Demo privacy notice
The Micklegate Lettings demonstration
This notice covers the live demonstration at demo-lettings.retrieverworks.co.uk. The short version: the agency is fictitious, the assistant is a real AI, it never asks who you are on the website, and what you type is deleted automatically, with a few exceptions we name below rather than round away.
1. This is a demonstration, and the agency is not real
Micklegate Lettings does not exist. It is a fictitious York letting agency invented to demonstrate software. The properties, the staff and every viewing you arrange are invented. Nobody will let you a flat.
The software is real, and so is this notice. The assistant is a live AI system, and your messages are genuinely processed and stored for a short time. That is what this page is about.
Retrieverworks LTD runs the demonstration and is the controller of the personal data described here. It is a company registered in England and Wales, company number 17471381. Registered office: 66 Paul Street, London, England, United Kingdom, EC2A 4NA.
For anything about your data, write to privacy@retrieverworks.co.uk. Nothing on the demonstration is legal advice, least of all the assistant’s answers about renting, which are example content.
2. You are told you are talking to an AI, first thing
A line beside the chat tells you before you type. Then the assistant’s first reply opens with:
“Hi, I’m Mai, Micklegate’s AI assistant. If you’d rather speak to a person, just say so. By the way, this is a demo developed by Retrieverworks.”
The system adds that introduction itself; it does not depend on the AI model deciding to mention it.
On WhatsApp nothing of ours can reach you before you write, so there you learn it is an AI in that first reply rather than before your first message.
Ask for a person at any point and the assistant stops replying and passes the conversation to the queue a person reads. This is a demonstration and that queue is not staffed around the clock, so the reliable route to a human is the email address above.
3. What we collect
On the website, nothing about who you are, unless you type it. There is no form before you start, and the chat never asks for your name, phone number or email address. Instead your browser session is given a made-up demo persona: a name and an email address at a test service that delivers to nobody. You play that person.
- Everything you type, word for word. This is the largest thing we hold, and you choose what goes into it.
- On WhatsApp, your phone number and your WhatsApp display name. WhatsApp sends them with your first message, before anything can reply, and there is no demo persona there: you write as yourself.
- What the demo asks about, if the conversation gets that far: budget, moving date, household, pets and work situation, answered as the persona or as you like.
- A viewing, if you book one: the date, time, property and the name you gave. The confirmation email goes to the test service, never to an address you type, and no invitation reaches you.
- Technical details your browser sends to the chat: a session identifier, browser and platform, language and the page you came from. The chat system keeps them; the assistant ignores them.
- Anything you attach. Please don’t: nothing here needs a document or a photo.
We never ask for payment details, identity documents, references or anything a real agency would need, and we never ask about health, ethnicity, beliefs or other sensitive matters. Because you type freely you could mention them anyway, and we have no filter that spots it: it would be stored and deleted like the rest of your message. So the honest advice is the practical one: this is a demonstration, so please don’t type anything you wouldn’t want kept for a week.
4. Why we use it, and on what legal basis
One purpose: showing our software to people who are considering it. We are not a letting agency and we are not marketing property to you. We never sell your information or pass it to anyone for their own purposes, and your conversation is not used to train AI models.
Why: our legitimate interest in showing prospective clients how the system behaves with real input rather than a scripted video. We think that is fair to you because the assistant says it is an AI demonstration before and in its first reply, it asks for as little as it can, and your conversation is deleted automatically. You can object at any time; see section 8.
The assistant answers on its own, but nothing it says has any effect on you: there is no tenancy, application or decision behind it.
5. How long we keep it
Your conversation is deleted within eight days of the last message you send, by an automatic job that runs once a day. Deleted means deleted, not archived or anonymised, in both the assistant’s database and the chat system.
The clock starts at your last message, not at each message: while a conversation is still going we keep all of it, because the assistant needs what you said earlier to make sense of what you say next. The job deletes conversations that have been silent for seven days and runs once a day, so the real ceiling is eight.
Exceptions, named rather than rounded off:
- WhatsApp messages at Meta. If you write to us on WhatsApp, Meta, which runs that service for us, keeps the messages for up to 30 days, longer than we do and beyond the reach of our deletion job. They are stored in the United Kingdom.
