Privacy policy
Magpie is a social media posting tool for estate agencies. It drafts social media posts for an agency's team from the agency's own website, its public Google reviews, the weekly blog pack the Ethical Agent Network (EAN) sends its member agencies, and what team members write themselves. Once a post is approved, Magpie publishes it to that team member's own Facebook Page, Instagram or LinkedIn account.
This policy explains what personal data Magpie collects, why, and what rights you have. We have tried to write it in plain English. If anything is unclear, email us and we will explain it properly.
To have your data deleted, see section 9, Deleting your data.
1. Who we are
Magpie Social ("Magpie", "we", "us") is operated by Nicholas Cheshire, trading as Magpie Social, based in Rayleigh, Essex, United Kingdom. For the purposes of UK data protection law (the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018), we are the data controller for the personal data described in this policy.
Contact for anything in this policy: nick@nestinessex.co.uk
2. Who this policy covers
- Users. Team members of an agency using Magpie, who sign in, review drafted posts and connect their own social media accounts.
- People who appear in content. Occasionally a person's name appears in content Magpie processes, for example the public display name of someone who left a Google review of the agency.
- People who comment on a published post. When someone comments on a Facebook or Instagram post that Magpie published, Magpie reads the comment so the agency's team can see it and reply. Magpie is not reading new comments or sending replies yet. Until it does, it reads only the totals of likes, comments and shares on each post.
3. What we collect and why
3.1 Your account
| Data | Why we collect it | Lawful basis |
|---|---|---|
| Name and work email address | To create and identify your account, and to send you Magpie's emails, such as password reset links, a weekly summary, reminders before a connection runs out and, for admins, alerts when something goes wrong | Performance of a contract |
| Password | To secure your account. Stored only as a bcrypt hash, never in plain text | Performance of a contract |
| Session cookie | To keep you signed in, for up to 30 days | Performance of a contract |
3.2 Your social media connections
| Data | Why we collect it | Lawful basis |
|---|---|---|
| Social account identifiers and names: your Facebook Page's ID and name, your Instagram account's ID and username, your LinkedIn member ID and name | To know where to publish the posts you approve, and to show you which account Magpie posts as | Performance of a contract |
| OAuth access tokens issued by Meta and LinkedIn, and a LinkedIn refresh token where LinkedIn gives one | To publish your approved posts to your accounts on your behalf. Magpie also uses them to read back how those posts did and the comments left on them on Facebook and Instagram, to send a reply when you write one in Magpie, and to renew access before it runs out | Performance of a contract |
| If you manage more than one Facebook Page: your own Facebook login token and the list of your Pages, with their access tokens, while you choose one | So you can pick which Page Magpie posts to, rather than Magpie guessing. Deleted as soon as you choose, when you disconnect Facebook or Instagram, or when you leave the team | Performance of a contract |
You connect each account yourself, through Meta's and LinkedIn's own login screens. We never see or store your social media passwords.
Nothing is published unless it has been approved, and usually that means you approved it yourself. The one exception is Autopilot, which you choose: once you have approved 20 listing posts in a row without binning one, you can switch it on, and Magpie then approves new listing posts for you. They show in This week marked as approved for you, and you can pull any of them back before they go out. An admin can switch Autopilot off for the whole team. Every other kind of post always waits for you.
3.3 Content
| Data | Why we collect it | Lawful basis |
|---|---|---|
| Public content from the agency's own website (property listings, blog posts and its about page) | To draft social posts about the agency's work and, when the agency sets up Magpie, to learn how it writes and a few true facts about it | Legitimate interests (marketing the agency's own published content) |
| Public Google reviews of the agency, rated four stars or higher, including the reviewer's public display name and up to 400 characters of the review | To draft posts celebrating genuine client feedback | Legitimate interests (sharing feedback the reviewer already made public) |
| For an agency that is a member of the Ethical Agent Network: EAN's weekly blogs, with their captions and pictures, kept as a separate copy for each member agency | To draft those blogs, in EAN's own words, for the agency's team to approve | Performance of a contract |
| Drafted, edited, approved and published posts, and your approve or decline decisions | To run the approval queue, publish approved posts and show you what went out | Performance of a contract |
| Pictures you upload: the agency's logo, its own photographs, or your own photo on a post | To draw the agency's branded images and publish them with your posts | Performance of a contract |
| How you write: up to three of your own past posts, if you paste them in under How you write in Accounts, and each change you make to a draft's words (the words as drafted, and as you changed them) | So that Rewrite can word a draft more the way you would. Your three most recent changes go with each Rewrite | Performance of a contract |
| Comments left on Facebook and Instagram posts that Magpie published, for 30 days after each post goes out: the commenter's name as the platform shows it, the comment, when it was left, and whether you replied | So the team sees an enquiry beside the post that earned it, and can reply from Magpie | Legitimate interests (answering people who respond to the agency's own posts) |
| How published posts did on Facebook and Instagram, as totals: reach, likes, comments, shares and saves | To learn when the agency's audience responds, and which of its designs do best | Legitimate interests (improving the agency's own posts) |
3.4 Technical logs
| Data | Why we collect it | Lawful basis |
|---|---|---|
| Server logs (timestamps, the web address of each page asked for, your IP address and browser type, errors, and sometimes a name or email address, for example when a company is deleted) | To keep the service secure and fix problems | Legitimate interests (security and reliability) |
We do not collect special category data, and Magpie is not directed at or intended for use by anyone under 18.
