Privacy Policy
To let members swap homes, Swoop has to hold some sensitive things: where your home is, when it's empty, and photos of the inside. This policy explains what we collect, who can see it and when, and how long we keep it.
The short version
- Other members see an area of about 1 km around your home, never the address. Your exact address goes to one person: the member you've confirmed a swap with.
- No ads, no advertising SDKs, and we don't sell or share your data for advertising.
- We collect no biometric data. We verify phone numbers, not faces or ID documents.
- Usage analytics run only if you agree to them.
- Our database and files are stored in the EU (Frankfurt).
1. Who we are
Swoop ("we", "us") is run by its founder, an individual based in Israel, who is the controller of the personal data described here. We have not appointed a data protection officer.
This policy covers the Swoop app for iOS and Android and this website. For anything about your privacy, write to [email protected].
The website sets no cookies, runs no scripts and has no analytics. Our web host (Cloudflare) handles the technical data needed to deliver the pages, such as your IP address.
2. What your swap partner sees, and when
What another member can see about you grows step by step, and the exact address comes last.
| When | What they can see |
|---|---|
| Any signed-in member, browsing | Your public profile: name, profile photo, bio, languages, home country, verification level, average rating and number of ratings, completed swaps, response rate, and when you joined. Your published listing: everything except the exact address, postal code and pin, with an approximate area of about 1 km on the map. Your available dates, unless you've marked them private. If one of your travel plans names their country, a note that you'd like to visit it (never the plan itself) |
| You show interest in their home | They see your profile and your home, so they can decide whether to say yes |
| They say yes, and a chat opens | What you send in the chat: messages, photos, voice messages. Your available dates, even if you marked them private |
| You both confirm a swap | Your exact address and map pin. Only the member in that swap can open them, and each time they do, we log who opened it, when, and for which swap |
| After the swap | Ratings and reviews, once you have both rated or 14 days after the first rating |
The approximate area is worked out on our server once for each home and stays fixed, so it can't be narrowed down by looking several times. Anything already shown to another member, such as messages or an address, may stay on their device or in their memory, and we can't erase it from there. Our Terms of Use require members to use a partner's address and details only for that swap.
3. What we collect, why, and for how long
For each kind of data: why we use it, the legal basis under the GDPR, whether you have to give it and what happens if you don't (as Israeli law requires us to tell you), and how long we keep it.
| Data | Why | Legal basis | Required? | Kept for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sign-in details: email address, name if your Google or Apple account shares it, account identifier; for email accounts, a hashed password | To create your account and sign you in | Contract | Required. Without it there's no account | While your account is open, then 30 days (see section 8) |
| Age and terms confirmation: that you're 18 or older, and when you accepted the Terms | Swoop is for adults only; to show you agreed | Contract; legal obligation | Required | While your account is open |
| Phone number (we keep only a one-way hash and its country) | To verify you're a real person, keep one account per number, and stop banned members coming back | Legitimate interest: member safety | Required to publish a home or show interest. Without it you can only browse | The hash is removed from your profile when you delete your account |
| Profile: name, photo, bio, languages, home country, app language | So members know who they're talking to | Contract | Voluntary, but a listing with no name or photo gets fewer replies | While your account is open |
| Listing: type, rooms, beds, bathrooms, guests, size, floor, amenities, house rules, pets, accessibility, swap types, nights, car, title, description, photos of the inside | To show your home to other members | Contract | Required to publish (at least 5 photos and the main details) | While your account is open; removed 30 days after deletion |
| Exact address, postal code and pin | To place your home on the map and give it to a confirmed swap partner | Contract | The pin is required to publish; the street address is voluntary | While your account is open; removed 30 days after deletion |
| Country, city, region, neighbourhood, approximate area | To show roughly where the home is and match it with travel plans | Contract | Country and city are required to publish | While your account is open; country and city stay in a minimal record after deletion |
| Availability | To show when a swap is possible | Contract | Required to publish, unless you say you're flexible | While your account is open |
| Travel plans: destinations, dates, guests, notes | To suggest homes and show owners that you'd like to visit their country | Contract | Voluntary. Without them, suggestions are less relevant | While your account is open |
