Privacy Policy
Draft prepared:
Beaconry is a price tracking and comparison service for model railway and tabletop wargaming hobbyists, operated by Chief Solutions Limited, trading as GuzzlerLabs (the "Company", "we", "us"). This policy explains what personal data we collect when you use the Beaconry website and mobile app, why we collect it, who we share it with, and the rights you have over it.
The data controller is Chief Solutions Limited (trading as GuzzlerLabs), a company registered in England and Wales under company number 06238112, with its registered office at CCM Chichester House, 2 Chichester Street, Rochdale, OL16 2AX. If you have any questions about this policy or your data, contact us at privacy@beaconry.co. [ICO data-protection registration number to be confirmed by legal.]
Data we collect
- Account details. When you register, we collect your email address and a password. Your credentials are stored and managed by Amazon Cognito on our behalf; we do not store your password in a form we can read. If you enable multi-factor authentication or sign in with a third-party provider, we also process the related settings and the basic profile information that provider returns.
- Your Beaconry activity. Your subscription tier and status, notification preferences, and the price alert beacons you set.
- Push notification token. If you turn on push notifications in the mobile app, we store the device token needed to deliver them.
- Technical and log data. To run the service securely and diagnose problems, our servers keep operational logs that may include your IP address and request metadata. Where an email address appears in these logs it is pseudonymised using a one-way keyed hash, not stored in readable form.
- How you use Beaconry. We record a small set of product events, such as a price alert being delivered to you or a tap through to a retailer, along with the subscription tier of the account involved. These are tied to a pseudonymous account identifier we generate, rather than to your name or email address. See "Product analytics" below.
- Essential cookie. We set a single signed session cookie so you stay signed in. We do not set advertising, analytics, or third-party tracking cookies. The product analytics described below are sent from our own servers, so they do not involve cookies or any other tracking technology in your browser.
The sign-ups waitlist
New accounts are not open yet. While they are closed, you can leave your email address on our waitlist so we can tell you when they open. This section covers only that list. You do not need an account to be on it, and being on it does not create one.
What we store
Your email address, whether you ticked the beta tester box, which mobile platform you said you would use if you did, the campaign code in the link or QR code you arrived through (if any), and the dates you joined and last updated your choices.
Lawful basis
Your consent, given when you submit the form. You can withdraw it at any time by emailing privacy@beaconry.co, and we will erase your entry. Because the list exists before you have an account, this is the route to use: there is no account to sign into and delete.
Who we share it with
Nobody, unless you ticked the beta tester box. If you did, we will pass your email address to Apple (App Store Connect) and Google (Google Play) so they can invite you to test pre-release builds. That is a disclosure to those companies, and it happens only for people who ticked the box. If you did not tick it, your address stays with us and our email provider, and you will still get the message telling you sign-ups have opened.
How long we keep it
The waitlist is a holding record, not a mailing list. We delete your address once we have sent you the message saying sign-ups are open, or after twelve months, whichever comes first. If you go on to create an account or join the beta, the ongoing relationship lives in your account or with the testing programme, not in this list, so we still delete the waitlist entry.
What we do not do
We do not use this address for a newsletter, marketing, or anything other than telling you sign-ups have opened, and we do not sell it.
How we use your data
- To create and manage your account and sign you in.
- To operate the core service: showing prices and sending the price alerts you have asked for.
- To manage your subscription and confirm your access tier.
- To keep the service secure, prevent abuse, and fix faults.
- To understand which parts of the service are used, so we can improve it.
- To contact you about your account or important service changes.
Legal bases
Under UK data protection law we rely on: performance of our contract with you (to provide the service you sign up for), our legitimate interests (to secure and improve the service), your consent (for push notifications, which you can withdraw at any time), and compliance with legal obligations. If you would like more detail on the basis for a specific use, contact privacy@beaconry.co.
Payments
Paid subscriptions are purchased through the Apple App Store or Google Play. Your payment and card details are handled entirely by Apple or Google; we never see or store them. We receive confirmation of your subscription status through RevenueCat, our subscription management provider, so we can grant the right access tier.
Retailer links and affiliate commission
When you tap through to buy from a retailer, that visit may carry an affiliate identifier so that we earn a commission if you make a purchase. This does not change the price you pay, and it does not affect how we rank or display prices, which are ordered by price. Once you leave Beaconry for a retailer's site, that retailer's own privacy policy applies to your visit.
Product analytics
To understand which features are worth building on, we send a small set of usage events to Amplitude, our product analytics provider. These cover things like a price alert being delivered or a tap through to a retailer, together with the subscription tier of the account involved.
Events are tied to a pseudonymous identifier we generate for your account, not to you by name. We do not send your email address to our analytics provider, and neither your password, your payment details, nor the device token used for push notifications form part of the event data. Where an event refers to a retailer, we send only the retailer's domain, never the full web address you visited. We rely on our legitimate interest in understanding and improving the service for this processing. You can object to it at any time by contacting privacy@beaconry.co.
Who we share data with
We do not sell your personal data. We share it only with the service providers that help us run Beaconry, and only as far as they need it:
- Amazon Web Services: cloud hosting, authentication (Amazon Cognito), and our database.
- RevenueCat: subscription status management.
- Amplitude: product analytics covering how the service is used.
- Apple and Google: payment processing for subscriptions.
- Our email provider: account and price-alert emails.
We may also disclose data where we are required to by law, or to protect our rights and the safety of our users.
International transfers
Some of our providers may process data outside the UK. Where that happens we rely on appropriate safeguards. Amplitude, our analytics provider, holds this data in the European Union rather than the United States. [Hosting region and specific transfer safeguards to be confirmed by legal.]
How long we keep your data
We keep your personal data for as long as your account is active and for a limited period afterwards where we need to for legal, security, or accounting reasons. [Specific retention periods to be confirmed by legal.]
Your rights
You have the right to access, correct, delete, restrict, or object to our use of your personal data, and to request a copy of it. You can delete your account at any time from within the app, which removes your account and the data we hold about it in our own systems. Where we have already shared usage events with our analytics provider, tell us and we will request their deletion too. To exercise any other right, or if you would prefer we handle a deletion for you, email privacy@beaconry.co. You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) if you are unhappy with how we handle your data.
Security
We take reasonable technical and organisational measures to protect your data, including managed authentication and pseudonymisation of identifiers in our logs. No online service can be completely secure, but we work to keep your data safe.
Children
Beaconry is not directed at children and is intended for adult hobbyists. We do not knowingly collect personal data from children.
Changes to this policy
We may update this policy from time to time. When we do, we will change the date at the top of this page and, where the change is significant, tell you through the service.
Contact
For any privacy or data protection question, contact us at privacy@beaconry.co.