Privacy policy

Who we are

CozyHaus is an app for iPhone and iPad made by Third Floor Studios, a small studio in the Netherlands. In this policy, “we” and “us” means Third Floor Studios.

Developer

Third Floor Studios, the Netherlands

Chamber of Commerce

KvK 42027191

VAT id

NL005439912B63

Postal address

De Fluessen 22, 8939 BE Leeuwarden, the Netherlands

Email

support@cozyhaus.app

Under the European privacy law (the GDPR), Third Floor Studios is the data controller for the personal data described here: your account, the homes kept on our server, the usage counts and any emails you send us.

Your account

You can answer the set-up questions and look around a sample home without an account. Until you sign in, everything stays on your phone and nothing is sent to us. Near the end of set-up, CozyHaus asks you to save your home with Continue with Apple or Continue with Google; set-up can’t be finished without it. Joining someone’s home asks the same.

From the sign-in we receive:

• an email address. With Apple you can choose Hide My Email, and we then get an Apple relay address instead of your own;
• an account id from Apple or Google, so we know it’s you next time;
• with Google, your name and profile picture as they are on your Google account. Google puts them in every sign-in, and our sign-in service keeps them with your account. CozyHaus asks Apple only for your email address, so Apple sends no name. The app doesn’t use either: the names people see in your home are the ones you type in set-up.

We never see your Apple or Google password. Apple and Google handle the sign-in under their own privacy policies. To show the Google button, the app includes Google’s sign-in code; it only talks to Google when you sign in with Google, and when you delete your account. Your sign-in is kept in your phone’s Keychain, which can keep it even after the app is deleted.

The legal basis is our agreement with you: we need the account to keep your home safe and share it with the people you invite.

What CozyHaus keeps, and where

To look after your home, CozyHaus keeps what you tell it: the names and looks of the people who live there, your rooms and the things in them, your chores and who picks them, stars, the marble jar, goals and treats, notes on the fridge, hidden notes and house notes on things, loved chores, your plants, the house guide, birthdays and other dates to remember, calendar events and away days, the shopping list, check-in answers, your home’s history and its Plus plan.

The names you type in set-up, for yourself and for the people you live with, are kept inside the home, so everyone in it sees them.

It is kept in three places:

• On your phone. The app keeps your home on the phone first, so it works without a connection.
• On our server. Once you have an account, the shared home is saved on CozyHaus’s server, run for us by Supabase in Frankfurt, Germany. Only the accounts in that home can open it. We don’t look at your home’s content, and we never read your notes.
• On the phones of the people you share it with. Everyone in the home gets the same house, through our server.

A few things stay only on your own phone and never leave it: today’s picks, and your sound, display and reminder choices. Which person in the home you are is kept with your account and in the shared home, so a new phone knows it’s you.

Your monthly check-in answers are part of the shared home, so they reach the other phones in it. The app keeps them hidden until everyone has answered.

Homes set up with an older test version of CozyHaus were kept in iCloud. When such a home moves to an account, the app reads it from iCloud once, writes the moved copy back there so older versions stop changing it, and leaves a move code in the app’s public iCloud space, so the other phones in the home can follow. The code is filed under your home’s id, which only the people in the home know, and works for 60 days. On a new phone, CozyHaus also looks in your iCloud once for a home from those test versions, to offer it back.

What we count

To learn which parts of CozyHaus help and which don’t, the app sends us small usage counts, tied to your account and your home:

• the app opening (at most once every half hour);
• steps of set-up, and set-up finished (how, which kind of household, how many people);
• an invite made or sent, and someone joining;
• a chore finished (which chore from our list, or just “your own chore”, and its size);
• the Plus page opening, a Plus purchase, and a home moving over from iCloud.

They never hold names, notes, messages, the titles of chores you type yourself, or anything else you write. They wait on your phone and are sent once you have an account. No other company’s analytics code is used. The legal basis is our legitimate interest in making CozyHaus better.

What CozyHaus never does

• No ads, and no tracking across other companies’ apps or websites.
• No selling or sharing of your data with advertisers or data brokers.
• No reading of your notes or what you write in your home.
• No texts or emails to anyone on your behalf. Reminders are made on your phone. The one note our server sends tells the others in your home that someone has moved in.

What it asks your phone for

• Notifications, if you want reminders. Your phone asks once, at the end of the reminders step in set-up, or later in Profile under Reminders. If you choose “No reminders”, it doesn’t ask. Someone who joins a home gets quiet notifications (no sound, straight to Notification Center) without being asked, and can change that in Settings. Reminders are planned on your phone. Once notifications are allowed, your phone also gets a push address from Apple; see Notes from our server.
• Calendar, only if you turn on Apple Calendar. This is a Plus feature you switch on in the Calendar tab. CozyHaus then keeps the next four weeks of your home’s plan in a calendar of its own. iOS asks for full access to your calendars, because an app needs it to keep a calendar of its own up to date, but CozyHaus only adds to and changes that one calendar and does not read your other calendars. Turning the feature off removes that calendar again.
• Files, only when you choose. When you save a copy of your home or bring one back, you pick the file yourself.

