Privacy policy

This policy explains what personal information DC Digital collects through this website and when you get in touch with us, why we collect it, who helps us look after it, how long we keep it and what your rights are. We have written it in plain English. If anything is unclear, ask us and we will explain.

It covers dcdigital.uk. Cookies and similar technologies have their own page, our cookie policy, which you should read alongside this one.

1. Who we are

DC Digital is the trading name of David Cooper Digital Ltd. We are the controller of the personal information described in this policy, which means we decide how and why it is used. SendIQ, our outbound service, is also a brand of David Cooper Digital Ltd, so this policy covers enquiries about SendIQ made on this website too.

• David Cooper Digital Ltd, trading as DC Digital
• Registered in England and Wales, company number 13710226
• Registered office: 4 Chester Court, Chester Hall Lane, Basildon, Essex SS14 3WR. This is our legal address. It is not an office open to visitors.
• VAT number: GB 448 3869 45
• Registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), reference ZB307124
• Email: [email protected]
• Phone: 07512 210345

David Cooper, our founder, is responsible for how we handle personal information. You can reach him at [email protected].

2. What we collect

We collect what this website asks you for, what you choose to send us, and some technical information. We do not take payments on this website.

When you start a project

Our Start a project form on the contact page asks for:

• your name and email address, both needed so we can reply
• your company name and phone number, which are optional
• the services you are interested in and the kind of help you want
• your website address and a short description of your project, which are optional
• if relevant to the services you choose: your current monthly ad spend, the social platforms you use, who you sell to, and whether you have run outbound campaigns before
• your budget range and timing
• how you would like us to reply and, if you ask for a call, the days and times that suit you

While you fill in the longer project form, your answers are saved in your own browser tab so you do not lose them if you move between pages. That copy stays on your device and the form clears it when you send the form. Closing the tab also ends it, although a browser’s session restore feature may keep it. Avoid entering personal information on a shared device. Our cookie policy lists it.

When you ask for a free website audit

We ask for your name, email address and website address, and optionally your company, phone number, the areas you want us to focus on and anything else you want to tell us. We review the public pages of your website only and never need your logins. We send you the finished audit as a PDF by email.

When you ask a question on our FAQs page

We ask for your question and your email address so we can answer it.

Information sent with every form

When you send any of our forms, we also receive some details about how you reached us: the page you sent it from, the time you sent it and any campaign tags in the link you followed, such as the source of an advert. If you have accepted analytics cookies, this can also include the page you first arrived on and where you came from earlier in the same visit. We use this to understand which pages and campaigns lead to enquiries. We never put your name, email address or phone number in a web address.

What happens when you send a form

When you send a form, your answers and the information above are saved as a private record in our website’s database, which is hosted by Hostinger. Stored records are never shown to visitors and can be seen only by authorised website administrators. The form is also emailed to DC Digital’s business mailbox so that we can reply, and you receive an automatic email from DC Digital to confirm we have received it. That email may repeat some of your answers so you have a record of what you sent. Both emails are sent through Google Workspace, our business email provider, using a sending plugin on the website that has its own email logging switched off. The automatic email does not mean a person has read your request or that a call is booked.

Please do not include sensitive information, such as details about your health, in any form or message. We do not need it.

When you phone, email or message us on WhatsApp

We receive your phone number or email address and whatever you tell us. Emails you send us are handled by Google Workspace, our business email provider. You can also message us on WhatsApp through our WhatsApp Business account on 07512 210345 (username @dcdigitalmarketing). If you do, WhatsApp also handles your phone number, your WhatsApp profile and information about the messages, under its own terms and privacy policy. WhatsApp is a Meta company. In the UK, its service is provided by WhatsApp LLC, based in the US. If WhatsApp is not how you would like to talk to us, use phone or email instead.

When you browse our website

• Google Analytics. We use Google Analytics to see how our website is used. It runs on every page. Before you make a cookie choice, and if you reject, it saves no cookies on your device, but it still sends Google a message about each page you view, which includes your IP address. If you accept analytics cookies, it also saves cookies so it can recognise your browser. We explain exactly what it sends in section 4 and in our cookie policy.
• Visitor insights from Apollo.io. This runs only if you accept it. Section 4 explains what it collects.
• Other cookies and browser storage. Our cookie policy lists every cookie and every item we save in your browser, says which are optional, and lets you change your choice at any time.
• Technical logs. Like most websites, our hosting and delivery providers may keep standard technical logs of requests made to our website, which can include IP addresses, browser type and the pages requested. These help keep the website running and secure.
• Spam protection. Our forms limit how many times one connection can send them. To do that, we keep a scrambled (hashed) version of the connection’s IP address for one hour. The form handler does not add your raw IP address to your enquiry. We do not use an outside spam checking service on our forms.

3. How we use it, and our lawful basis

Data protection law says we need a lawful basis for each thing we do with your information. Here they are.

