Privacy notice

Who we are

Venqaro Shop is software for small sign and print businesses. It's run by Venqaro Ltd (company registration pending). In this notice “Venqaro”, “we” and “us” mean that business. We'll add its company number and registered office here once Companies House confirms the registration. You can contact us about anything in this notice at tomoya@venqaro.co.uk.

We have two roles, and this notice explains both. For our own records (the website, requests to join the beta, accounts, support, security and our own marketing) we decide how information is used: we're the controller. For the records each shop keeps in Venqaro Shop, such as its customers, quotes, jobs, artwork and invoices, the shop decides: we store and process that information on the shop's behalf, as its processor, under our data processing agreement.

If you visit our website

Our public pages set no cookies and load nothing from other companies: no analytics, advertising or tracking, and the fonts are served from our own site. Our server has to handle your internet (IP) address to send you the pages, but we don't keep a log of visits.

If you ask to join the beta

You ask to join by emailing us at tomoya@venqaro.co.uk, with your name, business name and email, and optionally your website, the kind of work you do, how you run things now and what you'd like help with. We need the name, business name and email to consider your request and reply; the rest is up to you.

• Why: to decide whether we can offer you a place, and to talk to you about your request and the beta. Our lawful basis is our legitimate interest in running the beta with suitable shops.
• Emails about your request: we'll email you about your request and the beta, on the same basis. Those emails aren't marketing. We don't use beta requests for marketing: asking to join doesn't add you to our outreach.
• Who sees it: the people who run Venqaro, and the providers that host our service and our email, acting on our instructions.
• How long: requests are deleted 12 months after they're made, sooner if you ask.

If you have an account

What we keep:

• Account details: your name, your email address and your password, which we need to open an account; without them we can't. We never store the password itself, only a secure hash of it (scrypt), so it can't be read back. When you sign up we keep your name and email for up to 9 days until you finish, so the link we send works.
• Sign-in and security records: for each signed-in session, when it started and was last used, your browser's user-agent text (which names the browser and device) and a keyed hash of your IP address. We also count recent sign-in and sign-up attempts to stop password guessing and abuse.
• Your acceptance of our terms: when you create your account, which versions of the terms of service and the beta terms you agreed to, and when. If you create a workspace, we also record that you agreed to the terms, the beta terms and the data processing agreement for that business and confirmed you could: your account, the business name you gave, the versions and the time. We keep these to show what was agreed, and by whom.
• What you do in a workspace is recorded in its history (for example, who sent a quote), so the shop can see who did what. That history is part of the shop's records, which we keep on its behalf.
• Feedback you send from the app, and your email if you say we may contact you about it.

Why we use your account details, and our lawful basis, depend on who our agreement is with:

• You set up a workspace for a business you run yourself, as a sole trader or a partner: our contract is with you, and we use your details to provide the service under it.
• You set up a workspace for a company, or you were invited by the business you work for: our contract is with the business, not with you personally. We use your details because we and that business have a legitimate interest in providing the service it chose, knowing who uses its workspace, and letting you sign in to do your work. The business decides whether to invite you and what you can do in its workspace.
• Everyone: we keep the sign-in and security records to protect your account, the workspaces and the service from misuse (our legitimate interest in keeping the service secure). The records of acceptance of our terms have the same basis as your account details above: they show what was agreed under the contract, and by whom.
• Our other records: feedback and support conversations, our legitimate interest in supporting you and improving the service; privacy requests and complaints, our legal obligation to deal with them; the records that stop a deleted account, a deleted workspace or an erasure coming back after a backup is restored, our legitimate interest in keeping deletions done, as data protection law expects; and backups, our legitimate interest in being able to recover the service after a failure.

Service emails. Account holders get service emails: sign-up and password links, security notices, invitations, important news about your account, the service or the beta (such as changes to our terms, or when the beta ends and what happens to your workspace), and notifications about work in a workspace. You can turn the notifications off for each workspace in Settings → Account; the others come with having an account. Service emails don't promote anything; anything promotional counts as marketing, which the next section covers.

Marketing

We're a small business, and we tell other sign and print businesses about Venqaro Shop. That's marketing, and it's separate from service emails and from replies to a beta request. We don't send a marketing newsletter. Our marketing is targeted outreach: individual messages or calls to businesses we think Venqaro Shop could help.

• Where we get your details: from contact details a business publishes for business use, for example on its website.
• What we keep: your name and role if they're published, your business's name and what kind of business it is, your work contact details, where we found them, and a note of our contact with you. We keep this in our own records and mailbox, not in the Venqaro Shop app.
• Why: for limited companies and similar organisations, our lawful basis is our legitimate interest in telling businesses about Venqaro Shop, and you can object at any time. Sole traders and partnerships, and any business we can't confirm is a company, only get marketing emails if they've agreed to them (below): for them, that consent is the basis, and they can withdraw it at any time.
• The rules we follow: before we email a business, we check what kind of business it is. Limited companies and similar organisations (such as LLPs) can get our marketing emails until they ask us to stop. Sole traders and partnerships, and any business we can't confirm is a company, only get them if they've agreed to hear from us: a business email address doesn't make it a company's. We don't phone numbers registered with the Telephone Preference Service or the Corporate Telephone Preference Service unless you've told us we can. Every marketing message says who it's from and how to stop them.

