Privacy Policy
This Privacy Policy explains how GuestResearcher(“we,” “us,” or “our”) handles information. GuestResearcher is an early-stage site: some features described elsewhere are still being built, and this policy describes what actually runs today rather than what is planned.
1. What the site does today
The site offers accounts, listings, saved listings, and messages between a listing poster and someone interested in their listing. It does not process payments, and we never ask anyone to send us photographs of passports, visas, or similar personal documents.
2. Information we collect
If you create an account, we hold the details it needs — your sign-in email, display name, and any institutional email you choose to verify. If you post a listing, we hold what you entered. If you contact a poster, we hold that message so both of you can read it. In addition we collect the standard technical data, listing-view measurement, and analytics described in sections 3–7.
We collect nothing beyond that, and we do not sell or share personal information with advertisers.
3. Standard technical data
Like most websites, our hosting provider may process limited technical information — such as IP address and basic request logs — for security and reliability. This is handled by our infrastructure providers and is not used by us to identify individuals during the preview period.
4. Cookies
We do not set advertising cookies. We use a privacy-conscious analytics tool (see the Analytics section below), which may set basic measurement cookies or similar storage. Browser privacy settings and tracker-blocking tools can prevent these.
We also set one first-party cookie of our own, named gr_vid, when you open an individual listing page. It holds a random value that means nothing outside this site, it is httpOnly (scripts on the page cannot read it), and it expires after 30 days. It is described in full in the next section.
5. Listing view measurement
When you open an individual housing or marketplace listing, we record that the listing was viewed. This is how a person who posted a room or an item can eventually find out whether anyone is seeing it — the most common question posters ask us, and one we could not answer at all before.
What we store.Which listing was opened, when, and a one-way scrambled code standing in for “the same visitor”. That code is derived from either the random gr_vid cookie described above or, if you are signed in, your account id — combined with a secret only our server holds, and then cut short. We do not store the cookie value itself.
What we deliberately do not use. We do not use your IP address as an identifier, we do not fingerprint your device or browser, we do not use advertising identifiers, and we do not use any identifier that works across other websites. Refusing device fingerprinting is a deliberate choice: it is designed to survive you clearing your browser data, which would mean overriding your decision.
How long we keep it. The per-visitor records are deleted after 30 days. Deletion is carried out by our database provider shortly after that point rather than at the exact second it is reached, so a short tail beyond 30 days is normal. The gr_vidcookie expires after 30 days and is then replaced with a new random value, so there is no long-term handle on any person. What remains afterwards is a plain count — for example “this listing was viewed 91 times” — which contains nothing about who did the viewing.
Who sees it. Site administrators see counts. Nobody, administrators included, can look up who viewed a listing — the per-visitor records are not readable by any person, only by the server process that writes and expires them. Listing posters are never shown the identity of anyone who viewed or saved their listing.
Deleting your cookies clears the gr_vid value and starts a fresh one; the site works exactly the same either way, and nothing about your experience changes based on it.
6. Messages about listings
To show a poster whether their listing is generating conversations, we count inquiry threads, whether a reply was sent, and when. We use only the timing and direction of messages — never their contents. Message text is not read, scanned, or summarised to produce any statistic.
7. Analytics
We use analytics to understand site traffic, which pages are used, and where people run into friction — so we can improve the housing, marketplace, hub, verification, and event experiences. Like most websites, this means our analytics provider receives basic technical information such as device type, browser, approximate region, and the pages viewed.
Our analytics events are deliberately designed not to include message contents, private listing details, exact or private addresses, phone numbers, names, email addresses, or verification codes. We also avoid sending the text you type into search and the private parts of page web addresses.
Browser privacy tools, extensions, or settings may block analytics entirely, and the site works the same either way.
8. Children’s privacy
GuestResearcher is intended for adult researchers and professionals and is not directed to children under 16.
9. Changes to this policy
As we build toward launch, this policy will evolve to reflect the features we actually offer. Material changes will be reflected by updating the “Last updated” date above.
10. Contact
Questions about this policy can be sent to hello@guestresearcher.com.