Information used by the Guide
Account information includes your email address and account identifier. At subscription checkout, the workspace owner selects a country or territory. We retain this with the workspace and checkout record to support Supply Chain location preferences; it is not verified billing or tax residency. Subscription and refund records include your selected plan, workspace and customer identifiers, payment and invoice references, subscription status, paid access period, refund amount and status, and the terms version and acceptance time. Workspace membership, role and application-access records determine which services you can use. Information you provide in enquiries is handled through our Microsoft 365 email service. Hosting and authentication services may process network, device, session and security information needed to deliver and protect the service.
Account information may come from you or an authorised organisation administrator who invites you and assigns workspace access. Required identity and access information is needed to provide protected Guide access; without it we cannot activate that access.
Why information is used
We use information on the following bases: fulfilling an individual subscription contract for account access and support; legitimate interests in administering organisation subscriptions, protecting accounts, preventing misuse and responding to business enquiries; and legal obligations for records we are legally required to keep. Optional marketing, if introduced, will have a separate choice; accepting the terms is not marketing consent.
Service providers and access
Netlify provides hosting, authentication and the application database service. Microsoft 365 handles customer enquiries and subscription emails. Netlify Identity sends authentication emails, including confirmations and password resets, through Amazon Simple Email Service (AWS). Stripe handles checkout, subscription management and refunds. Stripe collects card details through its own pages; IMS receives identifiers and payment status needed to administer subscriptions rather than full card numbers or card security codes.
Authorised organisation administrators may manage membership and roles in their workspace. We may disclose relevant records where required by law, or to professional advisers handling a specific legal, accounting or security matter. At launch, database recovery uses Netlify’s managed backups. No new independent database exports are made through GitHub Actions. Encrypted recovery archives created before launch may remain in a private Microsoft Azure container in UK South until their retention periods expire; their recovery key is held separately.
Optional video demonstrations
Our demonstration pages load an embedded YouTube player only after you select Play. The player uses the youtube-nocookie.com domain. Once loaded, your browser connects to YouTube to deliver the video, and YouTube may process network, device and playback information. You may instead follow the Watch on YouTube link, which opens YouTube directly. You can use the rest of IMS without playing a demo. Review Google’s Privacy Policy for information about its processing.
Cookies and device storage
IMS uses three cookies for protected account access:
- nf_jwt: the sign-in access token.
- nf_refresh: the token used to renew a signed-in session.
- weldeng_workspace: your selected workspace.
The application sets these as Secure, HttpOnly and SameSite=Lax cookies, available across the site. It does not set a persistent expiry for them, so they are session cookies; browser session-restoration settings may preserve them when a browser is reopened. Signing out clears all three cookies. Token validity is also controlled by the authentication service.
After successful sign-out, the account page attempts to remove legacy browser-storage entries named weldeng_session and gotrue.user. The current service worker does not provide offline copies of protected account pages and clears older IMS caches. Guide favourites, notes and saved tool information may be stored in your browser under a namespace assigned to your verified account and workspace. These local values can persist between visits, are not synchronised to the server and are not included in database backups. Signing out does not erase these saved Guide values. Browser-profile access can expose locally stored information. Stripe’s hosted payment pages use their own storage and privacy arrangements. Optional video connections are described above; optional marketing or analytics tracking is not part of this launch.
Storage and international transfers
The Microsoft 365 admin centre showed United Kingdom as both the current and committed geography for Exchange Online on 10 October 2026. This confirms the reported email data-at-rest location; it does not establish that all processing by Microsoft or our other providers occurs in the UK.
Netlify confirmed that this project’s Functions execute in US East (Ohio). Identity account and authentication records, including names, email addresses and one-way password hashes, are stored and processed in the United States on AWS; the location is not configurable. Function logs are stored in the United States for at least 24 hours and up to seven days, depending on plan, with no longer-term copies retained by Netlify.
Netlify Database is hosted by Neon on AWS. Its region is fixed when the database is created; changing the Functions region does not move an existing database. On 1 November 2026, Netlify confirmed that our production database is hosted in AWS US East (Ohio), region us-east-2. Deploy-preview database branches copy production data and remain in the production database’s region. Netlify’s later privacy-team reply confirms that database backups are stored in the United States, with no UK/EU-only backup setting; this supersedes the earlier support statement about backup location.
Our providers may process information outside the UK. In its reply supplied on 22 October 2026, Netlify confirmed that its Data Processing Agreement applies automatically under its Self-Serve Subscription Agreement. Netlify identified the EU–US Data Privacy Framework and UK Extension as its primary transfer mechanism and the UK International Data Transfer Agreement under DPA section 14.4 where that does not cover a transfer. Neon and AWS are relevant Netlify subprocessors. Stripe’s published Data Transfers Addendum provides applicable transfer mechanisms, including the UK extension to the Data Privacy Framework and the UK addendum to the Standard Contractual Clauses. Microsoft publishes data-processing terms for its online services. You can contact contact@weldeng.co.uk to request information about the safeguards applicable to your information.
How long information is kept
We use the following retention criteria. Account closure and erasure requests are handled by the owner through a documented review process; there is no automatic account-erasure facility:
- Accounts and workspace access: for the life of the account and any period necessary to complete account closure, resolve an outstanding subscription or protect a relevant legal claim. Remove or anonymise information that no longer serves those purposes.
- Billing, refund and accepted-Terms records: for the period needed to administer the transaction, meet applicable accounting and tax recordkeeping obligations, and handle payment disputes or relevant legal claims. Keep only records needed for those purposes.
- Support enquiries: until the enquiry is resolved and any associated complaint, dispute or legal obligation has ended; review closed enquiries regularly and remove information no longer needed.
- Security and operational records: for the period needed to investigate incidents and protect the service; review this need regularly and minimise personal information in logs.
- Backups: Netlify’s privacy-team reply describes daily production database backups retained for seven days on Personal plans and 30 days on Pro and Enterprise plans. Publish-time backups retain the last three deploys on Personal and last ten on Pro and Enterprise; because these expire by deploy count, they may remain longer than 30 days on infrequently deployed projects. Our recorded launch configuration retains daily backups for seven days and the last three publication backups. Backups are not edited to remove individual records, so records deleted from the live service may remain until the relevant backups expire. Identity records are covered by Netlify platform backups that expire on fixed schedules of seven to 35 days. If a backup is restored, applicable deletion requests must be reapplied. Previously created independent Azure archives are configured to expire after 30 days, with seven-day soft delete enabled; no new GitHub-runner database exports are made during the initial launch. Deleted backups may therefore remain recoverable during that additional window. Copies downloaded for recovery must also be included in the retention and deletion procedure.
Where a record must be kept for a legal obligation or unresolved dispute, restrict its use to that purpose and review it when that requirement ends. Account closure does not necessarily require immediate removal of all billing evidence.
Your rights
Depending on the circumstances, you may request access, correction, erasure, restriction or portability of your personal information. You may withdraw consent where processing relies on consent.
You may object to processing based on legitimate interests, and to direct marketing. Contact contact@weldeng.co.uk to exercise your rights. We may need to verify your identity and explain any lawful reason a request cannot be met.
You can raise a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office. You may contact us first so we can try to resolve your concern.
Access decisions and other applications
Guide access is checked against account, workspace and entitlement records. No credit-scoring or similar profiling feature is described in the current Guide code. AVR, WQM, MRB and future organisation-listing workflows require their own confirmed data-handling details before activation; this Guide notice does not establish those future arrangements.
Updates
This notice shows its version and effective date above. Material changes will be communicated as appropriate.