Last updated 7 October 2026
ForRenters is a place where renters write about the homes they have lived in. This page explains what we collect, why, who else sees it, and how long we keep it. It describes what the site actually does today — where something is not switched on yet, it says so.
What you give us
Your account. A name, an email address and a password. Passwords are stored only as a one-way hash (Argon2id); nobody at ForRenters can read yours. We email you a short code to confirm your address and to reset a forgotten password. A password must be at least 15 characters and is refused if it is a well-known password or is built out of your email address; an account locks for 15 minutes after ten wrong passwords in a row, and changing or resetting a password signs out every other device.
What you post. Reviews, ratings, comments, replies and photos, and the maintenance reports, corrections and updates you send about a property. Reviews, comments and replies are public. They appear with your display name, and so does what you say about yourself on a review: whether you live there now, used to, or were looking to rent; the months you lived there; and any connection you declare. Photos you attach to a review are public too. If you name who managed the home, it appears on your review only after a moderator has checked it. Individual landlord names are withheld from the public landlord display: an individual landlord appears only as “Private Landlord”, and the name you give is seen only by our moderators. A management company appears by its name. Maintenance reports, corrections and updates are published only after a moderator approves them, and never with your name.
What stays private. Your saved properties; how you voted on a review (the public sees only the totals for each vote, never who voted or how); and the reports you make about content. A report and its outcome are seen only by you and by the ForRenters staff authorised to moderate reports; you can follow the outcome of your own reports on your profile page.
Verification documents. If you ask to be verified you send us a photo ID, or a document showing you lived at an address. These are handled differently from everything else, and are described below.
Technical records. Our servers keep ordinary request logs, which include IP addresses, and an activity log of moderation actions taken inside the product.
What we do with it
We run the service: your account, your reviews, and the moderation that keeps the site usable. We use your email to send account mail: confirmation codes, password resets, the result when a verification is decided, a warning 14 days before an undecided verification request expires or a reconsideration hold ends, and a short note when someone replies to your review. That note never includes the reply itself and is sent at most once an hour for each conversation. The setting on your profile page turns off only these reply notes; account and verification emails are always sent. We do not sell personal information, and we do not pass it to advertisers.
Your apartment or unit number stays private
If you verify residency at a building, the unit number you give is used for the check and is never shown next to your review, never put in a URL, and never sent to any outside service. In a building where one unit has one tenant, publishing it would name you.
Your public profile
Once you have published a review or a reply, other visitors can open a profile page for you. It shows your display name, how long you have been a member, your Renter Rep level and achievement badges, and short extracts of your published reviews with the building's address, never a unit number. The public Verified label on a review, and the achievement badge for verified reviews, appear there as they do elsewhere on the site. Your email address and your private verification documents and details (the documents themselves, your unit number, your notes and the reviewer's notes) never do. Search engines are asked not to index the profile. Your level and badges are worked out from contributions a moderator has approved.
Verification documents
Who can open one. You can always see your own — they are on your verification page until they are deleted. Apart from you, only staff who hold the specific permission for reviewing verifications can open one. That is a narrower thing than being an administrator: the general "may view files" permission behind our media library does not open an identity document, so access can be withdrawn from someone without changing anything else about their account. They are stored apart from everything public, with no link that serves them, and they are never attached to a review.
We do not keep them. When a moderator has made a decision we email you, and the document is deleted:
- 30 days after a verification is approved
- 7 days after one is not accepted, or after an approval is withdrawn
If nobody has reviewed your request, the document is deleted 90 days after you uploaded it and the request expires, whether or not a decision was ever made. We will not hold your papers indefinitely waiting for ourselves. We email you 14 days before that happens, so there is time to ask us about it or to start again. Nothing is lost except the file: you can make a new request and upload it afresh.
Asking us to look again. If a verification was not accepted, you can ask us to reconsider during the 7 days before the document is deleted. While that request is open the document is kept — we will not delete the evidence inside the window we invited you to use.
That hold is not open-ended. It lasts at most 30 days from the day you ask. We email you 14 days before it ends. If a moderator has looked again by then, the clock restarts from that second decision: 30 days if it is now approved, 7 days if it is still not accepted. If nobody has answered within the 30 days, the document is deleted anyway, the original decision stands, and you are free to start a new request with a fresh upload.
What we keep afterwards is the result: that a check happened, what kind it was, which home it was about, what was decided and when, and a short standard reason such as "document could not be read". The note you wrote, your apartment or unit number, and the moderator's own written explanation are deleted along with the document. The reason we email you is that short standard one, never the moderator's own words, because those can quote what is on your document. Deleting the document does not remove your verified status.
Backups. Documents are never included in our database backups, so restoring a backup cannot bring back a deleted document. Database records can remain in a backup for up to 30 days, which is how long we keep backups. Restoring one does not undo a deletion: deletions, withdrawals and closed accounts are recorded outside the database as well, and both those records and the retention rules are applied to the restored data before the site is available again. If that reconciliation cannot be completed, the site is not brought back up on the restored data at all.
Analytics and cookies
The only cookies ForRenters sets today are the ones that keep you signed in. They are necessary for the site to work and cannot be turned off while you are logged in.
No analytics or session-recording tool is running on this site at present. When that changes you will be asked first, in a panel with two separate choices:
- Analytics — Google Analytics 4 and PostHog: how many people visit, which pages they use, which features they try.
- Masked screen activity — Microsoft Clarity: heatmaps and recordings of how a page is used, with text masked. We say masked rather than anonymous because that is what it is.
Both start switched off. Saving your choices and refusing everything are offered as two buttons of the same size, side by side, and nothing loads until you answer — refusing means those tools are never fetched at all. Your answer is remembered for 12 months, and a Cookie preferences link in the footer lets you change or withdraw it at any time; withdrawing clears those tools' cookies.
Two things hold whatever you choose: properties are identified to these tools by a random internal ForRenters code and never by street address, and property pages are never recorded by Clarity at all, because the address is in the page's own web address.
Advertising
Advertising is not enabled. The spaces marked "Advertisement" are placeholders and no advertising network receives anything from your visit. If that changes, it will be after the consent choice described above, and this page will be updated first.
Other services involved
Maps. When a page shows a map, it is drawn by Google Maps in your browser, so Google receives the request. Street View pictures are fetched by our servers and served from ours, so viewing a property page does not tell Google which home you looked at.
Property information. Listing data comes from property-data providers. We send them an address to ask about a property; we never send them anything about you.
Email. Account mail is delivered through our email provider.
How long we keep the rest
Your account and what you have posted stay while your account exists. Verification documents follow the schedule above. Server logs are kept for troubleshooting and are rotated; the in-product activity log of moderation actions is kept, because knowing who approved or removed something is part of moderating fairly.
Deleting your account
There is no self-service delete button yet. Ask us through our contact page and we will close your account. Reviews you have written may remain on the site without your name attached, so that the record of a property is not rewritten by one person leaving.
Changes
If this policy changes we will update the date at the top. Material changes will be announced on the site.
Contact
Questions about this policy, or a request about your data: please reach out through our contact page.