Privacy Policy

TODO before public launch: The controller, contact details, legal bases, retention periods, hosting details, processors, and transfer safeguards must be completed and legally reviewed before public launch.

Technical audit status: 11 August 2026.

Controller

[TODO: identity and full contact details of the controller]

[TODO: privacy contact and data-protection officer details if one is appointed or required]

Personal data actually processed

The following description reflects the current repository. Deployment-specific logging and service settings must still be verified by the operator.

Administration account and login

The database stores an administrator email address, a password hash, enabled status, and record timestamps. Plain-text passwords are not stored by the application.

For failed-login throttling, the application temporarily keeps the client IP address and normalized submitted email in process memory for up to 15 minutes. A successful login or application restart clears the relevant in-memory entries.

Saved searches and preferences

Saved searches contain a user link, search name, enabled status, postal codes, room and area limits, rent and financing limits, required or excluded keywords, and timestamps. These preferences are stored in PostgreSQL.

The current repository has no favorites feature and therefore stores no favorites.

Telegram notifications

When a person interacts with the bot, the application can store the Telegram chat ID, username, first/display name, enabled status, saved searches, delivery status and attempts, Telegram message ID, error message, and timestamps. Telegram receives the chat ID, notification text, and original listing URL when a message is sent.

No Telegram bot token is configured in this deployment; previously stored Telegram records, if any, are not automatically deleted.

The current repository has no email notification provider, web-push service, or browser push identifier. Telegram chat IDs serve as the notification destination when Telegram is enabled.

Housing listing data

The application stores factual data obtained from public provider pages, including source identity and URL, title, project, address, district/postal code, rooms, area, rent, financing contribution, availability, published/detection timestamps, coordinates where available, status, change history, and selected raw parse fields. It does not deliberately collect applicant profiles, but public source fields could incidentally contain information relating to an individual.

Technical and security logs

The current web server can log client/network address, request method and path, protocol, response status, and time. Application logs record crawler and notification operations, identifiers, status, and errors. The production host or reverse proxy may create additional logs; the operator must verify the final configuration.

Cookies and browser storage

• An essential signed session cookie supports administrator authentication and CSRF protection. Its signed contents include an administrator identifier and CSRF token; the cookie is not used for analytics. It is HTTP-only, SameSite=Lax, and Secure in production. The operator must define and document its final lifetime.
• The essential gewosniper_locale cookie remembers DE or EN for one year. It is HTTP-only, SameSite=Lax, and Secure in production.

The current frontend uses no localStorage or sessionStorage and contains no analytics, advertising, profiling, or marketing tracker.

Because the current application sets only essential cookies and has no non-essential analytics, it does not display a consent banner. This must be reassessed before adding analytics or other non-essential storage.

Maps and geocoding

The public beta does not provide a map and does not load external map assets or tiles.

Google Maps and Google Geocoding are disabled. Deployment migration 0008 removes legacy cached coordinates while preserving listings and address data.

The current application does not request the user's device location or browser geolocation.

Recipients and external services

• Hosting/database provider and hosting location: [TODO: identify the actual host, location, processors, and subprocessors].
• Telegram Bot API: receives bot interaction and delivery data only when the Telegram integration is used.
• The beta has no map or geocoding recipient because those integrations are disabled.
• Housing-provider websites receive server-side crawler requests with an identifiable GeWo Sniper user agent. Saved-search or administrator account data is not intentionally sent to those providers.

Purposes and legal bases

Processing supports beta administration and security, housing-offer aggregation and change detection, saved-search matching, requested Telegram notifications, and operational troubleshooting.

TODO before public launch: The operator and qualified adviser must determine and document the applicable legal basis for each processing purpose. No legal basis is asserted by this repository draft.

Retention and deletion

Apart from the 15-minute in-memory login limiter and the one-year locale cookie, the current repository does not implement automatic retention or deletion for administrator accounts, Telegram users, saved searches, deliveries, listing history, crawl records, or application logs.

TODO before public launch: Define justified retention periods, deletion procedures, backup retention, log rotation, and a process for Telegram users to stop notifications and request deletion.

International transfers

Depending on the final hosting location and use of Telegram, processing outside the EEA may occur. The operator must verify actual data locations, roles, contracts, and any required transfer safeguards before launch.

Data-subject rights

Subject to the applicable conditions, data subjects may have rights of access, rectification, erasure, restriction, objection, data portability, and withdrawal of consent without affecting earlier processing.

A complaint may be lodged with the Austrian Data Protection Authority: https://www.dsb.gv.at/

TODO before public launch: Insert the verified address or email through which privacy requests can be submitted and describe the identity-verification process.

Automated matching

Saved-search rules automatically compare listing facts with user-selected filters and may queue a notification. The current system does not make decisions that allocate housing or determine legal eligibility.

Changes to this notice

Update this notice whenever the data model, hosting, integrations, logging, retention, or public functionality changes.