Privacy Policy

Introduction

This Privacy Policy explains how MapTools.uk ("we", "us", or "our") handles information in connection with our services. We provide different services, and they handle data differently:

• Free mapping tools (the free route planner, postcode tools, and similar) - these run in your web browser and we do not collect or store the data you put into them. This is explained below. The signed-in Route Planner Pro is a separate service, and the data it stores is described in the Account information section below.
• Proof of Delivery (POD) - a feature for signed-in subscribers that records delivery evidence (photos, optional signatures, delivery notes) on our servers so you can prove a delivery was made. Because this feature stores data for you, it works differently from the free tools, and the "Proof of Delivery Data" section below explains exactly what we store, why, and for how long.

Please read both the general sections and, if you use POD, the Proof of Delivery section, as they apply together.

By using our Site, you agree to the collection and use of information in accordance with this policy.

Who We Are (Data Controller)

The data controller responsible for your personal data is:

Grainger & Rossall Ltd
Registered office: 189 Lynchford Road, Farnborough, GU14 6HD, United Kingdom
ICO registration: application submitted (reference C1952682); our registration number will be added here once issued.

For any privacy or data-protection query, contact us at [email protected].

Information We Collect

Data processed locally by the free tools (not collected by us)

Our free mapping tools do as much as they can within your web browser. When you use these tools:

• Postcodes you enter are looked up in our own postcode files first, which your browser downloads by postcode district (our server sees which district file is asked for, such as SW1A, not your full postcode).
• Place names you type in Distance Between and the Elevation Finder are matched against our own place-name files, which your browser downloads by the first two letters you type (our server sees which file is asked for, not what you typed). Heights in the Elevation Finder come from our own height files, downloaded by the area around the point (our server sees which area).
• Some searches and points have to go to another service to be answered, such as a place name or address, or a point you click or your location to name the place. They are listed under Third-Party Services and Processors below, with whether each goes from your browser or through our server.
• Distance Between's road distance and the Drive Time Map's drive-time area send the points to our own routing server to be worked out. For their daily limits, Distance Between keeps a scrambled code (keyed hash) made from your IP address for two days, and the Drive Time Map passes your IP address to the routing server.
• CSV or spreadsheet files you upload to the free tools are processed in your browser, except the Radius Map, which sends each row it can't place itself (anything that isn't a latitude and longitude, as the whole row) through our server to Nominatim (see below).

For the free tools specifically, we do not keep your postcode searches, the routes you plan, or the files you use with them.

Please note: this "stays in your browser" position applies to the free tools. It does not apply to the Proof of Delivery feature, which deliberately stores data on our servers - see the Proof of Delivery section below.

Account information

When you sign in to Route Planner Pro, we create an account for you and store the following. Each item says how long we keep it.

• Your account. Your name and email address, as provided by your Google account, and a Google account identifier used to recognise you at sign-in. Your subscription and trial status and, for paying subscribers, a customer reference from our payment processor, Stripe. We do not store your card details - see Third-Party Services and Processors. Kept until you delete your account.
• Saved routes. When you save a route we store its name (up to 50 characters), your start and end postcodes and, for every stop, its postcode and whatever you gave us for it: the label, the text as you typed or imported it (for a CSV import that includes the name, address and notes columns) and any time window. If you save a route after optimising it we also store the calculated order, the map position of each stop, the road distances and times, the road geometry and the result of the check for late stops. You can have up to 20 saved routes. Kept until you delete the route or delete your account.
• Runs and stop records. When you start a delivery run we store the run (its name, when it started and finished, and its status) and each of its stops: postcode, map position, label, the text you typed or imported (including the name, address and notes columns of a CSV), its place in the run, and whether it was delivered, skipped or failed, and when. Kept until you delete the run or delete your account. Photos and signatures are kept as described under Proof of Delivery below.
• Saved settings. The defaults you choose to save (start and end postcodes, how to optimise, start time and break) and the column mappings we remember for your CSV files (a fingerprint of the header row, which column is which, and a label). Kept until you change or delete them, or delete your account.
• Suggestions you send us through the app, with your account. Kept until you delete your account.
• Product activity records. We record actions you take in the app (for example that a route was optimised, saved or shared, or that a stop was completed) with the time, the kind of device (mobile or desktop) and your day of the trial, plus some details of the action. The details are counts, settings, distances, the identifier of one of your own records, and, when a postcode could not be matched, the outward part of it (for example "SW1A"). We do not record the name of a route or a postcode you typed. Older records can contain the name of a route or a postcode you typed; those details are removed under the rule below. We remove the details from a product activity record after 90 days, and delete the record itself after 13 months. We use these records to run and improve the service, to see whether you have come back after signing up, and to decide which of our emails to send you.
• Email and sign-up records. We keep a record of each email we send you from the service (welcome, trial reminders, and similar) and of each sign-up notification, with the email address it was sent to and, if it failed, the error, so that we do not send the same email twice. The emails themselves are sent through Brevo (see Third-Party Services and Processors). Kept until you delete your account.
• Diagnostic copies, 30 days. When you optimise a route while signed in, the stops and time windows you submit are processed on our servers to plan the route, and we keep a copy for up to 30 days to diagnose problems and improve the service. If a postcode you enter into the signed-in route planner cannot be matched to a location, we send that individual postcode - together with the reason it could not be matched and your start and end postcodes, but not the rest of your stops and not any names or notes - to our servers and keep it for up to 30 days to diagnose and fix the problem.

