As a consumer in the EU, you have various rights to do with what companies can do with information about you. These rights are relatively new, so it might not be surprising if you have not heard of them.
Below, I will list all the information we have about you, what we are using it for, what rights you have and how to exercise them right now.
If you wish to read more about this regulation, it is called the General Data Protection Regulations, or more commonly GDPR. Try searching for that phrase.
We know four things about you. We know your name, we know your email address, we know your mobile phone number, and we know your IP address.
Your name, email address and mobile phone number have been supplied to us by your letting agent or landlord for the purpose of delivering your deposit-protection required reports to you electronically, instead of printing off the report. They may also be used by the inventory clerk who is inspecting the property to contact you, for example to arrange when to meet at the property.
This information can be seen only by your letting agent, and inventory clerk workers.
We store your IP address in our logged actions against this report. This is stored securely in our database, and can only be accessed by VeriSmarts technical team.
We have stored a COOKIE on your computer when you logged into this Tenant Portal. This is a temporary cookie, which will expire on it's own or when you close this browser.
The cookie contains only an ID number which we use to identify you when you are using this portal.
This information is only used to verify that it is indeed you that we are dealing with. An IP address is a network "address", usually a number, which is essential to how the internet works. It changes regularily, and is no guarantee of identity. We, however, can use it in comparison to confirm your identity.
We will not (In fact, cannot, by GDPR) change this arbitrarily in the future. If we wanted to use your information for any other purpose than the above, we would need to contact you and request you give consent for this use.
You do not, if you don't want to, have to consent to us sending you your inspection reports electronically at all. In fact, if you want to, you can withdraw consent for us to hold any information about you. This is called your "Right to Erasure".
If you ask us to, we will remove everything we know about you, including all the above and any log entries we have.
This does mean we will not be able to deliver your report to you electronically, and you will no longer have access to this system! At all!
We do not supply printed copies of our reports, so you will need to speak to your letting agent about accessing a copy. You will not be able to use our online tenant portal to add your own photos or comments, either.
We will also inform your letting agent that "the tenant" (We will no longer know your name!) has withdrawn consent for us to hold their information. That's fine, honestly. This is your right if you choose to exercise it.
To do so, please contact us. We will need to verify your identity (Doesn't take long), and then we will remove all data we hold about you.
You can contact us via email, postbox@verismart.co.uk, or by phone 0845 6123727.
We are obliged to remove your information once we are finished processing it. "Processing" does include sending the report to you, but we also may be asked to prove the comments on the report were actually by you, the Tenant.
Therefore, we hold on to your details until 6 months after you Check Out of the property, unless you ask us to remove them earlier.
At this point, we make an assumption that the Tenancy has fully completed and remove your details from our database. Your comments will remain on the report, but they will have no reference to anyone other than "The Tenant".
Our secure Database is located in London, in an ISO 27001-certified data centre. Your finished report is stored in cloud storage in Ireland. The cloud storage vendor is Amazon Web Services, and they are ISO 27001-certified.
All the data we store about you is in our secure database. This database is encrypted, and database backups are stored encrypted too. These backups are stored in a secure cloud storage facility in Ireland, and never leave the EU for any reason.
Only the VeriSmart technical team can access this data, and they use all available safeguards to secure their access accounts, including but not limited to strong passwords, two-factor authentification and restricted account permissions where applicable.
Your data does not leave the EU under any circumstances.
The data controller is
Dean Owen
Suite 5 West Wing
26 Commercial Road
Poole
BH14 0JR
postbox@verismart.co.uk
0845 6123727
This data was provided to us by your Letting Agent or Landlord when they made a booking with us.
No, we make no decisions, automatic or otherwise, with this data. We use this data only for delivering your report to you, arranging meetings and timings with you, and proving that any comments or photos you add are authentically from you.
As independant Inventory Clerks we do not have any say or involvement with your deposit at all. Our role is to provide a "snapshot" of the property before and after Tenancy.