Housies Privacy Policy
1.0 Intent
This policy covers every website that Tressel manages that links to this site, along with all of the products and services provided by Tressel through other websites, our marketplace, and our mobile application.
2.0 Purpose
Tressel is dedicated to customer and user privacy, from its conceptualisation as a SaaS based organisation, Privacy has been embedded through the core of our operations and is part of our DNA as a business. We ask for only the least amount of information necessary, gathering only what we believe is essential for doing business, or for the specific transaction at hand. We let customers know the information we have on them and allow them to opt out of specific engagements.
As part of Tressel’s business model, the company does not permit external organisations to advertise their products and services on our website or marketplace trading platform, thereby Tressel does not seek to generate revenue from advertising. This means Tressel avoids the fundamental conflict of interest between gathering customer information and driving advertising revenue, and the unavoidable compromises in customer privacy that it brings.
The purpose of this policy is to make explicit the information we gather, how we will use it, and how we will not. This policy is thorough, but Tressel needs to be unambiguous to address all scenarios relevant to its business. We will try and keep things simple and direct as much as possible.
3.0 Scope
This Privacy Policy applies to all Tressel websites that link to it. It also applies to the products and services provided by Tressel through these websites, our mobile application, and application presented by Tressel on Tressel’s online marketplace. This Privacy Policy does not apply to any of our websites, products or services that have a separate privacy policy, should we do so.
Why we use Information
In addition to the purposes mentioned above, we may use your information for the following purposes:
- To enable communications with you (such as through email) about insights or documents that you have downloaded and services that you have signed up for, changes to this Privacy Policy, changes to the Terms of Service, or important notices;
- To establish and maintain your Housies account, and to do all other things required for providing our services, backing up and restoring your data;
- Identify and prevent fraudulent transactions and other potential illegal activities, to report spam, and to protect the rights and interests of Tressel, Tressel’s customer/members, third parties and the public;
- To keep our customers updated on new services or property investments, upcoming events, offers, campaigns and other information that we think might be of interest to you;
- To seek participation in feedback sessions or surveys, or to solicit feedback on our services;
- To understand how members or visitors interact with our services, to monitor, manage and prevent issues, and continually improve our services;
- To provide customer support, and to analyse and improve our interactions with customers;
- To analyse trends, administer our websites, and track internet traffic (visitors) on our website to understand what they look at;
- To help deliver marketing campaigns and make suggestions relevant to existing and potential new customers.
4.0 Policy Requirements
4.1 Information that Tressel captures and controls
We collect information about you only if we need the information for some legitimate purpose. Tressel will have information about you only if (a) you have provided the information yourself, (b) Tressel has automatically collected the information, or (c) Tressel has obtained the information from a third party. Below we describe the various scenarios that fall under each of those three categories and the information collected in each one.
Information that you provide us
Account signup : When you sign up for an account to access one or more of our services, we ask for information like your name, contact number, email address, Trust or Company name and country to complete the account signup process. You'll also be required to create a unique password for the unique Customer ID that Tressel will assign to you, for accessing your account. You may also provide us with more information such as your time zone and language, but we don’t require that information to sign up for an account. After signing up, you will have the option of choosing a security question and an answer to the security question — if you provide these, they will be used only while resetting your password.
Event registrations and other form submissions: We record information that you submit when you (i) register for any event, including webinars or seminars, (ii) subscribe to our newsletter or any other mailing list, (iii) submit a form in order to download any product, whitepaper, or other materials, (iv) participate in promotions or respond to surveys, or (v) submit a form to request Tressel support (Guardian application, Vendor application, issues with your Member’s portal etc), or for any other purpose.
Payment processing : When you transact property shares with us, we ask you to provide your name, contact information, and credit card information or other payment account information. When you submit your card information, we store the name and address of the cardholder, the expiry date and the last four digits of the credit card number. We do not store the actual credit card number. For quick processing of future payments, if you have given us your approval, we may store your credit card information or other payment information in an encrypted format in the secured servers of our Payment Gateway Service Providers.
