Privacy policy.

Did we email or message you out of the blue? Go straight to section 2, If we contacted you about working together. It tells you what we hold about you, where we got it, why we think we are allowed to, and how to make it stop. Making it stop takes one line of reply and we do not argue about it.

1. Who we are

This site and this policy belong to Helitz Digital Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales, number 13261365. Our registered office is 112 Tunstall Road, Biddulph, Stoke-on-Trent, ST8 6HN.

For anything in this policy, we are the data controller. That means we decide what personal data we hold and why, and we are answerable for it.

To reach us about your data:

• Email hi@helitz.com with Data protection in the subject line.
• Or write to us at the registered office above.

A person reads that inbox, not a ticketing robot. We aim to reply within a working day and we are required to deal with a formal request within one month.

2. If we contacted you about working together

This section is for you if you got an email or a LinkedIn message from Helitz and you never asked for one.

We will say this plainly: we found you through public, work-related sources because something about your job suggested our work might be relevant to it. We did not buy your details and nobody sold them to us.

2.1 What we hold about you

• Your name.
• Your job title and the organisation you work for.
• Business contact details: a work email address, a LinkedIn profile, sometimes a work phone number listed by your organisation.
• The public evidence that made us think it was worth writing: a link to the job advert, article, directory entry or news item, with the date we found it and a short note on why it was relevant.
• A record of what we sent you and what you said back, including if you told us to stop.

That is the whole record. There is no profile, no score, no inferred interests, no tracking of you across the internet.

2.2 Where we got it

Every record names its source. The sources are:

• Your organisation's own website.
• Job adverts your organisation published.
• Articles, case studies or talks published under your name by your organisation.
• Your public LinkedIn profile, used to confirm your name and current job title.
• The Umbraco partner directory.
• Companies House.
• UK trade press, for example Prolific North or Insider Media.

All of these are places your organisation, or you, chose to publish the information. We fetched each organisation's public pages a handful of times, the same request any visitor's browser makes. We have never bought a list, never scraped at scale, and never guessed or pattern-generated an email address. If we could not find an address that your organisation had itself published, we did not invent one.

2.3 Why we are allowed to hold it

Our lawful basis is legitimate interests, under Article 6(1)(f) of the UK GDPR. Our interest is finding a small number of organisations that we can genuinely help, and yours is not being bothered by strangers.

We think the balance holds here, and here is the reasoning rather than the assertion:

• We write to you in a business role at a company, about a business service that relates to something you have publicly said is your responsibility.
• The volume is tiny. This is a hand-built list in the low tens, not a campaign in the thousands.
• Every message names a real person, comes from a real company with a phone number, and says why you specifically.
• You can stop it permanently with a one-line reply, and we tell you that in the first message.

If you think that balance is wrong in your case, you do not have to argue the point. See 2.4. Your objection ends it regardless of what we think.

Under Article 14 of the UK GDPR, when personal data is obtained from somewhere other than the person it is about, we have to tell you. The link in the footer of the first message we send you is that notification, which is how you got here.

PECR. We send business-to-business mail only to corporate subscribers: limited companies, LLPs and statutory or chartered bodies. We do not send unsolicited marketing mail to sole traders or unincorporated partnerships.

2.4 How to make it stop

Reply with "no thanks", or "stop", or anything to that effect, and we stop.

You can also email hi@helitz.com. You do not have to give a reason and we will not ask for one, send a "before you go" message, or try to keep you on a slower list.

When you object:

• We stop immediately. There is no remaining sequence that goes out anyway.
• It is permanent. We do not re-add you, we do not contact you about a different service, and we do not start again next year.
• It covers every channel: email and LinkedIn both.
• To make sure it holds, we keep a minimal suppression record: your name, the address or profile we contacted, and the date you objected. That record exists for one reason, which is so that nobody at Helitz ever contacts you again. If we deleted it we would have no way of knowing not to.

You have this right under Article 21 of the UK GDPR, and where the contact is marketing it is absolute. We have no grounds to refuse.