| Activity: homes you skip or show interest in, interests, matches, swap agreements, response rate, completed swaps, last time you opened the app | To run the service, avoid showing you the same home twice, and stop showing homes of owners who've been away for a long time | Contract | Created as you use the app | While your account is open |
| Messages, including photos and voice messages | To let you talk to the other member | Contract | Voluntary | While the chat exists. They stay with the other member after you delete your account |
| Originals of edited or deleted messages | To look into reports of abuse | Legitimate interest: member safety | Created when you edit or delete | 90 days |
| Ratings and reviews | To build trust between members | Contract | Voluntary | They stay after deletion, without your name |
| Reports, blocks and moderation decisions | To keep members safe and enforce the Terms | Legitimate interest: member safety | Voluntary to report | Blocks you made: until 30 days after deletion. Reports and decisions: as long as needed to protect members and handle disputes |
| Blocklist of banned accounts: email, account ID, phone hash | To stop a banned person returning | Legitimate interest: member safety | Applies only after a ban | As long as needed to protect members |
| Verification attempts: phone hash, dialling code, number of digits, outcome | To stop abuse of text messages and calls | Legitimate interest: fraud prevention | Created when you verify | 90 days |
| Subscription: plan, status, renewal and end dates, store transaction events | To give you Swoop Plus and handle billing questions | Contract; legal obligation for records | Only if you subscribe | Status: until 30 days after deletion. Store events: about 13 months |
| Push token and notification log | To send notifications and check they arrive | Consent (your device's permission) | Voluntary. Without it you won't hear about new interests or messages until you open the app | Token: until it stops working or you delete your account. Log: 90 days |
| Device location, only if you choose to place your pin at your current position | To place the pin | Consent (your device's permission) | Voluntary. You can search for the address or move the pin by hand instead | Not kept: only the pin you save is stored |
| Address search text | To find your address on the map | Contract | Voluntary | Not logged |
| Crash reports (Sentry): device model, operating system, app state | To find and fix crashes | Legitimate interest: an app that works | Automatic. You can object by writing to us | The period set in our Sentry account |
| Usage analytics (PostHog): screens opened and actions taken, linked to your account ID | To understand what works and improve the app | Consent | Voluntary. Off unless you agree; the app works the same either way | The period set in our PostHog account |
| Reason for leaving, if you give one | To improve Swoop | Legitimate interest | Voluntary | Kept with no link to you |
4. Details worth knowing
Phone numbers
We pass your number to Twilio, which sends the code by text message or call. We don't store the number itself, only a one-way hash of it and its country.
Photos
Before a photo leaves your phone, the app re-encodes it, which removes the metadata stored inside the file, including the GPS position where it was taken. Please don't upload photos of children, and avoid showing valuables, safes, alarm panels or keys.
Location
The location permission is optional and works only while the app is open. We never collect location in the background and don't track where you go. Address searches go through our server to Photon, an address search service built on OpenStreetMap data, so Photon sees our server, not your device or IP address.
Chats
Chats are not end-to-end encrypted. They're encrypted in transit and stored on our servers in the EU. Before a message is sent, the app checks it on your phone against a list of offensive words and asks you to change it if there's a match. Nobody at Swoop reads chats routinely: we look at a conversation only when it's reported or we're investigating a safety problem. Voice messages are stored as audio files and kept like other messages.
No biometric data
We collect no biometric data. Swoop verifies phone numbers only, and the "verified" mark on a profile means a verified phone number, not a verified identity. If we ever add identity verification, it will be through a specialist provider, we'll update this policy first, and we'll ask for your explicit consent before anything is collected.
5. Ranking and automated decisions
The order of homes in your feed is worked out automatically. The main factors, from strongest to weakest, are:
- whether the home is in a country one of your travel plans names (a plan open to "anywhere" counts a little);
- whether the owner has a travel plan that names your country;
- whether your dates and the home's availability overlap, or either side is flexible;
- whether the home sleeps as many guests as your plan needs;
- how recently the home was published.
Your filters (countries, dates, guests, type of home, type of swap) decide which homes appear. Homes you've already swiped on, homes of members you've blocked or who blocked you, and homes of owners who haven't opened the app for 14 days are left out. Swoop Plus doesn't affect ranking, and no one can pay to appear higher. Ratings don't affect ranking either. None of this has legal or similarly significant effects on you, and we don't use AI models on your data.