What we do	Information used	Lawful basis
Confirm by email that we have received your form, reply to your enquiry, prepare a proposal and arrange a call if you ask for one	Your contact details and your answers	Our legitimate interests in responding to people who ask about our services. If you are a sole trader asking us to quote, also taking steps you have asked for before entering into a contract
Carry out your free website audit and send it to you	Your contact details and website address	Our legitimate interests in providing the audit you asked for
Answer a question you send from our FAQs page	Your question and email address	Our legitimate interests in answering your question
Understand which pages and campaigns bring us enquiries	The information sent with every form (section 2)	Our legitimate interests in improving our website and marketing
Keep our website and forms secure and stop spam	Technical logs and the hashed IP address	Our legitimate interests in keeping our website secure
Count visits and see how our website is used when you have not accepted analytics cookies, using Google Analytics without cookies	The details Google Analytics sends to Google without cookies, including your IP address (section 4)	Our legitimate interests in understanding how our website is used, so we can improve it. You can object (section 9)
Measure how our website is used with analytics cookies	Information collected by Google Analytics cookies	Your consent
See which companies visit our website and which pages they look at, using Apollo.io	Information collected by Apollo.io (section 4)	Your consent
Run our work with you if you become a client, and invoice you	Contact and billing details	Performing our contract with you or your business
Keep tax and accounting records and meet other legal duties	Client and billing records	Legal obligation

Where we rely on legitimate interests, we have weighed them against your interests and rights. You can object at any time (section 9).

An enquiry does not sign you up to marketing emails. We will contact you about your enquiry itself.

You do not have to give us anything. We need your name and email address to reply to an enquiry, your email address to answer a question, and your website address to carry out an audit. Everything else is optional.

We do not make decisions about you automatically. The website sends an automatic email to confirm we have received your form, but it does not decide anything about you.

4. Who we share it with

We do not sell your personal information. We share it with the providers that help us run our website and our business, and only as far as they need it.

Provider	What they do for us	Where the information is held
Hostinger	Hosts our website, including the private copies of form submissions it keeps	Website hosting in the UK, with backups stored in Germany
Google (Google Workspace)	Our business email provider. It sends the email telling us about your form and the automatic email confirming we received it. It also holds our mailbox, including those emails, any emails you send us and our replies	Google’s data processing terms say it may process this information in any country where Google or its subprocessors have facilities (section 7)
Google (Google Analytics)	Measures how our website is used, as described below	Google LLC is based in the US
Cloudflare	Our website is delivered through Cloudflare’s network, so it handles the request details your browser sends, including your IP address	Cloudflare’s global network; Cloudflare, Inc. is based in the US
Apollo.io (ZenLeads, Inc.)	Visitor insights, only if you accept it (see below)	Apollo is based in the US
WhatsApp (WhatsApp LLC)	Handles messages only if you choose to message us on WhatsApp	WhatsApp LLC is based in the US

Our website is not set up to pass your form details to a customer relationship system or a marketing email tool. If that ever changes, we will update this policy first.

Google Analytics

Google’s Site Kit plugin adds Google Analytics to every page of our website. It loads from Google’s servers as soon as a page opens. We have chosen to run it in what Google calls advanced consent mode. This means that before you make a cookie choice, and if you reject analytics cookies, Google Analytics saves and reads no cookies on your device, but it still sends Google a message when you open a page and further messages about what happens on it, such as how far you scroll, when you start to fill in a form and when you click a link to contact us. These messages include the address and title of the page, the page you came from, your screen size, your language setting, details of your browser and device, and whether you have accepted cookies. Like every request your browser makes, they also reach Google with your IP address. They carry a random number that changes on every page you open, not a stored identifier. Google says Google Analytics does not log or store IP addresses, and that it uses these messages to estimate the visits of people who did not accept analytics cookies. We chose this set up so that we can count visits from people who do not accept cookies. It means Rejecting stops the cookies but not these messages.

If you accept analytics cookies, Google Analytics saves two cookies so it can recognise your browser across pages and on later visits, and the same messages carry the identifier from those cookies. Whatever you choose, our website tells Google that advertising cookies and the use of your data for advertising are not allowed. Our cookie policy lists the cookies and explains how to stop the messages completely, with Google’s free opt out browser add on or a content blocker.

Apollo.io visitor insights

If you accept visitor insights in our cookie banner, with Accept all or its own switch in Cookie settings, our website uses Apollo.io, a sales intelligence service run by ZenLeads, Inc. in the United States, to show us which companies visit the website and which pages they view. Until you accept it, Apollo’s code is not loaded and nothing is sent to Apollo. When it runs, Apollo receives the address of each page you open, the website you came from, any campaign tags, a random ID saved in your browser and, as with any web request, your IP address. Our lawful basis is your consent, which you can withdraw at any time with Cookie settings at the bottom of every page. Apollo offers an option to identify individual people who visit from the United States. We have not switched it on.

Apollo processes this information to provide its service to us. Its privacy policy also says it may use website visitors’ IP addresses to build and check its own business contact database, for which Apollo is a separate controller. Apollo’s privacy policy explains how to ask Apollo to remove your information.

