Datestone.

Privacy Policy

Last updated: 15 October 2026

1. Who is responsible for your data

Datestone is operated at datestone.io. You can reach us via the contact form at datestone.io/contact, and a person reads it. ICO registration: in progress.

2. What we collect

Account information. Your email address and sign-in details, handled by our authentication provider, Clerk. We don't see or store your password.

Property and tenancy information you enter. Addresses, property characteristics, tenancy dates and amounts, tenants' names if you add them, and the compliance answers you give. We ask you not to enter more personal information about other people than the service needs.

If you run a letting business on Datestone. The app holds what you and the people you invite put into it about the people you deal with: tenants', guarantors', contractors' and letting agents' names, email addresses and phone numbers, their reports and messages, the files they send, and enquiries from your public page. For that information you are the controller and we process it on your behalf, only to run the service for you. You can correct it at any time, and erase a person at their request, from People or the Inbox: their name, email address and phone number, everything they sent you and their words on the jobs they reported are deleted, and the records you must keep (a tenancy, a job, the rent, a notice served, what you sent them) stay with "[erased]" in their place. Somebody else who uses the same email address keeps their own details unless you erase them too, but what came from that address is deleted for everyone at it.

Documents you upload. Certificates and evidence you choose to store, kept to provide your evidence vault and compliance packs.

Free checker answers. If you use the public checker without an account, your answers are processed to show your result and are not stored unless you choose to save them by giving your email. The visit statistics (section 7) count that a check was done, never its answers.

Technical information and visit statistics. The server logs needed to run and secure the service, and our own count of how Datestone is used: the pages visited, the buttons pressed, the device, and roughly where in the world. Section 7 says exactly what is recorded, what never is, and how to turn it off.

Payments. Handled by Stripe. We never see or store your card number.

3. Why we use it, and our lawful bases

To provide the service you signed up for — reminders, obligation tracking, document storage, compliance packs (performance of our contract). To tell you about changes to the rules the service tracks where they affect your properties — these are service messages, not marketing (contract and legitimate interests). Marketing emails only if you opt in, each with an unsubscribe link (consent). To secure the service, prevent abuse and fix problems (legitimate interests). To improve the accuracy of the rules and licensing-coverage records the service tracks, using aggregated, area-level signals derived from how the service is used — never your identity, your address or your documents (legitimate interests). To count how Datestone is used, so we can see what to improve (legitimate interests, and the cookie rules in section 7). To meet our own legal obligations, such as tax and accounting records (legal obligation).

We do not sell personal data, and we never use your personal data to train AI models. We keep two kinds of AI strictly separate. The AI that monitors regulations reads only public government and council web pages — never your data — and may run on a third-party model provider for that public-source reading. The AI that reads a document you upload (for example, to read the dates on a certificate) is run only by Anthropic, our document-AI provider, solely to help you file it; your documents and personal data are never sent to the public-source model.

4. Who processes data for us

We use a small number of service providers under contract: Clerk (authentication), Neon (database hosting), Vercel (hosting and analytics), Stripe (payments), Resend (email delivery), Anthropic (AI reading of documents you upload) and Cloudflare (encrypted backup storage). Some of these providers process data in the United States; where they do, transfers are protected by the UK Addendum to the EU Standard Contractual Clauses or the UK International Data Transfer Agreement, alongside each provider's own safeguards. We will disclose information where the law requires it.

5. How long we keep things

Account, property and tenancy data: while your account is active. Close a business and everything in it is deleted at once, apart from the backups below. Delete your account and so is every business that has no other owner or manager in it. A business that does is not deleted: you come off it, or, if you were its last owner, it is handed to the manager who takes it on. Delete a home for good and it is deleted 30 days after you ask; you can cancel in that time. Uploaded documents: kept with their home, and deleted with it, at one of those times. Taking a document off the record only hides it. Checker answers you didn't save: not stored. Visit statistics: the individual records for 13 months, then deleted; the daily totals, which hold no person, are kept. Billing records: six years, as required for tax and accounting.

Backups. To recover from a disaster we keep encrypted copies of the database and the stored files: each night's for 35 days, and one a month for 400 days, in Cloudflare's storage and on an encrypted drive we hold. Anything deleted from the service, including when an account or a business is closed or a person is erased, stays in those copies until they expire, so it is gone from all of them within 400 days. They are opened only to restore the service. Our database host also keeps a short rolling history for undoing mistakes, which runs out on its own.

6. Your rights

You have the usual rights under UK data protection law: to access your data, correct it, delete it, restrict or object to our processing, and receive a portable copy. To exercise any of them, use the contact form at datestone.io/contact, and we'll respond within one month. You can also complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk, though we'd appreciate the chance to sort it out first.

7. Cookies and visit statistics

We use a few cookies. Two kinds keep the service working: the ones that sign you in and keep it secure, and one that remembers if you turn the statistics off. One more counts visits, so we can see what to improve.

