Privacy policy

Vallo is a marketplace for property and stays in Nigeria: homes to rent, property for sale, land, shops and offices, and stays, hotels and restaurants listed by the people who run them. It is operated by VALLO SPACES LTD (RC 9870413), a private company limited by shares registered in Nigeria under the Companies and Allied Matters Act 2020, whose registered office is Plot 5, Zone 6, Dutse Alhaji, Bwari Area Council, Federal Capital Territory, Abuja.

For the purposes of the Nigeria Data Protection Act 2023 (the "NDPA"), VALLO SPACES LTD (RC 9870413) is the data controller for the personal data described in this policy. Where this policy says "we" or "us", it means that company.

Questions about this policy, about the data we hold about you, or any request to exercise the rights in section 8, should go to the contact form, with Privacy as the subject. Requests sent that way reach the people at Vallo responsible for data protection.

We collect only what the platform needs to work:

• Account data. Your name, email address, phone number if you give one, password (stored only in hashed form), language, the state and local government you choose, your occupation if you give it, and the interests you pick.
• Your public profile and what you post. Your display name, handle, photo, cover picture and bio, and the posts, comments, stories, reactions and follows you make in the social part of Vallo. These are visible to other members, as the profile screen shows.
• What you list. If you list a property or a stay: its description, photographs, videos, price, address and, if you drop a pin or tap "use my location", its map position. The street address can be read by members who are signed in; it is not shown to anybody who is not.
• Bookings, messages and reviews. The listings you save, the bookings, reservations and inspections you make, the messages you exchange with the people who list, and the reviews you write.
• Payment data. Payment references, amounts, how each payment was split (the lister’s share, the Vallo Guarantee contribution and our commission), refunds, and, if you save them, a card token and the bank account you nominate for payouts. We do not keep a wallet or a balance for you, because we never hold your money. Card numbers are handled by Paystack; we never see or store your full card number.
• Agreements and Guarantee claims. The agreements you draw up and confirm, their versions, Vallo’s decision and its reason, and, if you make a claim on the Vallo Guarantee, what you claimed, the photographs and evidence you upload, and the decision.
• Verification data. If you apply to list as an agent or a host: your government ID or NIN, business registration documents where they apply, and the bank account you nominate for payouts.
• Location. Your device location is read only when you ask for it: to place a listing’s pin, to centre the map on where you are, or to save a spot for a price check (stored to about 100 metres). We do not track your location in the background.
• What you type to the AI assistant or the support chat. Assistant conversations are kept on your account so you can come back to them; the support chat is kept on your device, and a ticket you open with a person is kept on your account. What you type is processed by Anthropic to write the answers, only if you agree to it. See section 12.
• Devices and notifications. If you turn notifications on, the notification address your phone or browser gives us and a short device name ("iPhone", "Android phone"). To warn you when your account is used on a new device, we keep a code derived from the device and browser you sign in with, and the browser and platform of each signed-in session.
• Technical data. IP address, browser and device type in our hosting and database logs, used to keep the service working and secure. If something crashes, a crash report with the error, the page and the device type, with personal details removed.
• Price checks. When you use the price check, we record the area, the kind of property and how far you got, against your account, so we can see whether it gives useful answers. That and the sign-up step counts below are the only records we keep of how the product is used. There is no other analytics and no advertising tracking in Vallo.
• Sign-up step counts. We count, ourselves, how many visits reach each step of joining Vallo: opening the home page, starting to sign up, and, once you have an account, your first search and your first save. Each count carries the language, whether it was the website or the app, the part of the page you came from, and a random visit number kept in a cookie that is deleted when you close your browser. Before you have an account nothing ties a count to you; after, the first search and the first save are linked to your account only so that each is counted once. Nothing is shared with anyone, and the counts are deleted after 90 days.
• Emails we send you. A record of each one is kept for 90 days after it is delivered, so we can answer whether it arrived. A record of an email that could not be delivered is kept until a person at Vallo has dealt with it.

