' decisions is kept for good.

Your rights

Under the DPDP Act you can ask us:

For a summary of the personal data we hold about you and what we do with it. Most of it is in You and Settings already.
To correct or complete it. You can edit your reviews, posts and profile line yourself, and change your number in Settings.
To erase it. Settings → Delete my account does most of it at once (see above for what stays and why). You can also ask for a particular post or review to be taken down.
To withdraw your consent. Deleting your account withdraws it; what you posted while it stood stays as described above.
To name someone who can use these rights for you if you die or can't act yourself.
To hear back on a complaint. Write to the grievance officer. We acknowledge within 24 hours and answer within 7 days. If you are not satisfied, you can then complain to the Data Protection Board of India.

We may ask you to show that an account is yours (for example, by writing from it while logged in) before acting on a request about it.

Children

rentedhere is for people aged 18 and over. We don't knowingly keep accounts for children. If you think a child has an account, tell the grievance officer and we will close it.

Changes to this policy

This policy is version 2026-10-24, the same version as the terms. When the words change in a way that matters, the version changes and the login screen asks you to agree again. The date of the last change is at the top of this page.