Encrypted in your browser
We can't read your data. We do process PDFs and addresses in memory when you ask us to, and we never store them.
Every listing, rating, note and PDF is encrypted in your browser before it's stored, with a key the server never holds. What we keep is ciphertext: without your passphrase or recovery code nobody can read it, us included.
What the server does see is what it needs to keep your household apart from everyone else's:
- your account: email address, and the name you set;
- who is in your household;
- how many apartments, ratings and places you have, who rated what, and when each was added or changed;
- how many PDFs, addresses and listing links your household has had processed, and what each credit paid for: counts per household, never per person, and never what was processed. On flatpare.com we review these counts to check use against what was paid for;
- the size of each stored PDF.
Never what an apartment is: not its address, any of its details, ratings or comments. Self-hosted, the same holds with your own server in our place.
The exception, stated plainly
A few things cannot be done in a browser. For those, that single item is sent in readable form, used for that one call, never written to our database and never logged:
- A PDF goes to an AI model that reads the facts out and writes a short summary. On flatpare.com we use only model providers that guarantee zero data retention: the request is not kept once it is answered. Self-hosted, it is Google Gemini unless you configure another.
- An address goes to Google Maps, on its own: one address to find where it is, or two (the apartment and one of your places) for the bike and transit times. It is sent from our server, with nothing that names you or your household, and we do not store it. On a self-hosted setup without Maps, OpenRouteService does this.
- A listing's link is opened by our server only to check that the listing is still online. Nothing is read from the page or kept.
- A search for a listing: when a PDF has no link to its listing, or the link no longer works, the AI model searches the web with the listing's title, address, website and language, to find a link that does. On flatpare.com that search keeps nothing of the request. Self-hosted, it is Google Search, under Google's terms.
The map's streets load from OpenFreeMap, directly from your browser. OpenFreeMap sees your IP address and which area of the map you are viewing, never your apartments or ratings.
This makes Flatpare private by design, but not zero-knowledge.
