Last updated: 26 October 2026
The Dutch version of this text is the source. If the two versions differ in meaning, the Dutch version prevails.
Refinds is a guide to vintage, second-hand, brocante, antique and charity shops and the markets that go with them. This statement describes which personal data we process, why, for how long, who we share it with and what you can do about it. It applies to the website, the Refinds app, the my.refinds shop-owner portal and to our contact with shop owners and market organisers.
We never sell personal data, use no advertising technology and do not track you across other websites or apps. What we count within the app itself is set out in §5.7.
| Controller | A. Ferwerda, trading as Refinds.eu |
| Postal address | Refinds.eu, Box C2366, Keurenplein 41, 1069 CD Amsterdam, Netherlands (post box) |
| support@refinds.eu |
Privacy contact: see §13 Contact and complaints.
| You are | What we process about you | Why |
|---|---|---|
| A website visitor | Technical logs, aggregated search counts | To run and secure the site |
| An app user | Only if you use a feature that requires it: account, shared lists, photos — and, unless you turn it off, the usage statistics in §5.7 | To deliver the feature you choose; statistics: improving the app |
| A shop owner/organiser with an account | Account details, what you enter yourself, management actions | To let you manage your own listing |
| A shop owner/organiser without an account | Business data from public sources | To compile an independent guide |
| Someone submitting a shop or market | Name, email address, what you enter | To assess and confirm your submission |
The fourth row is the largest group and the least self-evident. It is therefore set out in full in §7.
What we process
What we do not do. No Google Analytics, no advertising pixels, no third-party trackers, no profiles, no A/B cookies. Fonts are served from our own server, not from a third-party font service.
Maps. As soon as you open a map, your browser or app fetches the map imagery directly from our map-imagery service — an external party that supplies the map tiles. That party sees your IP address in doing so — which is technically unavoidable when loading imagery from another server. We pass nothing else on: no search query, no account, no location. Where that party has its servers is for it to decide; please consult its own privacy statement for that. We do not store your IP address in this connection.
Refinds uses strictly necessary, functional cookies only and places no tracking or advertising cookies. The full overview — purpose and retention per cookie — is in the cookie statement. That statement is authoritative on this point; we deliberately do not repeat the list here.
The app works without an account. Searching for shops and markets, viewing them on the map, saving favourites and building day plans all work without signing in. We process the data below only when you use the relevant feature — and, unless you turn it off, the usage statistics in §5.7.
If you share a day plan or a list of favourites, the list name and the shops and markets in it are visible to the people you invite. The owner of a list can add and remove members. We show your display name, never your email address.
If you give permission, the app uses your location only while in use, to show shops and markets nearby. Your location is not linked to your account and is not stored on our servers. If you decline, the app simply works with a default area.
Your favourites, lists, day plans and recently viewed shops are stored locally on your device. We do not receive that data as long as you do not share a list or plan. You erase it by deleting the app.
Your language choice and country setting are also set locally, but — unless you turn off the usage statistics — they do go along as part of the count described in §5.7. Without that statistic we do not receive the contents of your favourites, lists and plans; the statistic only reports that you saved or planned something for the first time, and the kind (shop or market).
Address, opening hours, website and directions are freely visible. The remaining contact details sit behind two thresholds, which exist to stop anyone copying our directory in bulk:
Basis for both: legitimate interest (protecting our data collection and limiting automated copying).
If you share a photo of a find, the following applies:
You can report on a shop or market that its data is wrong, with or without an account. You choose what is wrong (for example the address, the opening hours or the website) and can enter the correct details in a short text field (at most 300 characters). Only our editorial team sees that text; it is never published. Please do not include personal data in it.
We record: the item reported and your suggestion, the app version and the platform, and whether the report was resolved, dismissed or corrected. If you are signed in, we link the report to your account. If you report without an account, we instead keep an irreversible fingerprint (hash) of your app’s installation identifier (see §5.4a). This lets us see that several reports come from the same installation without knowing who you are. To limit misuse, we count per day how many reports arrive per account, per app installation and per network. Of the network (your IP address, or for IPv6 its network part) we keep only an irreversible fingerprint; these daily counters are deleted after two days.
Legal basis: legitimate interest (the accuracy of the guide and preventing misuse). Retention: see §11.
Via Profile › Report a problem you can send us a problem or a question about the app, with or without an account. You write a message (at most 2,000 characters) and, if you would like a reply, you can give an email address; this is optional. The message reaches our editorial team in our management system and is never published.
We record: your message, the email address if you gave one, the app version, the platform, the language of the app and the screen you wrote from, and how we dealt with it (status, an internal note, who dealt with it and when). If you are signed in, we link the message to your account; if you delete your account, your messages are deleted too. If you write without an account, we instead keep an irreversible fingerprint (hash) of your app’s installation identifier (see §5.4a). We do not store your IP address with the message. To limit misuse, we count per day how many messages arrive per account, per app installation and per network; of the network we keep only an irreversible fingerprint, and these daily counters are deleted after two days.
Legal basis: legitimate interest (dealing with your question or problem and limiting misuse). Retention: 24 months after your message has been dealt with; see §11.