CozyHaus does not ask for your location, camera, photos, contacts or microphone. The weather and the seasons in the house are worked out from the date and your phone’s region setting, not from where you are.

Notes from our server

Almost every notification from CozyHaus is planned on your phone. One comes from our server: when someone finishes joining your home, everyone else in it gets “Tom moved in!” with the name that person has in the home.

For that, once you allow notifications, your phone gets a push address from Apple and we keep it with your account (with whether it belongs to a test build). Our server hands the note to Apple’s push service, which delivers it, and keeps a short record that it was sent, so it goes only once. The push address is deleted with your account, or when Apple tells us it no longer works. The legal basis is our agreement with you: telling your home who moved in is part of sharing it.

Inviting and sharing

To invite someone, CozyHaus makes a six-character code (like HOUSE-AB12CD) on our server. You send it however you like; the app doesn’t send anything for you. A code works for a week, or until everyone the home was waiting for has joined. The server keeps who made each code and who used it for as long as the home exists, and, to stop people guessing codes, it notes each try at a code.

Everyone in a shared home can see and change it. Please only send your invite to the people you want in your home.

When someone finishes joining, the others in the home get a note that they’ve moved in, with the name they have in the home.

Anyone who joined a shared home can leave it and keep a full copy of the house, with all its history, as their own home. The person who set it up can stop sharing; everyone then keeps a copy of the house as it is.

The free Plus week

Each person gets one free week of Plus, from the day they set up their first home. So that it is given only once, even after an account is deleted and made again, we keep a one-way fingerprint of the sign-in. It is made from the Apple or Google account id with a secret key, can’t be turned back into the id or your email, and is the only thing about your account that stays after you delete it. The legal basis is our legitimate interest in keeping the free week fair.

Copies of your home

CozyHaus saves a copy of your home on your phone every day you open it (the last 14 are kept), and another before anything big, like bringing back an older copy or leaving a home. These copies stay on your phone.

You can also save a copy to the Files app and keep it wherever you like. That file holds your home’s data, so look after it the way you would any personal file.

Purchases

CozyHaus Plus is bought through Apple’s in-app purchase, and Apple handles the payment under Apple’s own privacy policy. Each purchase tells Apple your home’s id, so the plan belongs to the home. The app learns from Apple which plan is active, and your home keeps a note of it (which plan, until when and who bought it), so everyone who lives there gets Plus and can see whose Apple Account pays.

We use RevenueCat to check purchases with Apple and keep track of each home’s plan: which plan, until when, and who in the home paid. RevenueCat knows the home by its id, not by your name or email.

We never receive your card details or your Apple Account password.

Crash reports and app analytics from Apple

Apple offers iPhone and iPad users a choice to share crash reports and app usage statistics with app developers. If you turned this on (in Settings › Privacy & Security › Analytics & Improvements › Share With App Developers), Apple may pass us crash reports and anonymous statistics about CozyHaus. Apple decides what these contain and doesn’t tell us who you are. We use them only to find and fix problems. You can turn this off at any time in the same place.

When you write to us

If you email us, we receive your email address, your message and anything you choose to attach. We use them only to answer you and to fix what you tell us about. The legal basis is our legitimate interest in helping you, or our agreement with you if you write about something you bought.

Your email sits in our mailbox, which is hosted by an email provider that stores it for us. We don’t add you to any mailing list and we don’t share your email with anyone else. We keep the conversation only as long as we need it to help you and for our records, then delete it. You can ask us to delete it sooner.

Please don’t send us your Apple or Google password or card details. We will never ask for them.

Why we use it, and on what basis

• Your account, your home on our server, sharing it, the note when someone moves in, and Plus: to give you the CozyHaus you asked for. The legal basis is our agreement with you (GDPR article 6(1)(b)).
• The usage counts: to learn which parts of CozyHaus help and to fix the ones that don’t. The legal basis is our legitimate interest (article 6(1)(f)). You can object to it at any time.
• The free-week fingerprint: to give the free week once per person. Our legitimate interest.
• Your emails to us: to answer you. Our legitimate interest, or our agreement with you when you write about something you bought.
• Crash reports from Apple, and this website’s server logs: to find problems and keep things running safely. Our legitimate interest.

Giving us your data is up to you. Without an account, though, CozyHaus can’t save your home on our server or share it, and set-up can’t be finished. We don’t make decisions about you by automated means.

