A PropTech company says virtual tours should now be made to abide by GDPR regulations to increase privacy for landlords and vendors advertising their homes.

Stewart Bailey, director of PropTech firm Virtual Viewing, says: “Client privacy should be the absolute priority when creating virtual tours of existing homes. We warn our partners that particularly self-made 3D tours carry an increased risk of exposing personal details of the current vendors, chancing a breach of data protection. 

“Our view is that CGI should be used to create carefully modified 3D tours that remove the security threats at source but without leaving tell-tale blurs or blocks in the image. 

“Blurs and blocked out areas are almost just as bad as pointing an arrow saying ‘motion detectors here’!  

“For new build we always encourage our clients to go full CGI. The results are indistinguishable from photography, reusable at a fraction of the cost and totally secure. As the demand for virtual tours and PropTech solutions continues to grow, we support the idea of virtual tours becoming GDPR compliant in order to safeguard consumers.”