2.5 How long we keep it

• If you object: the suppression record above is kept indefinitely, because deleting it would defeat its purpose. Everything else about you goes.
• If nothing comes of it: we delete your record within 12 months of our last contact with you.
• If we end up working together: your details move onto a normal client footing and are kept for as long as the relationship and our legal record-keeping obligations require.

2.6 What we do not do

• We do not sell, rent, share or trade contact details. Not ever.
• We do not add you to a mailing list, a newsletter or an automated nurture flow off the back of a cold approach.
• We do not use tracking pixels to watch whether you opened a message.
• We do not build a profile of you or make automated decisions about you.

2.7 Who else sees it

Contact records are held in Helitz's own systems and are accessible only to Helitz people who need them. Where we use a third-party tool to send or store business correspondence, that supplier acts on our written instructions and cannot use your details for anything of their own. We will name the supplier here and set out any transfer of data outside the UK before we rely on one.

2.8 Where our mail comes from

To protect the mail that our clients and hosting alerts depend on, outbound business mail may be sent from a Helitz sending domain other than helitz.com. Any such message will name the sender, name Helitz Digital Ltd, and link back to this page. If you get something that claims to be from us and does not, it is not from us. Tell us at hi@helitz.com.

3. If you visit this website

Like nearly every website, ours records standard technical information when you load a page: your IP address, browser type, internet provider, the date and time, and which pages you came from and moved to. We use it to keep the site working, to spot faults and abuse, and to understand in aggregate which pages are useful.

An IP address can count as personal data on its own, so we treat it as such rather than pretending otherwise. Our basis for this is legitimate interests: running a working, secure website.

We also use cookies, and analytics cookies are set only once you have agreed to them. What they are and how to control them is set out in our cookie policy.

4. If you fill in a form or get in touch

When you use the contact form, email us or call, we hold what you send us (your name, email, phone, company and the message itself) so that we can reply and, if it goes somewhere, discuss the work. Our basis is legitimate interests in responding to an enquiry, and then the steps towards a contract if one follows.

If you tick the box asking for the occasional note about Umbraco releases and what we are building, that is consent, it is separate from your enquiry, and you can withdraw it at any time by replying to any such note or emailing hi@helitz.com. We do not add you to it if you do not tick it.

Enquiries that do not lead anywhere are deleted within 12 months.

5. If you are a client, or work for one

Where we build, host or support software for a client, we hold the business contact details we need to run that relationship, and we keep records for as long as the contract and our accounting and legal obligations require.

Where our work means handling personal data belonging to a client's own users, we are acting as a processor on that client's written instructions, under a contract. In that situation the client is the controller and their own privacy policy governs how that data is used, not this one. Requests about that data should go to them, and we will point you to the right place if you come to us by mistake.

6. Your rights

Whatever brought you into contact with us, you can ask us to:

• Tell you what we hold about you, and give you a copy.
• Correct it if it is wrong.
• Delete it, where we have no overriding reason to keep it.
• Stop or restrict what we are doing with it.
• Hand it over in a portable format, where that right applies.
• Object to us using it, including (as set out in 2.4) an absolute right to object to direct marketing.
• Withdraw consent, where consent is what we relied on. Withdrawing it does not undo anything done beforehand.

Email hi@helitz.com with Data protection in the subject line. We will not charge you and we will respond within one month.

7. If you are not happy with how we handled it

Tell us first and we will try to put it right. If that does not resolve it, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office, which is the UK's data protection regulator.

• ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint (opens in a new tab)
• Helpline 0303 123 1113
• Information Commissioner's Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire SK9 5AF

Complaining to the ICO costs you nothing and you do not need to go through us first.

8. Children

Helitz sells development services to businesses. We do not aim any part of this site or our outreach at children and we do not knowingly hold personal data about anyone under 13. If you think we have, contact us and we will remove it.

9. Changes to this policy

If we change how we handle personal data we will update this page and change the date at the top. If a change materially affects people we are already in contact with, we will tell them directly rather than relying on them re-reading this page.