Privacy Policy — NST-Connect Rental Application Service
1. Who is responsible for your data
- Data controller
- 株式会社NST ConnectNST-Connect
- Registered address
- 〒169-0075 東京都新宿区高田馬場1丁目17-18 ST高田馬場ビル8階ST Takadanobaba Bldg. 8F, 1 Chome-17-18 Takadanobaba, Shinjuku City, Tokyo 169-0075
- Representative
- Tony Nguyen (代表者)
- Data enquiries contact
- toanns.work@gmail.com090-5992-3883 · 10:00–18:00 (JST)
- Member of
- ST Housing
2. What we collect
Information you provide when creating an application: full name, date of birth, gender, nationality, residence status; email, phone number, current address; employment or school details and income; details of your current housing and expected move-in date; contact details of an emergency contact in Japan and of a parent. Documents you upload: passport, residence card (在留カード); student ID or insurance document (for students); proof of income where required; a photo of the application deposit receipt. Technical information: access logs used for security and fraud prevention. When you use Smart Search on the listings page: what you type in the search box; the search criteria extracted from it and the list of properties suggested to you; and, if you are not signed in, a random code stored in a browser cookie to recognise your search history — it contains no name, email or other identifying information, and we store it only in hashed form. The cookie lasts 30 days; if you delete it, you can no longer see or delete that history yourself. Please do not enter your name, phone number, email address, residence card number or other personal information in the search box.
3. What we do NOT collect
The following are prohibited in our system. If you upload them by mistake, the file is quarantined and never included in a submission: My Number (マイナンバー) and the back of a My Number Card; your passwords or PINs; online banking credentials; full payment card data; health, religious, political or criminal record information unrelated to renting. Our staff will never ask you for these.
4. What we use your data for
Only for these purposes: preparing your rental application; checking property eligibility; screening by the property management company; screening by the rent guarantee company; contract preparation; customer support; legal compliance; security and fraud prevention; handling your privacy requests. We do not use your application data for advertising. Receiving news about new properties is a separate, optional consent you can withdraw at any time. Smart Search: understanding your question as housing search criteria, showing matching properties, and keeping your history so you can continue or review a search. What you type in Smart Search is not used for advertising, not sold, and not used to assess your rental application.
5. Who we share your data with
To find you a home we must send your application to: property management companies (管理会社), landlords (貸主), rent guarantee companies (保証会社), and corporate housing agents (社宅代行) where applicable — and only after you have given separate consent for this. Each transfer contains only the fields and documents that the receiving party actually requires for that property; we do not send your whole file. We keep a record of every transfer: what, to whom, and when. Our staff choose the receiving party for each application and record that party's name. Smart Search only: to understand your question, we send what you type and the search criteria via API to OpenAI, L.L.C. (USA), our processor (委託先) for this feature alone, and the data is processed in the United States, outside Japan. We do not send your name, email, phone number or account ID. OpenAI does not use this data to train its models and may retain it for up to 30 days to detect abuse, then deletes it. This entrustment is based on a data processing agreement with OpenAI that ensures a system meeting the standards of Article 28 of Japan's Act on the Protection of Personal Information (基準適合体制); you may ask us for information about these measures.
6. Where your data is stored
Your application data is stored and processed in Japan (Tokyo region) on the cloud infrastructure of two providers:
- Supabase, Inc. (USA) — database and file storage; servers in the
ap-northeast-1(Tokyo) region - Vercel, Inc. (USA) — servers that run the website;
hnd1(Tokyo) region
These two providers only supply infrastructure: they do not read or use your data for their own purposes, and they are bound by service contracts with data protection terms. We treat them as our processors (委託先) under Japan's Act on the Protection of Personal Information, and we are responsible for supervising them.
Database backups are also kept in the Tokyo region. We do not transfer your application data to servers abroad. What you type into Smart Search is a different case: it is sent to OpenAI in the United States for processing, as described in section 5.
Technical support staff of the two providers may be located outside Japan. Under the regulator's guidelines, if a provider in principle does not access the data, this does not count as provision to a third party abroad; if they may access it to provide support, the country and its data protection system must be stated.
7. How long we keep your data
Our principle is simple: keep only what is needed, only for as long as it is needed, then delete it.
Photos of your passport and residence card serve exactly one purpose — proving your application to the screening party. Once that is done, there is no reason for them to stay on our system, so we delete them. You don't have to ask or remember — we do it on a schedule.
Your data with us has three layers, each with its own time limit.
① Document photos you upload — passport, residence card, student card, income documents, transfer receipt photos.
| Your application | We delete document photos after |
|---|---|
| You started filling it in, then paused | 30 days from your last action |
| You changed your mind and withdrew before we sent it | 30 days |
| You finished filling it in but have not submitted | 90 days |
| The application has closed, whatever the outcome | 90 days |
| The application is being screened | For as long as it is still being processed |
| You signed a lease | 90 days from the lease start date |
You won't lose your documents midway. While you are applying for a new property, the schedule starts again from zero; your documents stay with you throughout your home search.
② Your application for each property — which property you applied for, when, and the outcome. We keep this for 180 days after the application closes, so we can still look it up for you if you or the guarantee company ask again. This part contains no document photos — they have already been deleted on the schedule above.
③ Basic information in your account — name, date of birth, nationality, email, phone number, address. We keep it for as long as you have an account, so you don't have to fill it in again from scratch. Next time you come back, sign in and your information is still there; you only need to retake the document photos and update the few things that changed — where you live now, your job, the property you want to rent.
Two things we keep, and how they protect you. The record of what you agreed to — a written commitment that we do only what you allowed. The record of each time we sent your application: what, to whom, and on which date — thanks to it, when you ask where your application has gone, we can answer precisely, down to the day; Japanese law also requires keeping it for at least three years. Neither contains your document photos.
Smart Search history. If you are signed in, the history of each search is kept for 90 days from the last time you sent a question in it, then automatically and permanently deleted. If you are not signed in, the history is linked to your browser by a cookie (valid for 30 days) and kept for 30 days from your last question, then automatically and permanently deleted; if you delete the cookie, you can no longer see your old history in that browser, and the history is still deleted on the schedule above. To prevent abuse, we keep only a counter of how many searches you made (without what you typed) for at most 24 hours. Properties you saved are not deleted with the history.
You decide. Want us to delete earlier than scheduled? Just send one line to toanns.work@gmail.com. Want to delete your whole account, even while an application is in progress? That's fine too — we will tell you that the application will stop.
8. Your rights
You may ask us to: tell you what data we hold about you; correct inaccurate information; delete data that is no longer needed; stop using it or stop sending it to third parties; withdraw a consent you have given. Send your request to toanns.work@gmail.com. We respond and carry it out within 30 days. Withdrawing consent does not affect processing already carried out lawfully. If you withdraw consent for transfers to third parties, we will not be able to continue processing your rental. Smart Search history: you can delete a single search or your entire history yourself, on the page, at any time. Deletion permanently erases it from our systems — it is not just hidden — and cannot be undone; saved properties are not removed. If you do not delete it, history is kept for 90 days (signed in) or 30 days (not signed in) from your last question and then deleted automatically. Content already sent to OpenAI remains subject to their maximum of 30 days (section 5).
9. How we protect your data
Your documents are held in a private store, separate from public property photos; passport and residence card numbers are encrypted; staff access requires two-factor authentication; uploaded files are scanned before entering your file.
10. If something goes wrong
If an incident affects your personal data, we will follow our incident response process and meet our reporting and notification obligations under the law.
11. Changes to this policy
We may update this policy. A new version will state its version number and effective date. Where a change affects the scope of data or the recipients, we will ask for your consent again.