Privacy Policy

Data controller: GunDogsDirect Limited, a company registered in England and Wales under company number 14027482, registered office 44 Evesham Avenue, Grimsby, DN34 5RT, United Kingdom. For any privacy matter, contact info@gundogsdirect.co.uk. You also have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner's Office (ico.org.uk).

GunDogsDirect Ltd respects your privacy and is committed to protecting your personal information. This Privacy Policy (together with our Terms and Conditions and any other documents referred to in it) sets out how we collect, use, and protect your personal data when you use our website.

Please read the following carefully to understand how we handle your personal data in accordance with the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018.

Information We May Collect

We may collect and process the following data about you:

• Information you provide by completing forms on our website (e.g. during registration, when posting listings, or requesting services), including your name, email address, telephone number, and the content of your adverts.
• Records of correspondence if you contact us.
• Responses to surveys or feedback forms (voluntary).
• Details of transactions you carry out via our site (payments are processed by Stripe; we do not store your full card details).
• Information about your visits to our site, including traffic data, location data, and other communication data.

How We Use Your Data, and Our Lawful Bases

We use your personal data for the following purposes, relying on the following lawful bases under UK GDPR Article 6:

• To provide the services you request — operating your Account, publishing your adverts, enabling buyers and sellers to contact one another, and processing payments. Lawful basis: performance of a contract (Article 6(1)(b)).
• To keep Our Site secure, prevent fraud, misuse, scraping and unlawful harvesting of data, and to investigate and enforce breaches of our Terms and Conditions. Lawful basis: our legitimate interests (Article 6(1)(f)) in protecting Our Site, our Users and our business.
• To improve our website and user experience, using statistical information about how the site is used. Lawful basis: our legitimate interests (Article 6(1)(f)).
• To send you marketing communications about our services, where you have given consent. Lawful basis: consent (Article 6(1)(a)), which you may withdraw at any time.
• To comply with legal obligations and to establish, exercise or defend legal claims. Lawful basis: legal obligation (Article 6(1)(c)) and legitimate interests (Article 6(1)(f)).

You can manage your communication preferences or opt out of marketing entirely via the ‘My Account’ section of the site or the unsubscribe link in any marketing email.

Publication of Advert Contact Details

GunDogsDirect is a classified-advertising marketplace. When you place an advert, the contact details you choose to include (such as your name, telephone number and email address) are displayed on Our Site so that genuine prospective buyers can contact you about your listing. This is a core part of the service you sign up for when you place an advert, and our lawful basis is performance of a contract (Article 6(1)(b)).

Your contact details are displayed solely to enable genuine enquiries between Users about specific listings. The collection, harvesting, copying, storage or re-use of Users’ contact details for any other purpose — including unsolicited marketing or the population of any other website, database or mailing list — is strictly prohibited by Clauses 5A and 11D of our Terms and Conditions. Where we become aware of such harvesting or of unsolicited direct marketing to our Users, we will take enforcement action and report the matter to the Information Commissioner’s Office.

You may remove or amend your advert (and the contact details displayed on it) at any time through your Account, or by contacting us.

IP Addresses and Cookies

We may collect information about your device, including your IP address, operating system, and browser type. We use this information for site security, fraud and abuse prevention (including the detection and blocking of automated scraping), and in aggregated form to understand how Our Site is used. IP addresses and similar online identifiers are personal data and are handled in accordance with this Policy.

We use cookies to help our site function effectively and to collect information on user behaviour. You can manage cookie preferences in your browser settings. For more information, please see our Cookie Policy.

Where We Store Your Data

Personal data is stored on secure servers located in the United Kingdom and/or the European Economic Area (our hosting provider’s data centres). Where data is stored in the EEA, the transfer is covered by the UK’s adequacy arrangements. Personal data will not be transferred outside the UK or EEA without appropriate safeguards.

We take appropriate technical and organisational security measures to protect your data. However, please note that transmission over the internet is never completely secure.

How Long We Keep Your Data

We keep personal data only for as long as necessary for the purposes described in this Policy:

• Account data: for as long as your Account remains open, and for 12 months after closure (to handle any follow-up queries, disputes or complaints), after which it is deleted or anonymised.
• Advert content and displayed contact details: removed from public display and deleted when the advert is marked as sold, expires, or is removed under our advert rules.
• Transaction and payment records: 6 years, as required for tax and accounting purposes.
• Correspondence and abuse reports (including emails): 12 months from resolution of the matter, or longer where reasonably necessary to establish, exercise or defend legal claims.
• Security logs (including IP addresses): 12 months.
• Marketing preferences: a record of any opt-out is kept indefinitely so that we can honour it.

Where litigation or a regulatory investigation is in progress or reasonably anticipated, relevant data may be retained for longer, until the matter is concluded.

Marketing and Third Parties

We may contact you about services or products that may interest you, only if you have provided consent. Every marketing email we send includes an unsubscribe link.

We do not sell your personal data. We may share anonymised, aggregated statistics with advertisers or analytics providers; these do not identify you.

Disclosure of Your Data

We share personal data only as follows:

• With our payment processor, Stripe, for the purpose of processing payments.
• With members of our corporate group and our sister site www.gundogsuk.co.uk, where you place an advert and Clause 5.6 of our Terms and Conditions applies (sharing of your advert details).
• With service providers who host and support Our Site, acting on our instructions under contract.
• If required by law, regulation, or legal process, or where disclosure is necessary to establish, exercise or defend legal claims.
• In the event of a business sale, merger, or acquisition, to the prospective or actual purchaser.

Your Rights

You have the right to:

• Access your personal data.
• Correct inaccuracies in your data.
• Request data erasure or restriction of processing.
• Object to certain processing (including direct marketing).
• Data portability (receive certain data you provided to us in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format).
• Withdraw consent at any time, where processing is based on consent.

To exercise your rights, please contact us at info@gundogsdirect.co.uk. Subject access requests are free of charge. We may require proof of identity before fulfilling a request, and we will respond within one month.

If you are unhappy with how we have handled your data, you may complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk.

Links to Other Websites

Our website may contain links to third-party websites. We are not responsible for their privacy policies. Please review them before submitting any personal data.

Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. Changes will be posted on this page with an updated “Last updated” date and, where appropriate, notified by email.