Privacy policy

1. Who we are

Smarter Web Solutions Limited, trading as SmartersWeb, is the data controller for the personal data described in this policy. We are a company registered in England & Wales under company number 12504462, with a registered office at 85 Shelbourne Road, London, N17 9YL, United Kingdom.

This policy covers the website at https://smartersweb.uk and the services we provide through it. You can reach us about anything in this policy at hello@smartersweb.uk.

2. What we collect

We collect only what we need. In practice that is:

Information you give us

• Enquiry and quote forms — your name, email address, and optionally your phone number, company name, website address, budget range, timescale and whatever you write in the message.
• Correspondence — the content of emails, calls and messages you send us, and our replies.
• Client account information — billing contact, billing address and purchase order references where your organisation needs them on an invoice.
• Credentials you choose to share — where a project requires access to your hosting, domain registrar or website, you may give us logins. We ask you not to send these through the website forms.

Information collected automatically

• Server logs — your IP address, the pages requested, the time of the request, the referring page and your browser's user-agent string. These are written by the web server for security and diagnostics.
• Form submission metadata — the time of submission and the IP address it came from, included in the notification email so that we can identify abuse.

We do not run advertising trackers, analytics scripts, social media pixels or profiling tools on this website. We do not buy contact lists, and we do not sell, rent or trade personal data to anyone.

3. Why we use it, and our lawful basis

We do not send marketing email unless you have asked us to. If we ever introduce a newsletter, it will be a separate opt-in with an unsubscribe link in every message, and unsubscribing will never affect the service you receive.

4. Who we share it with

We share personal data only where it is necessary to run the business, and only with organisations that are contractually required to protect it. These are:

• Our hosting provider, which stores the website and its server logs.
• Our email provider, which carries enquiry notifications and our correspondence with you.
• Stripe, which processes card payments. See section 5.
• Our accountant, for bookkeeping, VAT and statutory accounts.
• Professional advisers such as solicitors or insurers, where we genuinely need advice on a matter that involves you.
• Specialist subcontractors where a project needs skills we do not have in-house, such as copywriting or photography. They are bound by confidentiality terms and only receive what the task requires.
• Law enforcement or regulators, where we are legally required to disclose information.

We will tell you if a supplier we use changes in a way that materially affects your data.

5. Payments

Card payments are processed by Stripe. When you pay by card, your card number, expiry date and security code are transmitted directly to Stripe and are never stored on, or passed through, our own servers. We receive only the outcome of the transaction, the last four digits of the card, the card brand, and the billing name and address needed to reconcile the payment.

Stripe acts as an independent data controller for the payment data it holds, and processes it under its own privacy policy, which you should read at stripe.com/gb/privacy. We also accept UK bank transfer, in which case your bank handles the transaction and we see only what appears on our bank statement.

6. International transfers

We prefer suppliers that store data in the United Kingdom or the European Economic Area. Some of our suppliers, including our payment processor, may process data outside the UK. Where that happens, the transfer is protected by one of the safeguards UK data protection law allows: an adequacy decision covering the destination country, or the International Data Transfer Agreement or UK Addendum to the EU Standard Contractual Clauses. You can ask us which safeguard applies to a particular supplier.

7. How long we keep it

8. How we protect it

• The whole website is served over HTTPS, and HTTP requests are redirected to it.
• Credentials are stored in an encrypted password manager, never in plain text, spreadsheets or chat messages.
• Access is limited to the people who need it for the task in hand, and each client's systems are kept separate.
• Accounts that support it use multi-factor authentication.
• Devices are encrypted at rest and kept up to date.

No system is perfectly secure. If a personal data breach occurs that is likely to result in a risk to your rights and freedoms, we will report it to the Information Commissioner's Office within 72 hours of becoming aware of it, and tell you directly where the risk to you is high.

9. Your rights

Under UK GDPR you have the right to:

• Be informed about how your data is used — which is what this policy is for.
• Access a copy of the personal data we hold about you.
• Rectification of data that is inaccurate or incomplete.
• Erasure of your data, where we have no overriding reason to keep it.
• Restrict processing in certain circumstances, for example while an accuracy dispute is resolved.
• Data portability — receiving data you gave us in a common machine-readable format.
• Object to processing we carry out on the basis of legitimate interests, and to direct marketing at any time.
• Withdraw consent at any time, where we relied on consent.

To exercise any of these, email hello@smartersweb.uk. We will respond within one month. There is no charge unless a request is manifestly unfounded or excessive, and we will tell you before any charge applies. We may need to verify your identity before releasing personal data.

10. Cookies

This website sets no advertising or analytics cookies. It uses one strictly necessary session cookie on the enquiry and quote pages, purely to apply an anti-spam rate limit, and stores your light or dark theme preference in your browser's local storage, which never leaves your device. Full detail is in the cookie policy.

11. Children

Our services are sold to businesses and are not directed at children. We do not knowingly collect personal data from anyone under 16. If you believe a child has given us personal data, contact us and we will delete it.

12. When we act as your processor

Where we build or maintain a website for you, personal data belonging to your customers may pass through systems we administer. In that relationship you are the controller and we are your processor: we act on your documented instructions, we do not use your customers' data for our own purposes, and we will put a written data processing agreement in place setting out the requirements of Article 28 UK GDPR. Ask us for one at any time and we will provide it without charge.

13. Changes to this policy

We update this policy when our practices or the law change. The date at the top always shows the current version. Where a change materially affects how we use data you have already given us, we will tell existing clients by email rather than relying on you to notice.

14. Contacting us and complaints

For anything about privacy, email hello@smartersweb.uk, call +44 7912 315516, or write to Smarter Web Solutions Limited, 85 Shelbourne Road, London, N17 9YL, United Kingdom.

We would always rather resolve a concern directly. You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office, the UK supervisory authority for data protection, at ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint or on 0303 123 1113.