Privacy Policy

Mina Property Management (“Mina”, “we”, “us”) is a property management and utility billing service operated by Mina Technologies, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. We are the data controller for the personal data described in this policy, except where section 2 says otherwise.

For any privacy question or request, contact us at info@minatechnologies.com or +251 92 772 7196. Write “Privacy” in the subject so it reaches the person responsible for data protection.

This policy covers our website, the Mina web app and the Mina mobile app (together, the “Service”), and everyone who uses them: property owners, the managers they appoint, and tenants, buyers and occupants.

When an owner enters information about their tenants, buyers or occupants — names, phone numbers, lease terms, payments, meter readings — the owner decides why that information is collected. For that information we act on the owner’s behalf and on their instructions, and the owner is responsible for having a lawful reason to record it and for telling those people about it. If you are a tenant and want to know what your landlord has recorded, you can ask them, or ask us and we will help.

Information you give us

• Account details: name, phone number, email address, company name, and a password (which we store only in hashed form).
• Property details: buildings, floors, units, rents and settings.
• Information about tenants, buyers and occupants entered by owners and managers: names, phone numbers, emergency contacts, lease and sale terms, payment history, meter readings and the photos of their meter a tenant may send with one, maintenance requests and their photos, and documents attached to contracts.
• Payment information: amounts, dates, references and methods; photos of receipts a tenant uploads to report a transfer; and, for owners who withdraw money, the bank account they register. We do not see or store full card or mobile-wallet credentials — Chapa handles those.
• Messages: what you send us through the contact form or support, and comments on utility bills.

Information collected automatically

• Technical data: IP address, device and browser type, app version, and the push-notification token of your phone.
• Activity records: an audit log of changes made in an account (who changed what, and when), and server logs.
• Cookies and similar technology — see section 10.

We do not ask for sensitive personal data such as health, religion or ethnic origin, and ask you not to enter it into the Service.

• To provide the Service you signed up for (performance of a contract): creating accounts, recording leases, payments, bills and requests, sending reminders and notifications by app, push and SMS, processing payments and withdrawals, and support.
• To meet legal obligations: keeping financial and tax records, retaining traffic data as the Computer Crime Proclamation requires, and responding to lawful requests from authorities.
• For our legitimate interests, balanced against yours: keeping the Service secure, preventing fraud and misuse, fixing problems, and understanding how the Service is used so we can improve it.
• With your consent: marketing messages and the advertising measurement described in section 10. You can withdraw consent at any time, as easily as you gave it, without affecting what happened before.

We do not sell personal data, and we do not use tenants’ data for our own marketing.

The Service calculates due dates, balances, suggested late fees, arrears and each unit’s share of a utility invoice. These are calculations that an owner or manager reviews and acts on — a late fee is only ever a suggestion — and we do not make decisions with legal or similarly significant effects about anyone solely by automated means. If you think a figure is wrong, ask the owner or us to review it.

• Inside an account: an owner and the managers they appoint see the data for the buildings each manager is assigned to, limited by the permissions the owner grants. A tenant sees their own lease, payments, bills and requests.
• Service providers that run parts of the Service for us, under contracts that require them to protect it: Chapa (online payments and payouts), AfroMessage, SMSEthiopia and the mobile operators (text messages, sent within Ethiopia — the phone number and the message, which for a new tenant includes their first password, and for a bill an owner chooses to text about, its amount and due date), Google Firebase (push notifications), Amazon Web Services (file storage and website hosting), MongoDB Atlas (database hosting), our email delivery provider, our server hosting provider, and Meta (the website pixel in section 10).
• Authorities, courts and regulators, when Ethiopian law requires it or to protect the rights and safety of users and the public.
• A buyer or successor, if our business is reorganised or sold, under this policy.

Some of the service providers listed in section 6 store or process data on servers outside Ethiopia. Where we transfer personal data abroad we do so as Article 20 of the Personal Data Protection Proclamation allows — where the destination has adequate protection, where the transfer is necessary to provide the Service you asked for, or with your consent — and with safeguards in our contracts with those providers.

Where Ethiopian law requires personal data collected in Ethiopia to be stored on a server in Ethiopia, we take the steps the law and the Ethiopian Communications Authority require.

• Account and property data: for as long as the account is open. When an account is closed we delete or anonymise it, except what we must keep by law.
• Payment, invoice and other financial records: for as long as Ethiopian tax and commercial law requires — at least five years after the related tax filing, or longer where the Commercial Code requires.
• Server and traffic logs: one year, as the Computer Crime Proclamation No. 958/2016 requires, and then deleted.
• Backups: overwritten on a rolling basis, so deleted data leaves our backups within weeks.
• When an owner deletes a record in the Service it is removed or deactivated; cancelled payments and bills stay on record, marked cancelled, under the financial-record rule above.

• Encryption in transit (HTTPS) for every connection, and encrypted storage at our providers.
• Passwords stored only as hashes; sign-in sessions held in secure, HTTP-only cookies or in the phone’s secure storage.
• Permissions checked on our servers for every request, building by building, and an audit log of changes.
• Regular backups, and access to production systems limited to the people who need it.

If a personal data breach occurs that is likely to put people at risk, we will notify the Ethiopian Communications Authority and the people affected within 72 hours of becoming aware of it, as Articles 43 and 44 of the Proclamation require, and tell you what we are doing about it.

We use a small number of cookies:

• Essential cookies keep you signed in and route you to the right dashboard. They are set by our servers, contain no advertising data, and the Service does not work without them.
• Browser storage remembers conveniences such as an open chat or a chosen filter on your own device.
• The Meta (Facebook) Pixel on our public website measures how our advertising performs. You can block it with your browser’s tracking-protection or cookie settings without affecting the Service.

Under the Personal Data Protection Proclamation No. 1321/2024 you have the right, free of charge and without excessive delay, to:

• access the personal data we hold about you and learn how it is used (Art. 25);
• have inaccurate or incomplete data corrected (Art. 27);
• have your data erased where it is no longer needed or was processed unlawfully (Art. 28);
• object to processing, including for direct marketing (Art. 29);
• ask us to restrict processing while a question is resolved (Art. 30);
• not be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing (Art. 31);
• receive your data in a structured, machine-readable format and have it passed to another provider (Art. 32);
• withdraw consent at any time where we rely on it (Art. 8).

You can correct most account details yourself in your profile, and anyone can delete their account, in the app or on the website — how to delete your account says how, and what is kept. For anything else, contact us at info@minatechnologies.com or +251 92 772 7196. We may ask you to confirm your identity first. If you are a tenant and your request concerns information your landlord recorded, we will work with them to answer it.

If you are unhappy with how we handle your data, please tell us first so we can put it right. You also have the right to lodge a complaint with the Ethiopian Communications Authority, which supervises data protection in Ethiopia (Art. 58 of the Proclamation); its decisions can be appealed to the Federal High Court.

The Service is for adults managing or renting property. It is not directed at anyone under sixteen, and we do not knowingly collect their data except as entered by an owner with the consent of a parent or guardian (for example, a member of a tenant’s household recorded as an occupant).

We will update this policy when the Service or the law changes, and change the date at the top. If a change is significant we will tell owners by email or in the app before it takes effect. This policy is written in English; we can provide it in Amharic on request.

Mina Technologies
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Email: info@minatechnologies.com
Phone: +251 92 772 7196
See also our Terms of Use.