Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

Townagram is run by Simply Consulting Ltd (company number 04260717), registered office 11 Lone Tree Avenue, Impington, Cambridge, CB24 9PG, UK. We're the "controller" of your personal information, which means we decide how it's used and are responsible for looking after it under UK data protection law.

For anything about your privacy, use our contact page.

2. What we collect, why, and our lawful basis

The law requires a "lawful basis" for each use of personal information. "Legitimate interests" means we have a good reason that isn't outweighed by your rights.

• Your account: your email address and sign-in codes, plus Google's confirmation of your identity if you sign in with Google. We use these to create your account, sign you in and send service emails. Basis: contract.
• Managing a business: the business details you add and the evidence you give when you claim a business. We use them to check your claim, publish the listing and tell you the outcome. Business details you add are public. Basis: contract and legitimate interests (keeping listings genuine).
• Messages and forms: your name, email address and message from our contact form, and the business details you send through our join form. We use them to reply and to consider adding your business. Basis: legitimate interests (answering enquiries).
• Visits to the site: your IP address, device, browser and operating system details, whether you appear to be an automated bot, and the pages, listings and posts you view, or share, and the business websites you click through to. We use this to measure use of the site, keep it secure, count listing activity for businesses and improve Townagram. Basis: legitimate interests (running and improving the site).
• Your approximate location: we work out your rough location from your IP address, using a MaxMind database kept on our own systems, so that we can show you your nearest town. Basis: legitimate interests (showing relevant content).
• Ads and third-party analytics: see sections 5 and 6. Basis: consent, where UK law requires it.

3. Information from other sources

Our business listings are built from business information we obtain from the internet. It can include a business's name, address, phone number, website and contact email addresses. Where those details identify a person, such as a sole trader or a named work email address, they're personal information.

We use them to publish listings, to check claims and to email businesses inviting them to claim a free listing, with a short series of emails that can repeat. Contact email addresses we hold for invites aren't shown publicly. Basis: legitimate interests (building a useful local directory and telling businesses about it).

Every invite email has an unsubscribe link, which stops those emails for 12 months. To object for longer, or to ask us to correct or remove a listing, contact us.

4. Who we share information with

We share information only as needed with:

• Render, which hosts the site and its database;
• Amazon Web Services (SES) and Resend, which deliver our emails;
• FounderMail, which handles our contact and join forms, and Cloudflare, which may run a "Verify you are human" check on them;
• Google, if you choose to sign in with Google, and for AdSense, Analytics and our cookie consent tool;
• Microsoft Clarity and Plausible, for analytics;
• the public, for business details published on a listing;
• local news publishers, whose servers supply the images in news feeds and so receive your IP address when your browser loads them;
• social networks and businesses' websites, when you choose to follow a link or share something;
• professional advisers, a future owner of the business, or the authorities, where that's needed to get advice, complete a sale, comply with the law or protect people's rights and safety.

5. Cookies and similar technologies

Cookies are small files stored by your browser. These are set by Townagram itself:

• .AspNetCore.Identity.Application keeps you signed in, for up to 14 days after you were last active.
• .AspNetCore.Antiforgery.* protects forms against forgery, and lasts until you close your browser.
• .AspNetCore.External and .AspNetCore.Correlation.* complete Google sign-in, and last a few minutes.
• lister-location remembers the town you chose, for up to 10 years unless you clear it.
• lister-session lets us count visits, and expires 20 minutes after your last request.
• lister-labels is a diagnostic setting for our own staff, and expires after 20 minutes.

Other companies may also store cookies or similar technologies:

• Google AdSense shows ads, and may personalise them and measure how they perform.
• Google Analytics shows us how people use the site.
• Microsoft Clarity shows us how people use pages, including clicks, scrolling and how a visit plays out.
• Google's consent tool remembers the choices you make about cookies.

Plausible also provides analytics, and is designed to work without cookies.

If you're in the UK, EEA or Switzerland, Google's consent tool asks for your choice about ads and analytics, and those cookies stay off until you agree. Clarity runs without cookies until then. You can also clear or block cookies in your browser settings, though signing in may stop working if you do. If you're elsewhere, these features are on by default.

6. Advertising

We show ads through Google AdSense. If you consent, Google and its partners may use cookies and data about your visits to choose ads for you. Google explains this at how Google uses information from sites that use its services. We don't give advertisers your name or email address.

7. Where your information is held

The site and its database are hosted in the European Union. Some of our providers are based in, or use staff or systems in, the United States and other countries. Where information leaves the UK, we rely on UK adequacy regulations (which cover the EEA and US organisations certified to the UK Extension to the EU-US Data Privacy Framework) or on the ICO's approved contract terms. You can contact us to find out more or ask for a copy of the relevant safeguards.

8. How long we keep information

We haven't set fixed deletion dates, and nothing is deleted automatically at the moment. We keep information for as long as we need it for the reasons above, and then delete it when we no longer do, or when you ask us to and we have no legal reason to keep it. In practice:

• Accounts and managed listings are kept until you ask us to close the account or remove the listing.
• Claims, including rejected ones, are kept as a record of who has asked to manage a business.
• Site activity, including the IP address and device details recorded for each visit, is kept for measuring use of the site over time.
• Unsubscribe records are kept so that we can respect your choice.

Other providers keep information according to their own policies. Cookie lifetimes are listed in section 5.

9. Keeping your information safe

We use encrypted connections, limit staff access and don't store passwords, because sign-in uses one-time links and codes or Google. No system is perfectly secure. If a breach puts your rights at high risk, we'll tell you, and we'll tell the ICO where the law requires it.

10. Your rights

Under UK data protection law, you can ask us to:

• give you a copy of your personal information;
• correct anything that's inaccurate or incomplete;
• delete your information in certain circumstances;
• restrict how we use it in certain circumstances;
• give you information you provided in a portable format, where the law gives you that right.

You can also object to any use based on legitimate interests, and you have an absolute right to object to direct marketing. Where we rely on your consent, you can withdraw it at any time. That won't affect anything we did before you withdrew it.

To use any of these rights, contact us. It's free, and we'll normally reply within one month. We may need to confirm who you are first. We don't make decisions about you with legal or similarly significant effects using only automated means. A claim can be accepted automatically when your account email matches our records, and otherwise a person reviews it.

11. Children

You must be 18 or over to create an account. Anyone can browse Townagram, and the site isn't aimed at children. If you think a child has given us personal information, please contact us so that we can remove it.

12. Complaints

If you're unhappy with how we've used your information, please complain to us first through our contact page. We'll acknowledge your complaint within 30 days, look into it, keep you updated, and tell you the outcome without undue delay.

You can also complain to the UK regulator, the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), at ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint or on 0303 123 1113. Its address is Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF.

13. Changes to this policy

We'll update this policy when our practices or the law change, and we'll change the date at the top of this page. If a change significantly affects you, we'll tell you by email or on the site. Our Terms and Conditions cover the other rules for using Townagram.