Links to client websites, social networks and other external websites take you to services covered by their own privacy information.

We may also share information with our professional advisers, such as our accountants and lawyers, with a regulator, court or the police where the law requires it, and with a buyer if our business is ever sold, in which case they would have to protect it in the same way.

5. If we contacted you first

If we contacted you as part of an outbound campaign run by SendIQ, SendIQ’s privacy notice on sendiq.co.uk explains where we found your details and how we use them. You can tell us to stop at any time by replying to the message or emailing [email protected], and we will.

6. If we work together

If you become a client, we keep the contact and billing details we need to run the work and invoice you. When we work on your marketing, we may handle personal information on your behalf, for example in your website forms, advertising accounts, analytics or customer lists. For that work we act on your instructions as your processor, and your own privacy notice applies to the people whose information it is.

7. Sending information outside the UK

Some of the providers above are based in the US or may hold information in other countries. When they do, the transfer needs a safeguard that UK law allows.

• Hostinger. Our website is hosted in the UK and its backups are stored in Germany. The UK treats the EU as providing adequate protection.
• Google Workspace, our email provider. Google’s data processing terms say it may process the emails in our mailbox, including the emails about your form, in any country where Google or its subprocessors have facilities. For information sent to the US, Google says it relies on its certification under the UK Extension to the EU US Data Privacy Framework. For any other country that the UK does not treat as providing adequate protection, its terms provide for standard contractual clauses.
• Google Analytics. The messages described in section 4 go to Google LLC in the US. Google says it is certified under the UK Extension to the EU US Data Privacy Framework.
• Apollo.io. Apollo says it protects transfers of personal information from the UK to the United States with standard contractual clauses, including the UK’s international data transfer addendum, and through the UK Extension to the EU US Data Privacy Framework.
• WhatsApp and Cloudflare. These are US companies with global networks. They handle information under their own terms. If you would like detail on the safeguards they use, ask us.

If you would like more detail about any of these safeguards, ask us.

8. How long we keep it

We keep personal information only for as long as we need it for the reason we collected it, and then delete it. In more detail:

Information	How long we keep it
The copy of each form submission stored on our website	Only as long as we need it to deal with your enquiry, then it is deleted
Enquiries, audit requests, questions, emails and WhatsApp messages, including the emails about your form in our mailbox	Only as long as we have a business reason, such as dealing with your enquiry and any follow up, then they are deleted
Your free website audit report	With your enquiry, for the same period
Client records	While we work together, and afterwards for as long as tax, accounting and other laws require us to keep them
The hashed IP address used for spam protection	One hour
Your cookie choices	6 months, then we ask again
Cookies and browser storage	Each has its own lifetime, listed in our cookie policy
Google Analytics data	For the period set in our Google Analytics account
Information collected by Apollo.io	Set by Apollo under its own terms and privacy policy
Technical logs and backups kept by our hosting and delivery providers	Set by each provider for security and troubleshooting

When we delete an email from our mailbox, Google’s published data processing terms say it removes it from its systems within 180 days at most.

9. Your rights

You have the right to:

• ask for a copy of the personal information we hold about you
• ask us to correct anything that is wrong or incomplete
• ask us to delete your information
• ask us to restrict how we use it while a concern is looked into
• object to us using it on the basis of our legitimate interests. If you object to direct marketing, we will always stop
• ask us to move information you gave us to another organisation, where it is processed on the basis of consent or a contract
• withdraw your consent for cookies and visitor insights at any time, using the Cookie settings link at the bottom of every page

Withdrawing consent stops Google Analytics saving cookies and stops Apollo’s code loading, but it does not stop the cookieless messages Google Analytics sends (section 4). You can object to those. Because they carry no stored identifier, we cannot recognise your browser to switch them off for you. The quickest way to stop them is Google’s Google Analytics opt out browser add on or a content blocker in your browser. You can also email us and we will consider your objection.

To use any of these rights, email [email protected] or call 07512 210345. Our contact page has the same details. It is free. We may need to check your identity first. We will reply within one month, and tell you if we need longer because a request is complex.

10. Complaints

If you are unhappy with how we have handled your personal information, please tell us first at [email protected], so we can put it right. We will acknowledge your complaint within 30 days, look into it and tell you what we have found and what we will do, without undue delay.

You also have the right to complain to the ICO, the UK’s data protection regulator. It will usually ask whether you have raised your concern with us first. You can do this on the ICO’s complaints page.

11. How we protect your information

Our website uses an encrypted connection (HTTPS). Form submissions are stored privately and are never shown on the website. The emails about your form pass from our website to Google over an encrypted connection. We keep access to our systems limited, and our providers are bound by their own data protection terms. No system is completely secure, but we take care to protect your information and would tell you and the ICO about a serious breach where the law requires it.

12. Children

Our website is for businesses. It is not aimed at children, and we do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 18.

13. Changes to this policy

If we change how we use personal information, we will update this page and the date at the top. If a change affects the cookies we use, we will ask for your choice again.