Statements supporting Housies : When you authorise us to post a recorded Statement about our services on websites, we may include your name and other personal information in the statement. You will be given an opportunity to review and approve the recorded statement before we post it. If you wish to update or delete your testimonial, you can contact us at privacy@tressel.co.nz
Interactions with Tressel : We may record, analyse and use your interactions with us, including email, telephone, and chat conversations with our support professionals/partners, for improving our interactions with you and other customers.
Information that is collect automatically
From cookies and tracking technologies : We use temporary and permanent cookies to identify users and members of our services and to enhance their user experience. We embed unique identifiers in our downloadable products (such as industry or market articles) to track usage of the products. We also use cookies, beacons, tags, scripts, and other similar technologies to identify visitors, track website movements, understand demographic information about visitors and users, gain insights of our email campaigns effectiveness and for targeted visitor and user engagement by tracking your activities on our websites.
From web browsers, devices and servers : When you visit our websites, we collect information that web browsers, mobile devices and servers make available, such as the internet protocol address, browser type, language preference, time zone, referring URL, date and time of access, operating system, mobile device manufacturer and mobile network information. We include these in our log files to understand more about visitors to our websites.
From application logs and mobile analytics : We collect information about your use of our services and mobile application from application logs and in-house usage analytics tools, and use it to understand how your use and needs can improve our products. This information includes clicks, scrolls, features accessed (as applicable for an investor, guardian or vendor), the length of access time and frequency, any particular errors that may be generated, speed of app data, storage utilised, preferred user settings and configurations, and devices used (laptop, mobile etc) to access and their locations.
Information collected from third parties
Recommendations or Referrals : If someone has recommended or referred any of our services to you through any of our promotions or campaigns, that person might have provided us your name, email address and other personal information. You may contact us at privacy@tressel.co.nz to request that we remove your information from our internal records or customer repository. If you provide us information about another person whom you think would benefit from our services, or the reverse scenario occurs (ie: a person gives us your information), we will only use that information for the specific reason for which it was provided to us.
Information from social media platforms and other publicly available sources : If you provide feedback or comment about our services, or engage with us directly on our marketplace, or via social platform apps such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn through posts, and other interactions, we might collect the public posts, including profile information, to allow us to connect with you, improve our services, better gauge.gain context about user reactions and issues, or to(with your permission) reproduce and publish your feedback on our websites. For clear transparency, informing you, that once collected, this information may remain with us even if you decide to delete it from sites. Tressel may also add and update information about you, from other publicly available sources.
Signups using federated authentication service providers : You can log in to Tressel’s Services using supported federated authentication service providers such as Facebook and Google. These services will authenticate your identity and give you the option to share certain personal information with us, such as your name and email address.
Information provided from our business partners and/or services provider : If you contact any of our business partners (for example, our property services partner), the partner may pass your name, email address, company name and other information to Tressel. If you register for or attend an event that is hosted or sponsored by Tressel, the event organiser (if there is one) may share your information with us. Tressel may also receive information about you from feedback sites if you comment about our services, and/or from other third-party service providers that we engage for marketing our products and services.
Legals about collecting and using information
Legal processing applicable to Tressel : The majority of Tressel’s customers are New Zealand based or resided. However, if you are an individual from the European Economic Area (EEA), our legal basis for information collection and use depends on the personal information you have provided and the context in which we collected it. Most of our information collection and processing activities are typically based on (i) contractual necessity (ie: compliance regulations such as AML verification), (ii) one or more legitimate interests of Tressel or a third party that are not overridden by your data protection interests (such as our ‘Property Co’ partners), or (iii) your consent.
Sometimes, we may be legally required to collect your information, or may need your personal information to protect your vital interests or those of another person.
Genuine business interests : Where we rely on genuine business interests as the legal basis and those genuine interests are not specified in the sections above, Tressel will provide precise examples as to what those genuine business interests are at the time that we collect your information.
Removing your approval or consent : Where we rely on your approval or consent as the legal basis, you have the right to remove your approval as-and-when you choose to. This however, will not affect any past/historic processing that may have already taken place prior to your removal request.