6. Who we share data with
We share data with your swap partner as described in section 2, and with these service providers, which process it for us and only for these purposes:
| Provider | What for | What they receive | In the app? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Supabase | Database, file storage, sign-in | Everything stored in the app, hosted in Frankfurt, Germany | Yes |
| Twilio | Phone verification codes | Your phone number | No, from our server |
| Google, Apple | Sign-in with your Google or Apple account | What's needed to confirm your sign-in | Yes |
| Apple App Store, Google Play | Subscription payments | Your purchase; they handle payment details under their own policies | Yes |
| RevenueCat | Subscription status | Your account ID and purchase records | Yes |
| Expo, Apple Push Notification service, Firebase Cloud Messaging | Delivering notifications | Push token and the notification, which can include the sender's name and the start of a message | Yes |
| Sentry | Crash reports | Technical details about the device and the app | Yes |
| PostHog (EU servers) | Usage analytics, only with your consent | App events linked to your account ID | Yes |
| Photon (komoot) | Address search | The search text, sent from our server | No, from our server |
| Telegram | Internal notifications to the founder about activity, such as a new listing's title and city, the names of two members who matched, or the text of a report | Those event details | No, from our server |
| Cloudflare | Hosting this website | Request data such as IP address | No |
We have no advertising SDKs, don't collect your device's advertising identifier, and don't track you across other companies' apps or websites. We don't sell personal data, and we don't share it for advertising.
We may also disclose data when the law requires it, to protect someone's life or safety, or to defend legal claims. If Swoop is sold or merged, your data would move with it under this policy, and we'd tell you first.
7. International transfers
The Swoop database and files are hosted in the EU. Israel, where Swoop is run, is recognised by the European Commission as giving adequate protection (most recently reaffirmed in January 2024). Some providers above, including Twilio, RevenueCat, Sentry, Expo and Telegram, may process data in other countries, including the United States. For those, we rely on the EU-US Data Privacy Framework where the provider is certified, or on the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses.
8. When you delete your account
You can delete your account in the app at any time. For 30 days you can restore it by signing in again. After that, your profile details, home photos, address and pin, availability, travel plans, swipe history, blocks you made, subscription status and sign-in details are deleted, and your account email is replaced with a meaningless one. What stays, and why:
- messages you sent stay in the other member's chat, and reviews stay on profiles, both shown as "Deleted member";
- a minimal record of your listing (such as the type of home and its city) stays, because other members' past swaps refer to it;
- logs on the 90-day schedule above, store subscription events (about 13 months), and safety records.
Step by step: Delete your account.
9. Security and breaches
Data travels encrypted between the app and our servers. Database rules let each member read only what this policy says they can; the app itself can't read a home's exact address except through the confirmed-swap hand-over. Your sign-in session is kept in your device's secure storage, and limits on verification codes and interests are enforced on our servers. If a breach puts you at risk, we'll tell you without undue delay, notify the EU supervisory authority within 72 hours, and notify Israel's Privacy Protection Authority as Israeli regulations require.
10. Your rights
Wherever you live, you can ask us to:
- access the personal data we hold about you and get a copy;
- correct it (most of it you can edit in the app);
- delete it (you can delete your account in the app);
- receive the data you gave us in a machine-readable format, or have it sent to another service;
- object to uses based on legitimate interest, such as crash reports;
- restrict our use of it while a complaint is looked into;
- withdraw consent, for example to analytics or notifications, without affecting what happened before.
Write to [email protected] from the email address on your account. We may ask you to confirm it's you, and we'll answer within one month.
You can also complain to a data protection authority: in the EU or EEA, the authority in the country where you live or work; in the UK, the Information Commissioner's Office; in Israel, the Privacy Protection Authority. We'd appreciate the chance to put it right first.
11. Age and children
Swoop is only for people aged 18 or over. We don't knowingly collect data about anyone younger. If we learn an account belongs to a minor, we close it and delete its data. If you think a minor is using Swoop, tell us.
Please don't upload photos of children, in your listing, your profile or a chat.
12. Regional notes
- EU, EEA and UK: the legal bases are in section 3; our EU representative's details will be listed in section 1.
- Israel: this policy is the notice required by the Protection of Privacy Law. For each item, section 3 says whether you're required to give it and what happens if you don't.
- United States: we don't sell or share personal information as those terms are used in US state privacy laws.
13. Changes to this policy
When we change this policy, we'll post the new version here with a new date. If a change affects you significantly, we'll tell you in the app or by email before it takes effect.
Version history: 4 November 2026, first version.
14. Contact
Questions or requests about your privacy: [email protected].