Privacy

Stella is run by Ethical Introductions Ltd, registered in England with company number 09280849, at The Echo, 18 Albert Road, Bournemouth, BH1 1BZ, which is also the data controller. We have a data protection officer, who you can reach at dpo@justmovein.com. This notice goes with Stella’s terms, which say more about what she does.

What we keep

Your mobile number, your first name, your house’s name and the first names you give for your housemates. What you send Stella on WhatsApp: messages, photos, screenshots and documents. Voice notes are turned into text and the audio isn’t kept. The bills, mail and documents she reads for the house, and the facts she takes from them. Her notes, what she proposes, who said go, what she did and what came of it. What she’s learned about you from what you tell her, the choices you make and your own mail and calendar (your profile), which you can see and correct under What I know about you on her page. Your lists, your reminders, and the names and numbers you save with her as contacts. Recordings and transcripts of the calls she places and of the calls you make to her. If you connect Google, what she keeps from the mail, calendar events and files she reads there (see Your Google account). If you save a login, bank details or your date of birth, they’re sealed in a vault she can use but never see. When you ask for a sign-in code or join the waitlist, the address your device connects from, kept only as a scrambled code for up to a day, so nobody can flood people with codes. If you say yes or no to tips and offers, your answer, the words you were shown and when.

If you join the waitlist: your first name, mobile number and email; if you give them, your postcode or area, your address, what you’d like Stella to do and why your house should go first; whether you ticked the box for WhatsApp; and whose share link you joined with, if anyone’s. We use them to decide who to let in next, to show you your place and to email you about it. Stella messages you on WhatsApp first only if you ticked that box, and then only to send your link once you’re in.

Your email, first name, place in the queue, share link and answers, and whether you ticked the box, go to Customer.io, on its servers in the EU, which sends our waitlist emails. Your mobile number never does. If you joined with someone’s share link, they see your first name. When you type your postcode, it goes to Loqate (or Ideal Postcodes) to list the addresses there, and to postcodes.io to say which area it’s in. If you pick your address, its postcode, first line and property reference go to Just Move In’s own systems, which ask the energy industry’s registries (ECOES and Xoserve) who supplies its electricity and gas, and find what broadband reaches it, so we can show you.

Why

To check the number is yours (we send a code to it on WhatsApp), to set up your house, to let your housemates join with their own links, and so Stella can answer you and do what you and your house ask her to. We never sell your information and never use it for advertising. Tips and offers come only from Stella, and only if you’ve said yes to them; we never give your details to another company, such as IKEA, to market to you. We don’t train or fine-tune AI models on it, and the AI providers we use never train on it.

Mostly, we use your information because we need it to give you the service you signed up for: that’s our contract with you. Some uses, such as understanding how Stella is used and making her better, are in our legitimate interests, which the law allows only where they aren’t outweighed by your privacy rights and interests. Where we ask for your consent, such as for tips and offers, saying no is a free choice, and you can take a yes back at any time, though that doesn’t undo what was done while you’d said yes.

Improving Stella

Unless you turn it off, Stella learns from how houses use her, so she gets better for everyone. That means two things, both done automatically. First, playbooks: when she gets a job done on a website, she notes the steps that worked, as short codes, never the words on the page or anything about you. Once a playbook has worked in two separate jobs, with nothing personal in it, it’s shared with every house, even if both jobs were for one house. Second, test cases for checking her answers, rewritten so nobody can be identified. Nothing trains or fine-tunes an AI model, and the AI providers never train on your data.

It’s on by default because we think it’s in everyone’s interest that she gets better, and it doesn’t harm your privacy rights and interests: the law calls this legitimate interests. You can turn it off at any time on her page, under You, with Use my data to improve Stella. With it off, nothing of yours is used, including anything you share with your house, and anything of yours already set aside for it that can still be traced to you is deleted. A playbook already shared with every house, or a finished test case, holds nothing about you or your house, so it stays.

With it off, our team can open your conversations, documents or calls only for your safety or someone else’s, when the law requires it, or when you ask us to, such as with a request about your data. Whatever the setting, a person on our team reads your conversations to improve Stella only if you’ve separately said yes to that. Anything from your Google account is never used to improve Stella, and a conversation her safety checks flagged is never used for playbooks or test cases.

