Privacy policy
This notice explains what personal data SoftAware Commerce Ltd collects through this website, why we collect it, who we share it with and what rights you have. It is written to describe how the site actually works, in plain English.
Who we are
SoftAware Commerce Ltd is a UK e-commerce agency and is the data controller for personal data collected through this website. If you have a question about this notice or about your data, email [email protected].
The short version
- We collect the details you send us through the enquiry form or by email, and we use them to reply to you.
- Like every website, ours keeps technical logs for security and troubleshooting.
- We do not use advertising or analytics cookies, and there are no third-party trackers on this site at the time of writing.
- We do not sell personal data, and we do not add you to a marketing list because you sent an enquiry.
What we collect, why, and our lawful basis
| Data | Why we use it | Lawful basis under UK GDPR |
|---|---|---|
| Enquiry form: your name, email address, message and, if you provide them, your company, store URL, platform and the kind of help you need | To read your enquiry, reply to it and, if you wish, prepare a proposal | Taking steps at your request before entering into a contract, and our legitimate interest in responding to people who contact us |
| Emails you send us directly, and our replies | To correspond with you | The same as for the enquiry form |
| Server and security logs: IP address, browser user agent, the pages requested, and the date and time | To keep the site secure, block abuse and diagnose faults | Our legitimate interest in running a secure and reliable website |
| A temporary count of form submissions, linked to a hashed form of your IP address | To limit spam sent through the enquiry form | Our legitimate interest in protecting the form from abuse |
If you become a client, we will also hold the information needed to deliver the work and to meet our legal obligations, such as contract and invoicing records. That is covered by our agreement with you.
The enquiry form
When you send the form on our contact page, your enquiry is stored in this website’s database, where it is visible only to authorised users of the site’s admin area, and a copy is sent by email to our team. Your name, email address and message are required. Company, store URL, platform and the kind of help you need are optional.
The form does not use a third-party captcha, sets no cookies and loads nothing from another company’s servers. To stop automated spam it uses a hidden field, a timing check and a limit on how many messages can be sent from one IP address in a short period. That limit relies on a temporary counter that expires after about an hour. Your IP address is not saved with your enquiry.
Please do not include sensitive personal information, passwords or your customers’ data in an enquiry.
Server and security logs
Our hosting provider and our content delivery and security provider, Cloudflare, record technical details of requests made to the site, such as IP address, user agent and the pages requested. These logs are kept for a limited period and are used for security, to prevent abuse and to diagnose faults. We do not use them to build profiles of visitors.
Cookies
This site does not use advertising or analytics cookies. Cloudflare may set a strictly necessary security cookie to distinguish people from automated traffic. The detail is in our cookie policy.
Who we share data with
We do not sell personal data or share it for anyone else’s marketing. We use a small number of service providers who process data on our behalf, under contract and only on our instructions:
- Our hosting provider, which runs the server and database where the website and enquiries are stored.
- Cloudflare, which delivers the site and protects it from attacks, and so processes the requests your browser makes to it.
- Our email provider, which delivers and stores the emails we send and receive, including enquiry notifications.
We may also disclose data where the law requires it, or to professional advisers where that is necessary to establish or defend a legal claim.
Our site links to other websites, including our LinkedIn page. Those sites have their own privacy notices and we are not responsible for how they handle your data.
International transfers
Some of our service providers may process data outside the United Kingdom. Where that happens, we rely on a safeguard recognised by UK data protection law, such as UK adequacy regulations for the country concerned, or the International Data Transfer Agreement or Addendum issued by the Information Commissioner’s Office.
How long we keep data
We keep personal data for no longer than is necessary for the purpose it was collected for.
- Enquiries and related emails are kept while the conversation is active and for a reasonable period afterwards, in case you come back to us, and are then deleted. If an enquiry leads to a contract, the correspondence becomes part of our client records.
- Server and security logs are kept for a limited period and then deleted or overwritten.
- Client and accounting records are kept for as long as the law requires.
You can ask us to delete your enquiry at any time by emailing [email protected]. We will delete it unless we have a legal reason to keep it, and we will tell you if that is the case.
How we protect data
Access to enquiries is restricted to the people at SoftAware Commerce Ltd who need it to reply to you. The site sits behind Cloudflare’s security services. No system is perfectly secure, so if we ever become aware of a breach that is likely to affect your rights, we will tell you and the regulator as the law requires.
Your rights
Under UK data protection law you have the right to:
- Access the personal data we hold about you.
- Rectification: have inaccurate data corrected.
- Erasure: have your data deleted in certain circumstances.
- Restriction: ask us to limit how we use your data in certain circumstances.
- Object to processing that is based on our legitimate interests.
- Data portability: receive data you gave us in a commonly used format, where that right applies.
We do not make decisions about you by automated means, and we do not carry out profiling.
To use any of these rights, email [email protected]. There is no charge. We may need to confirm your identity, and we will respond within the time the law allows, which is normally one month.
Complaints
If you are unhappy with how we have handled your data, please tell us first so that we can try to put it right. You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office, the UK data protection regulator, at ico.org.uk.
Children
This website is aimed at businesses. It is not intended for children and we do not knowingly collect personal data from them. If you believe a child has sent us personal data, contact us and we will delete it.
If you are a client: your customers’ data
When we build or support a client’s store, we may have access to personal data about that store’s customers, for example orders and accounts in a Magento or Shopify admin. In that situation the client is the data controller and SoftAware Commerce Ltd acts as a data processor. We process that data only on the client’s instructions and under a written contract that includes the data processing terms required by UK GDPR. This notice does not cover that data. Customers of a store we work on should read that store’s own privacy notice.
Changes to this notice
We will update this notice if the way the site handles personal data changes, for example if we introduce analytics. The date of the latest update is shown on this page.