We use this information to provide the Route Planner Pro service, manage your subscription, and contact you about your account. Deleting your account erases all of it from our live systems straight away, as described under "Deleting your whole account" below.

Information Automatically Collected

When you visit our Site, we may automatically collect certain information including:

• IP address (anonymised)
• Browser type and version
• Device type
• Pages visited and time spent
• Referring website

This information is collected through cookies and similar technologies as described in our Cookie Policy.

Proof of Delivery (POD) Data

Proof of Delivery is an optional feature for signed-in subscribers. Unlike the free tools, it stores delivery evidence on our servers so that you, our subscriber, can later prove a delivery took place. This section explains what we store and how we handle it.

What we store

When you capture proof of delivery at a stop, we may store:

• Delivery photos - the image(s) you take of the delivery (for example, a parcel at a doorstep). Stored on our servers.
• Signatures - if captured, an image of a signature taken on your device at the point of delivery. Optional; only stored if you capture one.
• Delivery notes - short notes you add to a stop (for example, "left in porch").
• Capture details - the date and time of capture, the delivery address or postcode the evidence relates to, and the approximate location (GPS) recorded at the moment of capture.
• Run and stop records - your account identifier, the run, the stops on it, and their delivery status.

This information is stored using our infrastructure provider, Cloudflare (see Third-Party Services and Processors).

Whose data this is

POD evidence can include personal data relating to three kinds of person:

• You, the subscriber - your account and the records you create.
• The person at the delivery address - a photo of a property, the delivery address, and the fact and time of delivery can be personal data about the recipient, even though they are not our customer.
• A signature, where captured, can identify the person who signed.

We treat recipient information, and signatures in particular, with care, because the recipient is not our direct customer and a signature is directly identifying. We collect the minimum needed to evidence the delivery.

Why we store it (lawful basis)

• For your data, our basis is performance of our contract with you - POD is part of the subscription service you pay for.
• For recipient and signature data, our basis is legitimate interests: the legitimate interest of you (and the sender you deliver for) in being able to prove that a delivery was made, balanced against the recipient's reasonable expectation that a delivery to their address may be recorded. Photographing a completed delivery is an established practice across the courier industry. We keep the record proportionate and time-limited.

How sharing works

POD evidence is private to your account by default. If a delivery is queried, you can generate a share link for that single delivery and send it to the person who needs to see the proof.

• A share link shows only that one delivery's evidence - never your other stops, runs, or customers.
• A share link expires automatically after a fixed period (see Retention).
• GPS coordinates and your customer's name are never shown on a public share link. The location is kept for your internal records only.
• Signatures and delivery notes are only included on a share link if you choose to include them; they are off by default.
• You can revoke a share link at any time, which takes effect immediately.

