Last updated: September 2026. This policy describes what MoveCompass actually does with your data, written from the system itself rather than from a template.
1. Who is responsible for your data
MoveCompass is the data controller for the personal data described here, which means we decide what is collected and why.
| Postal address | Available on request |
|---|---|
| Privacy enquiries | info@movecompass.co.uk |
| ICO registration | Registration in progress — ask us and we will give you the number |
For anything about your data — a question, a correction, a copy, or a deletion — write to that address or use our contact page. A person reads every message.
2. What we collect
Account data
Your email address, a name if you give one, and a password. The password is stored only as a bcrypt hash — a one-way transformation — so we cannot read it, recover it, or tell you what it is. Nobody at MoveCompass can see your password.
We also send a six-digit code to your email to verify the address when you sign up.
Optionally, and only if you enter them: a phone number and a postal address. These are never required. They exist so a receipt can carry your address and so we can reach you if your email stops working.
Usage data
The postcodes you search and which tools you used. We keep these for two reasons: so your recent searches are there when you come back, and so we can enforce the fair-use limit that keeps the service fast. They are not sold, shared, or used to build a profile of where you might be moving.
Your IP address and browser user-agent are stored in your login session for as long as that session lasts, which is standard for any site you sign in to. We also use your IP address in memory to rate-limit requests and block automated scraping. We do not keep a log of pages you visited.
Saved areas and alerts
Areas you choose to follow, and the alerts you have asked for. You created these deliberately and you can remove any of them at any time.
Subscription data
Which plan you are on, when it renews, whether a trial is running, and any discount code you used.
Removals directory
If you list a business: your name, contact details, business details, vehicle details, the areas you cover, and the identity and insurance documents you upload. Documents are held on private storage, never served publicly, and are deleted as soon as your listing has been approved or rejected — we keep only the expiry dates we recorded from them. Your published listing shows what you chose to publish; your registration number is deliberately never shown, because publishing it would help vehicle cloning.
3. Payment and billing data
We never see or store your card details. Payment is taken on the payment provider's own secure page, and what comes back to us is a customer reference, the plan, and whether the payment succeeded.
Depending on which method you choose, your payment is processed by Stripe Payments Europe Ltd, PayPal (Europe) S.à r.l. et Cie, S.C.A., or GoCardless Ltd. Each is an independent data controller for the payment data it processes, under its own privacy policy, and each is required to handle card data to the PCI-DSS standard.
We hold the record of what you were charged and when, because we are legally required to keep accounting records.
4. What we do not do
- We do not sell your data. Not your email, not your searches, not your saved areas.
- We do not show adverts, and we do not take payment from estate agents, developers or removals firms to rank them higher.
- We do not use advertising or tracking cookies. Your sign-in is kept in your browser's own local storage rather than a cookie, and it never leaves your device except as an authorisation header when you ask us for something.
- We do not build a profile of where you are thinking of moving, or share your searches with anyone.
5. Who we share data with
Only the suppliers who make the service work, and only what each one needs:
- Our hosting provider, which stores the database on servers in the United Kingdom.
- Our email provider, which receives your email address in order to deliver the message we are sending you.
- The payment providers named above, when you subscribe.
When you use a tool, we query the data sources listed on our data attributions page — government departments and public bodies such as the DfE, police.uk, the NHS, Ofcom, HM Land Registry and DVSA, and also third-party services including OpenStreetMap, postcodes.io, Open Charge Map and, where enabled, Google Places. Requests carry the postcode or registration you entered and nothing that identifies you. Those organisations do not know who asked.
Fonts
Our typefaces are served by Google Fonts. Loading them means your browser contacts Google's servers, which receives your IP address and basic request information. Google state they do not use Google Fonts requests to build advertising profiles. We use them for speed and consistency, and we are looking at self-hosting so that request stops being made.
6. Where your data is held
On servers in the United Kingdom. Some of our suppliers — email and payment providers in particular — operate in the European Economic Area, which has equivalent protection under UK law.
7. Our legal basis for each use
UK GDPR requires us to have a lawful basis for every use of personal data. Ours are:
| What | Why | Lawful basis |
|---|---|---|
| Account, sign-in, password | To give you the service you asked for | Contract |
| Subscription and billing | To take payment and meet our obligations to you | Contract |
| Keeping billing records six years | HMRC require it | Legal obligation |
| Searches, saved areas, alerts, vehicles | Features you chose to use | Contract |
| Service emails — verification, payment reminders, alerts you set | To run the service | Contract |
| Security logs, rate limiting, anti-scraping | To keep the service available and safe | Legitimate interests |
| Contact messages | To answer you | Legitimate interests |
| Directory identity and insurance documents | To check a listing before publishing it | Legitimate interests, and your consent when you upload them |
Where we rely on legitimate interests we have considered whether it is fair to you, and you can object at any time using the rights below.
8. How long we keep it
| Data | Kept for |
|---|---|
| Account and profile | Until you delete your account |
| Postcode searches | 12 months, then deleted automatically |
| Saved areas, alerts, vehicles, checklist | Until you remove them or delete your account |
| Login sessions (IP and browser) | 30 days from last use |
| Contact messages | 24 months after the matter is closed |
| Security and error logs | 90 days |
| Directory identity documents | Deleted as soon as the application is decided |
| Directory listings and their expiry dates | While listed, then 12 months |
| Billing and payment records | Six years, because HMRC require it |
Deleting your account does not delete billing records. We are legally required to keep them, and they are the one thing that survives — they contain what you paid and when, not your searches or your saved areas.
9. Your rights
Under UK GDPR you have the right to:
- Be informed — which is what this page is for.
- Access a copy of what we hold about you.
- Rectification — have anything wrong corrected.
- Erasure — have it deleted, except where we are legally required to keep it.
- Restrict processing — tell us to hold it but stop using it while something is disputed.
- Data portability — receive it in a machine-readable form, or have it sent elsewhere.
- Object to anything we do on the basis of legitimate interests.
- Not be subject to automated decision-making that significantly affects you. We do not do any — no scoring of people, no profiling, no automated decisions about anybody.
- Withdraw consent at any time, where consent is what we relied on.
Deleting your account exercises most of these at once, immediately, from your account page: your email, password, searches, saved areas, alerts, vehicles and checklist. Billing records remain because the law requires it — see the table above.
For anything else, write to info@movecompass.co.uk. We respond within one month, which is the statutory deadline, and usually much sooner. There is no charge.
10. Complaints
If you are unhappy with how we have handled your data, tell us at info@movecompass.co.uk and write "complaint" in the subject.
We acknowledge every complaint within 30 days and tell you what we are doing about it. If our answer does not satisfy you, or you would rather not come to us first, you can complain directly to the Information Commissioner's Office:
- ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint
- 0303 123 1113
Complaining to the ICO does not cost anything and does not affect your rights against us.
11. Children
MoveCompass is not intended for children, and we do not knowingly collect data from anyone under 16.
12. Changes to this policy
If we change how we use your data in a way that affects you, we will email you before it takes effect rather than quietly updating this page.