Privacy notice

Who we are

Commercial Insights Group runs this website and the lead service it describes. For anything about your data, email [email protected].

When you request access

We collect your name, company, work email, phone number if you give it, the areas you cover and anything you write in the message box. We use it to reply to you and, if you go ahead, to set up your account. Our lawful basis is our legitimate interest in answering business enquiries, and taking the steps you ask for before a contract.

When you have an account

We keep your name, company and email; your password, stored only as a one-way hash that we can’t read; your search criteria; the leads delivered to you and the verdicts you give them; and the times you sign in. We use this to provide the service under our contract with you or your organisation, which is our lawful basis. If you upload a list of the companies you already deal with, we read only the company names from it, keep them only to leave those companies out of your sheets, and delete them when you remove the list or your account closes.

Security records

Our servers record IP addresses and the pages requested, and we keep an audit log of sign-ins and account changes. We use these to keep the service secure and to investigate misuse. Our lawful basis is our legitimate interest in security.

The business records in our leads

Our leads are built from public registers. Council business rates lists name the businesses that occupy premises, with addresses, rateable values and dates. Before anything else, we remove sole traders, individuals, and any entries a council has withheld as personal data.

Some leads also name people in their work roles, as public registers publish them: a company’s current directors, from the Companies House register, and a school’s head teacher, from the Department for Education’s register of schools. We show these names only to the client who receives the lead, so they know whom to ask for, and we never add personal phone numbers or email addresses. Our clients also see each school’s head teacher, as the register names them, in a list of the schools in their area. Each lead goes to one client only, as part of the service it pays for. Our lawful basis is our legitimate interest, and our clients’, in business-to-business contact.

If you are named in our data and would rather not be, or think your details are wrong, email us. We will delete your name and keep a short record of your request, so that it stays off our leads even while a register still shows it.

How a lead’s dates are worked out

Most office leases aren’t published anywhere. Where a lease isn’t on a public register, we estimate when it is likely to end or reach a break from the date the business became liable for business rates at the address and a typical lease length, and we label the result as an estimate. The estimate is about the business’s premises, not about any person. We don’t make decisions about people, and nothing we do with a name has a legal or similarly significant effect on anyone.

Cookies

We set one cookie, and only when you sign in, to keep you signed in. It is strictly necessary for the service to work. We don’t use analytics, advertising or tracking cookies, so there is nothing to accept or decline.

Who we share it with

Our hosting provider, DigitalOcean, stores the service’s data in its London data centre and acts only on our instructions. Each client sees the leads delivered to them, including any names described above: names in a lead go only to the client who receives that lead, as part of the service it pays for. We don’t pass personal data to anyone else, and never to advertisers.

How long we keep it

• Enquiries: up to two years after we last hear from you, unless you become a client.
• Account records: while you are a client, and up to six years afterwards for accounting and legal purposes.
• Security records: up to twelve months.
• Names in lead data: only while the public register still shows them. We recheck the registers regularly and delete any name we haven’t been able to confirm for 45 days. A removal request is kept for as long as we hold lead data, so that we can keep honouring it.

Your rights

You can ask us for a copy of your personal data, to correct it, to delete it, to restrict how we use it, or to object to our using it. You can object at any time to our use of your name in leads, and we will stop. Email us and we will reply within one month.

Complaints

If you are unhappy with how we have handled your personal data, tell us: email [email protected]. We will acknowledge your complaint within 30 days, look into it without undue delay, and tell you what we found and what we have done about it.

You can also complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office, online or on 0303 123 1113.