1. Who is responsible
For the account you create and for your documents vault, Homelinker is the controller. For the profile and documents an agency receives through one of its listings, the agency is the controller and Homelinker is its processor.
Contact details are in the legal notice.
2. What we collect, per role
Candidates: mobile phone number, name, nationality, move-in date, number of cheques, visa status, household size and pets, income type, employer or company name, job title or role, monthly income, trade licence number when the lease is in a company’s name, a self-presentation, and the documents of the file, before or after the viewing depending on the listing: Emirates ID, passport, visa page, proof of income (salary certificate, employment contract or payslips), bank statement, and for a company lease or commercial premises the company trade licence, the memorandum of association, the company bank statement and an optional tax registration certificate, plus any document the agency asks for on a listing.
Agency members: name, mobile phone number, role, RERA Broker Registration Number. Agencies: name, trade licence number, RERA Office Registration Number, office community, WhatsApp number and optionally the landlord’s IBAN for the landlord pack.
Technical data: timestamps of actions, an access log of document views, unlocks, exports and deletions. No cookies other than the session cookie, no trackers, no analytics scripts.
- We never collect religion or gender.
- We never compute a score or a ranking of candidates.
3. Why we use it
To let a candidate send a profile and a file to the agency of their choice, to let the agency decide and retain a candidate, to send automatic WhatsApp reminders while a file is incomplete, to produce the landlord pack, to invoice agencies per signed lease and to keep an access log for security.
4. Legal basis
Consent: the candidate’s explicit consent to share the file with a given agency, and a separate consent for the optional Etihad Credit Bureau screening. Consent can be withdrawn at any time; withdrawal cuts the agency’s access.
Contract: the processing needed to provide the service to the candidate (account, profile, tracker) and to the agency (listings, decisions, billing).
5. How long we keep it
Application data is kept for the retention period set by the agency after the listing closes, 12 months by default, then deleted. A candidate’s vault is kept while the account exists and deleted on request. Invoices are kept for the period required by UAE tax law. The access log is kept for 24 months.
7. Sub-processors and locations
The sub-processors are:
- Website, application and database hosting: AEserver, Homelinker’s hosting provider, on servers in the United Arab Emirates.
- Uploaded documents: stored on the same AEserver hosting in the United Arab Emirates, in private storage that is not publicly accessible, and opened only through the application by the people allowed to see them.
- WhatsApp messages: sent by the agents from their own WhatsApp; message content is subject to WhatsApp’s own terms.
- Etihad Credit Bureau: UAE, only when the candidate consents to a screening.
8. Your rights and how to exercise them
You may ask for access to your data, correction, deletion, a copy, and you may withdraw a consent at any time. Candidates can do most of this directly from the profile page; agencies from their settings. For anything else, write to the address in the legal notice. We answer within 30 days and never charge for it.
If you are not satisfied with our answer, you may contact the UAE Data Office once it accepts complaints, or the data protection authority of the country where the entity named in the legal notice is registered.
9. DIFC and ADGM
Homelinker is not established in the Dubai International Financial Centre or in Abu Dhabi Global Market. The DIFC Data Protection Law and the ADGM Data Protection Regulations apply to agencies established in those zones for their own processing; such agencies remain responsible for complying with them when they use Homelinker.
10. No automated decision
No decision about a candidate is taken automatically. Homelinker computes and displays a rent-to-income ratio from what the candidate declared; it does not score, rank, filter or reject anyone. Every decision is taken by a member of the agency and can be reversed.
11. Security
Encryption in transit, data and documents stored on servers in the United Arab Emirates, documents shown with a watermark and viewable in-app only before retention, access limited to the agency concerned, an access log visible to the agency, a password to sign in to an existing account. Staff access is limited to support on request and logged.
12. Changes to this policy
We update this policy when the service or its sub-processors change. The version line at the top of this page states the current version and date.