Privacy notice

Who we are

Dowco Ltd, trading as British Software Company, is the controller of the personal information described here. Registered in England and Wales, company number 13038356. Registered office: 5 Holmwood Avenue, Whitley Bay, NE25 8NF. Questions about this notice or your information: hello@dowco.co. We do not have, and are not required to have, a data protection officer.

What we collect when you contact us

Through the enquiry form: your name, email address, and anything you choose to add (phone number, business name, message). Automatically: the page of our site you sent the form from, the date and time, your IP address and your browser type (user agent). If you email or phone us instead, we keep the correspondence and any notes we make.

Why we use it and our legal basis

We use your information for the following purposes.

• Replying to your enquiry, giving you a quote and discussing a possible project: our legitimate interest in running and promoting our business, and, where you are the prospective customer yourself, taking steps you ask for before a contract (UK GDPR Article 6(1)(f) and 6(1)(b)).
• Keeping our website and systems secure and preventing spam and abuse (this is why we record IP address and browser type): our legitimate interest in network and information security (Article 6(1)(f)).
• Understanding which pages of our site lead to enquiries, so we can improve it (the page you came from): our legitimate interest in improving our service (Article 6(1)(f)).
• If you become a client: performing our contract with you and meeting our legal obligations such as accounting and tax records (Article 6(1)(b) and 6(1)(c)).

We do not use your information to send marketing. We do not make automated decisions about you and we do not profile you.

Who sees it

The people at Dowco Ltd who deal with enquiries. Service providers who process it on our behalf under contract: Hetzner Online GmbH (hosting of our website and enquiry database, servers located in the United States); Amazon Web Services (email delivery, servers in London). We do not sell or share your information with anyone else, except where the law requires it.

Transfers outside the UK

Your information is stored on servers in the United States operated by our hosting provider. We protect it with the UK International Data Transfer Addendum in our contract with the provider and have assessed the risks of that transfer. Email notifications are processed in the UK.

How long we keep it

We remove the IP address and browser type from the record within 30 days, and we delete enquiries that do not lead to work within 24 months of our last contact. Client records, contracts and invoices: 6 years after the end of the financial year they relate to, because tax and company law require it. We review stored information regularly and delete or anonymise what we no longer need.

Your rights

You can ask us for a copy of your information, ask us to correct or delete it, ask us to restrict how we use it, object to our use of it (including an absolute right to object to any marketing), and ask for a copy in a portable format. Where we rely on your consent you can withdraw it at any time. Write to hello@dowco.co; we will respond within one month. You are not under any legal or contractual obligation to give us your information, but we cannot reply to an enquiry without a way to contact you.

Complaints

If you are unhappy with how we have handled your information, please complain to us first at hello@dowco.co. We will acknowledge your complaint within 30 days, look into it and tell you the outcome. You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office: ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint, or 0303 123 1113.

Cookies and similar technologies

This website does not set cookies and does not store or read anything on your device. We do not use advertising or analytics trackers.

Changes

We will update this page if what we do changes, and show the date at the top.