Privacy Policy

Last updated: 21 August 2026

Data controller: DJ Wilde Consulting Ltd, 40 St James Buildings, St James Street, Taunton, Somerset TA1 1JR, United Kingdom (registered in England & Wales).

1. Information We Collect

We collect information you provide directly, including your name, email address, and enquiry details. We also collect usage data such as pages visited, browser type, and device information to improve the Service.

2. How We Use Your Information

• To process and facilitate enquiries between boaters and marine operators
• To communicate with you about your account and enquiries
• To improve and personalise the BerthFinder experience
• To comply with legal obligations

3. Our Lawful Basis for Using It

Under UK GDPR we must have a lawful basis for each use of your information. Ours are:

• Performance of a contract — running your account, and passing your enquiry to the marinas you asked us to contact.
• Legitimate interests — improving the service, keeping it secure and free from abuse, understanding overall usage, and contacting marina businesses about their listing on BerthFinder. You can object to any processing we carry out on this basis at any time, and we will stop unless we have compelling grounds not to.
• Consent — where we ask for it, such as optional marketing. You can withdraw consent at any time without affecting anything done beforehand.
• Legal obligation — keeping records we are required by law to keep, such as records relating to payments and tax.

4. Marketplace Role

BerthFinder is a marketplace. While we verify partners, the final contract of berthing is between the Boater and the Operator.

When you submit an enquiry, your contact details are shared with the relevant marina operator so they can respond to your request. Marina operators are independent data controllers for the information they receive.

5. Data Sharing and Processors

We do not sell your personal data. We share information only with:

• Marina partners (to fulfil enquiries)
• Payment processors (to handle transactions)
• Service providers who assist in operating the platform. These currently include: hosting and databases (DigitalOcean, servers in London), content delivery and security (Cloudflare), email delivery (Resend), payments (Stripe), our own business mailbox (Microsoft), mobile push notifications (Apple), and website analytics (Plausible, hosted in the EU).
• AI assistance. If you use our chat or AI matching, the message you write and the boat details you give are sent to a third-party AI provider so a reply can be generated. We do not send them your email address or payment details, and your content is not used to train their models under our agreements.

6. Where Your Data Is Held

Our database and application servers are located in London, United Kingdom. Some of the service providers listed above are based outside the UK — principally in the United States and the European Union. Where personal data is transferred outside the UK, it is protected by the safeguards permitted under UK data protection law, such as the UK International Data Transfer Addendum or a UK adequacy decision.

7. How Long We Keep It

• Boater accounts — for as long as your account is open, and for 12 months afterwards, then deleted.
• Berth enquiries and the replies to them — 3 years, so we can answer questions about what was asked and quoted.
• Marina business contact details — for as long as the listing is published, or until you ask us to remove it.
• Payment and invoice records — 7 years, because tax law requires it.
• Website and app usage data — 25 months.

If you ask us to delete your data we will do so, except where we are legally required to keep it (for example payment records), in which case we will keep only what the law requires and nothing more.

8. Data Security

We use industry-standard security measures to protect your data, including encryption in transit and at rest. However, no method of transmission over the internet is 100% secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.

9. Your Rights

Under UK GDPR you have the right to:

• Be informed about how your data is used — that is what this notice is for.
• Access a copy of the personal data we hold about you.
• Rectification — have inaccurate data corrected.
• Erasure — have your data deleted, subject to any records we must keep by law.
• Restrict processing — ask us to pause what we do with your data.
• Data portability — receive the data you gave us in a common, machine-readable format.
• Object — including to any processing we carry out under legitimate interests, and to direct marketing at any time.
• Withdraw consent at any time, where consent is the basis we rely on.

To exercise any of these, email us at [email protected]. We will respond within one month. There is no charge.

10. Complaints

If you are unhappy with how we have handled your personal data, please tell us first and we will try to put it right. You also have the right to complain to the UK's data protection regulator, the Information Commissioner's Office:

Information Commissioner's Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire SK9 5AF · Helpline 0303 123 1113 · ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint

11. Cookies & Analytics

We use strictly necessary cookies only. As of 21 August 2026 these are: hb_csrf, which protects forms against cross-site request forgery, and __cf_bm, set by Cloudflare to distinguish humans from bots. Both are required for the site to work safely, so no consent banner is required for them. We do not use third-party advertising cookies and we do not track you across other apps or websites.

To understand usage and improve the platform we use privacy-friendly, first-party analytics: on the website via a cookieless analytics tool that does not identify individual visitors, and in our mobile app via our own servers using a random, non-identifying device identifier. This behavioural data (such as searches and pages viewed) is never sold and is not used for advertising.

12. Contact

For privacy-related enquiries, contact us at [email protected].