Privacy

Last updated 2026-09-25.

We keep this short and honest. We do not sell or rent your information, we collect the minimum we need, we keep it the shortest time we can, and we tell you plainly what we do.

Browsing the site

We measure anonymous, aggregate usage with a cookieless analytics tool (GoatCounter, at spaceke.goatcounter.com) and a Google Analytics dashboard, both reading only non-personal page and click signals (which buttons get clicked, by page type), never your name, email, or message. We also run an advertising-measurement tag (Google Ads); it sets cookies so we can see how well our ads work and reach people likely to want verified tours. These analytics and advertising cookies are on by default, and you can turn them off at any time from the privacy notice at the bottom of any page. Turning them off takes effect immediately, removes any advertising identifiers already stored on your device, and the site keeps working exactly as before. We never sell your information, and none of these tags receive your name, email, or message. The one cookie we set regardless is the sign-in session cookie for My SpaceKE accounts, described below; it is separate, identifies your session to us alone, and is never shared with advertisers.

Two other anonymous signals help us find what is missing from the library: if you use the buyer-demand form (the short "what are you looking for" dropdowns on listing pages), we store only the options you selected, with no name, email, device identifier, or address of any kind; and if a search returns nothing, we store the unmatched phrase as you typed it, screened so that an email address or phone number is removed before storing. Both exist so we can go and find the coverage people asked for, and neither can be traced back to you.

When you tap a WhatsApp, "book a call" or email button on the site, we note that a tap happened, on which page and about which listing or service, so that we can match the conversations that reach our phone and calendar back to the site; we store nothing about you or your device beside it (no name, number, address, cookie or IP), it is deleted on the same schedule as the operational copy of enquiries described below, and it cannot be traced back to you.

My SpaceKE accounts

Creating a My SpaceKE account stores, on our own server in our control: your email address, a securely hashed password (we never see or store the password itself), your saved tours and follows, your Concierge preferences if you sync them, service enquiries you ask us to continue, and a log of your actions inside your own dashboard (so the product works and so we can improve it). Signing in sets a session cookie (httpOnly and secure) that keeps you signed in for up to 30 days; it carries no tracking and is removed when you sign out. We protect sign-ins with email verification codes and optional 2-step verification. Your account data lives on our server in our sole control; no third-party identity provider receives it. You can export or permanently delete your account and everything in it from your settings at any time. Deletion is immediate. It removes your personal data outright, with one exception we would rather name than hide: if you have ever paid us, the payment and invoice rows stay on our books as financial records, with your account link and your email and name stripped out, so what remains is an amount and a date that no longer identifies you.

If you subscribe or we invoice you

Paid plans are handled by our payment provider, Paystack. Your card details go to Paystack and never reach our server; we never see or store a card number. What we keep is the record of the transaction: the amount and currency, the payment reference, the method, whether it succeeded or was refunded, the date, and the email the payment was made with, linked to your account so your plan works and so we can answer a billing question or issue a refund. If we invoice you directly (for example for a bank transfer), we also keep the invoice with the name and email you gave for it. These are financial records, so we keep them for as long as Kenyan tax and accounting practice requires, and they survive account deletion in the anonymised form described above.

Contact and "leave your email" forms

When you submit the contact form or a "leave your email" box, your message is sent to our server, which forwards it to our team at [email protected] so we can reply. To be sure a message is never lost if email delivery fails, the server also keeps a short-lived operational copy in an access-controlled file (not public, not a mailing list). We do not store your IP address with it. We keep the operational copy of an enquiry for 90 days, the record of someone who enquired and never engaged for 24 months, and the records of a paid engagement for 7 years because they are financial records. Ask us to delete your information and we do it straight away, whichever of those periods applies. The information also lives in our mailbox for as long as we need it to reply and follow up. These forms are not an automated alert system and do not add you to any marketing list; any "we'll keep you posted" means a person from our team following up.

We send you one automatic acknowledgement when you write in, with the guides that match what you asked about, so you are not left waiting in silence. It goes only to the address you typed, only once, and a person still replies to you properly afterwards. It is a reply to your own message, not a mailing list, and there is nothing to unsubscribe from.

You can add a phone or WhatsApp number. It is optional, it goes to our team with your message and into the same short-lived copy described above, and it never appears in any count or report we publish.

If you prefer, the contact form's Copy as text button lets you copy your brief and send it from your own email client instead.

When you ask us to continue with a service, we also keep a short record of that request (the service you asked about, where you asked from, your email, a one-line summary and whether it is still open) so a person can pick it up and reply. It lives in the same account database on our own server, and it is how we remember an enquiry that takes weeks to answer rather than losing it.

If you book a call with us through our scheduling tool (Calendly, under its own privacy notice), Calendly tells our server that a booking was made or cancelled, and we keep a short record of it (your name and email as you gave them to Calendly, the call's time and type, and a cancellation reason if you wrote one) in the same access-controlled, short-lived file described above, so that a person knows a call is booked and does not send you a "did my note reach you" follow-up in the meantime. It carries no IP address and is deleted on the same schedule.

The "what are you looking for?" form

The short form on our area and tour pages asks what you are looking for: a county, a property type, a budget band, a timeline and whether you are buying or renting. Every answer is a fixed choice from a menu, there is no free-text box, and we store no name, email, IP address or cookie beside it. The result is a count, for example "eleven people looked for two-bedroom homes in Kiambu this month", which tells us where to find more verified tours and is the anonymous market picture we share with developers. Nothing in it can be traced back to you.

