Privacy policy

1. About this policy

Homebound is operated by Use Homebound, an Australian business. This policy covers usehomebound.com.au, the staff tool that hotels use to log lost reports and found items, and the guest pages that go with them: reporting, claiming, paying for postage and tracking a parcel.

Homebound is a lost-property tool for hotels. Each hotel is responsible for the lost and found items it holds. We handle the information on the hotel's behalf, and this policy explains how.

2. What we collect and why

When a hotel logs a lost report or a found item, we may hold:

• the guest's name, email address and phone number
• a description of the item and where the hotel keeps it
• photos of found items, which may show personal belongings

We use this information to match lost reports to found items, contact the guest about a match, arrange a return and keep the hotel's own claim and handover records.

If an item is being posted to a guest, the guest enters their own shipping address and contact details on our site. Hotel staff don't enter these for them. Your shipping address is not stored in our database. It goes straight to our courier partner to arrange delivery, and we don't keep it afterwards.

3. Payments

If you pay for postage, Stripe processes the payment. We never see or store your card details. We only receive whether the payment succeeded and how much was charged.

4. AI-assisted matching

When staff ask Homebound to suggest matches for a lost report, the report's description and the descriptions of recent unclaimed items are sent to Anthropic, an AI provider based in the United States. Guest names, contact details and photos are not sent.

Suggestions are shown to staff only. Homebound doesn't decide whether a guest gets an item. Staff check every match and decide what to do with it.

5. Who we share information with

We don't sell personal information, and we don't rent it out. We share it only with partners that run Homebound, such as payment, courier, hosting and email providers. Each partner receives only what it needs for its role, and handles it under its own privacy terms.

If a guest reports an item through our “left something at a hotel” form, we pass their name, contact details, stay details and item description to the hotel they name, with their consent, so the hotel can look for it. If a hotel without a Homebound account asks us to send a guest's item, the hotel gives us the guest's name and email so we can send them the link to pay for postage.

Each partner handles information under its own privacy terms. To ask how a specific partner handles your information, contact us through our contact page.

6. Where information is stored

Our database is hosted in Japan. Some partners process information in the United States, including Stripe, Resend and Anthropic. Information can therefore be stored or processed outside Australia, and the privacy laws there may differ from those here.

7. Cookies and analytics

We use Vercel Web Analytics, which doesn't use cookies and doesn't track you individually across visits.

On our public marketing pages (such as the home page, our hotel pages and our guides), we use a Google Ads tag. It sets cookies or similar identifiers so we can measure our advertising and show ads to people who have visited our site. Google may combine this with other information it holds about you, under its own privacy policy.

Reporting a lost item, claiming an item, paying for postage and tracking a parcel never involve advertising tags. You can block cookies in your browser settings, or opt out of personalised ads through Google.

8. Marketing

We don't send guests marketing. Guests only receive emails about their own lost item, such as a found-item notice or a shipping update.

9. How long we keep it

We keep claim and lost-report records for 3 years after a claim closes, and then delete them. If you ask us to delete your details sooner, we will.

10. Children

Homebound isn't aimed at children. A hotel may log a found item that belongs to a child, and we hold only what the hotel records about it.

11. Security

Only the hotel's staff and our team can access a property's records. Item photos are stored privately, and each time they're shown the link to them expires after one hour.

12. Your rights and how to use them

You can ask us:

• what personal information we hold about you
• to correct information that is wrong
• to delete your information

Send your request through our contact page. We'll respond within a reasonable time.

13. Complaints

If you think we have mishandled your information, tell us first through our contact page and we'll look into it. If you aren't satisfied with our response, you can complain to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner at oaic.gov.au.

14. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as Homebound changes. When we do, we change the date at the top of this page.