ShowingTime+ Privacy Notice
Effective Date: January 3, 2022
The ShowingTime+ products and services are owned and operated by Zillow, Inc. and its affiliates, as applicable (“ShowingTime+”, “us”, “our”, or “we”). We know you’re trusting us with your data. We also know we have a responsibility to respect your privacy, and we work hard to do just that. This notice explains what information we collect, why we use it, who we share it with, and how we protect it, along with the tools you can use to manage your privacy.
Introduction
We carefully evaluate how we use data to make sure that we’re using your information to provide value for you. On this page, we aim to explain everything you need to know about your privacy while using our services. If you have any questions that we haven’t answered here, you can always contact us at privacy@zillow.com.
Information collected by Us
When you use our services, we collect a variety of information from and about you and your devices. Some of this information identifies you directly (like an email address) while some of it is associated with you through your account, profile, or device (like your location data).
The kind of data we collect about you depends on how you use our services. Even if you don’t have an account with us, we may still collect some data about you, like your email address and phone number if you choose to contact a real estate agent through our platform, or your IP address and other device information when you browse our sites or use our apps.
Information you give us or create using our services
When you use our services, we often ask you for information about yourself. This usually includes basic things like your name, email address, and phone number.
You may also provide information about other people through our services. For example, if you share a home listing with someone, we will collect that person’s email address as part of your account information.
Below are some examples of what information we collect for our products and services and how we collect it.
Information from Public Sources and Third Parties
We collect information from public sources, such as county and state tax and property records, government agencies, and multiple listing services (or MLS). Most of this information is about properties, not people. But some information we collect, like the identity of a property’s owner or real estate license information, may relate to individuals.
We also collect information about you from various third parties in order to provide better service to you, or as part of the employment application process. This may include demographic information and other attributes about you.
Information we collect as you use our services
Along with the information you give us directly, we collect a variety of information automatically as you use our services.
Activity information
We collect information about how you use our services. This includes things like your home search history, homes you view, purchase activity, what you’ve clicked on and other uses of our features, and the amount of time you spend looking at different parts of our websites. When you call or text us or a real estate professional using our platform, we collect data about your call or text, including the date and time of the call or text, your phone number, and the content of the call or text.
Device information
Like other websites and apps, we collect data about the browsers and devices you use to access our website. The data we collect includes browser or device model and settings, operating system, unique identifiers, and the version of the app you’re using. We also collect data about how your browsers and devices interact with our services, including IP address, crash reports, system activity, and the date, time, and the URL of the site you visited before our website.
You can control our collection of certain data, such as your mobile device model or the language your mobile device uses, by adjusting the privacy and security settings on your mobile device.
Location Information
If you enable location services on your mobile device, we collect the location of your device. We use that information to provide you with location-based information and ads, as well as to provide our services where applicable. If you don’t want to use these features, you can turn off location services on your device.
We also collect location information for similar purposes from your browser if you enable it. You can disable access through your browser settings.
Cookies, pixel tags, and other tracking technologies
We and our partners use various tools to collect data when you visit our sites and apps, including cookies, pixel tags, and other similar technologies. Cookies are bits of electronic data that can be transferred to your computer or other device to identify your browser.
When you use our website, we and our partners may use cookies and other tools to gather information about how you view and use our services and content, and to connect your activity with other data we store about you. The use of cookies helps us serve you better by understanding what you’re interested in, tracking trends, measuring the effectiveness of ads, saving your preferences, and storing information you may want to retrieve on a regular basis, such as your favorite homes. We also allow specific, approved partners to collect data from your browser or device for advertising and measurement purposes using their own cookies or similar tools.
At any time, you can use our cookie preference tools to manage what kinds of cookies and other tracking technologies you’re comfortable with. Check out our information about how to access these tools. You can also disable cookies altogether by adjusting the settings on your browser. However, if you choose to disable some or all cookies, many parts of our services may no longer work.
In addition, if you give your email address to us, we may use a scrambled, unreadable form (called a “hashed” version) of your email address to deliver tailored ads to you on our website or on other websites.
For information about how you can manage your cookie preferences, check out the section of this policy called “Your privacy tools and choices.”
Social networks
If you use social media or third-party logins (like Google or Apple) to log in to our website, we may access your public social media profile information. You can always limit this sharing using your social media service settings.
Inferences
To improve our services and make them more useful to you, we use data about your activity to understand and infer your preferences.
Commercial Information
We collect information about the products and services you purchase or consider purchasing from us.
Why we use your information
Completing your transactions
When you use our website to complete a transaction, like buying a media package or subscription service, we use your personal information to verify your identity and process and complete your transaction.
Providing and improving our services
We use your information to provide our services to you. We also use your information to improve our existing services and develop new ones. For example, we track how you use our websites and apps and use that information to troubleshoot issues and adjust things to improve your experience.
