Privacy policies have a reputation for being written to be filed rather than read. This one is written the other way round: each section says what is actually happening with your information and what that means in practice.
It applies to this website and to information you send through it. A whitening enquiry means giving a stranger your name, your contact details, and something about your teeth, so it is reasonable to want to know where that goes.
What Information Is Collected
Information reaches this website in two different ways, and they are worth separating because they work differently and carry different risks.
Information you type in yourself
When you submit a support question or a general enquiry, your name and your email address are collected so that a reply can be sent. Whitening enquiries also involve details you choose to supply about your circumstances — a contact number, a postcode identifying the area your enquiry relates to, and whatever you write in the description box.
That last part is within your control and worth using deliberately. Describing your teeth, your staining, and your timescale is useful. Typing your full medical history into a web form is not — detailed health information belongs in a conversation with the clinician who would treat you.
Information collected automatically
Visiting a website leaves traces whether or not you fill anything in. Analytics collects information about visits — which pages were viewed, roughly where the visit came from, what kind of device was used. This is about how the site is used overall, not about identifying you by name.
Why It Is Collected, and on What Basis
Under UK data protection law, collecting personal information requires a lawful reason. Two apply here, and your options differ depending on which is which.
Because you asked for something
When you submit an enquiry, you are consenting to be contacted about that enquiry using the details you supplied. That consent has boundaries: it covers answering what you asked, not adding you to an indefinite marketing list. If you would rather not be contacted again after the matter is closed, you can say so, and you can withdraw consent at any point.
Because the website needs to function and improve
Analytics exists so obvious problems can be spotted — a page nobody can find, a section that loses everybody halfway down. This is a legitimate interest in running the site competently, balanced against the data being processed anonymously rather than tied back to individuals.
What is not a reason: selling your details, sharing them with advertisers, or passing them to unrelated third parties. Information supplied through this site is used to respond to you and to keep the site working, and not for those purposes.
Where Information Is Stored and Who Can See It
Information submitted through forms is stored on this website's own database, and additional copies are not kept elsewhere. That matters more than it sounds: every extra copy of personal data is another place it can be exposed.
Any website involves a hosting provider — the company whose servers it runs on. A host has technical access to what sits on its servers by nature, and hosting here is provided under terms requiring compliance with data protection obligations.
Beyond the host and the analytics described above, information you send is not passed to other organisations and is not sold. If disclosure were ever legally required — a valid request from a public authority, for instance — that obligation applies as it does to any organisation, but it is a legal requirement rather than routine practice.
How Long Information Is Kept
The principle is that personal information should not be kept longer than there is a reason to keep it. Enquiry records exist so a conversation can be picked up sensibly — checking what was discussed about aftercare, or which arrangement was described — and that usefulness has a natural end.
Analytics information is aggregate rather than individual, and is kept for as long as it remains useful. Because it is processed anonymously, it does not identify you personally in any case.
If you would rather your details were not held once your question has been dealt with, you need not wait for any period to expire — you can ask for erasure, and the mechanism is described below.
Keeping Information Secure
Submitted information is held within the website's own database rather than scattered across multiple systems. Keeping the number of copies low is itself a security measure.
No system can be described as absolutely secure, and any policy claiming otherwise is overstating its position. What can reasonably be said is that information is not distributed more widely than it needs to be.
Part of this you control. Send what is needed and no more: information that was never submitted cannot be exposed, which makes restraint the most effective privacy measure available on any website.
What You Can Ask For, and How It Works
UK data protection law gives you specific rights over information held about you. These are not favours, and exercising them should not require explaining yourself.
Asking for a copy of your data
You can request a download of the data held about you. The request goes through a double opt-in confirmation, meaning you confirm by email that the request genuinely came from you. A file is then generated in a standard format — XML or JSON — and emailed to you, with a download window that expires after forty-eight hours. That expiry is a safeguard rather than an obstacle: a permanent link to a file of your personal data would be a liability in itself.
Asking for your data to be erased
You can request erasure. Again a confirmation email is sent, so a request cannot be triggered by someone else using your address. Once confirmed, the request is added to a queue for review by the site administrator. Where content is associated with you, it can be reassigned or deleted, and comment content is anonymised rather than left attached. Where nothing is associated with you, you receive confirmation of the erasure request along with a six-digit token to keep, which exists so that a recovery request can be identified afterwards if one is ever needed.
Asking for corrections
If information held about you is wrong, you can ask for it to be put right. The same double opt-in confirmation applies, and the request is then added for the administrator to handle. Correction is often more useful than erasure — a misspelled email address stops replies reaching you, and fixing it solves the problem that deletion would not.
Making a complaint
Complaints about how your information has been handled follow the same confirmed-request route. Separately from anything this site operates, you retain the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office, the UK's independent data protection regulator. You do not need permission to do that, and you do not need to raise it here first.
Anonymisation is worth distinguishing from deletion: anonymised information can no longer be linked to your email address, which is what most people actually want when they ask to be removed.
Children and Young People
This website is intended for adults. It is not designed for children, it is not aimed at them, and information is not knowingly collected from them.
If you are a parent or guardian and believe a child has submitted personal information through this site, you can ask for it to be removed using the erasure route described above, and it will be handled in the same way as any other erasure request.
Links to Other Websites
This site links to other pages within itself, and may link outward to external sites. This policy covers only this website. Once you follow a link elsewhere, you are on someone else's site under someone else's policy, and what they collect is governed by their rules rather than these.
That is worth remembering with directory listings, review platforms, and social pages mentioning businesses. A page that looks connected to a service is not necessarily operated by it.
Changes to This Policy
This policy may be updated — because the law changes, because the site changes, or because something turns out to be explained badly. The current version is the one published on this page, and continuing to use the site after a change means the updated version applies.
If you are relying on a specific point in this policy for a decision you are making, read the version in front of you rather than one you remember from a previous visit.
Raising a Question About Your Information
Here the policy has to be straight with you about a limitation. This website does not currently publish a dedicated privacy contact address — no email address, no postal address, and no telephone number appears anywhere on the site, including on this page.
The published route for any question, including a data request, is the written enquiry route described on the Contact page. If you are making a request about your information rather than asking about treatment, say so plainly at the start of your message and state which right you are exercising — a copy of your data, a correction, or erasure — so it is handled as the request it is rather than as a general enquiry.
Two further points. You can complain directly to the Information Commissioner's Office without going through this site at all. And if a dedicated privacy contact address is published in future, it will appear on this page — the sensible place to check rather than a detail found elsewhere.