Privacy Policy

We have not appointed a Data Protection Officer (DPO) as we do not meet the mandatory thresholds under UK GDPR Art. 37. All data protection enquiries are handled by our Privacy Contact at the address above.

2.1 Account Registration

• Full name, email address, password (stored as bcrypt hash — never in plaintext)
• Phone number (optional)
• Job role and employer sector
• Immigration / visa status (optional — you may select "prefer not to say")
• Union membership and union name (optional)
• Consent timestamp and policy version

2.2 Incident Reports

• Workplace name, specific location, date and time of incident
• Free-text description of what happened
• Name and role of any person involved (manager, colleague, patient)
• Witness names and contact information (if provided)
• Injury details, medical attention sought, days off work
• Retaliation events, timeline, and description
• Police involvement and crime reference number
• Details of any immigration-related coercion by an employer

2.3 Evidence Files

• File contents (photos, PDFs, documents) stored in encrypted object storage
• File metadata: name, type, size, SHA-256 hash, upload timestamp
• EXIF metadata extracted automatically: GPS coordinates, device make/model, original capture timestamp — you are notified of this at upload
• Masked IP address and browser user-agent at upload time

2.4 Legal Claims

• Case type, status, notes, and linked incident report
• Legal representative contact details (name, firm, email, phone)
• Retaliation event log
• Schedule of loss: date of birth, employment start/end dates, pay figures, pension loss, injury-to-feelings damages
• Legal deadlines (tribunal filing dates, limitation dates)

2.5 Technical & Usage Data

• Masked IP address — the last octet of your IPv4 address (or last 4 groups of IPv6) are zeroed before storage. We never store your full IP.
• Browser user-agent string (for device compatibility diagnostics)
• Audit log entries: action type, resource accessed, timestamp (no report content)
• Session authentication cookies (HTTP-only, Secure, SameSite=Lax)

2.6 Anonymous Submissions

If you use our anonymous submission option, no account or email is required. We store: incident type, workplace sector, region (UK region, not precise location), retaliation flag, injury flag, and visa flag. We also generate a UUID token you can use to claim the report later.

UK GDPR Article 6 requires a lawful basis for every processing activity. Article 9 requires an additional condition for special category data. The table below sets out our basis for each activity.

• Providing the service — storing and displaying your reports, evidence, and legal cases
• Authentication — verifying your identity on each request
• Communications — confirmation emails, legal deadline reminders, organisation invites
• AI incident classification — automatically categorising your report to assist you in understanding its urgency and type. This runs entirely on our platform; no data is sent to external AI APIs without your knowledge.
• Evidence integrity — computing SHA-256 hashes and optional blockchain timestamps to create tamper-evident records for legal proceedings
• Security and fraud prevention — rate limiting, audit logging, and abuse detection
• Platform stability — error monitoring via Sentry (body stripped; see §10)
• Legal compliance — responding to lawful requests from courts or regulators

We share your data only with the sub-processors listed below, each subject to a signed Data Processing Agreement (DPA) as required by UK GDPR Art. 28. View full sub-processor details →

Sharing with Organisations

If your account is linked to an employer or union organisation, you may choose to share specific incident reports or legal cases with that organisation. This sharing is always worker-initiated and explicit — we never share your data with an organisation without your action. You can revoke any share at any time from your reports page.

Legal Disclosure

We may disclose data if required by a court order, statutory authority, or applicable law. Where permitted by law, we will notify you before disclosing.

Three sub-processors (Resend, Stripe, Sentry) are based in the United States. All international transfers to the US are governed by Standard Contractual Clauses (SCCs) approved by the UK ICO as an appropriate transfer mechanism under UK GDPR Chapter V. Copies of the SCCs are available on request.

Vercel may process request metadata (not personal data content) in US and EU edge locations as part of content delivery. This is governed by Vercel's DPA and SCCs.

We keep data only as long as necessary for the purpose it was collected, or as required by law. The table below sets out our retention periods.

Hard-deletion after account closure

When you request account deletion, your profile is immediately pseudonymised (name replaced with "Deleted User"; contact fields nulled; visa/union data cleared). All incident report PII fields (descriptions, names, locations, medical details) are anonymised within the same request. Witness records are hard-deleted immediately. The remaining structural data is permanently deleted within 30 days.

Despite these measures, no system is completely secure. If you discover a security vulnerability, please report it responsibly to privacy@safeguardworkers.co.uk.

We use no advertising cookies, no cross-site tracking, and no fingerprinting. The Sentry session replay feature is disabled by default and only enabled with your explicit consent. Text and media are masked even when replay is enabled.

You have the following rights. Most can be exercised directly in your Account Settings. We will respond within 30 days (UK GDPR Art. 12(3)).

To exercise rights not available in Account Settings (rectification, portability, complex erasure), email privacy@safeguardworkers.co.uk with "GDPR Rights Request" in the subject line. We may ask you to verify your identity.

Our service is intended for workers aged 16 and over. We do not knowingly collect personal data from anyone under 16. If you believe we have done so, please contact us immediately at privacy@safeguardworkers.co.uk and we will delete the data without delay.

We will update this policy when our processing activities change. For material changes (new special category processing, new sub-processors, changes to retention) we will notify registered users by email and require re-consent where the lawful basis is consent. Minor clarifications will be noted in the version history.

The current version is 1.0, effective 21 March 2026. Older versions are available on request.

Right to complain to the ICO

If you are not satisfied with how we handle your personal data or respond to your rights request, you have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), the UK supervisory authority: