Privacy Policy

Mercala is run by Stochastic Traders (KvK H50872.0), Weg Fontein 23, Aruba. Stochastic Traders decides how your personal data is used and is responsible for it.

For anything about your data, email support@mercala.org.

When you create an account: your name, email address and password. The password is stored scrambled, so we cannot read it. You can add a phone number.

When you use Mercala: your settings and saved searches; listings, photos and documents you upload; and requests you make, such as asking for an appraisal report.

When you sign in: the time, your IP address, and your type of device and browser. You can see your recent sign-ins under Account.

How you use the site: the pages you visit, your searches and clicks, and recordings of your sessions (where you click and how you scroll). When you are signed in, these are linked to your account. What you type into forms is blanked out in the recordings, and payment details are entered on Stripe's site, so they are never part of a recording.

When you pay: your plan, and when you paid and renew. Your card details are held by Stripe, not by us.

When you write to us: your emails and our replies.

To provide Mercala to you, under our agreement with you: your account, your settings and saved searches, the listings you upload, your alerts and notifications, your plan and payments, and our replies when you write to us. When you ask for an appraisal report, we send your name, email address and phone number to the listing's owner, so they can reply to you.

To keep accounts secure and use fair, which is our legitimate interest: while you are signed in, we use your sign-in history (times, IP addresses, devices) and recordings of your sessions to spot an account being shared, scraped or otherwise misused, as our Terms describe.

To understand how Mercala is used and improve it: page visits, searches and clicks. While you are signed in this is part of the same records as above. If you are not signed in, we collect it only after you press Accept in the cookie notice.

We do not sell your data. Service providers handle it for us, only to run Mercala: hosting and database, sign-in, file storage, payments, email, in-app notifications, search, maps, analytics and session recordings, and error reporting.

Others receive your data only in these cases: the listing's owner, when you ask for an appraisal report (see above); authorities, when the law requires it; and a buyer of Mercala, if the business is ever sold, who must then keep to this policy.

If you want to know which provider handles your data, write to support@mercala.org.

Our service providers store your data outside Aruba and the European Union, including in the United States. Where the law requires a safeguard for this, the transfer relies on the European Commission's standard contractual clauses, or on the provider's certification under the EU–US Data Privacy Framework.

We keep your data while you have an account. Deactivating your account under Account deletes nothing, so you can come back.

If you ask us to delete your account, we delete your data within 30 days. We keep only statistics that identify neither you nor the property (see our Terms), and payment records for as long as tax law requires.

Session recordings are deleted after 30 days.

Mercala stores small files in your browser.

Needed to run the site, always on: to keep you signed in, and to remember your choices, such as your filter settings, dark mode, and whether you answered the cookie notice.

For analytics: to count visits and record sessions (see "What we collect"). If you are not signed in, these are only stored after you press Accept, and you can press Decline instead. While you are signed in, they are part of keeping accounts secure (see "Why we use it").

You can ask us to:

• show you the data we hold about you, and give you a copy in a common format;
• correct data that is wrong (most of it you can change yourself under Account);
• delete your data (see "How long we keep it");
• stop or limit a use of your data, or object to it.

If you object to our use of your data to keep accounts secure, we will stop unless we have a strong reason to continue, such as an account check that is under way. Where we use your data with your consent, as with analytics for visitors, you can withdraw it at any time.

Write to support@mercala.org. We may ask you to confirm who you are, and we reply within 30 days.

If you are unhappy with how we handle your data, write to support@mercala.org first and we will try to put it right. You can also complain to the data protection authority where you live; in the Netherlands, that is the Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens.

If we change how we use your data, we email you at least 30 days before the change takes effect. Smaller changes, such as clearer wording, take effect when we publish them here with a new date.