You can tell us to stop at any time, by replying or by emailing tomoya@venqaro.co.uk, and we will. We then delete your details, keeping only the contact details you asked us to stop using, your business's name and the date, so that we don't contact you again. Otherwise we delete a prospect's details after 12 months without meaningful contact between us, such as a reply, a call or a meeting.

If you're a customer of a shop that uses Venqaro Shop

When a shop quotes you, sends you artwork or an invoice, or you send an enquiry through its form, the shop decides what information is collected and how it's used; we store it on its behalf. That includes your contact details, what you ordered, files, and messages you exchange with the shop. Emails the shop sends you through Venqaro Shop come from our email system, and your replies go to the shop.

When you accept or decline a quote, or approve or ask for changes to artwork, from a link the shop sent you, we keep a record of the decision for the shop: the name you type, your email if you give it, anything you write, the time, your IP address and your browser's user-agent text. Enquiries sent through a shop's form keep a keyed hash of your IP address instead.

Two things about you are ours rather than the shop's, because we need them to run the service securely. When the shop emails you through Venqaro Shop, we keep a record that the email was sent (your address and name as the shop gave them to us, the subject and whether it was delivered) for 12 months. And when you use a shop's form or links, we count recent attempts from your connection, by a keyed hash of your IP address, for 2 days, to stop abuse. Our lawful basis for both is our legitimate interest in running a reliable, secure service. You can ask us about them, or object, at tomoya@venqaro.co.uk.

The shop should tell you how it uses your information. Please contact the shop first with any questions or requests about it. If you can't reach them, contact us and we'll pass your request on and help where we can.

Cookies

We use two cookies, both needed to sign you in and keep your account secure, and only once you sign in or create an account: a sign-in cookie that lasts 30 days, and a recognised-device cookie that lasts 12 months and lets you still sign in on that browser if someone else keeps guessing your password elsewhere. Signing out ends the sign-in cookie but leaves the recognised-device cookie, so the browser is still recognised next time. Deleting your account removes the sign-in cookie and your account's entry in the recognised-device cookie from the browser you delete it on, and your account's recognised-device codes stop working everywhere. There are no advertising or analytics cookies, and no cookie banner, because none is needed. The cookie notice has the details.

Who we share information with

We use a small number of providers to run the service: hosting, the database, file storage and email delivery. They handle information only on our instructions. The subprocessor list names the ones we plan to use. Emails you send us, and our replies, are kept in our own mailbox, hosted by our email provider (Namecheap Private Email). We don't sell personal information, and we only share it otherwise if the law requires it.

Where information is processed

Nothing is hosted yet. We plan to run the service, and keep its database and files, in the UK or the European Economic Area. Some of the providers we plan to use are US companies, and our planned email-delivery provider says it processes data mainly in the United States. Before we use any provider that handles information outside the UK, we'll put in place a safeguard UK law provides for, such as the UK–US “data bridge” for US companies that have signed up to it, or the UK International Data Transfer Agreement or Addendum, and name it on the subprocessor list. You can ask us at tomoya@venqaro.co.uk for a copy of the safeguard we rely on.

How long we keep things

Some records, such as issued invoices, payments and the history of a workspace, can't be edited or removed on their own while the workspace exists, because shops need them to be reliable (and HMRC requires businesses to keep VAT records for at least 6 years). They're deleted with the workspace.

How we protect it

• The database itself keeps each workspace's records separate, not only the app.
• Passwords and secret links are stored only as hashes, and the service only runs over secure (HTTPS) connections.
• Files uploaded to a workspace are kept private and held until a virus scanner has checked them for known malware; files it finds infected are deleted. No scanner catches everything, so take the same care with unexpected files as you would with an email attachment.
• The people who run Venqaro see figures about the service (such as how many workspaces there are and whether emails are being delivered), beta requests, and the feedback people send us. The app gives them no way to open a shop's records. They can reach the database and backups that hold them, and only look at a shop's records if the shop asks for help, if it's needed to keep the service running or put a fault right (for example, restoring a backup), or if the law requires it.

No online service can promise perfect security. If something goes wrong that puts your information at risk, we'll tell the people and shops affected, and the ICO, where the law requires us to.

Your rights

For the information we're responsible for, you can ask us for a copy, and ask us to correct it, delete it or limit how we use it. You can object to how we use it where we rely on legitimate interests, and you can always tell us to stop marketing to you. Where you've given consent (to marketing emails, as a sole trader or partnership), you can withdraw it at any time. Where we use your information under a contract with you, or your consent, you can also ask for a copy in a form you can take elsewhere. Some rights have exceptions: for example, a workspace's history is the shop's record, so a request about it goes to the shop, which decides.

You can change your name and delete your account yourself in Settings → Account. To change your email address, or for anything else, email tomoya@venqaro.co.uk. We'll reply within one month; if we need to confirm who you are, the month starts once we have. If a request is complex, or you've sent us several, the law lets us take up to two more months, and we'll tell you why within the first month. If your request is about a shop's records, we'll pass it to the shop, as it decides what happens to them.

If you're unhappy with how we've handled your information, you can complain to us at tomoya@venqaro.co.uk. We'll acknowledge your complaint within 30 days, look into it, and tell you what we found and what we've done. You can also complain to the UK's data protection regulator, the ICO, at ico.org.uk.

Changes to this notice

This notice covers the free beta. It will change when facts change: for example, to add the company's registered details once they're confirmed, and the hosting and email providers we use, where they process information and the safeguards for it. The date at the top shows when it was last changed, and we'll tell account holders about important changes.