• To create and run your account and show the platform in your language.
• To process bookings, take payments, issue refunds and pay people out.
• To check the identity of the people who list and keep fraudulent listings off the platform.
• To carry messages between you and the people who list, about listings and bookings.
• To show listings, stays and places on a map and near where you ask.
• To answer your questions with the AI assistant and the support chat, if you agree to it (section 12).
• To send you notifications and emails about your bookings, messages, money and account, including a warning when your account is used on a new device.
• To answer support requests and investigate reports and disputes.
• To keep the service secure, prevent abuse and comply with Nigerian law.
• Marketing messages are sent only with your consent, and every one includes a way to opt out.

Every use of your data rests on a lawful basis recognised by the NDPA:

• Contract. Running your account, processing your bookings and payments, carrying your messages and paying people who list are necessary to provide the service you signed up for.
• Legal obligation. Identity verification, financial record keeping and responding to lawful requests from Nigerian authorities.
• Legitimate interest. Fraud prevention, new-device warnings, crash reports and platform security, balanced against your rights.
• Consent. The AI assistant and support chat, notifications, reading your device location, and marketing. Each can be withdrawn at any time without affecting the rest of the platform.

We do not sell personal data. We share it only where the service requires:

• The people who list, and the people who contact them. When you book a stay, request an inspection, apply for a tenancy or enquire about a sale, the person who listed the property sees the details they need to answer you. When you list, the people who contact you see your public listing profile.
• Other members, who see your public profile and what you post in the social part of Vallo.
• Our service providers, each under contract, only on our instructions and only for the job named:
  • Supabase (Ireland, EU): our database, sign-in and file storage.
  • Vercel (United States): hosting the website and app.
  • Paystack (Nigeria): card and bank payments, splitting each payment to the lister’s bank account and the Guarantee reserve, and refunds.
  • Yellow Card (Nigeria): where crypto payment is offered, converting it to naira. It receives the payment reference and amount.
  • Resend (United States): sending our emails.
  • Anthropic (United States): writing the answers of the AI assistant and the support chat, if you agree to it (section 12).
  • MapTiler (Switzerland) and CARTO (United States, Spain): map tiles. When a map is shown they receive your IP address and the part of the map you are looking at.
  • Google Firebase Cloud Messaging (United States) and Apple Push Notification service (United States), and your browser’s own push service: delivering notifications to your device, if you turn them on.
  • Sentry (United States), only when crash reporting is switched on: crash reports, with personal details removed.
  • Unsplash (United States): some example photographs are loaded from it, which gives it your IP address.
• Authorities. Where Nigerian law requires it, or to protect the safety of our users, and only to the extent required.

Our database and files are stored in Ireland (EU). Some of our providers named in section 5 process data in the United States, Switzerland or elsewhere. Where personal data leaves Nigeria we rely on the transfer mechanisms the NDPA permits, including transfers to jurisdictions providing adequate protection and contractual safeguards with our providers, so your data keeps the same level of protection wherever it is processed.

We keep personal data only as long as we need it. While your account is open we keep your profile, your content and your records. When you delete your account, two different things happen to two different kinds of data, and this section says plainly which is which.

You can delete your account yourself, in Settings then Account, in the app or on this website. You do not need to write to us and we do not do it by hand.

Nothing is destroyed for 30 days. The moment you confirm, your account is signed out everywhere and deactivated: you cannot sign in and nobody can reach your profile. We email you the date the deletion runs and a code that stops it. If you use that code inside the window, everything is put back and nothing has been lost. At the end of the 30 days a scheduled job runs the deletion, and we email you again when it has finished.

Destroyed outright. Your profile and the details in it, your photograph and cover picture, your posts, comments, stories and unpublished drafts, your saved properties, stays, tables, searches and interests, your search history, the devices you are signed in on and the device records we keep to warn you about new sign-ins, your notification addresses, your notifications, the emails we had queued or sent you, your price checks and saved price-check spots, your assistant conversations, your saved cards and bank accounts, and every file you have uploaded, including host documents and the identity and agency documents of anybody who applied to be an agent and was not approved. The files are removed from storage, not merely the records that point at them. The one exception is an approved agent’s identification, described below.

Your email address is not kept. We keep only a one-way keyed code made from it, which cannot be turned back into the address. Our staff can use it only to see that a new account uses the same mailbox as a deleted one.

