Who we are
Stega is operated by Stega Limited, a company registered in England and Wales. We provide software that helps landlords and tenants manage tenancy information, documents, messages and property repairs.
- Company number: 17455608
- Registered office and postal contact: 27 Old Gloucester Street, London, WC1N 3AX
- Privacy enquiries and support: help@stega.uk
Our responsibilities and your landlord's responsibilities
Stega Limited is the controller of personal information we use to administer our service, protect accounts, respond to direct enquiries, manage our business and meet our legal obligations. This means we decide why and how that information is used.
Your landlord is normally the controller of the property, tenancy, household, document, message and repair information they manage through Stega. We process that information on their instructions. Their own privacy information explains their purposes and lawful bases. This notice also explains how our service handles those records, but does not replace the landlord's notice or our data processing terms with them.
If you contact us about information controlled by your landlord, we will help identify the responsible party and assist the landlord with your request.
Information we handle
Depending on your role and use of Stega, this includes:
- Accounts and access: names, email addresses, telephone numbers, landlord business details, invitations, account identifiers, sign-in and recovery records, and the versions of terms and privacy information presented during onboarding.
- Properties and tenancies: addresses, property details, tenant and household details, rent and deposit information, tenancy dates and status, and contact or access instructions.
- Communications and repairs: messages, read status, repair descriptions, safety answers, photographs, appointment arrangements, contractor details, updates and repair outcomes.
- Documents: uploaded tenancy agreements, inventories, deposit documents, safety certificates, invoices and other files, with their dates, versions and sharing settings.
- Operation and support: technical request information, security events, limited activity and delivery records, support correspondence and records of account or service changes.
- Business administration: supplier contacts, service-contract records, billing contacts and financial records where relevant. Stripe processes payments and relevant billing information when a customer orders a paid plan.
- Landlord referrals, where the limited pilot is offered: a code assigned to the referring account (stored as a one-way hash for checking and encrypted so its owner can see it again), the referral link and code a new landlord opens or enters, which stay in the web address and in our signup record rather than in a cookie, a promotional code a landlord enters, which we keep on their account until they subscribe, the link between the two accounts, eligibility and review decisions, qualifying invoice evidence, and Stripe credit transaction references. We do not collect raw card details for this purpose. Each landlord sees only their own reward status, not the other landlord's identity or billing details.
Please include only information needed for the task. Avoid photographs of people or unrelated documents, and do not include diagnoses, identity documents, criminal records or other sensitive information unless there is a specific, lawful need. Contact us if sensitive information has been included by mistake. Ordinary account access does not require you to send us identity documents by email.
Where information comes from
We receive information directly from users, from landlords who create tenancy records and invite tenants, and from authorised participants who add messages, documents or repair updates. We also receive technical, billing and delivery information from the providers that operate the service. Another household member's access depends on their authorised tenancy role and the record's sharing permissions.
Why we use information
For information for which Stega Limited is the controller, our purposes and lawful bases are:
- To set up and administer a service requested by an individual landlord, including necessary pre-contract steps: performance of a contract under Article 6(1)(b) UK GDPR.
- To communicate with a representative of a landlord company or other business customer: our legitimate interests in administering the business relationship and providing the requested service under Article 6(1)(f).
- To secure accounts, prevent impersonation and abuse, and investigate failures: our legitimate interests in protecting users' information and maintaining a reliable service under Article 6(1)(f).
- To answer enquiries and provide customer support or necessary service notices: contract where necessary for our contract with an individual, otherwise our legitimate interests in resolving enquiries and operating the service.
- To keep records required by a specific tax, accounting or other legal duty, and handle applicable data-protection requests: legal obligation under Article 6(1)(c).
- To manage supplier relationships and establish, exercise or defend legal claims: our legitimate interests, or legal obligation where a specific duty applies.
- To run an optional, account-holder referral credit pilot and prevent duplicate or fraudulent awards: our legitimate interests in testing a bounded acquisition route and protecting customer and company funds under Article 6(1)(f). We do not send an unsolicited invitation to the person referred or require a customer to send a marketing message.
For landlord-controlled tenancy, document, message and repair records, we act on the landlord's documented instructions. The landlord must identify the appropriate basis for each use, for example carrying out the tenancy contract or meeting a housing duty. We do not choose that basis for the landlord.
Our legitimate interests are assessed against the effect on the people concerned. We limit the information used, restrict staff access and use retention limits. Accepting service terms or acknowledging this notice is not consent to unrelated processing or marketing.
Who can receive information
The relevant landlord and authorised tenants can see records according to their role and the applicable sharing settings. A shared document is different from a landlord's private document. Information from a previous tenancy is not automatically made available to a new tenant. Contractors receive the details needed for work assigned to them through the relevant workflow. This is not a public directory of tenant information.
Authorised Stega personnel may access information needed for support, security or administration. Our internal support tools use limited activity records and role-based access.
Our service-provider inventory includes:
- Supabase: application database, authentication and private file storage.
- Vercel: website and application hosting, server processing and deployment services.
- Resend: authentication and transactional email delivery.
- Zoho Mail: company email and correspondence sent to help@stega.uk.
- Stripe: active business account for payment services. When billing is enabled, Stripe will process payments and relevant subscription information.
Some providers also act as controllers for their own account administration, legal or security purposes. Stripe may act as processor for some payment functions and as an independent controller for purposes such as regulatory compliance and fraud prevention. See Stripe's privacy information.