What the visit statistics are for. To make Datestone better, and nothing else. We count visits with our own code, in our own database. No advertising company or analytics company is given this record, it is never used to show you adverts or to target you, and it is never sold. It is shared only with the companies that host Datestone and its database (section 4), who run it for us. Separately, our host, Vercel, counts page views with its own Web Analytics, without cookies, on the website and on landlords' public pages. That count is not these statistics: the switch, Do Not Track and Global Privacy Control do not stop it.

What is recorded.

  • The pages you visit, and how long you stay on each.
  • The buttons, links and tabs you press. On our public pages, by their words, such as "Start the free check". Everywhere else, the app included, only by a name we gave the button, or for a link by where it goes, never by what either says. Choosing an address from a list, or answering a question on the free check, is recorded as just that, never which address or which answer.
  • Whether a form was sent, and the names of any fields it refused, such as "postcode". Never what was in them.
  • Script errors and slow pages, and a button pressed again and again.
  • Where you came from (a website, a search engine or a campaign link), your device type, system, browser and screen width, and your country, region and town, which our host works out from your IP address.
  • The steps that matter: a free check done, with or without an account; and once you have one, signing up, setting up a business, adding a first home, going to pay, starting a trial, paying, changing or cancelling a plan, and a payment failing. The payment steps come from our payment provider, not your browser, and carry the plan and the amount. When you sign up, and when you use Datestone signed in, that browser's visitor number is joined to your account, so its earlier visits count as yours.

What is never recorded. Anything you type. Names, email addresses, postal addresses or documents. Your IP address, or anything made from it: our host uses it to work out your country, region and town, and we use it only as each visit arrives, to leave our own team's visits out and to slow a flood, then drop it. Anything after a question mark in a page address, except a campaign link's three tags (its source, medium and campaign name). And nothing of these statistics from a page a tenant, a contractor or somebody with a shared link reads, such as a landlord's public pages.

The cookies.

  • ds_v: a random visitor number, kept for 13 months, so a visitor is counted once. It is set only for these statistics.
  • ds_s: not a cookie but an entry in your browser's session storage, for these statistics only. It holds the current visit's own random number, when it was last active, the page it began on, the website it came from and any campaign tags, and your browser deletes it when the tab or window is closed.
  • ds_optout: remembers that you turned the statistics off, for five years. It is strictly necessary: without it we could not keep your word.
  • ds_us: set only on our own team's devices, so our own visits are left out.
  • The cookies that sign you in and keep the service secure (from Clerk, our sign-in provider), and ds_business, which remembers which of your businesses you are working in. These are strictly necessary.

How long. The individual records are kept for 13 months and then deleted. Before they go, each day is added up into totals that hold no person, and those are kept.

Our own step counts. Separately, we count a few steps as plain totals, with no cookie and no visitor number: a free check started and finished (with whether a tenancy was answered), an email left on a check's result, "Keep this home free" pressed under a result, a contact message sent, a compliance pack downloaded, and an account made. The count of an account made carries the new account's id, unless the browser has turned statistics off or sends Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control. Erasing your account removes its id from them. The switch, Do Not Track and Global Privacy Control do not stop these totals: they hold no visitor number, and only the account's id is left out of the last.

Why we may do this. The law on cookies (the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations, Schedule A1, paragraph 5, in force since 5 February 2026) lets a service count its own use without asking first, when that is its only purpose, nothing is shared except with those who help improve the service, you are clearly told what is done, and you have a simple, free way to object. This section is the telling, and the way to object is below. For the personal data in the records, UK GDPR applies, and our lawful basis is legitimate interests: making Datestone better. You can object to that too (section 6).

How to object. Press "Don't count mine", after "We count visits to make Datestone better.": it is at the foot of the website's pages, under the free check and the sign-in and sign-up cards, and in the app. It sets one cookie, ds_optout, and removes your visitor number from that browser. We also treat your browser's "Do Not Track" and "Global Privacy Control" settings as an objection, with nothing to press. Each one stops these statistics recording anything from that browser; our host's own page-view count, above, is separate. If you are signed in when you turn statistics off, or when you sign up, set up a business, add a home, start a checkout or open billing from a browser that has turned statistics off or sends one of those settings, we also note the objection on your account: from then on nothing more is recorded for your account, on any device, the payment steps included, nor from a browser already linked to it. That note holds only your account and the time, and is kept until you press "Count my visits again" for your account, in the app under Settings, or your account is deleted. What was recorded before you objected stays until its 13 months are up; to have it deleted sooner, ask us (section 6). Turning statistics off changes nothing about your account, your homes or your payments: those are records you asked us to keep, not statistics. The same page counts that browser's visits again ("Count my visits again on this browser"); your account's are counted again only in the app, under Settings.

No advertising cookies. No cross-site tracking.

8. Children

The service is for people aged 18 and over and is not directed at children.

9. Changes to this policy

We'll update this page when our practices change and, for material changes, tell you by email before they take effect.