Money is never deleted with an account. On the day the deletion runs we check again. If a payment or a refund is still in progress, a Guarantee claim is open, or money is owed to you or by you, the deletion waits: nothing is destroyed, a person at Vallo is told, and we contact you to settle it first. Your code to stop the deletion keeps working while it waits.

Kept, with you removed from it. Vallo is registered with the Special Control Unit against Money Laundering and is subject to Nigeria’s Money Laundering (Prevention and Prohibition) Act, which requires a business that moves money to retain its transaction records for at least five years after the transaction. So your bookings, reservations, agreements, payments, Guarantee claims, platform revenue lines, payout records, inspection requests and reviews are kept for that period. Your name, email address and telephone number are removed from every one of them, and what remains is an amount, a date and a reference that no longer identifies you. Messages you have sent stay in the other person’s conversation so their side of the thread is still readable, with the sender shown as a deleted account.

This is the retention exception to your right to erasure, and section 8 sets out how to exercise that right. The NDPA permits us to keep personal data where another law requires us to, and this is that case. It is limited to the records named above, for the period named above, and to nothing else.

Verification documents are the clearest example of the line. If you were approved as an agent, you were a customer under the same anti money laundering law, which requires us to keep your identification. So when you delete your account we keep, for five years after it closes, your identity and agency documents, your name, residential address, ID type and number, business registration and payout account details. Only our staff can read them, and at the end of the five years they are destroyed. If you applied and were not approved, none of this is kept: the documents and the numbers are destroyed with the rest of your account.

The full list of what is destroyed and what is kept, and the form that stops a deletion already running, are at the delete account page.

The NDPA gives you rights over your personal data. You can:

• Ask for a copy of the personal data we hold about you.
• Ask us to correct data that is inaccurate or incomplete.
• Delete your account yourself, in Settings then Account, which destroys everything except the records section 7 says we are required to keep.
• Ask us to delete other data we no longer have a lawful reason to keep.
• Object to, or ask us to restrict, certain processing.
• Ask for your data in a portable format.
• Withdraw consent where processing is based on consent.

Deletion is the one you do not have to ask us for: it is a control in the product, it takes effect immediately, and the delete account page explains it in full. To exercise any of the others, write to us through the contact form. We respond within the timelines the NDPA sets. If you are not satisfied with our response, you have the right to complain to the Nigeria Data Protection Commission (NDPC).

We use only cookies and device storage that the product needs to work, and one first-party cookie for the sign-up step counts in section 2. There is no analytics from a third party, and no advertising or tracking cookie in Vallo.

• Your sign-in session (set by our sign-in provider, Supabase).
• Your choices: language, theme, which side of Vallo you last used, how you like search results shown, and whether you have seen the welcome cards.
• That you agreed to how the AI assistant works (section 12).
• A random visit number for the sign-up step counts, deleted when you close your browser.
• On your device only: places you saved before signing in, your support chat, whether notifications are on for this device, and your data-saver choice.

Vallo is for adults. You must be at least 18 years old to create an account, book a stay or list a property. We do not knowingly collect personal data from children, and we delete any such data we discover.

We protect personal data with encryption in transit, access controls, hashed passwords and payment processing through licensed providers. No system is perfectly secure, so if we ever discover a breach that puts your rights at risk we will notify the NDPC and affected users as the NDPA requires.

Vallo’s assistant, the support chat and the @vallo replies in the social feed are AI. They are powered by Anthropic, a company in the United States. When you use them, what you type, the recent turns of the conversation and the Vallo listings the assistant looks up for you are sent to Anthropic to write the answer.

• Only with your agreement. Before the first question we show you what is sent and to whom, and nothing is sent until you agree. Our servers refuse to send anything without that agreement. You can use Vallo fully without the AI, and you can always reach a person at Contact support, with no AI involved.
• Not used to train models. Under Anthropic’s commercial terms, what we send is not used to train its models. Anthropic keeps it only for a limited period for safety and abuse monitoring.
• Don’t share secrets. Never type card numbers, passwords or codes into the assistant.
• Withdrawing. Deleting your account deletes your assistant conversations with us. To withdraw your agreement without deleting your account, clear this site’s data on your device or write to support.

When we change this policy we will update the date at the top of this page, and for significant changes we will tell you directly through the product or by email before they take effect.