Who sees it

Nobody in your house sees your private chat with Stella, or anything that’s yours alone. These companies handle what their part needs, under contract with us, some of them in the United States:

Meta carries the messages between you and Stella on WhatsApp.

Linq and Loop Message carry the messages between you and Stella on iMessage. Apple’s own terms and privacy policy also apply to your use of iMessage.

OpenRouter routes what she reads and writes to the AI models that write her replies (mainly Anthropic’s Claude and Google’s Gemini), with zero data retention required on every request.

ElevenLabs, reached through OpenRouter with zero data retention, turns her words into speech when she sends you a voice note.

OpenAI’s embedding model, run on Microsoft Azure and reached through OpenRouter with zero data retention, turns what she notes and remembers about you and your house into numbers, so she can find a note by its meaning. The numbers are sealed with your house’s key, like the words.

Exa reads web pages and searches the web for her, directly or through OpenRouter’s web search. It sees the page’s address or the words searched for.

OpenAI powers her browser, seeing screenshots of the sites she uses; it may keep them for up to 30 days to watch for abuse. Its model is also the voice of her calls.

Retell runs her calls and keeps a recording and transcript for a day; Twilio carries the calls and records nothing.

Fly.io runs Stella and our database in London. Her own computers run on Fly.io’s Sprites, in a region we can’t guarantee, which may be outside the UK.

Webshare gives her browser UK internet addresses. Tigris stores files in London, sealed with your house’s key. Vercel hosts our websites. Resend handles your house’s email, from Ireland. Logfire keeps our logs for 30 days, in the EU, with no message content. Cloudflare Turnstile checks you’re a person when you ask for a sign-in code or join the waitlist.

Loqate (or Ideal Postcodes) lists the addresses at a postcode you type, and postcodes.io, the open postcode directory, says which area your house’s postcode is in. Just Move In’s own systems (Just Move In is a trading name of Ethical Introductions Ltd) ask the energy industry’s registries, ECOES and Xoserve, who supplies electricity and gas at your house’s address, or at the address you pick on the waitlist.

Customer.io, on its servers in the EU, sends our waitlist emails (see What we keep, above).

Google, only if you connect your Google account: see Your Google account, below.

Where your information goes outside the UK, we make sure it’s protected by an approved safeguard: a UK adequacy decision (such as the UK’s data bridge with the US), or otherwise the International Data Transfer Agreement or the UK Addendum to the EU standard contractual clauses. If you ask us, we can give you a copy of these safeguards.

Your Google account

Connecting is optional. If you choose to connect your Google account, Stella asks Google for permission to: read, label and draft emails in your Gmail (gmail.modify); send an email from your Gmail, only after you say go to exactly what she shows you (gmail.send); see and add events in your Google Calendar (calendar.events); read files in your Google Drive (drive.readonly) and create files there (drive.file); and know which account you connected (your email address). You can untick any of these on Google’s screen.

What she reads and why. On her own, Stella reads household mail in your inbox, such as bills, renewals, deliveries, tenancy, insurance and council tax, to tell you what’s due, what’s changed and what could be cheaper. She also reads some of your own mail that isn’t about the house, to tell you once, in your own chat, about something worth knowing: an appointment or interview booked, moved or cancelled, a problem with a delivery or one coming today, and mail Gmail marks important from a person. Before an interview, meeting, appointment, trip or deadline in your calendar, she reads your mail about it, which can include mail you sent, so she can help you get ready, and she may look the organisation up on the web by its name. You can turn these off on her page or by telling her. When she signs up or signs in to a website for you with your Gmail address, she reads that site’s own email for the code or link that confirms the account or signs you in. The code or link is typed straight into the site’s page and kept only until then, and neither it nor the email is shown to an AI model or logged. She never opens password resets or security alerts, and never reads your spam or bin. She reads other emails or Drive files only when you ask her to. What she reads is private to you. It’s shared with your house only if you choose to share a kind of thing, such as bills, on your page.

What we keep. Google’s ids for what she read, wrote and sent, and the facts taken from household mail as your own private documents, with card numbers, codes and passwords removed first. From the other mail she reads on her own, only Google’s id, when it came, what she told you and the few facts she checks a later email against, so she doesn’t tell you twice, and any page she made to help you get ready, which only you can open. We don’t keep copies of whole inboxes. Your Google sign-in token is encrypted in our vault and never shown to anyone, including the AI models.