You can delete your account and all associated data at any time, in the app via Profile › Delete account. Deleted are: your account and sign-in details, the lists and plans you own, your membership of other people’s lists, your shared finds, your profile picture and your preferences.
We ask you to sign in again just before the deletion, using the same method you normally use to sign in. That is one extra step and it takes a moment, but it is deliberate: deletion cannot be undone, and without that step someone with brief access to your unlocked device could erase your account. After that confirmation the deletion is immediate and permanent.
If you no longer have the app on your device, or you can no longer sign in, you can also request deletion by email using the address in §13. We will first ask you to show that the account is yours — otherwise someone else could have your account erased — and we then carry out the request within the statutory period of one month set out in §12. If you can still reach the app, use that route: it works immediately.
Without your name or account, we keep track of how the app is used — four events: the first time you open the app after installation; the first time you save something (a favourite, a list item or a stop in a day plan — we record only the kind: shop or market); your first day plan with a stop; and (re)opening the app after it has been inactive for at least 30 minutes, or after a cold start.
With every report we process: a random installation identifier, which lives on your device in secure key storage and is stored on our server only as a peppered, irreversible hash — never the identifier itself; the operating system (iOS or Android); the app’s language; the country setting (your own choice, or otherwise derived from your device’s region setting — not from your location — or NL if that cannot be recognised); the app’s version number; and, on opening, the place you view most often in the app (derived from what you open in the app, not from your device’s location, and counted locally on your device), plus how many days ago the app first reported for you. The timestamp is our server clock, truncated to the minute.
This installation identifier is pseudonymous, not anonymous: it makes your installation recognisable without a name or account, but it is in theory an identifier. We never link it to your account — no sign-in token travels with it — and no third party, no cookie, no use of your device location and no tracking across other apps is involved.
Turning it off. Go to Profile › Privacy › "Usage statistics" — on by default, off with one tap. Turning it off stops the measurement immediately and, as soon as your device reaches our server, deletes what we had already counted for your installation, including a short 7-day "deleted" marker that still refuses a late-arriving report; if that does not succeed right away (for example without internet), the app tries again at every next start. Turning the statistics back on starts with a new installation identifier. If you delete your account, we delete the installation identifier and the corresponding server rows as well — without changing the state of this switch. If the switch is on, the count then starts again with a new identifier.
Retention: 400 days per report. We keep the overview of your installation (the date of the first report, operating system, language, country, app version, most-viewed place) for up to 400 days after your last report. Our backups keep a deleted row for no more than 14 further days; we keep a monthly copy for up to 12 months. Should we ever restore a copy, we will carry out your erasure request again.
Legal basis: legitimate interest (improving the app based on counted usage, without third parties and without linking to your account). You object using the switch above; that takes effect immediately.
No third-party crash reporter and no push notifications.
If you claim your listing, we additionally process:
Legal basis: performance of the agreement (you ask us to let you manage your listing) and legitimate interest (fraud prevention, recoverability, evidence in a claim dispute).
Retention: see §11.
This part is about you if you have never signed in with us, but your business is in Refinds. We set it out because you are entitled to know that we process data about you, where it comes from and what you can do about it.
Business data is not always personal data. But for a sole trader or a small independent shop, business and person coincide: the address is often also a home address, the phone number a private number, the name a family name. We therefore treat the listing as a whole as personal data as soon as that may be the case — even where an individual field looks neutral on its own.
Business name, address, town, country, coordinates, category, opening hours (including exceptions), phone number, email address, website, social media profiles, keywords and a description written by us. For each field we additionally record where the value came from, when it was observed and how confident we are about it. That provenance layer is part of your right of access (see §12).
Exclusively from publicly accessible sources, and from what you tell us yourself:
We do not copy anyone else’s texts, photos or reviews verbatim.
See §12 Your rights for how to do this.
The GDPR requires us to inform you when we process data about you that did not come from you. Because the guide covers tens of thousands of businesses in many countries, it is not possible to notify each one individually; in that case the GDPR allows us to make the information public and to take appropriate measures. We do that with this statement, with this fully written-out chapter, and by making objection, correction and taking over your listing as easy as possible.
We do not approach shop owners and organisers unsolicited by email, letter or telephone to get them to take over their listing. You only hear from us: (1) in reply to a message you sent us yourself; (2) if you submit a shop or market yourself (§8.1); (3) as the holder of a listing in the portal — the messages that go with that are set out in the portal terms of use §9. If you tell us you no longer want any messages, we record that in one central suppression list, so that it stays that way.
If you submit a shop or market yourself, we process the name and email address you provide, what you enter in the form, and your IP address — the latter solely to protect the form against abuse. We send you a confirmation email in which you confirm your submission; of the confirmation link we keep only an irreversible fingerprint (hash). A submission never goes live automatically: there is always an editorial assessment in between.
We do not sell personal data and do not share it for advertising or profiling. We do engage service providers who process on our behalf — hosting, email delivery, error monitoring, automated text and image processing, geocoding, data collection, back-up and the handling of post sent to our postal address.
