Privacy notice

Who we are

WebLothian is a trading name of Harvie Software Solutions Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales (number 17514012), with its registered office at Bartle House, 9 Oxford Court, Manchester, M2 3WQ, United Kingdom and its trading address at 12/1 Cunningham Square, Portobello, Edinburgh, EH15 1BH, United Kingdom. We are the data controller for the information described here. You can reach us at ben@weblothian.co.uk or on 075800 77770.

What we collect, and when

Only what you type into one of the two forms on this site, into the chat on the home page, or into one of the booking calendars on the consultation and contact pages. There is no account to create, nothing that identifies you is collected in the background, and we do not buy contact data from anybody.

• The contact form: your name, email address, and optionally a phone number, business name and website, plus the subject you choose and the message you write.
• The consultation form: your name, business name, phone number, email address, optionally your website, which services you tick, any detail you add, and when and how you would prefer to be contacted.
• The booking calendars: if you book a time in one, the details it asks for (your name, email address and anything you choose to add) go to Calendly, which runs the calendar, and on to us so we can meet you at that time.
• Either form: whether you ticked the newsletter box. It is unticked when the page loads, and it stays that way unless you tick it.
• Which website or advert campaign brought you here (only its name, such as a Google search or a Facebook advert, and the page you arrived on, never anything about you), and your answer if you tell us where you heard about us. Your browser holds the source during your visit; if you then send a form or join the newsletter, it is stored with your enquiry or newsletter sign-up so we know which kinds of advertising work. Nothing is kept if your browser asks sites not to track you or if you decline the cookie banner.
• A short-lived, one-way hash of your IP address (a scrambled code that cannot be turned back into the address), used only to limit how often the forms can be sent, to keep out automated spam. It is never stored with your message.

Why we are allowed to hold it

For an enquiry, our lawful basis is legitimate interests: you have asked us a question and we need your details to answer it. If we go on to work together, the basis becomes performance of a contract.

For the newsletter, the basis is your consent, given by ticking a box that was not ticked for you. You can withdraw it at any time, and withdrawing it does not affect anything else.

What we do with it

Your message is stored so we can read it, reply to it and keep track of the conversation, and a copy is emailed to Ben so it is not missed.

If we work together, the quotes and invoices we send you are stored too, with your name, business and contact details and any choices you make on a quote, so we can keep our records and the accounts straight. Each one is on a private link that is not listed anywhere, and the link is never passed to our analytics.

If you ticked the newsletter box, your email address is also added to a mailing list, and you will get occasional emails about things that are useful to a local business. Every one of them has an unsubscribe link, and unsubscribing removes you from the list.

We do not sell your information, we do not share it for anybody else’s marketing, and we do not use it to build a profile of you.

The chat on the home page

The chat on the home page answers questions about WebLothian. Your question is sent to Anthropic, which runs the AI model behind it, and is processed only to generate the answer. The question and its answer are stored for 90 days so we can see what people ask and check the answers are right, and are then deleted; one is kept longer only if we keep it to improve this site. Each browser can ask three questions a day, and that limit is enforced by a strictly necessary cookie called wl_chat, which holds a random identifier rather than anything about you and lasts 24 hours. Your IP address is stored only as a one-way hash (a scrambled code that cannot be turned back into your address), used for the same limit. Please do not type anything personal into it.

Who else sees it

Only the suppliers that run this website, and only to the extent they have to:

• Vercel, which hosts the site and serves the pages.
• Supabase, which stores enquiries and the mailing list.
• Resend, which delivers the email notifications and any reply we send you.
• Calendly, which runs the booking calendars on the consultation and contact pages and holds the details of any time you book in them.
• Anthropic, which runs the AI model that answers questions asked in the chat on the home page.
• All five are processors acting on our instructions under a contract. They do not get to use your information for their own purposes.

How long we keep it

Quotes and invoices are kept as part of our business records, which a company has to keep for six years.

Enquiries are kept for up to three years from the last message in the conversation, so that we can pick up where we left off if you come back to us, and then deleted.

Mailing list entries are kept until you unsubscribe or ask us to remove you.

Questions asked in the chat on the home page, and their answers, are deleted after 90 days, unless we keep a particular one to improve the site.

Cookies and analytics

Visitor numbers are measured with Vercel Web Analytics, which is cookieless: it records the page and a coarse, aggregated signal, and stores nothing on your device and nothing that identifies you. It is not part of the choice below, because there is nothing about it to choose.

We advertise on Google. Google Ads, and Google Analytics where it is switched on, can set cookies that tell us whether an advert actually led to an enquiry. Those cookies are set only if you press Accept on the banner. Until you do, and permanently if you never do, the Google tag runs in its denied state: no cookie, no identifier, and nothing stored on your device.

Declining costs you nothing. Every page and every form works exactly the same either way. We can still see that an advert brought somebody here, but not which click it was, and nothing is stored on your device to tie it to you.

Your answer is kept in a single entry called wl-consent in your own browser’s storage. It never reaches us and it is not an identifier. To change it, in either direction and at any time, use the “Cookie settings” link at the foot of any page: it forgets your answer, switches the cookies back off immediately, and asks you again.

The booking calendars on the consultation and contact pages are run by Calendly and are not loaded until you press “Show available times”. Once one is, Calendly can set the cookies it needs to take a booking, and any others it sets are explained in Calendly’s own cookie notice. If you would rather they did not load at all, the forms on the same pages reach Ben just the same.

Apart from the chat cookie described above, one other cookie of our own exists, and it lasts about two minutes. If you send the consultation form with JavaScript turned off, the site puts a short-lived marker on your browser so the page you land on can tell a real submission from somebody simply opening that address. It holds nothing about you, it is deleted the moment it is read, and it is set whatever you answered above, because it is there to make the form behave correctly rather than to follow you around.

Your rights

You can ask for a copy of what we hold about you, ask us to correct it, ask us to delete it, object to our using it, or ask for it in a portable form. Email ben@weblothian.co.uk and we will answer within one month.

If you are not happy with how we have handled your information you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk, though we would rather you told us first so we can put it right.