Privacy Policy
This Privacy Policy (hereinafter referred to as the ‘Policy’) is that of the company that publishes the HomeExchange.com Website (hereinafter referred to as ‘Website’):
HomeExchange.com Inc. 625 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139
DPO contact: dpo@homeexchange.com
As the data controller,HomeExchange Inc is very committed to protecting your personal data and respecting your privacy.
The purpose of this Policy is to inform you of our practices regarding the collection, use and sharing of information that you may provide to us when you use our HomeExchange website, accessible at www.homeexchange.com/en/ (hereinafter referred to as ‘HomeExchange’).
We encourage you to carefully read this Policy, which applies when you use HomeExchange, in order to know and understand our practices regarding the processing of your personal data that we handle as well as your rights.
This Policy shall take effect as of 03/03/2023. It is subject to change at any time; in the event of substantial changes, we will inform you within a reasonable time period and, if necessary, request your consent again before it comes into effect. You are responsible for ensuring we have an up-to-date active and deliverable email address for you, and for periodically visiting our Website and this privacy policy to check for any changes.
Former versions:
03/12/2019: https://www.homeexchange.com/p/privacy-policy
Contents (Hyperlinks/formatting)
To enable you to make the best use of our HomeExchange service, we may collect and use some of your information. This Policy aims to inform you of our practices and the reasons for them, in order to guarantee transparency for our users.
We undertake to use your information in compliance with the laws relating to the protection of personal data.
We collect and process the following data:
2.1. Required information that you transmit directly to us
Depending on the use of our services on HomeExchange, certain information must be provided. This is the data you transmit directly to us.
This information is required, for example, to create your account or to establish communication between your guests and yourself. These data are necessary so that we can provide you with the related service.
We, therefore, explain why we need it.
2.2. Additional and optional information that you may send us
When using our services on HomeExchange, in order to benefit from an enhanced user experience, you may be asked to provide us with additional categories of information, the provision of which is optional, such as the following:
2.3. The information we automatically collect
Data may be automatically collected as you navigate our Website. We also automatically collect certain categories of information such as:
We use the data we collect for the following purposes:
Purpose | Legal Basis |
---|---|
3.1 to execute contracts concluded between you and us or between our business partners and us and to provide you with the services requested | This processing is necessary for the performance of our respective contractual obligations, in accordance with our General Terms and Conditions of Use, accepted when creating your account and using HomeExchange. |
3.2 to allow you to customize your profile in order to share more information with the HomeExchange community, socialize and reassure other HomeExchange members who would like to welcome you to their accommodation or be welcomed at your accommodation. | This processing is necessary for the performance of our respective contractual obligations. |
3.3 to verify your identity and to certify your member account in order to enjoy the trust of the other members of the HomeExchange community | This processing is necessary for the performance of our respective contractual obligations. |
3.4 to answer your questions and assist you with your requests | This processing is necessary for the performance of our respective contractual obligations. |
3.5 to send you newsletters and notifications regarding HomeExchange community news and to notify you when there is activity on your account | This processing is done based on your consent if you are not already a client of HomeExchange. If you are already a client, this processing could be done based on our legitimate interest. |
3.6 to send you emails and marketing messages | This processing is done based on your consent if you are not already a client of HomeExchange. If you are already a client, this processing could be done based on our legitimate interest. |
3.7 to prevent fraud and illegal activities | This processing is necessary in order to protect HomeExchange members and protect them from attempts at fraud, which is a legitimate interest |
3.8 to analyze the use of our services | This processing is necessary to provide you with better service and to allow our teams to make our website more attractive in order to facilitate your navigation, which is a legitimate interest. |
3.9 to collect your payments or forward to you the sums collected on your behalf | This processing is necessary for the performance of our respective contractual obligations. |
3.10 to store connection logs | This processing is based on a legal obligation to keep logs of connections to HomeExchange for a period of one year. |
3.11 to perform profiling operations | This processing is based on the legitimate interest to strengthen and personalize the service offering according to your interests. |
3.12 to participate in studies and research | This processing is anonymised. |
3.13 to share your photos in our media | Contract-based (terms of use). However you can opt out and ask us to stop using your medias if you do not want to share it |
3.14 to receive commercial prospection messages from companies from our group The companies from our group may send you messages in order to present you new services that could be interesting for you. We will only share your email address with these companies. | This processing is done based on your consent. |
For processing performed on the basis of your consent, you may withdraw your consent at any time by removing the information from your account yourself. Our consent collection processes are currently being modified to correspond to personal data protection obligations.