You can decide
Disable capture of cookies : You can choose to disable your web-browser cookies before visiting our websites. However, if you do so, you may not be able to use certain functions or features properly.
Opt out of non-essential electronic communications : You can choose to opt out of receiving newsletters or company or industry updates from us; as well as other non-essential messages we may publish by using the ‘unsubscribe’ function included in all our communications. However, you will continue to receive important notices and emails that may impact your account or membership, security incident alerts, security and privacy update notifications, and essential transactional and payment related emails.
Optionals : It’s your call if you do not want to fill in non-mandatory fields when you submit any form linked to Housies.
Who we share your information with
All Tressel group entities have access to the information covered in the above mentioned sections. Tressel does not sell any personal information, ever. It is not a source of revenue for us. We share your information only in the ways that are described in this Privacy Policy, and only with parties who actively align to and adopt similar confidentiality and security measures as us.
Employees and independent contractors : Employees and independent contractors of relevant Tressel group entities have access to the information covered in this document, on a need-to-know basis (role based). We require all employees and independent contractors of Tressel group entities to follow this Privacy Policy for personal information that we share with them.
Third-party service providers : We may need to share your personal information and aggregated or de-identified information with third-party service providers that we engage, such as marketing and advertising partners, Nominee organisations, web analytics providers (Google) and payment processors. These service providers are authorised by Tressel to use your personal information only as necessary to provide these services we have engaged them to do for us.
Reselling partners : We may share your personal information with our authorised partners in your region, solely for the purpose of contacting you about products that you have downloaded or services that you have signed up for. We will give you an option to opt out of continuing to work with that partner.
Housies application developers : When you install the Housies app (once built and it goes live), your name and email address will be shared with the developer of the application, so they may engage with you directly as the provider of that application or service. Tressel does not control the use of your personal information by the developers, which will be based on their own privacy policies.
Your rights as a controller of your information
Right to access : You have the right to access (and obtain a copy of, if required) the categories of personal information that we hold about you, including the information's source, purpose and period of processing, and the persons to whom the information is shared.
Right to rectification : You have the right to update the information we hold about you or to rectify any inaccuracies. Based on the purpose for which we use your information, you can instruct us to add supplemental information about you in our database.
Right to erasure : You have the right to request that we delete your personal information in certain circumstances, such as when it is no longer necessary for the purpose for which it was originally collected.
Right to restriction of processing : You may also have the right to request to restrict the use of your information in certain circumstances, such as when you have objected to our use of your data but we need to verify whether we have overriding legitimate grounds to use it.
Right to data portability : You have the right to transfer your information to a third party in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format, in circumstances where the information is processed with your consent or by automated means.
Right to object : You have the right to object to the use of your information in certain circumstances, such as the use of your personal information for direct marketing.
Right to complain : You have the right to complain to the appropriate supervisory authority if you have any grievance against the way we collect, use or share your information. This right may not be available to you if there is no supervisory authority dealing with data protection in your country.
Retaining your Information
Tressel retains your personal information for as long as it is required for the purposes stated in this Privacy Policy (7 years is the base requirement in New Zealand). In exceptions, we may retain your information for longer periods as permitted or required by law, such as to maintain suppression lists, prevent abuse, if required in connection with a legal claim or proceeding, to enforce our agreements, for tax, accounting, or to comply with other legal obligations - in New Zealand, again, this is typically a period of 7 years. When we no longer have a genuine business need to process your information, we will delete it or anonymize it in our archived repository.
4.2 Information that Tressel processes for you
Information entrusted to Tressel
Information provided in connection with services : You may entrust information that you control, to Tressel, in connection with use of our services or for requesting technical support for our services. This includes information regarding your customers (EG: If you are a Trustee purchasing shares) or data that you hold and use on behalf of another person for a specific purpose. The data may either be stored on our servers when you use our services, or transferred or shared to us as part of a request for support.
Retention of information
We hold the data in your account as long as you choose to use Housies Services. Once you terminate your Housies user account, your data will eventually get deleted from active database during the next clean-up that occurs once in 6 months. The data deleted from active database will be deleted from backups after 3 months.