Communicating with you and connecting you with others
We use the contact information you provide us, like your phone number and email address, to communicate with you about our services. This includes things like responding to comments, questions, and requests you send us. It also includes notifying you of transaction or service updates and changes. We may also inform you about our services, offers, promotions, news, and other updates we think may be of interest to you.
If you ask us to, we also use your information to connect you to real estate professionals, like when you want to contact an agent to discuss a home you find for sale on our platform.
Personalizing your experience
We use the information we collect about you and your activity on our services to personalize the services we offer. We also use it to show advertising, content, or features that we think you might like. This includes things like customized search results that match your preferences and prior search criteria and, if you ask us to, connecting you to a real estate professional best suited to help you.
If we know you’re working with a particular real estate agent, we may share information about your saved homes and searches with that agent to let them serve you more effectively. You control what we share with real estate pros you find on our platform.
Other uses of your information
We also use your data to detect, investigate, and prevent fraudulent transactions and other illegal activities and to protect our rights and our property as well as the rights and property of our customers, and others.
Occasionally, there may be a reason we’d like to use your information in a way that isn’t described here. If that happens, we’ll let you know so you can decide if you’re comfortable with it.
Sharing your information
We understand that sharing information with third parties is a big responsibility. We’re committed to sharing information only when needed for a legitimate business or legal purpose, and then only with recipients who will protect it.
Information you ask us to share
We share information when you ask us to share it. For example, if you choose to contact a real estate agent through our platform, we will send them your name and contact information.
Service providers and business partners
When we hire a service provider to help operate our business, we may need to give them access to information to provide their service. We allow them to use the information only to perform the service we’ve asked them to perform. We vet all service providers carefully, and we always remain responsible for the privacy of your information that is shared with our service providers.
When we partner with other businesses to offer products and services to you, we may share information with those partners only as needed to provide those products and services and only subject to the terms of this privacy notice.
Legal and compliance transfers
When we need to share data to satisfy a legal or regulatory requirement, including responding to a subpoena or other lawful government request for data, we will share information only as necessary to comply with that requirement. We’ll tell you before sharing your information in these situations unless we’re prohibited from doing so. For more information about how we respond to requests for data, see Government and Civil Information Requests. We may also share information if needed to enforce our legal rights, detect or prevent fraud or security concerns, and protect public safety.
If we are involved in a merger, acquisition, or any form of transfer or sale of some or all of our business, whether as a going concern or as part of bankruptcy, liquidation, or similar proceeding, we may share your information in connection with that transaction.
Public and deidentified data
We may share information that is collected from public sources or that you choose to share publicly (such as public reviews ) with third parties. We may also share aggregated and/or deidentified information that cannot reasonably be used to identify you.
Sales of personal information
We allow certain companies to place tracking technologies like cookies and pixels on our sites, which allow those companies to receive information about your activity on our website that is associated with your browser or device. The companies may use that data to serve you more relevant ads on our sites or others. Under some state laws, sharing data for online advertising like this may be considered a “sale” of information. Except for this kind of sharing, we do not sell any of your information.
You always have full control over whether these technologies work on your devices. You can disable them entirely using our cookie consent preference tools on our websites.
Privacy tools and choices
Accessing and deleting your information
If you live in California, state law may provide you with specific rights regarding the personal information we’ve collected about you in the course of providing our services. Please review the “Legal Disclosures” section below for more information. Please note that while d we will never discriminate against you for using them, if you choose to delete your data or close your account, we won’t be able to offer you services that require us to use your data.
Managing cookie preferences
Our third-party ad servers, ad network providers, and third-party advertisers provide ad content that appears on our website. To measure how effective those ads are and to make them more relevant, ad providers may use their own tracking technologies to collect your information. These are used to record users’ activity, such as the pages visited, and to learn what types of information are of most interest to the users. For more information regarding the choices you have about these technologies (such as opting out), visit the Network Advertising Initiative, Digital Advertising Alliance, Omniture, and PrivacyChoice.
Managing communications preferences
Email subscriptions
We may send you email for a variety of reasons. When you use or purchase our services, we’ll send you status updates and other information about your purchase. We may also send you information about additional or different services we might think may interest you. You can manage the types of email you receive by following the instructions included in each email we send you. Even if you unsubscribe from promotional email subscriptions, we may still need to email you with important transactional or other non-advertising information.
Calls and texts
Some of our services allow you to provide your phone number to us. If you give us your number, we may call or text you, for example, to give you information about booking a media package you’ve purchased, or to let you know about other products or services of interest. We will contact you through these methods only in accordance with applicable legal requirements, and you always have the ability to opt out of further calls or texts.
Protecting your information
We understand that no matter how we collect your information, we have a responsibility to protect it. We take that responsibility seriously. We build security into our products and features from the ground up to help protect data from unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration, and destruction.