The full, current list with the category of each recipient, the purpose, the data processed and the country is in the sub-processor list. That list is authoritative on this point; we deliberately do not repeat it here, so that two versions can never arise. There we name each provider’s function rather than its trade name; the name of a specific party is available on request, by the route set out on that page.
In addition, we may disclose data where the law obliges us to, on the basis of a valid order.
Transfers outside the EEA. Some of our service providers are established outside the European Economic Area or have a parent company outside it. The sub-processor list states, per provider, where the data is stored and which transfer mechanism applies.
| Data | Period |
|---|---|
| Server logs | At most 30 days |
| Error reports | At most 90 days with our error-monitoring service |
| Sign-in codes (app and portal) | 10 minutes |
| Shop-owner portal session | 30 days |
| Shop-owner portal claim link | 7 days |
| App account and associated data | Until you delete the account |
| Shared finds and profile | Until you delete them or close your account |
| Record of the accepted version of the terms, house rules and licence | Until you delete your account; after that without your name or email address for as long as content of yours is still in the service |
| Rejected photo | Not kept |
| Fingerprint (hash) of a shared photo, to recognise duplicate photos | 30 days |
| App usage statistics (§5.7) | 400 days per report; installation overview up to 400 days after the last report (backups: up to 14 further days, a monthly copy up to 12 months; see §5.7) |
| Usage-statistics deletion marker | 7 days |
| Reports in the app (photos, profiles and shop or market data) | 12 months after they are dealt with |
| Daily counters in the app | 2 days |
| Messages via "Report a problem" in the app | 24 months after your message has been dealt with |
| Submissions via the form | Your name and email address and the content of the form: up to 12 months after the submission is dealt with; your IP address: 30 days after it is dealt with |
| Messages you send us (contact form and email) | Up to 24 months after your message is dealt with |
| Shop-owner management actions (audit trail) | 24 months after your last management action; after that we keep the changes without your name or email address |
| Shop-owner portal claim requests (channel, level of evidence, IP address, time, outcome) | 24 months after they are dealt with |
| Messages we send to holders of a listing (which message, when) | 24 months |
| Suppression list (opt-outs) | Indefinitely — precisely in order to keep guaranteeing that you receive no further messages from us |
| Listing data for shops and markets | For as long as the listing is part of the guide; where an objection is upheld, we remove it |
Where we have not yet set a period, we keep data no longer than is necessary for the purpose for which we collected it.
You have the right to:
autoriteitpersoonsgegevens.nl). If you live in another EU country, you may also go to the authority there.We respond within one month. If a request is complex we may extend that by two months; we will tell you within the first month if we do.
To prevent someone else from requesting or deleting your data, we may ask you to show that you are who you say you are. We ask no more than necessary.
Questions about this statement, about your data or about your listing can be raised in any of these ways. They all reach the same person.
support@refinds.eu | |
| Also works | privacy@refinds.eu and info@refinds.eu — those addresses arrive in the same mailbox, so you do not have to choose |
| Contact form | on the website, under Contact |
What happens to your message. If you submit the contact form, your name, your email address, the subject you chose and your message are sent by email to our contact mailbox, with your email address as the reply address, and are stored in our management system so that we can deal with your message; we also record how and when we dealt with it. We delete it 24 months after it has been dealt with. We use your IP address only at the moment of sending, to limit how often the form can be submitted; it is not included in the message and we do not store it. You receive no automatic acknowledgement — you hear from a person.
How quickly we respond. These periods apply across the whole set; the other documents refer here and name no period of their own.
| For what | Period |
|---|---|
| A request about your data (§12) | the statutory period of one month, with the extension described there |
| Confirmation that your question or report has arrived | within five working days |
| The fix itself — a correction, a barrier, an adjustment | no fixed period |
That last one is a deliberate choice. Some corrections are a single action; others require checking with a source or touch the design. So we do not promise when it will be done, but we do promise that you hear what we are doing with it — including where we decide to change nothing, and including where it takes longer than we expected. A shorter promise we cannot always keep does not help you.
One procedure has its own, tighter rhythm because third-party rights are at stake: the third-party rights notice procedure names a decision period alongside the confirmation.
If you want to object to your listing or send a correction, please state the name and town of the business, so that we can find it unambiguously.
If we cannot resolve matters together, you may lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority; see §12.
We update this statement when our processing changes — for example on engaging a new provider or launching a new feature. The current version is always on this page, with the date of the last change at the top. For a significant change we notify account holders in advance.
We include this text in our first reply to a shop owner or organiser without an account. It is deliberately short, and refers to this statement for the rest.
Why are you receiving this message? Your business is listed in Refinds, a guide to vintage, second-hand, brocante, antique and charity shops. We compiled your business’s details — name, address, opening hours and contact details — from publicly accessible sources: [source of the data]. We use them to compile the guide and to let you know that you can check and take over your own listing. Our basis for that is our legitimate interest in a complete and up-to-date guide. You can view, correct, take over or object to your listing, and you can tell us that you no longer wish to hear from us. We always act on the latter. How that works and what other rights you have is set out in our privacy statement: [URL]. Controller: A. Ferwerda, trading as Refinds.eu · support@refinds.eu.