4. How drafting works (AI)
Magpie uses Anthropic's Claude API to write post captions. To do this we send Anthropic the relevant content (for example a listing description, a blog excerpt, or a review's text and the reviewer's display name) together with the agency's name, its brand voice settings and facts, your name, and the captions colleagues have already been given for the same post, so that yours reads differently. When you write a post yourself with Post about something else, your words go to Anthropic to be written up.
When an agency sets up Magpie, we also send Anthropic up to 20,000 characters of the agency's own website copy, to describe how it writes and pick out a few true facts about it.
EAN's blogs go out in EAN's own words, and are only sent to Anthropic if you press Rewrite on one. Rewrite sends the draft's words, your name, the agency's name, up to three of your own past posts if you have saved any, and your three most recent changes to a draft's words.
The AI never publishes anything itself. Every post is approved by a team member, or by Autopilot for listing posts once a team member has switched it on for themselves (see section 3.2). A team member can edit, approve or decline any draft. Magpie makes no automated decisions about any person that have legal or similarly significant effects.
5. Who we share data with
We never sell personal data. We share data only with the service providers needed to run Magpie:
| Recipient | What and why |
|---|---|
| Google Cloud | Hosting and storage. Magpie runs in Google Cloud's europe-west1 region, in Belgium. Its database is copied continuously to Google Cloud Storage as a backup, using a tool called Litestream, and uploaded and drawn pictures are kept in Google Cloud Storage too. That storage is in the same region, in Belgium |
| Anthropic | AI drafting of captions, as described in section 4 |
| Meta Platforms (Facebook and Instagram) | Receives the posts you approve for your connected Facebook Page or Instagram account, and any reply you send to a comment. If you change the words of a published Facebook post, or delete it, from History in Magpie, Meta receives that change or deletion too. Magpie reads back those posts' comments and figures, as described in section 3.3 |
| Receives the posts you approve for publication to your connected LinkedIn profile | |
| Google (Places API) | When an agency sets up Magpie, we send Google the agency's name, its website address and the office address shown on its website, to find its Google listing. After that we send the listing's place identifier to fetch its public reviews and its Google rating. We send Google no personal data about you |
| Resend | Sends Magpie's emails (see section 3.1). It receives the address each email goes to and what the email says |
| Google Fonts | Magpie's pages load the Hanken Grotesk typeface from Google Fonts, so your browser asks Google's servers for it, which shows Google your IP address |
| HM Land Registry | If an admin sets a market area, Magpie fetches public sold price figures for that postcode district. We send the district and nothing else |
EAN sends Magpie its weekly blogs. Magpie sends EAN nothing about you.
Once a post is published to Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn, that platform's own privacy policy applies to it there.
We may also disclose data where the law requires it, for example to comply with a court order.
6. International transfers
Magpie itself runs in the European Union. Some of our providers, including Anthropic, Meta, LinkedIn, Google and Resend, process data in the United States. Where personal data leaves the UK we rely on appropriate safeguards recognised under UK law, such as the UK Extension to the EU-US Data Privacy Framework, the UK International Data Transfer Agreement, or the UK Addendum to the EU Standard Contractual Clauses, depending on the provider.
7. How long we keep data
- Account data: for as long as your account is active, then deleted within 30 days of account closure. When an admin deletes the company, every account in it is deleted at once. When an admin removes you from the team, you can no longer sign in and your sessions and social connections are deleted at once, but your name, email address and the record of your posts stay with the agency's account until the company is deleted, or until you ask us to delete them (section 9).
