Privacy Notice

This explains what personal information The Business Listing collects, why, and what you can do about it. It describes what the site actually stores — nothing here is aspirational.

Last updated August 2026

Who is responsible

The data controller is [Registered company name, company number and registered address].

For anything about your data, email sales@thebusinesslisting.co.uk.

If you list a business

We store the account details you give us: your name, your email address, and your password (hashed — we never see it).

We store the listing details you enter: business name, street address, postcode, phone number, business email, website, social links, opening hours, description, map coordinates, and any logo or photos you upload.

Business contact details on a listing are published — that is the point of a directory. Your account name and email are not published.

We do this to provide the service you asked for, which is our contract with you.

If you leave a review

We store the name you give, your email address, your rating and your review text.

We also store the IP address the review was sent from. It is used only to spot spam and abuse, and it is never displayed.

Your name and review are published if the review is approved. Your email address and IP address are not.

If you claim an existing listing

We store your claim: your role at the business, a contact phone number, and any evidence you provide, along with who reviewed it and when.

If you subscribe to Featured

Payments are handled by Stripe. Your card details go straight to Stripe and never reach our servers.

We store the identifiers Stripe gives us — a customer reference and a subscription reference — so we know which listing a subscription belongs to.

Stripe is a separate controller for the payment data it holds. Their privacy notice covers it.

Signing up

We briefly count new sign-ups by IP address to stop automated abuse. That count expires on its own and is not tied to your account.

We send you an email to verify your address when you register.

Cookies

When you sign in we set a WordPress login cookie so you stay signed in. That is essential to the service and cannot be turned off while you are logged in.

The add-a-business form keeps a draft of what you have typed in your own browser, so a refresh does not lose your work. That draft stays on your device and is never sent to us until you submit the form. Clearing it is what the "Start over" button does.

The Partner badge

If you choose the Partner package, our system visits your website's homepage to check the badge is present. It reads the page only, and looks for nothing else.

The contact form

A message you send through the contact form is emailed straight to us, with your address set as the reply-to so we can answer directly. It is not stored in a database and is never shown on the site.

We briefly count contact-form submissions by IP address to stop spam. That count expires on its own within the hour.

If a check on your listing is flagged

If something about your listing is queried — by our automated checks or by a member of staff — we store the check and its status, so it shows correctly in your dashboard.

If you or we reply to a query, we store that reply against the listing so the conversation is kept in one place. A reply to an automated check queues it for another look; a person always makes the final decision on whether a listing stays live, is changed, or is removed. No automated check alone decides that.

Who we share with

We do not sell your personal information.

We share it only with the services that make the site work — our hosting provider, Stripe for payments, and our email provider for the messages we send you. Where any of these are based outside the UK, they are required to protect your data to UK standards, including through the standard contractual safeguards recognised for that purpose.

Children

This site is for businesses and the people who run them. It is not directed at children, and we do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 18.

How long we keep it

Listing details are kept for as long as the listing exists. If you delete a listing or close your account, we remove the personal details we no longer need.

We keep records of payments for as long as tax and accounting rules require.

Quality-check records and replies are kept for as long as the listing they belong to exists, so the history stays accurate if a check is ever revisited.

Your rights

You can ask for a copy of your data, ask us to correct it, or ask us to delete it. You can also object to how we use it, or ask us to restrict that use.

Most of it you can change yourself, at any time, from your dashboard.

Email sales@thebusinesslisting.co.uk and we will respond within a month.

If you are unhappy with how we have handled your data, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk.

Also see our Terms of Use.