How your data is handled

You send us the list. We run the checks on our own systems, automatically and row by row, and a person approves the finished check before we hand the files back to you. You are not given an account and you are not asked to operate anything. Nothing is delivered without a person approving it first.

The records we derive from your file and the finished files we produce are held in the European Union, in Ireland. Some limited data leaves the UK and EU, and section 5 of our Data Processing Terms lists each case. Our hosting provider states that data is encrypted in transit and at rest.

We use a small number of specialist providers to carry out particular checks, for example whether a mailbox accepts mail. Every one of them is listed, with what it does and where it processes data, on our sub-processors page. We tell you before that list changes.

Before we touch a file we ask you for one short written instruction: who you are instructing us on behalf of, that you are authorised to do so, what is in the file, and what you are asking us to do with it. We keep that instruction as the record. It is the standard data protection step for this kind of work and it applies to a free check exactly as it applies to paid work.

Each kind of data we hold is kept, and deleted, on its own terms, set out below.

• The file you send us is deleted automatically 30 days after it arrives. It does not wait for you to ask.
• The working records we derive from your file are kept while we are working together, so that we can compare your next full check with this one. There is no automatic deletion after a fixed period. They are deleted whenever you ask, and when our engagement ends. A separate copy of what we handed back for each contact is deleted automatically 365 days after the check that produced it; the working records, and the check results held on them, are not.
• The finished files we hand back to you are kept while we are working together, so that we can send them again if you ask and compare your next full check with this one. They are deleted whenever you ask, and when our engagement ends.
• Records that processing happened, meaning dates, counts, which version of these terms you accepted and our accounting entries, are kept after your data is deleted. We have to be able to show what we did and on what terms. They hold none of your contacts.

A free check is run separately from all other work. Everything for it, the file, the records and the results, is deleted automatically seven days after the file is processed. You never see or use it. A file we never process is deleted seven days after it arrives.

If your own retention policy needs something shorter, tell us in your instruction and we will apply it.

We do not create records in your systems, and we never change or overwrite what is already in them. Where you connect a CRM and ask us to write back, we add only to the Datuma fields we create in it, and that is the only writing we ever do. We never sell the data you send us.