Privacy Policy — Home Sleuth

Last updated: 11 July 2026

Home Sleuth (“the App”) is a UK property research tool that lets you look up sale history, energy ratings, council tax, local crime, demographics, schools and transport links for any UK postcode. This policy explains what information the App handles and where it goes.

Summary

No account, no sign-up. The App never asks for your name, email, or phone number, and has no login.
The only datum you actively provide is a UK postcode — typed by you each time you search, or found for you if you choose to use the optional “Use my location” button (see Location).
The App shows banner ads through Google AdMob. To serve ads, Google collects your device's advertising identifier and ad-interaction data. See Advertising below, including how to opt out of personalised ads.
The developer collects nothing about you. There is no first-party analytics. Your recent searches and a 30-day results cache stay in your device's local storage and are never transmitted to the developer.

Information You Provide

The only information you actively provide to the App is the UK postcode you enter into the search box. The postcode is treated as a query string, not as a record about you.

The App does not collect:

Names, emails, phone numbers, or addresses
Account credentials of any kind
Photos, contacts, calendar entries, microphone or camera data

Location (“Use my location”)

The search screen has an optional “Use my location” button. If you tap it — and only if you tap it — the App asks the operating system for your device's location and uses it once to find the nearest UK postcodes:

Your coordinates are sent over HTTPS to postcodes.io (an open-source postcode lookup service) in a single reverse-geocoding request, which returns the nearest postcodes for you to choose from.
Your coordinates are not stored — not on your device, not by the developer — and are never shared with advertisers or any service other than postcodes.io.
The feature is entirely optional. If you never tap the button, the App never requests location permission, and if you decline the permission prompt the App works exactly the same — just type a postcode instead.

Information Sent to Third Parties

When you search a postcode, the App makes HTTPS requests from your device to the following public data services. Each request contains the postcode you entered (or a derived geographic identifier such as latitude/longitude or an ONS area code). None of these public-data requests include your name, device advertising identifier, or any identifier that ties the query to you personally. Advertising is handled separately by Google AdMob and is described under Advertising below.

Service	Operator	Why the App calls it
HM Land Registry SPARQL	UK Government	Property sale history for the postcode
Energy Performance of Buildings data service (gov.uk/find-energy-certificate)	Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government	EPC energy ratings and property details
Council Tax band lookup (gov.uk/council-tax-bands)	HM Revenue and Customs	Council tax band for each property
postcodes.io	Open-source service	Council name, latitude / longitude, ONS area codes, deprivation rank; also reverse geocoding when you tap “Use my location” (see Location)
data.police.uk	UK Home Office	Recent reported crime within ~1 mile of the postcode
ONS Nomis (`nomisweb.co.uk`)	Office for National Statistics	Census 2021 population, age and tenure for the local area
Overpass API (`overpass-api.de`)	OpenStreetMap Foundation	Nearby schools

Each of these services operates its own privacy policy, which you can find on the linked operator's website. The App authenticates to the EPC API on its own behalf using a bearer token issued to the developer, not to you.

Advertising

The App is free and is supported by banner advertising served through Google AdMob (provided by Google Ireland Limited and Google LLC). AdMob is the only advertising or analytics SDK in the App.

To display and measure ads, Google's Mobile Ads SDK collects and processes:

Your device's advertising identifier (on iOS, the IDFA, and on Android the Advertising ID);
Approximate (coarse) location derived from your device's IP address — not GPS;
Ad-interaction data such as which ads were shown, viewed, or tapped;
Device and diagnostic information (device type, operating-system version, crash and performance data).

This information is used to serve ads, measure their performance, prevent fraud, and — only where you have given permission — to personalise the ads you see. For this advertising, Google acts as an independent data controller and handles the data under its own terms. See How Google uses information from sites or apps that use its services and About AdMob and user privacy.

Your choices:

On iOS, before any cross-app tracking the App shows Apple's App Tracking Transparency prompt. If you decline, your IDFA is not used and you receive only non-personalised ads. You can change this at any time in Settings → Privacy & Security → Tracking, and reset or limit your identifier under Settings → Privacy & Security → Apple Advertising.
In the UK and EEA, the App also shows a Google-certified consent prompt (Google's User Messaging Platform) asking whether ads may be personalised. Non-personalised ads are shown if you do not consent.
On Android, you can reset or delete your Advertising ID, or opt out of ad personalisation, under Settings → Privacy → Ads.

The App does not sell your data. The developer does not receive any advertising identifier or personally identifying information from AdMob; the developer receives only aggregate, non-identifying reports on ad performance.

Information Stored Only on Your Device

To make the App fast and reduce repeated network calls, your device locally stores:

A list of your most recent searches (last few postcodes), used to populate the home screen.
A 30-day cache of search results, keyed by postcode.

This data lives in standard browser local storage on your device only. It is never transmitted to the developer or to any third party. You can clear it by:

Removing the App from your device, or
On iOS: Settings → General → iPhone Storage → Home Sleuth → Offload App

Apple App Store and TestFlight

The App is distributed through Apple's App Store and TestFlight. Apple may collect standard, aggregated information about installs, crashes, and device characteristics under Apple's privacy policy. The developer of Home Sleuth does not receive personally identifying information from these reports.

Children's Privacy

The App is intended for adults researching UK property. It is not in Apple's Kids Category, is not directed at children, and the developer does not knowingly collect personal information from children. The App has no in-app purchases, no social features, and no user-generated content. It does display banner ads served by Google AdMob (see Advertising); personalised ads are shown only where permitted by your tracking and consent choices.

Security

All requests made by the App use HTTPS. The App does not transmit cleartext data. The App does not request access to your contacts, camera, microphone, or photos. It presents at most two privacy prompts: Apple's App Tracking Transparency request, used solely to decide whether ads may be personalised (see Advertising), and a location permission request shown only if you tap “Use my location” (see Location) — you may decline either and the App works exactly the same.

Changes to This Policy

This Privacy Policy may be updated to reflect new features or changes in the third-party services the App uses. Updates will be posted on this page with a new “Last updated” date.

Contact

If you have questions about this Privacy Policy or how the App handles data, please email: [email protected]