HoodShare
Privacy
Last updated 14 September 2026
HoodShare lets neighbours lend each other things they own but rarely use. Doing that needs to know roughly where you live, which makes this page worth reading rather than skimming. It describes what the service holds, who can see it, and how to get rid of it.
This policy covers the HoodShare website at hoodshare.codecrox.com, the app that runs there, and the HoodShare app for Android. The data controller is the operator of HoodShare, contactable at hoodshare@codecrox.com.
What the service holds
| What | Why it exists |
|---|---|
| Your email address, display name, and profile picture if your sign-in provider supplies one | To identify your account and address you by name. Supplied by Google sign-in, or by you when registering with an email address and password. |
| Your household's address, and the latitude and longitude derived from it | Distance is what the service is for: whether something is worth borrowing depends almost entirely on how far away it is. |
| Your household — its name, and who else lives there | Lending happens between households, not individuals, so that a thing lent stays available to everyone who lives with you. |
| Items you list: title, description, category, and any photo you add | So neighbours can find them. |
| The neighbourhood groups you belong to, and requests to join them | Group membership is what decides who can see your exact address. |
| Borrow requests you send and receive, with any message attached | To show each household what is waiting on them. |
| Notification preferences, your notification history, and — if you turn browser notifications on — the push endpoint your browser issues | To tell you when something needs you, by the means you chose. |
HoodShare does not read your device's location. Your address is typed in by you, and the app asks for no location permission on any platform. It has no advertising, no trackers, no analytics SDK, and no third-party cookies.
Who can see your address
This is the part most worth being precise about, because the answer is enforced by the server rather than left to the app to get right.
Anything shared publicly carries no address and no coordinates. A public listing tells a stranger only an approximate distance, rounded into 100-metre bands — “about 600 m away”. It is rounded so that the same listing seen from several places cannot be used to work out where you live.
Your exact address is attached only to items you own, and to items reached through a neighbourhood group that both households have been approved into. Approval is a decision made by that group's administrators, and you choose which groups to ask to join.
Sharing an item publicly is a deliberate act: the service refuses to publish one unless the app has shown you what public sharing means and you have confirmed you understood it. You can stop sharing an item publicly at any time, and the listing leaves the public index immediately.
Why we are allowed to hold it
Under UK and EU data protection law, processing needs a lawful basis. Ours are:
- Performance of a contract — your account, household, address, items, group memberships and borrow requests. The service cannot work without them, which is why they are not optional.
- Consent — browser and device notifications, which you turn on yourself and can turn off at any time in the app, or by withdrawing permission in your browser or operating system.
- Legitimate interests — keeping the service secure and working, and dealing with misuse.
Who else processes it
HoodShare does not sell your data, and does not share it with anyone for their own purposes. It is handled on our behalf by:
| Who | What they handle | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Google (Firebase Authentication) | Sign-in. Your password, if you use one, is held by Google and never reaches us. | EU / US |
| Amazon Web Services | Hosting, the database, and item photos. | London (eu-west-2) |
| Zoho (ZeptoMail) | Sending the emails the service owes you, such as a household invitation. | EU |
Where data reaches the United States it does so under the transfer safeguards those providers offer, such as standard contractual clauses.
How long it is kept
Your account and its data are kept until you delete them. Delete your account and the data goes with it, as described below — there is no archived copy waiting to be restored.
Backups of the underlying database may hold a copy for a short period after deletion before ageing out. They are not used to serve the app and are not consulted to restore a deleted account.
Deleting your account
You can delete your account from inside the app, under Account. It is immediate and it cannot be undone.
What goes:
- your profile, notification history and notification settings;
- your membership of your household and of every neighbourhood group;
- if nobody else lives in your household: the household itself, its address, every item it lists, its invitations, and its borrow requests.
A shared household is not deleted. If anyone else is a member of your household, it and everything in it belongs to them and stays exactly as it is — only your own membership and personal data are removed. One person cannot delete a home out from under the people they live with.
Deleting your account also deletes the sign-in identity held by Firebase, so nothing remains that could be signed back into.
Your rights
You can ask for a copy of your data, ask for it to be corrected, ask for it to be deleted, ask us to restrict or stop a particular use of it, or object to processing based on legitimate interests. Most of this you can do yourself in the app; for the rest, write to hoodshare@codecrox.com and we will answer within one month.
If you think we have handled your data badly, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk, or to the supervisory authority where you live. We would rather you told us first, so we can put it right.
Children
HoodShare is not intended for children. You must be 18 or over to hold an account. If you believe a child has created one, tell us and we will remove it.
Changes
If this policy changes in a way that affects you, the date at the top changes and we will say so in the app before the change takes effect.