Legal
Privacy Policy
This describes what SearchScallers actually collects, why, who else touches it, and what you can require us to do about it. It is written from how the site is built rather than copied from a template.
Last updated
Who we are
SearchScallers ("we", "us") operates https://searchscallers.com. For the purposes of the UK and EU General Data Protection Regulation, we are the data controller for information collected through this website. You can reach us at [email protected] or .
What we collect
Information you give us
When you submit our contact form, we collect:
- Your name, and your business name if you provide one
- Your email address
- Your phone number, if you choose to provide one — this field is optional
- Your website address, if you have one
- The content of your message
- A record of the consent you gave: which permissions you agreed to, the exact wording shown to you at the time, and a timestamp
Information collected automatically
When you submit the form — and only then — our server records some technical detail alongside it. We keep it in two separate places, because the two have different purposes and different lifetimes.
| Kept as | What it is | What it is for |
|---|---|---|
| Consent record | Your IP address, your browser's user agent string, the country your request came from, the page you submitted from, and the exact consent wording shown to you, with a timestamp | Evidence. If you later dispute having agreed to be contacted, the law puts the burden on us to show that you did. |
| Enquiry record | Your approximate location (city and region, worked out from your connection — we do not use GPS and we do not ask your device for it), your timezone, the first page of our site you arrived on, and the website that sent you to us if any | Understanding which parts of our site and which sources actually bring people to us, so we know what is worth writing more of. |
Your IP address is stored only in the consent record, never against the enquiry record. It is the most identifying item here and it has one specific job, so we do not keep a second copy of it for any other purpose.
We do not use any of this to build a profile of you, we do not track you across other websites, and we do not attempt to work out who you are beyond what you typed into the form yourself. The first page you arrived on is recorded once, for your visit only, and is discarded when you close the tab unless you submit a form.
If your browser sends a Global Privacy Control signal, none of the attribution above is collected at all. Nothing is stored on your device, no landing page is recorded, and your enquiry is processed without it. See our Cookie Policy for the mechanism.
Our hosting provider processes standard server request data to deliver the site and protect it from abuse. We do not maintain separate access logs of our own.
Analytics. We currently run no analytics or tracking on this website at all. If that changes, this policy will be updated before the change goes live, and anything that sets a cookie will be gated behind your explicit consent.
Why we process it, and on what legal basis
| Purpose | Data | Legal basis (GDPR) |
|---|---|---|
| Replying to your enquiry | Name, email, message, business, website | Consent, and steps taken at your request prior to entering a contract |
| Calling or texting you | Phone number | Consent — separately given, and never assumed from the form alone |
| Proving consent was given | Consent text, timestamp, IP, user agent | Legal obligation and legitimate interest in defending a claim |
| Knowing which pages and sources bring in enquiries | Approximate location, timezone, landing page, referring website | Legitimate interest in understanding how our own site performs — balanced against your privacy by keeping it coarse, session-scoped and free of your IP address |
| Keeping the site running and secure | Request data handled by our host | Legitimate interest in operating and protecting the service |
A specific note about your phone number
The phone field on our contact form is optional. If you fill it in, that alone does not permit us to call or text you for marketing purposes — under the US Telephone Consumer Protection Act that requires separate express written consent, which is the unticked checkbox beneath the form.
If you did not tick it, we will reply by email only. If you did, we keep a record of the exact wording you agreed to and when. You can withdraw that consent at any time by replying STOP to any message, or by emailing us.
Who else touches your data
We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it for anyone else's marketing. We use the following service providers, each of which processes data only on our instructions:
| Provider | What they do | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Cloudflare, Inc. | Website hosting, DNS and CDN delivery, and the database in which enquiries and consent records are stored | United States |
| Resend (Plus Five Five, Inc.) | Delivering the email we send you about your enquiry, and the copy that notifies us of it | United States |
We may also disclose information where we are legally required to, or where it is necessary to establish or defend a legal claim.
How long we keep it
- Enquiries that do not become clients: 730 days (about 24 months), then deleted. Every enquiry is stored with its own expiry date attached, and deletion is a routine job rather than something we have to remember to do.
- Client records: for the duration of the relationship and up to 7 years afterwards, where tax and accounting rules require it.
- Consent records: retained for at least 5 years after the consent is withdrawn or expires. These are kept deliberately longer than the underlying enquiry, because their entire purpose is to demonstrate what was agreed if it is ever questioned.
Your rights
Depending on where you live, you may have the right to:
- Know what personal information we hold about you and get a copy of it
- Correct information that is inaccurate
- Have your information deleted
- Object to or restrict how we process it
- Withdraw consent at any time, without affecting processing already carried out
- Receive your data in a portable format
- Not be discriminated against for exercising any of these rights
One thing worth being plain about: if you ask us to delete your data, your enquiry and everything we recorded about how you found us goes. Your consent record stays, because it is the proof of what you agreed to and when — including the proof that you asked us to stop. Destroying that would leave you with less protection, not more. We built the two as separate records specifically so that erasing one does not force us to erase the other, and we will tell you exactly what was kept.
To exercise any of these, see Your Privacy Choices or email [email protected]. We respond within 30 days and we do not charge for it.
If you are in the EU or UK and you believe we have handled your data improperly, you have the right to complain to your national data protection authority. We would rather you told us first so we can put it right.
California residents
We do not sell or share personal information as those terms are defined under the CCPA/CPRA. We have not done so in the preceding 12 months. We honour the Global Privacy Control browser signal automatically — if your browser sends it, we treat it as an opt-out without asking you again.
Children
This site is intended for businesses. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 16. If you believe a child has provided us information, email us and we will delete it.
Security
The site is served over HTTPS. Form submissions are transmitted encrypted. Access to enquiry data is limited to the people who need it to do the work. We are honest about the limits here: no system is perfectly secure, and any provider claiming otherwise is overstating it.
Changes to this policy
If we change what we collect or who processes it, we will update this page and change the date at the top before the change takes effect. For anything significant, we will contact people whose data we already hold.
Questions about this document? Email [email protected] or write to us at the address in the footer.