1. Why you are reading this
Most privacy notices are written for people who filled in a form. This one is for people who did not. UK data protection law says that when an organisation gets your details from somewhere other than you, it has to tell you so, tell you where from, and tell you how to object. That is what this page is.
It sits alongside our main privacy notice, which covers everything else. If you have since become a client, that is the one that applies to you.
2. Where we found you
From a public professional register or a public company register. Nothing was bought from a list broker, and nothing was guessed from a name and a pattern.
- Government registers. Companies House, and lists published on GOV.UK such as the register of approved doctors. These gave us your name, your role, your company or practice, and often its website.
- Professional and regulatory registers. Registers kept by professional bodies and regulators so that the public can find and contact their members. The Solicitors Regulation Authority publishes one of these as an open data service.
- Your own organisation's website. A contact page or a team page, where a business address is published.
- A business contact database. We use Apollo. Where an address came from there, that company holds its own copy of your data and is a separate controller of it.
If you ask us which one you came from, we will tell you. We record the source against every record for exactly this reason. Email privacy@ascribed.ai and we will name it.
3. What we hold
- Your name
- Your business email address, and sometimes a business telephone number
- Your job title or professional role
- The company or practice you are connected to, its registration number and its website
- Which source we took it from, and when
- What we have sent you, and whether you replied or asked us to stop
Where we have looked at what is publicly published about you, so that the message says something useful rather than nothing, we may also hold a short note of what we found. That comes from search results and public profiles, and it is the same research we would do for a client.
We do not hold, and do not want, information about your health, your finances, your private life, your beliefs or your background.
4. Why we are writing, and on what legal basis
We are writing about your professional record: what a search engine or an AI assistant says about you when someone looks you up, and whether that is accurate.
Our lawful basis is legitimate interests. Ours is finding people who might want the service. The judgement is that a short, relevant, business message to a named professional at their published business address, which is easy to stop, is something a reasonable person in that position would expect and would not object to.
That judgement is written down and you can ask for it. Where the balance does not fall our way we do not send at all, which is why some people we could technically reach never hear from us.
You can disagree with that judgement. The right to object is absolute for direct marketing. If you object we stop. There is no balancing test on our side and nothing for you to justify.
5. How to make it stop
Any of these, and they are all equal. You do not need to give a reason.
- Click the unsubscribe link in the message
- Reply with the word "stop", or anything else that means it
- Email privacy@ascribed.ai
We stop, and we keep your email address on a suppression list afterwards. That is the one thing we deliberately do not delete, because the only way to be certain we never write to you again is to remember not to. That list holds your address and nothing else, it is never used to contact anyone, and it exists solely to be checked against before anything is sent.
6. How long we keep it
- You have not replied. Twelve months from when we first wrote, then the record is deleted.
- You asked us to stop. The record is deleted. Your email address stays on the suppression list.
- You replied and said no thank you. Deleted, address suppressed.
- You became a client. The main privacy notice takes over.
7. Who else sees it
Nobody who does not need to. It sits on our own server in the United Kingdom and it is not sold, shared or rented to anyone. Sending an email involves an email provider, and that is the only third party in the chain.
8. Your rights
You can ask us for a copy of what we hold about you, ask us to correct it, ask us to delete it, ask us to restrict what we do with it, and object to us using it at all. Ask at privacy@ascribed.ai and we will answer within one month.
If you are not satisfied you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk or on 0303 123 1113. You are entitled to go straight to them and you do not have to come to us first.