Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

DirectDSS (“we”, “us”, “our”) is a platform that helps people find rental properties that accept Housing Benefit and Universal Credit. The service is operated by DirectDSS Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales under company number 17147341. For the purposes of UK data protection law (the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018), we are the “controller” of the personal data described in this policy.

If you have any questions about this policy or how we handle your data, you can reach us at:

2. The information we collect

We only collect information you choose to give us, plus a limited amount of technical data needed to run the site securely. Specifically:

When you contact us

Through our contact form we collect your name, email address, phone number (optional) and the content of your message. We also record basic context to help us respond and to guard against spam — the page you contacted us from, your browser type, and an automated spam-check score.

When you enquire about a property

When you send an enquiry about a specific listing we collect your name, email address, phone number (optional) and your message. If you choose to tell us, we also record whether you receive benefits and which types, so that the landlord or agent can respond appropriately. Your enquiry — including these details — is passed to the relevant landlord or letting agent so they can reply to you.

When you join our mailing list

To send you property alerts we collect:

• Your name and email address, and your phone number if you provide one;
• The type of person you are (for example, a property seeker, housing officer, support worker or landlord/agent);
• If you tell us, whether you have a housing officer and their name;
• Your search preferences — such as location (including the approximate coordinates of the area you choose), price range, number of bedrooms, property type and required features — so we can send you relevant listings.

A housing officer, support worker or agent may sign up to receive alerts on behalf of someone they are helping. If someone signs you up and you did not want this, you can unsubscribe using the link in any email or by contacting us.

When you use our affordability tool

Our affordability checker asks for details such as your postcode, the rent, your age, your income and your Universal Credit status to calculate an estimate. This is processed in real time to give you a result and is not stored by us or linked to you.

Technical and security data

To keep the service running, secure and free from abuse, we and our service providers process limited technical information such as your IP address, browser type and the pages you visit. We use this for security, to rate-limit and prevent spam and automated abuse of our forms, and for privacy-friendly, aggregated analytics — see “Cookies and analytics” below.

3. How and why we use your information

We use your personal data for the following purposes, relying on the following legal bases:

• To respond to your enquiries — when you contact us. Legal basis: our legitimate interest in answering your questions, or taking steps at your request before entering a contract.
• To pass your property enquiry to the relevant landlord or agent — and to let them respond to you. Legal basis: taking steps at your request; where you tell us about your benefit status, we rely on your consent to share that detail so you can be matched with a suitable property.
• To send property alerts and updates — when you join our mailing list. Legal basis: your consent, which you can withdraw at any time.
• To provide the affordability tool — to calculate your estimate. Legal basis: taking steps at your request; the data is not retained.
• To keep the service secure and prevent spam and abuse — including CAPTCHA checks and error monitoring. Legal basis: our legitimate interest in protecting the service and its users.
• To understand and improve the service — using aggregated, privacy-friendly analytics. Legal basis: our legitimate interest in improving DirectDSS.

4. Who we share it with

We do not sell your personal data.

Landlords and letting agents. When you enquire about a specific property, we pass your enquiry and contact details (and, if you provided it, your benefit status) to the relevant landlord or letting agent so they can respond. They act as a separate data controller for the details you send them.

We also share data with trusted service providers who process it on our behalf, under contract and only as needed to run the service:

• Striving Properties — operates the backend systems and database that store your mailing-list, enquiry and contact details.
• Supabase — the database platform used to store this data.
• Vercel — hosts the website and provides aggregated, privacy-friendly analytics.
• Sentry — error and performance monitoring, so we can find and fix problems.
• Cloudflare Turnstile — protects our forms from spam and automated abuse.
• Google Maps — displays property locations on the map.

Some of these providers may process data outside the UK. Where they do, we rely on appropriate safeguards (such as UK/EU-approved data transfer mechanisms) to protect your information.

We may also disclose information where we are legally required to do so, or to protect our rights, users or the public.

5. Cookies and analytics

DirectDSS does not use tracking or advertising cookies. We don’t require a cookie banner because we don’t drop cookies for advertising or cross-site tracking.

We use privacy-friendly, aggregated analytics (via Vercel) that do not identify you individually, and your browser’s local storage to remember simple preferences — such as whether you prefer the list or map view. This information stays on your device and is not used to track you across other websites.

6. How long we keep it

We keep your personal data only for as long as we need it for the purposes described above:

• Mailing-list data — until you unsubscribe or ask us to remove you, after which we delete it or keep a minimal record to honour your opt-out.
• Contact and property enquiries — for as long as needed to deal with your enquiry and for a reasonable period afterwards for our records.
• Affordability tool inputs — not stored.
• Technical and security logs — kept for a short period for security, spam prevention and troubleshooting.

7. Your rights

Under UK data protection law you have the right to:

• Access the personal data we hold about you;
• Ask us to correct information that is wrong or incomplete;
• Ask us to delete your data;
• Ask us to restrict or object to how we use it;
• Ask for a copy of your data in a portable format;
• Withdraw your consent at any time (for example, by unsubscribing from our mailing list — every email includes an unsubscribe link).

To exercise any of these rights, email us at info@directdss.co.uk. We will respond within the timescales required by law.

8. Complaints

If you are unhappy with how we have handled your personal data, we’d like the chance to put it right — please contact us first. You also have the right to complain to the UK’s data protection regulator, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), at ico.org.uk.

9. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time. When we do, we’ll change the “Last updated” date at the top of this page. Please check back periodically to stay informed.