Retention

• Delivery photos and signatures are automatically deleted from our storage 90 days after the photo is uploaded to our servers.
• Share links expire 30 days after they are created, regardless of the 90-day data retention, so a link stops working before the underlying data is deleted.
• After deletion, evidence cannot be recovered.

Your control and erasure

• You can delete an individual photo, or delete an entire run (which removes its stops, photos, signatures, and any share links), from within the app.
• If a recipient asks you, or asks us, to delete a delivery photo or signature relating to their address, we can locate and delete it. We keep a record that a deletion took place (for accountability), but that record does not retain the deleted image.
• That accountability record may retain the contact details of whoever made the deletion request (for example, an email address), so that we can evidence who asked and when.
• To make a request to us directly, contact us at [email protected].

Deleting your whole account

You can delete your entire account at any time from within the app (open the account menu and choose "Delete account"). This is immediate and cannot be undone. When you delete your account:

• Your account and the data we hold for it are erased from our live systems straight away - your saved routes, runs and their stops, delivery photos, signatures, delivery notes, saved settings and column mappings, suggestions, product activity records, email and sign-up records, and any share links you created.
• If you have a paid subscription, it is cancelled immediately. We do not provide a refund for any unused portion of the current billing period.
• For legal and accounting reasons, we keep payment and invoice records held by our payment processor, Stripe, for the period required by UK law (for example, HMRC tax records). These are retained separately from your account.
• We keep a dated record that a deletion took place, for accountability. This record does not contain your deleted content; where an email address is held it is stored only so we can evidence that the request was made and actioned.
• Copies of data may persist temporarily in our encrypted backups. We do not use backups to restore deleted accounts, and backup copies are overwritten and age out automatically on our normal backup rotation.

How We Use Your Information

We use the automatically collected information to:

• Understand how visitors use our Site to improve our services
• Monitor and analyse trends and usage
• Detect and prevent technical issues
• Display relevant advertising through our advertising partners

We use Proof of Delivery data only to provide the POD feature to you - to store, display, and let you share the delivery evidence you capture. We do not use POD photos or signatures for advertising, we do not sell or license them, we do not use them to train machine-learning models, and we do not perform facial recognition on them.

Third-Party Services and Processors

Google AdSense

We use Google AdSense to display advertisements. Google may use cookies to serve ads based on your prior visits to our Site or other websites. You can opt out of personalised advertising by visiting Google's Ads Settings.

Like any page with ads, Google AdSense receives the web address of the page you're on. That address no longer includes what you searched for: our tools keep your search in your browser tab (so it survives a reload) and take it out of the address before the ad code loads. When you copy a share link, the search is in that link, and it is taken out of the address again when the link is opened. Two things can stay in the address: campaign tags on a link you followed to reach us (such as utm_source), and, on Route Planner Pro, short flags about signing in, payment or which of our emails you came from. Neither contains your postcodes or stops.

For more information about how Google uses data, please visit How Google uses information from sites that use our services.

OpenStreetMap Foundation: map data and Nominatim

Our maps use data from OpenStreetMap. Nominatim is the OpenStreetMap Foundation's place-search service, and these tools send it what you type or the point you choose (OSM Foundation privacy policy):

• Straight from your browser (Nominatim sees your IP address): place names and addresses in Distance Between that our own place-name files can't answer (a place abroad, an address or a landmark), when you press Calculate, never while you type; place names, addresses, outward codes we don't recognise and each row of a batch in Postcode Distance; and the point you click on the Radius Map, to name it.
• Through our server (Nominatim sees our server, not you, and we don't log the search): place names and addresses in the Radius Map, Measure Distance and the Drive Time Map when you search, and in the Elevation Finder when you choose "Search everywhere" or press Enter with nothing of ours listed, never while you type; the rows of a file you upload to the Radius Map that aren't a latitude and longitude, each sent whole; and, to name the place, the point you click, your location or the point in a shared link in Sunrise & Sunset and the Light Pollution Map, and every point the Elevation Finder checks.

postcodes.io

postcodes.io is a public postcode service maintained by Ideal Postcodes. These requests go straight from your browser, so it sees your IP address. We don't store what is sent.

