Your data
Privacy notice
We collect as little as we can, keep it only as long as we need it, and never store your address as text.
Last updated · Draft — pending legal review
Who we are
Offer Odds is run by Offer Odds (Lime Creations), the data controller for the personal data described here. Contact us about anything in this notice at hello@offerodds.limecreations.co.uk.
What we collect and why
- Your email address, when you ask for a free street check or buy a Shortlist, so we can send your result and a private link to it. If you tick the box, we also send you reminders before the application deadline. That box starts unticked.
- Where your home is, as the property’s unique reference number (UPRN), postcode and map coordinates, so we can measure the distance to each school the way the council does. We never store your address as free text. If we can only find your postcode, we use the postcode’s centre and mark your result as approximate.
- Your answers about siblings and faith, only to work out which admission criterion applies to you at each school. They are saved with your results so the private link shows the same answers, and deleted after the admissions season. A faith answer shows your family’s religious belief, so we use it only if you tick the box to agree; you can always choose “None of these, or I’d rather not say”.
- Your order, if you buy something: what you bought, the price and whether it was paid or refunded. Stripe takes your card details; we never see or store them.
- How you found us: campaign tags in the link you followed (such as utm_source or fbclid), saved with your email so we know which adverts and posts work. They are kept in a cookie only if you choose “Accept”.
- Outcome survey answers, if you choose to tell us after offer day which school offered you a place. We use them, without names or emails, to check and improve our accuracy.
Our lawful bases
- Contract: to run the check or Shortlist you asked for and send your results.
- Consent: for marketing emails and for Meta advertising cookies. You can withdraw consent at any time, with the unsubscribe link in any email or the “Cookie settings” button at the foot of every page. Withdrawing stops anything being sent from then on.
- Explicit consent (UK GDPR Article 9(2)(a)): for faith answers, which are special category data. We record when you gave it.
- Legitimate interests: to keep the service secure (for example, limiting repeated requests), to prevent fraud, and to measure our accuracy using anonymised figures.
- Legal obligation: to keep records of payments for tax purposes.
How long we keep it
- Home location (UPRN, postcode and coordinates) from checks: deleted on 30 September after each admissions season (for everything from before 1 September that year). After that we keep only survey outcomes with the distance rounded to the nearest 100 metres, mixed together with no link to you, to improve our accuracy.
- Results behind your private link: the link keeps working, but on 30 September after the season we remove your location, every distance from your home and your sibling and faith answers from it. The schools, verdicts and the councils’ cut-offs stay.
- Your email: marketing stops as soon as you unsubscribe. If you only used the free check, we delete your email on 30 September after the season. If you bought a Shortlist, we keep it with the payment record.
- Payment records: as long as the law requires us to keep them for tax purposes (normally six years).
Who processes data for us
These services act on our instructions under a data processing agreement.
- Stripe: payments and refunds.
- Resend: sending emails.
- Cloudflare: security, delivering the website, and the Turnstile check on our forms that tells people from bots.
- Plausible: cookieless website statistics. Plausible doesn’t use cookies or collect personal data, so it runs for everyone.
- Ideal Postcodes (when we use it): when you type your address, the search is sent to it to find your property. We don’t keep the text you type.
- Our hosting provider, which runs the servers and database.
Other organisations that receive some data:
- Meta (Facebook and Instagram): advertising measurement, only if you choose “Accept” on our cookie banner. We send Meta a scrambled (hashed) version of your email and technical details about your visit (IP address, browser), so it can tell us when an advert led to a sign-up or purchase. For this data Meta is a joint controller with us under its Business Tools Terms; see Meta’s privacy policy.
- postcodes.io (a free public service, used when we don’t use Ideal Postcodes): it receives the postcode you type. Our server sends it, not your browser, so it doesn’t see your IP address. It has no data processing agreement with us.
Some of these providers process data outside the UK. Where they do, they protect it with safeguards recognised under UK law, such as the UK International Data Transfer Agreement or an adequacy decision.
What we never do
- We never send your address, postcode, the schools you looked at, or your sibling or faith answers to Meta. Meta’s tracking never runs on school pages, check pages or your results.
- Our statistics service (Plausible) receives the addresses of the pages you visit, including public school pages, but nothing that identifies you, and never the secret part of a results link.
- We never sell your data.
- We never load Meta’s tracking before you choose “Accept”.
Cookies
- oo_consent (necessary): remembers whether you chose Accept or Reject on the cookie banner.
- Security cookies (necessary): set by Cloudflare to protect forms from bots.
- oo_checkout (necessary, 1 day): links your return from Stripe’s payment page to this browser so we can show your results straight away.
- oo_attr (measurement, only after “Accept”, 7 days, first-party): which campaign link brought you here. Never shared. Deleted if you choose “Reject”.
- _fbp and _fbc (advertising, only after “Accept”): set by Meta to measure our adverts.
Plausible statistics use no cookies. Change your choice at any time with “Cookie settings” at the foot of every page.
Your rights
Under UK data protection law you have the right to see the personal data we hold about you, to have it corrected or deleted, to restrict or object to how we use it, to receive a copy in a portable format, and to withdraw consent. Email hello@offerodds.limecreations.co.uk; we reply within one month.
If you’re unhappy with how we’ve handled your data, please tell us first. You can also complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO): ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint, or call 0303 123 1113.
Children
Offer Odds is for parents and carers. We don’t ask for your child’s name or date of birth, and the only information about your child we use is your answers about siblings and faith.
Changes to this notice
If we change how we use personal data, we’ll update this page and the date at the top. If a change is significant, we’ll tell you by email first.