Data subject requests
If you are from the European Economic Area and you believe that we store, use or process your information on behalf of one of our customers, please contact us. We will extend our support to that customer in responding to your request within a reasonable timeframe.
4.3 General
Children’s personal information
Our products and services are not directed to individuals under 18. Tressel does not knowingly collect personal information from minors who are under 18 years of age for its own purposes. If we become aware that a minor under 18 has provided us with personal information, we will take steps to delete such information. If you believe that a minor under 18 years has provided personal information to us, please write to privacy@tressel.co.nz with the details, and we will take the necessary steps to delete the information we hold about that child. However, in using our products, if you process information relating to minors, you acknowledge and agree that you will be responsible for complying with the applicable laws and regulations related to protection of such personal information.
How secure is information
Tressel has taken steps to implement appropriate administrative, technical & physical safeguards to prevent unauthorised access, use, modification, disclosure or destruction of the information you entrust to us. If you have any concerns regarding the security of your data, write to us at security@tressel with any questions.
Data Protection
Tressel Leadership oversees our management of your personal information in accordance with this Privacy Policy. If you have any questions or concerns about our privacy practices with respect to your personal information, you can reach out to Tressel by sending an email to privacy@tressel.co.nz or by writing to: Tressel Leadership, Level7, 56 Cawley Street, Ellerslie, Auckland, 1051.
Locations and international transfers
We share your personal information and service data within the Tressel group and with third parties engaged by the Tressel group (eg: technology partners) for the purposes described above. By accessing or using our services or otherwise providing personal information or service data to us, you understand the processing, transfer, and storage of your personal information or Service Data within New Zealand and Australia. You can write to privacy@tressel.co.nz for obtaining a copy of the agreements on the basis of which we transfer your data within Tressel and with the third parties engaged by us.
Do Not Track (DNT) requests
Some internet browsers have enabled 'Do Not Track' (DNT) features, which send out a signal (called the DNT signal) to the websites that you visit indicating that you don't wish to be tracked. Currently, there is no standard that governs what websites can or should do when they receive these signals. For now, we do not take action in response to these signals.
Automation and Artificial Intelligence
In keeping with Tressel’s promise not to exploit your data we make only the following limited use of service data for these technologies: (i) using anonymized functions of tools to improve accuracy of any algorithms we use.
Enforcement of our rights
We may disclose personal information and service data to a third party if we believe that such disclosure is necessary for preventing fraud, spam filtering, investigating any suspected illegal activity, enforcing our agreements or policies, or protecting the safety of our users.
Business Transfers
We do not intend to sell our business. However, in the unlikely event that we sell our business or get acquired or merged, we will ensure that the acquiring entity is legally bound to honour our commitments to you. We will notify you via email or through a prominent notice on our website of any change in ownership or in the uses of your personal information and service data. We will also notify you about any choices you may have regarding your personal information and service data.
Disclosures in compliance with legal obligations
We may be required by law to preserve or disclose your personal information and service data to comply with any applicable law, regulation, legal process or governmental request, including to meet national security requirements.
Compliance with this Privacy Policy
We make every effort, including periodic reviews, to ensure that personal information you provide is used in conformity with this Privacy Policy. If you have any concerns about our adherence to this Privacy Policy or the manner in which your personal information is used, kindly write to us privacy@tressel.co.nz We'll contact you, and if required, coordinate with the appropriate regulatory authorities to effectively address your concerns.
Notification of changes
We may modify the Privacy Policy at any time, upon notifying you through a service announcement or by sending an email to your primary email address. If we make significant changes to the Privacy Policy that affect your rights, you will be provided with at least 30 days' advance notice of the changes by email to your primary email address. However, if you have not verified your email address, you may miss important notifications that we send through email. If you think that the updated Privacy Policy affects your rights with respect to your use of our products or services, you may terminate your use by sending us an email within 30 days. Your continued use after the effective date of changes to the Privacy Policy will be deemed to be your agreement to the modified Privacy Policy.