- Debugging traces. LangSmith, the tool we use to see why the assistant answered as it did, keeps a copy of conversations for 14 days. It has no shorter setting.
- Server backups. The server is backed up daily and seven backups are kept, so a copy can outlive the deletion job by a week: about 15 days in the worst case. If we ever restore from a backup, we run the deletion job again.
- The demo’s confirmation email. It goes to a test address that reaches nobody, but Resend, the service that sends it, keeps it for 30 days plus 7 days of backups. It names the persona, the property and the time.
- The demo’s diary. A booking creates an entry in the demonstration’s own diary with the name you gave. No invitation or email reaches you. The entry stays until we clear the diary, and we delete it sooner if you ask.
- Attachments. The automatic job deletes the record of a file you attach. We have not yet confirmed that it also removes the stored file, so if you sent one, ask and we will delete it by hand.
6. Who else sees it
These companies run parts of the demonstration for us, under contract and only on our instructions:
| Provider | What reaches them | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Amazon Web Services (Lightsail) | The server that runs the assistant, the chat system and the database | United Kingdom (London) |
| Amazon Web Services (Bedrock) | Your messages, while the AI writes a reply. Nothing is stored there | The UK and the EU: each request goes to one of seven regions, six in the EU and one in London |
| Meta (WhatsApp Cloud API) | If you write on WhatsApp: your messages, your phone number and your WhatsApp display name, which reach Meta before they reach us. Meta keeps the messages up to 30 days and is our processor for them; your WhatsApp account itself is a matter between you and WhatsApp, which is its own controller for it | Messages are stored in the United Kingdom. While one is being delivered it can pass briefly through Meta’s other data centres, under WhatsApp’s data transfer terms |
| LangSmith | Traces of conversations, for debugging, kept 14 days | European Union |
| Resend | The demo’s confirmation email, sent to a test address | Sent from Ireland, stored in the United States, under standard contractual clauses and the UK Extension to the EU-US Data Privacy Framework |
| Google (Google Workspace) | The demo’s diary entry for a booking | Google’s data centres, including outside the UK, under Google’s data processing terms and their international transfer safeguards |
| Vercel Inc. | Hosting the demonstration website, which means your IP address and the usual request details | United States and other locations, under standard contractual clauses with the UK addendum |
The chat system, Chatwoot, runs on our own server, so it is us rather than another company. We may also disclose data where the law requires it.
7. Channels we have not switched on yet
Today the demonstration takes conversations on the website chat and on WhatsApp. We are adding the channels below. Each is described here before it goes live, so that nobody writes to it before this notice covers it, and we will update this page when each one is switched on.
- Phone calls and text messages. Through Twilio, in the United States, under the UK Extension to the EU-US Data Privacy Framework and the UK addendum to the standard contractual clauses. A call brings us your number, the time and its length, and what you say is passed to the assistant while the call is in progress. A booking text brings Twilio the number and the text. Twilio is our processor for the service and its own controller for its call and message records and a short list of its own purposes, such as fraud prevention and telecoms rules. Our records there will be deleted after seven days.
- Email enquiries, in the format letting portals send. An email brings us your address and whatever the enquiry carries, which on a portal enquiry is usually your name, phone number and the property.
- Instagram. A direct message would bring us your message and, because our chat system asks Meta for it, your profile: display name, handle, picture, follower count, whether you follow us and whether you are verified. On Instagram Meta acts as its own controller.
8. Your rights
Under UK data protection law you can ask us to:
- tell you what personal data we hold about you and give you a copy;
- correct anything that is wrong;
- delete it, though it goes automatically anyway;
- limit how we use it;
- stop using it, since we rely on legitimate interests;
- give it to you, or to someone else, in a usable format.
Write to privacy@retrieverworks.co.uk. We will answer within one month, and it is free. Ask soon: after the deletion job has run, only the exceptions in section 5 are left to find. How to ask us to delete your data says what to include so we can find your conversation.
If you are unhappy with how we handle your data, please tell us first so we can put it right. You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office: ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint or 0303 123 1113.
9. Changes to this notice
When the demonstration changes what it collects, adds a channel or changes a provider, we update this page and the date at the top before the change goes live. Our main privacy notice covers everything else Retrieverworks does.