Privacy notice

Who we are

If you only use the free plot check

You do not need an account and we do not ask who you are. You give us a place, typed in your own words, and a screenshot of a historic map viewer.

We never keep the screenshot. It is read and discarded inside the same request. It is not written to storage, not written to a column and not written to a log.

We keep, for seven days, what you typed, the link to the map you were pointed at, what the read found, and the date. If you decline the result we delete it immediately.

We also keep one thing about your connection, for forty eight hours. To stop one visitor using the free tool all day we count reads against a salted one way hash of your network address, with the salt held outside the database. It is not your address and it cannot be turned back into one.

If you sign up to the newsletter

If you sign up, we keep your email address, where on the site you signed up, and the dates you asked and confirmed. Nothing is sent until you follow the link in the first email, and every issue has a way to leave.

We also count sign-ups against the same salted one-way hash of your network address as the free plot check, for forty eight hours, so the form cannot be used to send email to strangers.

If you buy the book

If you buy the PDF, Paddle passes us the email address you paid with and we send the book to it once. We keep that address and the date it was sent for one year, so a question about delivery can be answered.

If you have an account

What you give us on purpose is your email address, and, if you fill it in, the name, address, email and phone that print on letters you send. Those are the only account level personal fields we hold.

What you build is everything you record about your project: the plot, the budget, the programme, the specification, the enquiries and orders, the site diary, the safety paperwork, the snags, and every file you upload. Both storage areas are private and nothing is served from a public address.

We hold your evidence and we do not interpret it. Your own files come back exactly as you uploaded them, byte for byte.

Information about other people that you put in

This is the part worth reading carefully. A build record is full of other people: an engineer's mobile number, a contractor's contact, the person who signed an induction, the party who returned a price, and your own written opinion of a business you dealt with.

We hold it because you recorded it. We do not use it for anything of our own, it leaves with you when you export, and it is deleted when your record is. There is no separate clock for it.

Why we are allowed to hold it

Who else touches it

We use a small number of providers and we sell nothing to anyone. The product you sign in to has no advertising, no analytics and no tracking. The public pages use Google Analytics only if you say yes to cookies, and nothing from Google loads until you do. Every cookie is listed under Cookies below.

The historic map viewer is a link, not a service. We host, licence and serve no maps. You look at a third party's viewer in your own browser and send us a screenshot of what you saw.

Our database and our files are in London. Two providers are in the United States: the model provider, so a document you send to be read leaves the United Kingdom for the length of that request; and, only if you say yes to cookies, Google Analytics. Nothing else does.

The features that read documents

They run only when you press the button, on the document you chose. Nothing is read in the background and nothing you file is sent anywhere on its own.

We record which model produced a draft and on what date, so that question stays answerable later, and we count how much you use in pages. That meter holds the project, the purpose, the model and the counts. It holds no part of any document.

Anything we draft is shown to you separately from anything you wrote, and nothing goes out in your name until you have settled it.

How long we keep things

How it is kept safe

• Everything is sent over an encrypted connection.
• There is no password. You sign in with a link sent to your email address, so there is no password for us to hold or for anyone to steal.
• The database enforces, row by row, that an account can reach only its own data. That is a rule inside the database rather than a check in our code.
• Both file stores are private. Nothing is served from a public address.
• Keys and secrets are held on the server and never sent to your browser.
• The database is backed up every night.

Cookies

The ones that sign you in: a session cookie from our sign in provider, and a short lived one that completes a sign in link. If you have signed up to the newsletter, one that opens the live tools list without signing in; it holds a code, not your address, and lasts thirteen months. And one that remembers your answer to the cookie question, for six months.

If you say yes to that question, and only then: Google Analytics, which tells us which pages people read and which adverts brought them, using Google's own cookies; and one of ours that remembers how you arrived, for example from one of our adverts or letters, for ninety days, so that if you buy we know which route worked. If you came from a Google advert it also holds Google's click reference, which we keep with your purchase for ninety days and then delete. You can change your answer at any time from Cookie settings at the foot of every page.

Your rights, and how to use them

You can ask us for a copy of what we hold, ask us to correct it, ask us to delete it, ask us to restrict what we do with it, ask for it in a portable form, or object to what we do with it. Write to hello@themodernhousebuilder.co.uk and we will deal with it within one month.

Two of those you can already do yourself without asking. Once your first week is up you can export your whole record, including your own files byte for byte, whenever you like. During the trial week the download is held back, so write to us and we will send it. And the free plot check deletes itself.

If you think we have got something wrong you can complain to us first, and you can complain to a regulator at any time: the Information Commissioner's Office if you are in the United Kingdom, or the Data Protection Commission in Ireland.

Changes

If we change how we handle your information we will say so here, and we will tell you at least thirty days before it takes effect if the change affects you.