If the member wishes to modify their preferences in terms of privacy, they can do it through their account, in the section labeled “Settings”.
We have the obligation to store your personal data during the duration of use of our service HomeExchange. If you asked for the erasure of your profile, we archive your personal data for a period of time of 3 months in case you would want to restore your profile during this period. We also can erase your account after a period of inactivity of 3 years.
After these retention periods, we only store information :
At the end of the retention periods summarized above, we delete all your personal data in order to guarantee your confidentiality for future years.
The deletion of your personal data is irreversible and we will no longer be able to communicate them to you after this period. At most, we can only keep anonymous data for statistical purposes.
Please also note that in the event of litigation, we have an obligation to keep all the data concerning you for the duration of the processing of the file, even after the expiry of their retention periods described above.
5.1. HomeExchange members with whom you are communicating
When you exchange accommodation with another HomeExchange member, you will receive information from each other: this includes information about your identity, your contact details and the address of your accommodation.
5.2. Other companies belonging to our group
We will only share your data with those persons who are authorized to use it to implement our services. This may include our staff in charge of service implementation, accounting, marketing or even security of our premises. We may also pass on your data to certain members of our group or to technical service providers (e.g. hosting) in order to operate our service.
5.3. Business partners or third-party service providers
We work with third-party companies with whom we share some of your information, and who are:
By subscribing to our damage and cancellation offers, we are required to transfer your data to our insurance partners, for the sole purpose of the fulfilling of their contractual obligations. These data include:
We prefer to store your information, as much as possible, within the European Union. For example, our servers are located within the European Union.
However, we may use service providers who process the information we provide to them outside the European Union. When this happens, we first ensure that the recipient offers appropriate guarantees to process your information with a level of protection at least equivalent to the protection that European Union law offers you.
Unless strictly necessary and on an exceptional basis, we never transfer your data outside the European Union and your data is always hosted in the European Union. In addition, we make every effort to use only service providers who host your data within the European Union.
Should our service providers nevertheless transfer your personal data outside the European Union, we take great care to ensure that they implement appropriate safeguards to ensure the confidentiality and protection of your data such as standard contractual clauses drafted by the European Commission or adequation decision.
We use cookies and trackers for various reasons:
8.1 Technical cookies
We need to store these cookies so that you can use the basic functions of our website and to offer you improved, personalized functions.
For example, technical cookies will allow us to know that you are connected, to offer you the language of your choice, to display the website according to your display preferences, to better manage the load on our servers, etc.
8.2 Audience measurement cookies
We place these cookies to better understand how you browse our website, what other website you came from, what content will get your attention, which pages you visit most regularly, etc. This allows us to improve our service.
8.3 Advertising cookies
We place advertising cookies to display ads that may be of interest to you. These advertising cookies collect your browsing habits on our website and/or on other websites on which these cookies are also present in order to create a profile of your interests. These third-party cookies are produced by the advertising agencies themselves.
For these advertising cookies, you can also indicate your objection to tracking cookies Your Online Choices: http://youronlinechoices.com/fr/controler-ses-cookies/, offered by the digital advertising professionals grouped within the European association EDAA (European Digital Advertising Alliance).
8.4 Social network / third-party cookies
We place social network cookies to allow you to share content on the leading social networks. These third-party cookies are produced by the social networks themselves.
You can block the use of cookies in several ways. You can check the type and use of the cookies in the following link: https://www.homeexchange.com/p/our-cookies. To block cookies, scroll to the bottom of the page and click on the button “Cookies Settings” and select the cookies you would like to be blocked.