- OAuth tokens: until you disconnect the account in Magpie, an admin removes you from the team, or the company is deleted, whichever comes first. Disconnecting deletes the stored token for that platform at once. A token that has run out stays stored, unused, until one of those happens or you reconnect. Facebook and Instagram are connected together through your Facebook Page and hold the same token, so disconnect both to remove it completely.
- Post drafts and publishing records: for as long as the agency uses Magpie, so it has a record of what was published where. They are deleted when the company is deleted, or sooner if you ask (section 9). Comments and Google reviews collected for the agency are kept the same way.
- Server logs: 30 days.
- Sign-in sessions end after 30 days, and password reset links stop working after 45 minutes.
- Pictures stored for an agency (its logo, uploaded photographs and the drawn post images) are not deleted automatically, even when the company is deleted. Email us to have them deleted.
- Backups: we keep 30 days of database backups, so deleted data can remain in them for up to 30 days, and a deleted backup file can be recovered for 7 days after that.
8. How we protect data
- All traffic to and from Magpie is encrypted with HTTPS.
- Passwords are stored only as bcrypt hashes.
- Password reset links are stored in our database only as a one-way hash, work once, and stop working after 45 minutes.
- The sign-in cookie cannot be read by scripts on the page, and only travels over HTTPS.
- Social media access tokens are held server side and are never exposed in the browser.
- Pictures are served at hard to guess web addresses, so that Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn can fetch them. Anyone given one of those addresses can open that picture.
- Access to production systems is restricted to the people who operate the service.
9. Deleting your data
You can remove your data at any time, in any of these ways:
- Disconnect a social account: open Magpie, go to Accounts, and press Disconnect beside the account. Magpie deletes the stored access token for that platform at once, and any of your posts scheduled for that platform go back to Approve rather than going out. Facebook and Instagram share one connection through your Facebook Page, so disconnect both to remove it completely. You can also remove Magpie inside Facebook's or LinkedIn's own settings (Instagram is connected through Facebook), which stops the token working at the platform's end.
- Leave your agency's team: ask your agency's admin to remove you (in Accounts, under Team). You can no longer sign in, your sessions and social connections are deleted at once, and anything of yours still waiting to go out is binned. Your name, email address and the record of your posts stay with the agency's account until the company is deleted, or until you ask us to delete them (below).
- Delete the whole company: an admin can delete the agency's account. In Accounts, choose Team, then Company settings, then Delete this company. Enter your password and press Yes, delete everything now. Every account in the company is deleted at once, along with its sessions, social connections and tokens, anything saved under How you write, drafts, publishing records, collected comments, settings and image bank. Pictures stored for the company are not deleted automatically: email us to have those deleted too.
- Delete your whole account and data: email nick@nestinessex.co.uk from your registered email address with the subject "Delete my Magpie data". We will delete your account, tokens and personal data within 30 days and confirm when it is done.
Deleted data can remain in our database backups for up to 30 days, and can be recovered from a deleted backup file for 7 days after that.
This section also serves as our data deletion instructions for users who connected via Facebook Login or LinkedIn.
10. Your rights
Under UK data protection law you have the right to:
- access a copy of the personal data we hold about you;
- have inaccurate data corrected;
- have your data erased;
- restrict or object to our processing, including any processing based on legitimate interests;
- data portability, where processing is based on contract and carried out by automated means;
- withdraw consent at any time, where processing is based on consent.
To exercise any of these rights, email nick@nestinessex.co.uk. We will respond within one month.
If you are unhappy with how we handle your data, you have the right to complain to the UK's supervisory authority, the Information Commissioner's Office: ico.org.uk or 0303 123 1113. We would appreciate the chance to resolve any concern first.
11. Cookies
Magpie uses two essential cookies. One keeps you signed in, for up to 30 days. The other lasts 15 minutes and is only set while you connect a Facebook or LinkedIn account, to check that the connection was started by you. We use no advertising, analytics or tracking cookies.
12. If you left a review or a comment
If you left a public Google review of an agency that uses Magpie, your public display name may appear in a social post celebrating that review. This uses only what you already published on Google. If you comment on a Facebook or Instagram post that Magpie published, your name as the platform shows it and your comment are copied into Magpie so the agency can see it and reply.
If you would like a post featuring your review taken down, your name removed from future posts, or your comment removed from Magpie, email nick@nestinessex.co.uk and we will action it promptly.
13. Changes to this policy
If we make material changes to this policy we will update the date at the top and notify active users by email or inside the app before the changes take effect.