Terms of Use and Privacy

1. Who can use Zuwu

You must be at least 18 years old and provide accurate information about yourself. One person, one account. Verification badges (mobile, student email, government ID, ownership documents) must relate to your own identity and your own property.

2. What Zuwu is — and isn't

Zuwu is a listings and messaging platform. We are not a real estate agent, landlord, tenant, or party to any tenancy agreement formed between users. Verification badges reduce risk but do not guarantee that any person is honest or that any listing is accurate.

Never pay a bond, deposit or holding fee before you have inspected a property (in person or by live video) and confirmed who you are dealing with. Our safety guide explains the warning signs.

3. Listings and content

You must own or have the right to share everything you post — photos, descriptions, profile details. Listings must describe a real property you are genuinely entitled to offer, at a genuine price.

Listings and profiles must comply with anti-discrimination law. Zuwu does not offer, and will not honour requests for, filtering or selection of tenants by race or ethnicity. Members may voluntarily describe themselves on their own profile — that is their choice and theirs alone.

We may remove content that we reasonably believe is false, unlawful, discriminatory, or part of a scam, and may suspend the account that posted it.

4. Prohibited conduct

No fraud or misrepresentation; no soliciting payment outside the platform before an inspection; no harassment; no fake accounts or impersonation; no scraping or bulk collection of member data; no using Zuwu to advertise unrelated services.

5. Fees and upgrades

Browsing, posting and messaging are free. Optional paid upgrades (search bumps, larger previews, members-only data such as nearby amenities and suburb safety statistics) are one-time purchases for a stated period. During our launch period, upgrades are provided free of charge.

Nothing in these terms excludes rights you have under the Australian Consumer Law.

6. Your content and licence

You keep ownership of what you post. You grant Zuwu a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to host, display and reproduce that content for the purpose of operating and promoting the platform. Deleting content or your account ends this licence except for copies we must keep for legal or safety reasons.

7. Privacy and sensitive information

We collect the information you give us (account details, listings, messages, verification records) and use it to operate the platform: showing your posts, enabling messaging and translation, verification, and safety review. We do not sell your personal information.

Some optional fields are sensitive information under Australian privacy law — for example, if you choose to state your ethnicity or ancestry on your roommate profile. Providing them is entirely voluntary and constitutes your consent to display them publicly on your post. You can remove them at any time by editing your post, and they are never used to filter, rank, or exclude anyone.

Documents uploaded for verification (identity checks, proof-of-ownership bills) are stored privately and are never shown to other users. They are read by our review team, and to speed that up they are also put through an automated document check run by Google (Gemini), which reads the document type, address and name so they can be compared with your listing. If you would rather a person read yours instead, email us and we will do that.

Photos you publish are checked automatically too: compared against photos already on Zuwu so a stolen advert can be spotted, and screened for content that does not belong on the site. Nothing is taken down by that check alone — a person reviews whatever it flags.

Messages you send may be automatically translated so the other person can read them in their language. Report tools share the reported conversation with our review team.

8. Who else handles your information

Running Zuwu takes a handful of service providers, and each one sees only what its job needs: Supabase (database, file storage and sign-in), Vercel (website hosting), Stripe (payments and, if you choose it, identity verification), Twilio (verification SMS), Resend (the emails we send you), DeepL (message translation), Google (Gemini for the document check, photo screening, listing safety checks and the optional bio writer; Maps for addresses and travel times), Sentry (error reports) and PostHog (product analytics). Some of them store or process information outside Australia, including in the United States and Europe.

We do not sell your personal information, and no provider is permitted to use it for anything beyond the service it provides to us.

PostHog counts which pages you open and which steps of a listing or roommate post you reach, so we can see where people get stuck. It does not record what you type, the documents you upload, the photos you post, or your messages — Zuwu does not use session recording anywhere. Until you answer the notice on your first visit, we count the visit and PostHog stores nothing on your device. If you decline, that does not change — the only thing kept is your answer itself, so we do not ask again. If you accept, it keeps a small amount of information in your browser so that coming back is not counted as a new person. This information is stored on servers in Europe.

Zuwu keeps a few things in your browser rather than on our servers: what keeps you signed in, your language and dark-mode choice, a listing or roommate post you are part-way through writing so closing the tab does not lose it, your recent searches and filters, whether you have seen the tour of the search page, and your answer to the notice about counting visits. None of it follows you to other websites.

9. Access, correction, and complaints

Most of what we hold about you can be seen and changed from your account at any time. To ask for a copy of the rest, to correct something, or to close your account and take your posts down, email hello@zuwu.com.au and we will reply within 30 days.

We keep your information while your account is open, and after it closes only where we have to — records attached to a payment, a verification, or a scam report.

If you are unhappy with how we have handled a privacy question, you can complain to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner at oaic.gov.au.

10. Third-party data

Maps and location data © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL) and © CARTO. Transit data © Transport for NSW (CC BY 4.0). Points of interest © NSW Spatial Services (CC BY 4.0) and Overture Maps Foundation. Rent benchmarks derive from NSW Fair Trading rental bond data; safety statistics from BOCSAR. All distances, transit times, rent medians and safety figures are estimates provided for general information — verify anything that matters before relying on it.

11. Liability

To the extent permitted by law, Zuwu is not liable for losses arising from dealings between users, from inaccurate listings or member content, or from third-party data. Where liability cannot be excluded, it is limited to resupplying the service. Nothing here limits guarantees under the Australian Consumer Law.

12. Suspension, changes, and law

We may suspend or close accounts that breach these terms, and may update these terms — material changes will be notified on the site and continued use means acceptance. These terms are governed by the laws of New South Wales, Australia.