Privacy Policy
Expat Pal helps people plan a holiday in Portugal, or move here and settle in. This page explains what we know about you, why, and what you can do about it.
Who is responsible
Expat Pal decides how your information is used. To ask anything about it, email hello@expatpal.com.
What we collect, and why
We only ask for what we need to do the thing you asked for.
- When you ask for a call back: your name, your email address, what you need help with, roughly when you are travelling or moving, and any note you choose to add. We also record which page or button you asked from. We use this to reply to you.
- When you subscribe to The Pal newsletter: your email address, and whether you signed up in the footer or on the call-back form. We use this to send you the newsletter. You can unsubscribe at any time.
- When you request the starter guide: your email address, your name if you give it, and whether you also chose to hear from us by email. We use this to get the guide to you.
- When you create an account: your email address and a password. We never see your password: it is stored in a scrambled form that cannot be read back. If you save a budget estimate, we store the choices you made (household size, region, housing and lifestyle) and the name you gave it, so you can come back to it.
- On your profile, if you fill it in: your full name, phone number, the country you live in, your nationality, roughly when you plan to move and the language you prefer. All of it is optional, you can change or clear it at any time, and only you and Expat Pal staff can see it. The email address you sign in with cannot be changed.
- To stop our forms being abused: when you send a form we briefly keep a scrambled fingerprint of your internet address, so that one sender cannot submit hundreds of times. It cannot be turned back into your address, it is not linked to anything else, and in normal use it is cleared within the hour.
You can use the whole site, including the budget calculator and its results, without an account.
What we do not do
We do not sell your information or share it for anyone else's marketing. There are no advertising trackers and no visitor analytics on this site.
Who handles it for us
A few companies process information on our behalf, only to provide the service and under their own security and data-protection terms:
- Supabase stores our database and runs account sign-in.
- Resend sends our emails.
- Netlify hosts the website.
How long we keep it
We keep your information only for as long as we need it for the purpose you gave it to us, and we delete it when you ask us to. If you unsubscribe from the newsletter we keep a record of that, so that you are not added again by mistake. If your account is deleted, your saved estimates are deleted with it.
Your rights
Under the General Data Protection Regulation you can ask us to:
- show you the information we hold about you;
- correct it;
- delete it;
- stop or limit how we use it;
- give you a copy you can take elsewhere;
- withdraw a consent you gave, such as the newsletter.
Email hello@expatpal.com and we will deal with it. If you are unhappy with how we respond, you can complain to the Portuguese data protection authority, the Comissão Nacional de Proteção de Dados (CNPD).
Cookies
We only use storage that is essential. See the Cookie Policy.
Changes to this page
If what we collect or how we use it changes, we will update this page before the change takes effect.