Who else sees it. The AI models that help Stella answer see what’s needed for your request, through providers that keep nothing (zero data retention). Our hosting (Fly.io, London) and storage (Tigris) hold it encrypted. If you call Stella and confirm it’s you, a short summary of a Gmail, Calendar or Drive lookup is spoken to you through our voice provider (Retell), which keeps the call for a day. We never sell Google data, never use it for advertising, and never let people read it, except with your permission for specific messages, for security, or where the law requires.

No AI training. Data from your Google account is never used to develop, improve or train generalised AI or machine learning models, ours or anyone else’s.

Disconnecting and deleting. Disconnect on your page at any time. We revoke Stella’s access at Google and delete what was read from it straight away. You can also remove access at myaccount.google.com/permissions. If Google ends the connection, we delete what was read after 30 days unless you reconnect.

Limited Use. Stella’s use and transfer to any other app of information received from Google APIs will adhere to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements. The use of information received from Google Workspace scopes will adhere to the Google Workspace API User Data and Developer Policy, including the Limited Use requirements.

Cookies

Her web app, app.thehousemate.com, sets only the cookies it needs to work, and one that remembers a choice you made there. None of them tracks you or is used for advertising, and none is shared with anyone. All but that one are set by our server, can’t be read by anything on the page, and go back only to app.thehousemate.com. Here’s each one, and how long it lasts.

Signing in. Your sign-in: 30 days. The sign-in code we’ve just sent you: 10 minutes.

Joining. Your invite link, or your link from a house’s iMessage group: an hour. Your answers while you set up your house: a day. A friend’s referral code from their link, and whether you said it’s for a place of your own: 30 days. An event’s code from its link: 7 days.

The waitlist. Your answers while you fill it in: 30 minutes. The way back to your place once you’ve joined: 90 days. The share code from a friend’s waitlist link: 30 days.

Checks and one-time links. A code we’ve sent before a payment, before you read security mail she’s held for you, before you see a saved login, or before you leave your house, download your data or delete it: 10 minutes each. A link to save a login or other details, or to add a card: an hour. A link to give her a code, or to watch her browser: 10 minutes. A link to type a card’s security code: 15 minutes. Where to bring you back to after you connect Google: 10 minutes.

Your starting idea. If you pick an idea to start with on her welcome pages, the page sets a cookie that remembers it, so your house page shows the suggestions that follow from it first: a year. It’s set only when you pick one, and you can clear it in your browser at any time.

On a phone, her page also remembers that you’ve put away its offer to add her to your home screen, so it stays away for 30 days. That’s kept in your browser’s own storage, not a cookie, and never sent to us.

When you ask for a sign-in code or join the waitlist, Cloudflare Turnstile checks you’re a person and not a script, using signals from your browser. It’s there to stop abuse, not to follow you.

On thehousemate.com, nothing loads from Spotify until you press to play her playlist.

How long

Sign-in codes are deleted after a day, and invite links 90 days after they end. A waitlist entry is deleted 90 days after it’s declined, and otherwise a year after it last changed. Call recordings and transcripts are kept for 12 months. Your private things go 7 days after you leave a house. The rest stays while your house uses Stella; closing a house deletes everything within 30 days of its seven-day undo. Backups clear within 35 days. The full list is in Stella’s terms.

Do you have to give us your information?

Setting up your house, and Stella doing things for you, need some of your information. If you don’t give something, or have it deleted, some of what she does may not work, in full or in part. If that happens, we’ll tell you what it means for what you can use.

Your rights

You can see and download your data, or delete it, from her page at any time, and leave your house there too. You also have the right to ask us for a copy of your data, to have it corrected, to have it deleted, to restrict or object to how we use it, and to have it given to you, or to another company, in a common format. Where we rely on your consent, you can take it back at any time. To ask, email my.data@justmovein.com, write to Data Protection, Ethical Introductions Ltd, The Echo, 18 Albert Road, Bournemouth, BH1 1BZ, or contact our data protection officer at dpo@justmovein.com. We’ll reply within a month. If you’re unhappy with how we’ve used your data, you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ico.org.uk).