We’re always looking for threats and take reasonable steps to respond to those threats, protecting the information users share with us. Of course, no method of Internet transmission or data storage can provide guaranteed protection to your information. If anything should ever happen to your information, we’ll let you know as soon as we can and try our best to make it right.
We are based in the United States and the information we collect is governed primarily by U.S. law. Where we are subject to the privacy laws of other countries, we comply with those requirements. If you access or use our services or provide information to us, your information will be processed and stored in the United States, where you may not have the same rights and protections as you do under your local law.
Applicability of this policy
This policy applies to the ShowingTime+services available for purchase through the ShowingTime+ website. It does not apply to standalone purchases of the ShowingTime, dotloop, or Bridge services, which have separate privacy policies. The ShowingTime privacy policy is available here and the dotloop privacy policy is available here.
Our apps and services may link to other companies’ websites. Some features may also involve the sharing of your information with third-party websites. These third-party websites may collect information about users on those websites. We don’t control those sites, and this privacy notice does not apply to these external websites and third parties.
Legal Disclosures
In this section, we’ve provided some legally required disclosures under state privacy laws. There shouldn’t be anything surprising in this section, and we’ve tried to explain our privacy practices in plain English throughout the rest of the policy.
Under the California Consumer Privacy Act or CCPA, California residents have certain rights regarding their data, including:
- The right to know the categories of personal information we’ve collected and the categories of sources from which we got the information (see Information collected by us and the chart just below)
- The right to know the business purposes for sharing personal information (see Why Zillow uses your information)
- The right to know the categories of third parties with whom we’ve shared personal information (see Sharing your information)
- The right to access the specific pieces of personal information we’ve collected and the right to delete your information (see Privacy tools and choices)
- The right to correct inaccurate personal information stored by us
- The right to opt out of sales of personal information and to limit the use of Sensitive Personal Information for non-essential purposes
- California residents also have the right to not be discriminated against if they choose to exercise their privacy rights.
| CATEGORY AND SOURCES OF INFORMATION | HOW WE USE IT | TYPES OF INDIVIDUALS AFFECTED | HOW WE SHARE IT |
|---|---|---|---|
| Identifiers: We collect this information from our users. We also generate identifiers internally. | To enable use of our sites, services, and products, to communicate with you, to understand how our users interact with our sites, and to improve our offerings | People who access our sites or mobile applications | We share this data with our service providers, affiliates, and with business partners or others to whom you instruct us to send this information |
| Personal information under California Civil Code section 1798.80: We collect this information from our users | To enable use of our sites, services, and products, to communicate with you, to understand how our users interact with our sites, and to improve our offerings | Site visitors, Registered Users | We share this data with our service providers, affiliates, and with business partners or others to whom you instruct us to send this information |
| Protected classifications | We don’t collect this data | None | None |
| Commercial information: We collect this information from our customers, and generate it internally during transactions with our customers | To transact with you if you use our services or products, and to enable your real estate transactions | None | None |
| Biometric information | We don’t collect this data | None | None |
| Electronic network activity information: We collect this information from our users and customers | To enable use of our sites, services, and products, to communicate with you, to understand how our users interact with our sites, and to improve our offerings | People who access our sites or mobile applications | We share this data with our service providers, affiliates, and with business partners or others to whom you instruct us to send this information |
| Geolocation data: We collect this information from our users and customers | To enable use of our sites, services, and products, to understand how our users interact with our sites, and to improve our offerings | People who access our sites or mobile applications and allow us to collect their location data | We share this data with our affiliates and service providers. |
| Audio, electronic, visual, thermal, olfactory, or similar information: We collect this information from our users and customers | To identify you and to provide customer support or other services | People who call us | We share this data with our affiliates and service providers |
| Professional or employment-related information: We collect this information from our customers and business partners | To enable use of our sites, services, and products, and to enable you to complete your real estate transactions | Registered Users | We share this data with our service providers, affiliates, and with business partners or others to whom you instruct us to send this information |
| Education information> | We don’t collect this information | None | None |
| Inferences: We generate these internally | To understand how our users interact with our sites, to develop and offer more relevant and useful services and products, and to improve the products and services we offer | Registered Users | We share this data with our service providers and affiliates |
Contacting Us
If you have any questions about this privacy notice, or our privacy practices, please email us at privacy@zillow.com, or you can write to us at:
Zillow, Inc.
Attn: Consumer Care
1301 Second Avenue
Seattle, WA 98101
Changes to this policy
We are always reviewing our privacy practices to make sure they comply with this policy. Sometimes, we’ll need to update the policy to reflect changes in our products, technology, and uses of data. We won’t change the policy in a way that reduces your rights or significantly changes the way we use or share data without telling you ahead of time and giving you a chance to stop using our services if you want.