The SpaceKE Concierge (AI chat)

The Concierge answers questions from our verified information only. When you send it a message, that message is processed by our AI provider (Anthropic, which processes it outside Kenya) to write the reply; it is used to answer you, not to build a profile. Your conversation lives in your browser and the full exchange is not stored on our servers. We do keep, separately, a de-identified copy of the question you asked, with any email address or phone number removed, together with which topics and areas it touched, so we can see what people actually want and improve our coverage. Nothing identifying is stored beside it: no name, no email, no account, no network address, so a stored question cannot be traced back to you. We keep these copies for 24 months. Please keep personal details out of the chat, as apart from an email address or phone number your words are kept as written. We publish these only as counts and common words, never as anyone's sentence. The Concierge also remembers your preferences on your own device only (see below); you can clear that at any time from the chat panel. If you have a My SpaceKE account and switch on "save my conversations" in your settings (off by default), your conversations are stored in your account on our server, only so you can continue them on any device, for up to 24 months; switching it off stops new saving, and deleting your account removes them entirely.

Stored on your device and account

Features like Follow, your watchlist, recently-viewed, the Concierge's memory and your saved Concierge conversations (visible at Ask SpaceKE) are saved in your browser's local storage on your device. Saved conversations stay on that device only, are limited in number and length, and the "Clear memory" control in the chat removes every one of them along with the rest of that memory. When you sign in, saved tours, follows and any Concierge preferences you choose to sync are copied into your My SpaceKE account so they work across devices. Recently-viewed stays on your device. The Concierge also sends a short non-personal summary (for example "interested in Kiambu") with your chat so answers are relevant. Clearing your browser data, using the in-app controls, or deleting your account removes the matching data.

Keeping in touch

There is no newsletter. There is one topic list, off-plan updates, and you are on it only if you ticked the box on our off-plan page or asked us to add you. It is a monthly note written and sent by a person, not an automated mailing engine, and it carries new verified coverage of developments under construction. Reply STOP and you are removed the same day.

Your address for that list is held in an access-controlled file outside the website, separate from anything public, until you leave. We are registering with Kenya's Office of the Data Protection Commissioner, the ODPC. The protections in this notice apply from day one either way, and they do not depend on that filing.

A few addresses remain from an earlier newsletter sign-up that has since closed. Nothing is sent to them, and each is deleted on the schedule below.

How long we keep each kind of record

A nightly job deletes each kind of record once it passes the period below. Ask us to delete your information and we do it straight away, whichever period applies.

The operational copy of a message you send us, a call you book, a tap on a WhatsApp, call or email button, and the working notes our team makes from them each night: 90 days.
The record of someone who enquired and never engaged us: the request, and the follow-up notes a person keeps about it: 24 months from the last activity on it.
The few addresses left from an earlier newsletter sign-up, which has closed and sends nothing: 24 months from sign-up, or straight away if you left the list.
The records of a paid engagement, because they are financial records: 7 years.
De-identified copies of the questions asked of the Concierge and of searches that found nothing, with email addresses and phone numbers removed and nothing identifying stored beside them: 24 months.
Concierge conversations you chose to save to your My SpaceKE account: up to 24 months, and removed at once when you delete your account.
Your My SpaceKE account and what you keep in it: until you delete it.
Payment and invoice records: as long as Kenyan tax and accounting practice requires, with your name and email removed once you ask us to delete you.

YouTube embeds

Video tours load via YouTube's privacy-enhanced youtube-nocookie.com domain, and only after you click a thumbnail (the page does not contact YouTube until then). YouTube applies its own privacy practices to anything it collects when you play a video; Space Kenya has no access to it.

Backups

We take a daily backup of our server, so that a failure costs you nothing. It is pulled over an encrypted connection onto our own equipment rather than a third-party service, and it includes the account database and the short-lived operational copy of enquiries described above. Daily backups are kept for 30 days and a monthly one for a year, then deleted automatically. The first backup of each year is kept indefinitely, so that a record of the service survives after the rest have aged out. A backup is a frozen snapshot, so it is the one place your data does not disappear the instant you ask: see below for exactly how we handle that.

Your rights

Under the Kenya Data Protection Act 2019 you have rights of access, correction and deletion over any personal data we hold about you. If you have an account you can export everything and delete it yourself, immediately, from your settings. Otherwise write to [email protected].

What happens when you ask us to delete you, stated plainly so you can hold us to it. Within 30 days we remove your details from the live systems: your account and its contents, any messages from you in our mailbox, and the operational copy of your enquiry. Some things take longer, for reasons we would rather explain than gloss over. Payment and invoice records stay, anonymised, because tax law requires a business to keep its books. And your data remains inside existing backup snapshots until those snapshots age out on the schedule above, at most 30 days for a daily and up to a year for a monthly. The one exception is the yearly snapshot, which we keep: if your data was in the service on the first of January, it stays in that year's snapshot. We do not reach into a backup to edit it, because a backup you can rewrite is not a reliable backup, and if we ever restore one we re-apply your deletion straight after. Nothing in those snapshots is used for anything except restoring the service after a failure.

Contact

For privacy questions and everything else: [email protected].