Privacy Policy
Last updated: August 2026
This policy explains what personal data I collect through ProtectMyMobile, why I collect it, how long I keep it, and what rights you have over it under the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018. I have tried to write it in plain English rather than legal boilerplate.
Who Runs This Site
ProtectMyMobile is run by me, Antonio Smith, as an individual working as a sole trader. There is no company behind it. That makes me the data controller for everything described on this page.
The route for any data protection request, question or complaint is my contact form. I do not publish a postal address on the site, but a correspondence address is available on request if you need one for a formal request.
What I Collect, Why, and For How Long
Each thing I collect is listed below with the reason I collect it, the lawful basis I rely on under the UK GDPR, and how long I keep it.
Contact form messages
Your name, email address, subject and message.
- Why: so I can read your message and reply to you.
- Lawful basis: legitimate interests — you have chosen to write to me and expect an answer.
- Retention: kept while I still need it to deal with your message and any follow-up, then deleted.
Community survey responses
Your answers to the multiple-choice survey questions, a random session identifier generated in your browser, your browser's user agent string, and a one-way hash of your IP address. The IP address itself is not stored, and the survey does not ask for your name or email.
- Why: to produce the statistics published on this site, and to spot duplicate or automated submissions.
- Lawful basis: consent — you choose whether to submit the survey.
- Retention: kept while the statistics drawn from them are still published.
Experience reports
If you submit your story through the report-an-experience form: your name, email address and the account you write.
- Why: so I can review it and, if you have agreed, publish it to help other people.
- Lawful basis: consent.
- Retention: published reports stay until you ask me to take yours down; reports I do not publish are deleted after review.
Theft map reports
The location name, approximate coordinates, date, item type and free-text description you enter, plus a random session identifier. No name or email is collected.
- Why: to build the crowd-sourced theft map. Please do not put personal details about yourself or anyone else in the description — approved reports are shown publicly.
- Lawful basis: consent.
- Retention: kept while the report is displayed on the map.
Site analytics
The site keeps its own simple usage log. When you view certain pages or use certain features — including landing on a page that does not exist — a record is written to my own database containing the page path or address, your browser's user agent string, the page that referred you, and a random session identifier. There are no analytics cookies and no third-party trackers of any kind: nothing is sent to Google Analytics, advertising networks or similar services.
- Why: to see which guides people actually use, and to find broken links and missing pages.
- Lawful basis: legitimate interests — running and fixing my own site, using the smallest amount of data I can.
- Retention: kept while it is useful for improving the site, then deleted.
What I DON'T Collect
- Your IMEI number or device identifiers
- Your banking or financial information
- Your precise location
- Personal identification documents
I also do not sell personal data, share it for advertising, or use it to make automated decisions about you.
Cookies and Local Storage
No advertising cookies and no third-party tracking cookies are set on this site. The cookie banner you may have seen at the bottom of the page is a notice only — there is nothing to accept or reject, because the analytics described above do not use cookies at all.
Dismissing that banner stores a single flag in your browser's local storage so it does not come back. A few other small flags are stored the same way, for example to remember that you have already answered a one-question survey. All of that stays on your device and is never sent to me.
Who Else Handles Your Data
I use three suppliers, each acting as a processor on my instructions:
- Convex — the database and backend that stores contact messages, survey responses, reports and analytics records.
- Netlify — website hosting and the serverless functions that handle form submissions. Netlify keeps its own short-lived server logs.
- Resend — email delivery, used to send replies and notifications.
Transfers Outside the UK
Netlify and Resend are United States companies, so personal data handled by them may be processed outside the UK.
Where personal data is transferred outside the UK, I rely on the UK International Data Transfer Agreement (IDTA), or the UK Addendum to the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses, as incorporated into each supplier's terms, where those mechanisms apply.
Your Rights
Under the UK GDPR you have the right to:
- Be informed about how your data is used — which is what this page is for.
- Access the personal data I hold about you, and get a copy of it.
- Rectification — have inaccurate data corrected or incomplete data completed.
- Erasure — ask me to delete your data.
- Restrict processing — ask me to keep your data but stop using it, for example while a dispute about its accuracy is sorted out.
- Object to processing — including objecting at any time to anything I do on the basis of legitimate interests.
- Data portability — receive the data you gave me in a common, machine-readable format, or have me send it to someone else where that is technically possible.
- Withdraw consent at any time, where I rely on consent. Withdrawing consent does not undo what was done before you withdrew it.
- Not be subject to automated decision-making — I do not do any.
To exercise any of these, use my contact form. It is free, and I will respond within one month. I may need to ask you something to confirm which submission is yours, since most of the site does not use accounts.
Complaints
If you are unhappy with how I have handled your personal data, please tell me first so I can put it right. You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office, the UK's data protection regulator, at ico.org.uk, or on 0303 123 1113.
Changes to This Policy
If what I collect or how I use it changes, I will update this page and change the date at the top. Significant changes will be flagged on the site.
Contact
For anything to do with privacy or your data, please use my contact form. A correspondence address is available on request.