Privacy

Provider Ledger is designed to collect as little personal information as possible. It records what official publishers put on their own lists. It does not set out to record anything about the people who read it.

Who is responsible

The data controller is the person or organisation that decides why and how personal data in this ledger is processed. Where this page says “this project” or “the controller”, it means that controller.

This copy of the site was built without the controller’s name, so it is not printed here.

This copy of the site was also built without a contact route, so none is printed here.

Questions about personal data, and requests under the rights listed below, go to the controller.

When you read this site

Every page is a file generated in advance. Nothing is rendered by a server when you ask for it, and no script runs in your browser to produce the content of a page.

No analytics and no tracking pixels.
No cookies, and nothing is stored on your device by this site.
No behavioural profile of any reader is built.
Nothing is loaded from a third party: the typefaces are served with the pages, and there are no embedded widgets, advertisements or tag managers.

The host that serves the files processes the ordinary technical data of a request (the IP address, the page requested, the time and the browser type) so that the site can be delivered and kept secure. Its lawful basis is legitimate interests, set out below. This project adds nothing to that data and keeps no copy of it.

What is processed, why, and for how long

Each purpose below has its own lawful basis under Article 6 of the UK GDPR and its own retention. Nothing collected for one purpose is used for another.

Serving the site

What is held: The host’s ordinary request records: IP address, page requested, time and browser type.
Lawful basis: Legitimate interests (Article 6(1)(f)): delivering the pages and keeping the service secure. The balance favours it because nothing is added to the request, no profile is built, and the data is not used for any other purpose.
How long: Set by the host, not by this project. This project holds no copy.

Publishing the register

What is held: What an official publisher puts on its own list: company or trading name, listing reference, dates and source. Where a provider’s only name is a person’s own name, that name is withheld; see the section below.
Lawful basis: Legitimate interests (Article 6(1)(f)): keeping an accurate, dated record of what official lists contained, which the lists themselves do not keep. The balance favours it for company records, which are not personal data, and for the rest because only the authority’s own reference is published.
How long: For the life of the register. The change log is append-only and the evidence behind each event is never deleted.

Writing to this project

A message is used only to reply to you or to act on what you asked. It is not sold, not shared for advertising, and not added to any record about a company beyond what you asked to be published.

What is held: Whatever you choose to include in your message, and the address it came from.
Lawful basis: Legitimate interests (Article 6(1)(f)): reading and replying to what you sent, and acting on it.
How long: Until the matter is closed, and no longer than needed to show how it was handled. Erased on request.

A company’s statement about its own record

A statement should be made in the company’s name and should not include another person’s details. The statement and the official record are stored and shown separately; one never overwrites the other.

What is held: The statement as received, dated, and published beside the official record, labelled as provided by the company. The sender’s contact details, used to reply, are not published.
Lawful basis: Legitimate interests (Article 6(1)(f)): giving a company a dated reply beside an official record, without altering that record.
How long: Published for as long as the record it answers is published. Any later change to a statement is recorded as its own dated event; the log is append-only, so an earlier event is not removed. Contact details are kept as for a message.

A free API key

The call count is deliberately thin. It holds no IP address, no user agent, no query text or parameter, and no company name: a question about one named company is counted as a call to the route, exactly like any other. The API page sets out the allowance and what is counted.

What is held: The email address the key was issued to, a one-way hash of the key (never the key itself), the tier, and the dates it was issued and, if so, retired. For each day, the key identifier, the route name and a count of calls.
Lawful basis: Contract (Article 6(1)(b)): providing the free key you asked for, on the terms in Terms and the API page; and, for the count of calls, legitimate interests (Article 6(1)(f)): keeping the free allowance fair.
How long: While the key is in use. After it is retired the address is erased on request.

A free watchlist

A watch takes two steps. You enter an address and name a company or a country, and the request is held while nothing is watched. It becomes a watch only when the address uses the confirmation link sent to it. The link works once and stops working after 24 hours.

This project sends no email at present, and nothing in it is able to send one: no sender exists. A confirmation link is an email, so no link can be delivered and no watch can become active. If you enter an address now, the request is held and then lapses, no link reaches the address, and nothing is watched or sent. If a sender is added, a request produces one email, which carries its link, and alerts follow only for watches that have been confirmed.

Stopping does not remove every trace of an address. An address that stops every watch is kept in two places, indefinitely. The suppression record is kept so that the address is never contacted again. The attempt log is kept so that a refusal to send can be audited afterwards, and stopping does not clear it, because a log with the refusals removed would no longer show what was tried. One record honours the objection and the other records what the project did. You can ask the controller to erase or restrict either record. The request is weighed against the reason given here for keeping it.

What is held

What is held depends on the stage the request has reached.

