Privacy notice
Hearing is the only subject this website covers, and this notice says what becomes of the details you send us about it. It applies to the pages at blackpoolhearingtests.co.uk and to anything submitted through the enquiry form there. The controller — the party deciding what happens to that information — is Blackpool hearing tests.
Who answers for your information
Blackpool hearing tests publishes these pages and makes the decisions about how an enquiry is dealt with, which is what makes us the controller under data protection law. The contact page is the way to reach us about anything in this notice, whether that is a question, a correction or a request about your own details. We publish no other route, so please do not rely on a telephone number or address you may have found elsewhere.
What the form asks, and what the servers note
Most of what we hold, you typed yourself. The enquiry form asks for your name, an email address, a telephone number, a postcode or address so that we know which area you are in, and whatever you choose to tell us about your hearing and the sort of appointment you are looking for. Messages that come later, including your replies to us, are kept with the same enquiry. The form itself is delivered to us by Basin (usebasin.com). Separately, the delivery network that serves these pages keeps ordinary technical logs — the address your request came from, the time of it, the page wanted and the browser used. If you are thinking of attaching a picture, please read this first: Please do not send photographs that show people. If one does, we delete the photograph.
Our reasons for using it
The first purpose, and the basis in law we rely on for it, is set out here: To answer your enquiry and pass it to one specialist covering your area, which is what you ask us to do when you send it. Our legitimate interest is in answering the people who contact us and in running the enquiry service, for which the specialist pays us. We have assessed that this does not override your interests, because you have asked us to pass your enquiry on and you can take your enquiry elsewhere at any time. After that, we keep what was said so there is a record of your enquiry and of our reply if a question comes up later, and we look at server logs to satisfy ourselves that the site is working and is not being abused; both of those rest on our legitimate interests. Where a law obliges us to keep something or to hand it over, the basis is that legal obligation. What we do not do is worth stating plainly: no marketing, no profiling, no automated decision-making, and nothing you send is sold, rented or swapped. Your enquiry, with the details you gave, is passed to one specialist firm covering the area you told us about, so that they can contact you about it. They use it only to answer your enquiry and to arrange any visit or work you agree with them, and from that point they are responsible for how they handle it. We do not pass your details to anyone else for their own use.
Other companies in the chain
The site does not run entirely on equipment of our own, so a limited amount of handling happens elsewhere. The suppliers involved are these: Basin delivers the enquiry form; Bunny serves the pages; Namecheap provides our email; and Google supplies the typefaces the pages are set in, so your browser requests those files from Google. Each of them handles it only to do that job for us. We would also give information to a regulator, the police or a court where the law required it, and to nobody else.
Journeys outside the UK
Pages are served from machines in more than one country and our email arrives at the site's own domain, so some of this information can travel. The regions and the safeguard are as follows: The network that serves the pages holds its technical logs in the United Kingdom, the European Union and the United States. The form service operates from the United States and is certified under the UK Extension to the EU-US Data Privacy Framework.
How long it stays on file
An enquiry is not left with us open-endedly, and there is a fixed rule rather than a decision made case by case: We keep an enquiry for twelve months from the last contact about it, so that we can answer a later question about what was said and who it went to. After that it is deleted from the form service and from our email, and any backup copy is overwritten on the provider's normal cycle. You can ask us to delete it sooner at any time. The network that serves the pages keeps its technical logs for no more than 3 days.
Keeping it to ourselves
Every page and every submission travels over an encrypted connection, so what you type cannot be read by anyone watching the network in between. Once it reaches us, only the people who actually deal with enquiries can see it, and it is not circulated beyond them.
Your say over your own information
Data protection law hands you a set of rights over information that is about you: You have the right to ask what personal information we hold about you and to receive a copy; to have it corrected; to have it deleted; to restrict how we use it; to object to our using it; and to receive what you gave us in a form you can take elsewhere. Ask through the contact page and we answer within one month, without charge; we may ask you to confirm who you are. If you are unhappy with how we have handled your information you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk or on 0303 123 1113, though we would rather you told us first. The contact page is where to begin. Tell us what you would like done and we will deal with it; we may need to check who you are before acting on a request about someone's details. If our answer leaves you unhappy: If you complain to us about how we have handled your personal information, we acknowledge it within 30 days and reply as soon as we can.
Enquiries from under-eighteens
Booking a hearing test is something adults do, for themselves or for a relative, and nothing on this site is aimed at children. We do not look for enquiries from anyone under eighteen. If it becomes clear that a child has filled in the form, we delete what was sent instead of passing it to a specialist.
Cookies, analytics and advertising: none
This website sets no cookies of its own. Nothing here counts your visit, measures what you read or builds a picture of you, and no advertising network is given a window into the site. Typefaces are loaded from Google Fonts, which means your browser fetches those files from Google's servers when a page opens.
Keeping this notice current
This notice will be rewritten if the handling of an enquiry changes or if one of the companies behind the site is replaced. The version you can read on this page is the one in force; we keep no separate edition in circulation.