• A postcode that isn't in our own data, in most of our postcode tools, to find its location.
• In School Finder, what you type in the postcode box, as you type, to suggest postcodes.
• In Toilet Finder and Food Hygiene, your position when you press Use My Location, to find the nearest postcode.
• In Crime Checker, the postcode or point you check, only when police.uk can't say which police force covers it.

Other public data services

These requests go straight from your browser, so each service sees your IP address. We don't store what is sent.

• data.police.uk (the Home Office's police data service): in Crime Checker, the point you check, to find its police neighbourhood and the crimes recorded nearby.
• Food Standards Agency ratings API: in Food Hygiene, your search point and radius, only when our own copy of the ratings can't answer.
• Open-Meteo: in the Elevation Finder, the point you check when it is outside our own height data, and the points along a profile line if the service below can't answer.

Open Topo Data: in the Elevation Finder, the points along a profile line you draw, and a point Open-Meteo can't answer, go through our server to Open Topo Data, which sees our server, not you. We don't keep them.

Cloudflare

We use Cloudflare to host our service and to store Proof of Delivery data (photos, signatures, and associated records). Cloudflare processes this data on our behalf as our infrastructure provider.

Brevo (email)

The emails we send from Route Planner Pro (your welcome email, trial reminders, receipts for a change of plan, and similar) go through Brevo, an email service run by Sendinblue SAS in Paris, France. To send an email, Brevo receives your name, your email address and the content of that email, and keeps delivery records (whether the email was delivered and opened). Brevo processes this on our behalf as our email provider. We do not use Brevo for advertising, and we do not give it any other data about you.

Routing

Route Planner Pro works out road distances and drive times on our own routing server, which is hosted by Hetzner in Nuremberg, Germany. If that server is unavailable, the map positions of the stops on the route you are optimising are sent instead to the public OpenStreetMap routing service at router.project-osrm.org, run by FOSSGIS e.V. in Germany, so that you still get a route. Only the positions are sent: no names, addresses, notes or account details. The request comes from our server, not from your device. That service keeps its own logs, which we do not control.

Google (sign-in)

Route Planner Pro uses Google Sign-In to let you sign in to your account. When you sign in, Google provides us with your name, email address, and a Google account identifier. Your use of Google Sign-In is also subject to Google's Privacy Policy.

Stripe

We use Stripe to process subscription payments. Stripe handles your payment-card details directly; we do not store full card numbers ourselves. Stripe acts as our payment processor and retains transaction and invoice records as required for financial and legal purposes.

Cookies

We use cookies to enhance your experience on our Site. For detailed information about the cookies we use and how to manage them, please see our Cookie Policy.

Data Security

We implement appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect the information we collect. However, no method of transmission over the Internet is 100% secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.

Proof of Delivery data is transmitted over encrypted connections and stored with our infrastructure provider. Public share links use long, non-guessable addresses, are served only over secure connections, and are rate-limited to prevent anyone from trying to discover links by guessing. Treat a share link as confidential: anyone who has the link can view that delivery's evidence until it expires or you revoke it.

Your Rights (UK GDPR)

Under UK data protection law, you have rights including:

• Right of access - to request copies of your personal data
• Right to rectification - to request correction of inaccurate data
• Right to erasure - to request deletion of your data
• Right to restrict processing - to request limitation of data processing
• Right to object - to object to processing of your data
• Right to data portability - to request transfer of your data

For the free tools, we hold little or no personal data, so in practice these rights mostly concern data collected through analytics and advertising. For Proof of Delivery, we do store personal data (including data about delivery recipients), and these rights apply to it - including the right of a recipient to ask for a delivery photo or signature to be erased. To exercise any of these rights, contact us at [email protected]. We aim to respond within one month, as required by UK GDPR.

You also have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), the UK's data protection regulator, at ico.org.uk.

Children's Privacy

Our Site is not intended for children under 13 years of age. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13.

Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will notify you of any changes by posting the new Privacy Policy on this page and updating the "Last updated" date.

Contact Us

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, or wish to exercise your data rights, please contact us at:

Email: [email protected]

Our data controller details (registered entity and address) are set out in the "Who We Are (Data Controller)" section above.