Privacy policy
How RentLex handles personal data: what we collect, what we use it for, who receives it, how long we keep it, and your rights.
1. Who is responsible
RentLex, Zurich, Switzerland (the "controller", "we"). Contact for all data-protection matters: support@rentlex.ch. RentLex is operated by rentlex.ch (legal entity in formation), Schärenmoosstrasse 80, 8052 Zürich, Switzerland.
2. What this policy covers
This policy explains how we process personal data when you visit rentlex.ch, request access, use the RentLex application or correspond with us. It is governed by the Swiss Federal Act on Data Protection (FADP). Where the EU General Data Protection Regulation applies to you, the rights described below apply accordingly.
3. What we collect
| Category | Examples | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Contact and account data | email address, language, password (hashed), invitation code, settings | you |
| Documents you upload | leases, letters and forms from your landlord or property manager, service-charge statements, handover protocols, photographs | you |
| Data derived from your documents | rent, dates, deadlines, deposit, parties, clauses, the figures and letters we generate for you, your corrections | our systems |
| Case and outcome data | what you asked, which documents you created, whether you sent them, what the landlord answered, the outcome you report | you, our systems |
| Usage and technical data | pages and features used, device and browser type, approximate location from your IP address, log data, error reports | our systems |
| Communications | emails you send us, survey answers, feedback | you |
Data about other people. The documents you upload contain data about third parties, typically your landlord, the property management company and their staff. You confirm that you are entitled to upload them for the purpose of managing your own tenancy. We use third-party data only for your case and de-identify it before any other use (section 5).
4. What we use it for
- To provide the service: reading your documents, computing what applies to your situation, explaining it, preparing documents, tracking your deadlines and your case, and communicating with you about it.
- To operate your account and communicate with you: verification, security notices, changes to the service, answers to your requests.
- To send you the RentLex newsletter if you requested access or subscribed: about one email every two weeks about renting in Switzerland and news from RentLex. You can unsubscribe in every email.
- To develop, improve and secure RentLex: analysing documents, results, corrections, outcomes and usage; building and maintaining de-identified datasets to develop, train, test and evaluate our document reading, our legal engine and new features; producing aggregated statistics, research and reports on renting in Switzerland; detecting abuse and errors.
- To build and maintain a register of rents and lease terms by property and by landlord or property-management company, in order to produce statistics, research and reports on the Swiss rental market and, where the law allows, to let tenants check the rent history of their own home. In this register you are not named; landlord and property-management companies are identified as legal persons; private landlords are pseudonymised.
- To comply with the law and to establish, exercise or defend legal claims.
We process your data on the basis of the FADP's principles (lawfulness, good faith, proportionality, purpose limitation, transparency and security). Where a specific processing requires your consent, we ask for it and you may withdraw it at any time with effect for the future. Where we rely on our legitimate interests, in particular for improving and securing RentLex, you may object as described in section 9.
5. De-identification and development use
Before a document, an extracted fact or a generated letter is used for development purposes, we remove or replace the information that identifies you and any third party (names, postal and email addresses, account and reference numbers, signatures, photographs of people). De-identified data may be retained and used indefinitely for the development purposes described in section 4 and may be combined into aggregated statistics. We do not sell personal data and we do not share identifiable documents with anyone other than the service providers listed in section 6.
Data about companies (for example most landlords and property-management firms) is not personal data under Swiss law and may be kept and linked across cases in identified form. Data about private individuals other than you is pseudonymised before it enters the register, which is kept under restricted access and is never made available to users in identifiable form.
If you do not want your documents used for development purposes after de-identification, or your lease facts included in the register, write to support@rentlex.ch; we will exclude documents uploaded after we receive your request.
6. Who receives data
We use service providers that process data on our behalf under contract and only on our instructions:
- hosting and delivery of the website and application (Vercel Inc., USA, with EU/Swiss edge locations);
- database and file storage (Supabase Inc.; data stored in the European Union);
- AI models used to read documents and draft text (Anthropic PBC, USA; our contract excludes the use of your content to train the provider's models);
- email delivery and newsletter (Brevo SAS, France);
- analytics without cookies (aggregated page statistics).
Once dispatch and signature services are offered, the providers of registered mail and electronic signatures will be added here. We may also disclose data where the law requires it or to protect our rights.
7. Transfers abroad
Some providers are located outside Switzerland, in the European Union and the United States. Transfers to the EU rely on the Federal Council's adequacy decision. Transfers to the United States rely on the provider's certification under the Swiss-US Data Privacy Framework or on the EU standard contractual clauses with the Swiss addendum, together with technical measures such as encryption.
8. How long we keep data
| Data | Retention |
|---|---|
| Account, documents, case data | for the life of your account and 30 days after deletion |
| De-identified development data and aggregated statistics | retained indefinitely (section 5) |
| Newsletter data | until you unsubscribe, then a suppression record |
| Technical logs | 90 days |
| Correspondence | as long as needed to handle the matter, then up to 3 years |
| Data subject to statutory retention (for example invoices) | 10 years |
9. Your rights
You may request access to your data, its correction or deletion, a copy of the data you provided in a common electronic format, and you may object to processing based on our legitimate interests or withdraw a consent. Write to support@rentlex.ch; we may ask you to prove your identity. We answer within 30 days. You may also delete your account yourself in the application; this deletes your documents and case data from the service store. You have the right to complain to the Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner (FDPIC).
10. Security
Data is encrypted in transit and at rest, access is limited to what each role needs, and our providers are bound by confidentiality and security obligations. No system is completely secure; please keep your password private.
11. Cookies and tracking
rentlex.ch uses only the cookies and local storage strictly necessary to run the site and, in the application, to keep you signed in. We use cookieless, aggregated analytics. We do not use advertising trackers.
12. Age
RentLex is intended for adults who rent a home in Switzerland. We do not knowingly collect data from persons under 18.
13. Changes
We may update this policy. The version on this page is the current one; material changes are announced in the application or by email.