Who helps us

• Supabase runs our server and database in Frankfurt, Germany (on Amazon Web Services). It stores your account, your homes, the invite codes, the push addresses, the free-week records and the usage counts for us, and sends the note when someone moves in. It may only use them to run the service. Supabase is a US company, so in rare cases, like support, its staff may reach the data from outside the EU. That is covered by a data processing agreement with the EU’s standard contractual clauses.
• RevenueCat checks purchases with Apple and keeps each home’s plan for us, known only by the home’s id. RevenueCat is a US company, so this data may be handled outside the EU, under a data processing agreement with the EU’s standard contractual clauses.
• Apple and Google handle signing in, each under its own privacy policy. Apple also handles purchases and delivers our notes through its push service, which may handle them outside the EU, and iCloud carries homes from the older test versions over to our server.
• Cloudflare (USA) runs the address book for cozyhaus.app and passes the emails you send to our support address on to our mailbox, which Google hosts. Cloudflare doesn’t keep or read them. Both work under data processing agreements with the EU standard contractual clauses.
• Vercel (USA) hosts this website and keeps short logs of visits, as described under This website.

We don’t share your data with anyone else, unless the law requires us to.

How long we keep things

• Your account and usage counts: until you delete your account.
• A home: as long as someone is in it. When the last person leaves or deletes their account, the home is deleted from our server.
• Invite codes: they stop working after a week, or once everyone has joined. The note of who made and used one stays as long as the home.
• Push addresses and tries at codes: until you delete your account (a push address also goes when Apple tells us it no longer works).
• The free-week fingerprint: kept, so the free week is given once.
• Emails to us: as long as we need them to help you and for our records.
• This website’s server logs: as long as the host keeps them; see This website.

Your rights

Under the GDPR you have the right to:

• see the personal data we hold about you, and get a copy;
• correct it if it’s wrong;
• have it deleted;
• limit how we use it, or object to how we use it, for example to the usage counts;
• take it with you in a common format.

You can do much of this yourself: see and change everything in the app, take your home with you with Save a copy (in Profile, under backups), and delete your account as described below. For anything else, write to support@cozyhaus.app from the email address on your account, and we’ll answer within a month.

If you think we’ve handled your data wrongly, please tell us first so we can put it right. You also have the right to complain to the Dutch data protection authority, the Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens, or to the authority in the EU country where you live.

Deleting your account

You can delete your account in the app at any time: open Profile, then Sharing and backups, then Your account, and tap Delete my account. This:

• ends CozyHaus’s Sign in with Apple, or signs CozyHaus out of your Google account (you can also remove it in your Google Account’s settings);
• takes you out of every home you are in, and deletes from our server any home nobody else is in;
• deletes your account, your usage counts, your push addresses, your tries at codes and your free-week record.

Only the one-way free-week fingerprint stays. Homes other people still live in stay with them.

Some things are on your side, and you remove them yourself:

1. If you use Apple Calendar sync, turn it off in the Calendar tab. That removes the app’s calendar. You can also delete it in the Calendar app.
2. Delete the app from your phone. This removes the home and the daily copies stored on the phone.
3. Delete any copies you saved to Files yourself, in the Files app.

Deleting your account doesn’t cancel a Plus subscription; cancel it in Settings on your iPhone or iPad. To have your emails to us deleted, write to us and we’ll do it.

Children

CozyHaus is made for grown-ups sharing a home. It is not directed at children under 13, and we don’t knowingly collect personal data from children. If you believe a child has sent us personal data, write to us and we will delete it.

This website

• No cookies. This website sets none.
• No analytics and no tracking. We don’t count visits or follow you around the web.
• No requests to other companies. The fonts, pictures and code all come from this website itself, so your browser doesn’t contact Google or anyone else when you visit.

The site can remember one choice on your device, and only if you make it: cozyhaus-theme, Day or Night, when you pick one of them instead of Auto. It is kept in your browser’s local storage.

It stays in your browser, is never sent to us or to anyone else, and holds nothing about who you are. Picking Auto removes it again, and so does clearing your browser’s data for this site. Because it only keeps a choice you made yourself, there is no cookie banner.

Like every website, this one is delivered by a hosting company. Its servers may keep short logs of each visit (your IP address, the page asked for, the time and your browser’s name) to deliver the site and keep it safe. Our host is Vercel Inc. in the United States. It keeps these logs only for a short time, and its data processing agreement with the EU standard contractual clauses covers them. The legal basis is our legitimate interest in running the site safely.

Changes and contact

If the way CozyHaus handles data changes, we will update this page and the date at the top before the change reaches the app. If a change matters, we will also mention it in the app’s update notes on the App Store.

Questions about privacy, or anything else, are welcome at support@cozyhaus.app. You can also read our terms of use or find help on the support page.

Third Floor Studios, the Netherlands. KvK 42027191.