An unconfirmed request: the email address, that it asks for a watch, which company or country it would watch, when it was asked for and when its link stops working.
A confirmed watch: the email address, whether a company or a country is watched, which one, and the date it was confirmed.
The consent record: when the request was made, the moment it was confirmed, and the confirmation link that was used, which is the evidence that the address itself confirmed.
A record that a link was sent: the link’s token and the time. It has no address in it.
The attempt log: for every attempt to send a confirmation link, whatever came of it, the time, the address as it was entered, the purpose and the outcome.
A suppression record, after every watch for an address is stopped: the address, the reason (stopped, or objected) and the date.

Nothing else about the person is held.

Lawful basis

Consent (Article 6(1)(a)), given when the address uses its confirmation link and not when it is entered. An entry nobody confirmed is not consent and produces no watch. You can withdraw consent at any time by stopping the watch. Stopping one watch removes that watch and its consent record. Stopping every watch for an address removes them all and then adds a suppression record. After consent is withdrawn, the suppression record and the attempt log are kept under legitimate interests (Article 6(1)(f)), for the two reasons given in the paragraph on stopping above.

How long

An unconfirmed request is valid for 24 hours. It is deleted the next time the service takes a request or a confirmation after that, so it stays in storage for longer if nobody uses the service in between. A watch and its consent record are kept until you stop the watch or ask for them to be erased. The suppression record, the attempt log and the record that a link was sent are kept indefinitely.

What the register holds about a company

Only what an official publisher puts on its own list or page: a company or trading name, a listing or licence reference where the publisher gives one, the dates a record began and ended, and the official source it came from. Nothing is added from any other source and nothing is enriched with personal data.

A named contact person, a home address, a personal email address or a personal telephone number that an official list carries is excluded. The company name and the official listing reference are kept, and nothing else.

Where a provider’s only name is a person’s own name

A sole trader’s trading name can be the person’s own name, and an official list may publish it as the provider’s name. This is the one place where this ledger processes personal data about someone who has no part in it, so the controller states the rule it applies.

The name is withheld. This register’s own pages, files and API do not show it.
The withholding is stated. Where it applies, the record says that a name is withheld, so that a reader is never left to assume the entry is complete without it.
The row is kept. The provider remains in the register under the authority’s own listing reference, with its dates, its source and its place in the change log. It is never dropped: a register that quietly left out a provider the authority lists would be wrong about the list it records.

The lawful basis is legitimate interests (Article 6(1)(f)): keeping an accurate, dated record of what an official list contained. Withholding the name limits the effect on the person to the fact that an entry exists under the authority’s own reference.

The captured copy of the authority’s file, which this project keeps unaltered as the evidence behind each event, may still contain the name. It is held, and is never deleted, because the change log depends on it. It is published only where that source’s terms allow, and then as the authority’s own publication. You have the rights listed below in respect of it, including the right to object.

When a change about a named company is published

No single observation produces a public statement about a named company. A change is published only after two consecutive runs agree. A removal is published only when, in addition, at least 72 hours have passed since the company was first absent and no source anomaly was raised for that source in the window. A change that would remove more than 20 per cent of a list at once is never published. These rules and the figures behind them are set out on Method, and a reader can check any published event on Proof.

Automated decisions

This project makes no decision about a person by solely automated means. The engine publishes what authorities publish. The rules that decide when a change is published are applied automatically to records of companies, and are described on Method. If you think a record is wrong, write to the controller. The official record is not altered by the request, only corrected by a new dated event where the evidence requires it. How a request is handled is under Your rights.

Processors and transfers outside the UK

A processor handles personal data on the controller’s instructions.

This copy of the site was built without the name of the host that serves its files, without where that host processes data and without the safeguard relied on for any transfer, so none of them is stated here.

This project uses no analytics, advertising or tag-management provider, and sends no reader data to one.

Your rights

Under the UK GDPR you have the right to:

be told what is held about you and to receive a copy (access);
have inaccurate data corrected (rectification);
have data erased where the law provides for it (erasure);
restrict how data is used while a complaint is looked at;
object to processing based on legitimate interests, which includes everything above except the free API key and a confirmed watch; the records kept after a watch is stopped do rest on legitimate interests, so you can object to those;
withdraw consent where consent is the basis, without affecting what was done before;
receive data you gave for a key or a watch in a portable form.

Ask the controller. Because the change log is hash-chained and append-only, an erasure or an objection about a published name is met by not showing or serving the name, and not by editing a past entry; the log keeps the event and its hash.

This copy of the site was built without a statement of how soon the controller replies to a request or of who reviews one, so neither is given here.

Complaints

If you are not satisfied with how your personal data is handled, you can complain to the supervisory authority for the United Kingdom, the Information Commissioner’s Office, at ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint. You are welcome to raise it with the controller first, but you do not have to.

This policy reflects how the site was built for the run dated 25 October 2026.

This page is information taken from official published lists. It is not tax, legal or professional advice, and it does not replace checking the official source.