Data and privacy
What SlumCheck collects about you, what it does not, and where its address data comes from.
Where our address data comes from
SlumCheck's address records are assembled from open data. Crediting these sources is a condition of the licences they are published under.
Address records
- Overture Maps Foundation — the addresses theme. Approximately 28.6 million records in our corpus originate here.
- National Address Database (US Department of Transportation) — a United States Government work in the public domain. The majority of the records we added came from this dataset by way of Overture. No attribution is owed for public-domain material; we credit it because it is the right thing to do.
- A subset of Overture's United States address sources is published under CC BY 4.0 and requires individual credit. We are compiling that list from the Overture source metadata and will name each one here.
Coordinates
Where a property has no coordinates in the source data, we look it up with the United States Census Bureau geocoder, a free public service. Census results are United States Government works in the public domain. These coordinates are interpolated along a street segment rather than measured at the building, so a map pin may sit a short distance from the actual door.
Maps
The map itself is rendered in your browser using MapLibre GL JS, served from this site. The map imagery is credited beneath each map, as its licence requires.
SlumCheck does not use any data licensed under the Open Database License (ODbL) in its address records. That is a deliberate architectural choice: ODbL's share-alike terms would attach to our database.
What we collect about you
If you create an account
- Your email address and the username you choose.
- Your password, stored only as a salted one-way hash. We cannot read it, and neither can anyone who obtains a copy of the database.
- Your notification preference, and the dates your account was created and last changed.
- A password-reset token, if you request a reset. It is short-lived and single-use.
What you choose to publish
- Reviews you write, and the ratings within them.
- Comments you post.
- Photographs you upload, of properties or as your avatar.
- Properties you follow, and reports you submit about listings.
This material is published on the site and is associated with your username. Treat anything you write here as public.
Server logs and abuse prevention
- Our web server writes an ordinary request log which includes the IP address a request came from. Passwords, tokens, email addresses and login identifiers are stripped from logs before they are written.
- To stop automated abuse we count recent requests per IP address in a short-lived in-memory store. These counters expire on their own and are not linked to your account.
What we do not collect
- No analytics or advertising trackers. There is no Google Analytics, no advertising pixel, no session recorder, and no third-party tag of any kind on this site.
- No IP addresses in our database. We deliberately do not record the IP address or device of each sign-in. IP addresses appear only in the transient places described above.
- No location tracking. We never ask your browser for your location.
- No selling or sharing of personal information. See the California section below.
- No payment details. SlumCheck does not take payments, so no card or bank information exists to hold.
Other services involved
These are the only third parties that see anything, and what each one sees:
- The map tile provider. When a map loads, your browser fetches map imagery directly from the provider credited beneath the map. That request comes from your browser, so the provider sees your IP address and which map tiles you asked for. If you never open a map, your browser never contacts them.
- The United States Census Bureau geocoder. When a property needs coordinates, our server sends that property's street address. It never sends anything about you — not your IP address, not your account, not the fact that you were the person viewing it.
- Our network provider. Traffic to this site passes through a content delivery network, which necessarily handles the connection.
Your rights
If you are in the United Kingdom or the European Economic Area, the UK GDPR and the GDPR give you rights over your personal data. We extend the same handling to everyone, wherever you are, because maintaining two standards invites mistakes.
- See your data. Ask us and we will send you the personal data held about your account.
- Correct it. Your email address and username can be changed at any time from your account settings.
- Delete it. You can delete your account from your account settings. This removes your account record and the content attached to it — your reviews, comments, photographs, reports and follows. It cannot be undone.
- Take it with you. Ask us and we will provide your data in a machine-readable format.
- Object, or ask us to restrict use. Tell us what you object to and why.
- Complain. If you are in the UK you may complain to the Information Commissioner's Office; in the EEA, to your national supervisory authority.
California residents
The California Consumer Privacy Act, as amended by the California Privacy Rights Act, gives California residents specific rights. The categories of personal information we collect are described above: identifiers (your email address and username) and the content you choose to publish.
- Know what personal information we have collected about you.
- Delete it, which you can do yourself from your account settings.
- Correct inaccurate personal information.
- Opt out of sale or sharing. There is nothing to opt out of: SlumCheck does not sell personal information, and does not share it for cross-context behavioural advertising. We run no advertising and no trackers, so no such transfer exists.
- Limit the use of sensitive personal information. We do not collect any.
- Not be discriminated against for exercising these rights. We do not offer financial incentives for personal information.
Making a request
Deleting your account and changing your details can be done from your account settings without asking anyone. For anything else — a copy of your data, an export, an objection, or a question about this page — get in touch and tell us which account you are asking about, so we can be sure we are talking to the right person.
Last reviewed .