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The Guardian - AU
The Guardian - AU
Comment
Samantha Floreani

Why should renters like me have to trade away our privacy just to get a roof over our heads?

A woman uses a smart phone at night
Renters now interact with real estate tech at every stage, from submitting applications to paying rent though and logging maintenance requests. Photograph: Jacob Wackerhausen/Getty Images

Would you trade your data privacy and security for housing? Thanks to the rise in real estate technologies, renters often have no choice but to hand over huge amounts of revealing information to digital third parties just to have somewhere to live. All the while we are told: trust us, we take your privacy seriously.

But recent Guardian reporting has revealed that seven popular “rent-tech” platforms have serious security vulnerabilities, leaving millions of documents containing personal information of renters exposed on the open web for years. When they were alerted to the risk, only two of the seven companies responded to say they would put additional security measures in place. Is this what taking renter privacy seriously looks like?

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