Depending on your jurisdiction, you may have several rights with respect to your information that we possess:
Right of access | You may ask us to access any information we hold about you. |
Right to rectification | You may ask us to correct your information. Most of the time, you can make corrections yourself when you are connected to our website. |
Right to object | You may ask us to stop using your information when we do so because of a legitimate interest. You may also ask us to stop sending you direct marketing / prospecting messages. You can easily do this when you are connected to our website by going to the ‘My Profile’ tab and then ‘Settings’ or by unsubscribing by clicking on the link provided at the bottom of our emails. |
Right to withdraw consent | Where you have given us your consent to use your information for a specific purpose, you may, at any time, decide to withdraw your consent and we will then stop using your information for that purpose. You can easily do this when you are connected to our website by going to the ‘My Profile’ tab and then ‘Settings’ |
Right to erasure or right to be forgotten | You may ask us, via email to our data protection officer, to delete your information or to stop using it. We can only do this when possible: sometimes we need your information to comply with the law or simply to provide you with our services. |
Right to restriction of processing | You may ask our data protection officer by email to block the use of your information, i.e. to temporarily store it but to stop using it. |
Right to portability | You may contact our data protection officer to request an export of your information in a reusable format. |
Right to lodge a complaint | You may lodge a complaint with the authority responsible for protecting personal data if you believe that your rights have not been respected. |
For a request to be taken into account, it is imperative that it be made directly by you at dpo@homeexchange.com. Any request that is not made in this manner cannot be processed.
Requests cannot be made by anyone other than you. We may therefore ask you for proof of identity if there is any doubt about the identity of the requester.
We will respond to your request as soon as possible, but no later than one month after receipt. The request can be processed in a maximum time of 3 months in case the request is technically complex or if we receive many requests at the same time.
Please note that we can always refuse to respond to any excessive or unfounded request, especially if it is repetitive.
If you believe that your rights under the data protection regulations have been violated, you have the possibility to make a complaint before the French Supervisory Authority, the CNIL or before your local authority if you are not located in France. . In France, to the CNIL.
This complaint to the CNIL can be made via :
- The CNIL website: https://www.cnil.fr/en/plaintes
- By post to the following address CNIL - Service des Plaintes - 3 Place de Fontenoy - TSA 80715 - 75334 PARIS CEDEX 07
Protecting your information is important to us. That is why we have appointed a data protection officer. He or she is the best person to answer all your questions about personal data.
You can contact us in several ways:
By email: dpo@homeexchange.com
HomeExchange.com Inc. 625 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139
The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) protects the data rights of residents of the State of California, USA.
At this time, HomeExchange is not subject to the CCPA. However, your privacy is important to us; we have therefore set ourselves high standards in data protection, and our Privacy Policy goes beyond many of the CCPA’s requirements.
The CCPA requires that companies post a link regarding a “Do Not Sell My Personal Information” enabling users to opt out of having their data sold to third parties. In our case, we NEVER sell any member data to any third party. Your accommodation and your information are safe with us.
If you live in California and you wish to have more visibility on how our Privacy Policy compares to the CCPA, please feel free to reach out to our Data Protection Officer: dpo@homeexchange.com California's "Shine the Light" law (Civil Code Section § 1798.83) permits users of our Website that are California residents to request certain information regarding our disclosure of personal data to third parties for their direct marketing purposes. To make such a request, please send an email to [contact@homeexchange.com] or write to us at: [ Home exchange Boston, USA: 625 Mass Ave., Cambridge, MA 02139, United States of America].
Our Website is not intended for children under 15 years of age. No one under age 15 may provide any personal data to or on the Website. We do not knowingly collect personal data from children under 15. If you are under 15, do not use or provide any information on this Website or through any of its features. If we learn we have collected or received personal data from a child under 15 without verification of parental consent, we will delete that information. If you believe we might have any information from or about a child under 15, please contact us at [contact@homeexchange.com].
We have implemented measures designed to secure your personal information from accidental loss and from unauthorized access, use, alteration, and disclosure. The safety and security of your information also depends on you. Where we have given you (or where you have chosen) a password for access to certain parts of our Website, you are responsible for keeping this password confidential. We ask you not to share your password with anyone. Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure. Although we do our best to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee the security of your personal information transmitted to our Website. Any transmission of personal information is at your own risk. We are not responsible for circumvention of any privacy settings or security measures contained on the Website.