Where necessary and lawful, relevant information may be shared with professional advisers, authorities or others involved in a specific legal claim. We do not sell tenant information. Enabling additional analytics or another supplier requires an update to the inventory and any affected privacy information before that use begins.
International processing
Stega's hosted Supabase projects use the London region, but this does not mean all processing takes place in the UK. Hosting requests, email delivery, supplier support and downstream providers may involve other countries, including the United States.
For a restricted transfer, we use an applicable lawful transfer route, such as relevant UK adequacy regulations or appropriate contractual safeguards, together with the required assessment. Contact help@stega.uk for information about the safeguards that apply to your data.
How long information is kept
We distinguish keeping an account accessible from keeping the underlying records. Ending a tenancy, archiving a document or signing out does not itself erase information.
- Landlord account closure: the clock starts on the closure date. The landlord downloads any records they need before closing and cannot sign in afterwards.
- Landlord-controlled records: we delete properties, tenancies, repairs and photos, messages, documents, contractor records and their files from ordinary live systems within 30 days of landlord account closure. There is no continuing archive service after closure.
- Tenant access and identity: tenants can read and download the records they are entitled to see until 30 days after their landlord closes, when access ends. We treat each tenancy separately and remove a tenant's login only when no other tenancy uses it. The six-year former-tenant read-access ceiling applies only while the landlord account stays open, subject to earlier lawful deletion. It does not extend access beyond the closed landlord's deletion date.
- Landlord profile and sign-in: we delete the ordinary landlord profile and Auth user 90 days after closure, and the Stripe customer record where Stripe allows. We delete the Auth user last. Necessary controller evidence is kept separately as described below.
- Records for open landlord accounts: necessary tenancy, repair and message evidence is kept under the landlord's instructions, normally no longer than six years after the relevant tenancy ends or repair closes. Documents and photographs are kept only while needed for their purpose and associated record. Unnecessary or excessive material is removed sooner. These category periods do not override the 30-day closure rule.
- Invoices, payments and contract evidence: we keep the minimum necessary service-contract and terms evidence for six years after contract or account termination. Financial records normally follow six years from the end of the company financial year they relate to, subject to any legally required longer period.
- Account closure and repeat-introduction evidence: we keep a record of account closure for six years from closure and a record that prevents a free trial or pilot being used twice for six years from when that record was made. The repeat-introduction record uses one-way keyed identifiers rather than raw email addresses, phone numbers or addresses.
- Account-change log: we keep content-free customer events with the underlying record, then for no more than six years after account closure or the last related tenancy end, whichever is later. Events for unclaimed landlord invitations have a six-year maximum from expiry or revocation. This log contains no messages or documents.
- code access ends after the pilot window or earlier disablement. Pending attribution and review evidence is kept only while needed to decide eligibility or resolve a dispute. Credit issue, use, reversal and related financial audit evidence may be kept for up to six years from the relevant transaction or account closure where needed for accounting, disputes or legal claims. We remove or minimise information that is no longer needed sooner.
Six years is not a blanket requirement to keep every file, photograph or message. We remove information sooner when its purpose ends, a valid instruction or rights request requires it, or a shorter period is sufficient. A specific documented legal hold may require the identified records to be kept longer.
Truly anonymous aggregate statistics may be kept longer. Replacing a name with an identifier does not by itself make data anonymous.
Required information, cookies and preferences
We need sufficient identity and contact information to provide secure access and administer the requested service. Without the necessary information, we may be unable to create an account, send an invitation or process a request. Forms identify required and optional fields. Declining an optional field does not authorise refusal of an otherwise valid service request.
Authentication uses cookies or similar storage to maintain secure sessions. Browser storage also supports preferences and unfinished work. We do not use those technologies to sell personal information or train advertising profiles.
Automated processing and AI
The current product uses automated access and abuse controls. It does not use customer records to train AI models or make solely automated decisions about tenancy eligibility or repair entitlement. Any future AI use of messages, documents or photographs requires a separate purpose, lawful-basis and transparency assessment before it begins. This notice does not grant permission to train models on user data.
Your rights and complaints
Depending on the circumstances, you may ask to access, correct, erase, restrict or receive a portable copy of your information. You may withdraw consent where a particular use relies on consent. These rights have conditions and exceptions.
You have the right to object to processing based on legitimate interests. We will consider the grounds you raise rather than automatically refuse an objection. You can also object to direct marketing if we introduce it.
Contact help@stega.uk to exercise a right or raise a privacy complaint. We will make proportionate identity checks and route landlord-controlled requests appropriately. Our responses follow the applicable statutory deadlines. A request does not need to mention a particular law or use a special form.
You may complain to the Information Commissioner's Office. You do not have to wait for our permission to do so.
Security and children
The application uses authenticated access, tenancy-level permissions, private file storage and restrictions on staff access. We test these boundaries and review the controls as the service changes. No system can guarantee absolute security.
Stega accounts are available only to people aged 18 or over. The service is intended for landlords and authorised adult tenants. Records about a tenancy or household may still contain information about children, and that information must be limited to what is necessary. Contact help@stega.uk if an under-18 account has been created. Closing that account does not indiscriminately erase necessary landlord-controlled records.
Changes to this notice
We keep dated versions of this notice so account records can be matched to the information users received. We will explain material changes through an appropriate service notice, such as an email or in-product notification, where required.