Privacy Policy
Last updated 13 August 2026.
The short version. We are a one-person automation business in Beverley. We hold business contact details for firms we think we can help, answers people give us on our own website, and records of our work for clients. We do not sell data to anyone. If you want us to stop contacting you, reply to any email and say so, and we will keep a note of that so it does not happen again.
1. Who we are
Join The Bots is a trading name of John Cant, a sole trader based at Minster House, 23 Flemingate, Beverley, HU17 0LL.
For the purposes of UK data protection law we are the data controller for the personal data described here. You can reach us at john@jointhebots.com or on +44 7550 018590.
We are in the process of registering with the Information Commissioner's Office. This page will carry our registration number once it is issued.
2. What we collect, and why
If you visit this website
With your consent, we use Google Analytics to understand which pages people read and how they arrived. This tells us which of our articles are worth writing more of. It collects a device identifier, approximate location derived from your IP address, and the pages you view. If you do not consent, it is not loaded and we learn nothing about your visit.
Our hosting provider keeps standard server logs, including IP addresses, for security and to keep the site working. That happens whether or not you consent to analytics, because a website cannot be served without it.
If you answer the questions on one of our report pages
We store the four answers you give and the email address you enter. We use them to send you your result, to understand whether what we sell would suit your business, and to know which parts of the report people find useful.
If we send you a personalised report link
We would rather say this plainly than bury it. If we email you a link to a report with your firm's name in it, that link is unique to you. When it is opened, we record that it was opened and when. We use that to know whether the report reached a real person and whether sending it was worth doing. It does not follow you around the internet, and it tells us nothing about any other site you visit.
If you contact us or book a call
We keep what you send us: your name, email address, phone number if you give it, and what you wrote. Bookings are handled through Google Calendar, which records the time you chose and the details you enter.
If we contact your business by email
We find business contact details from public sources: company websites and their team pages, Companies House, professional body directories, and business listings. We use them to contact businesses about services we think are genuinely relevant to that business.
We rely on legitimate interests for this. In plain terms: we have a business reason to make contact, the message goes to a business address about that business, we keep it short, and we make it easy to stop. We have weighed that against the disruption of an unwanted email and think it is proportionate. You are entitled to disagree, and section 8 tells you how to make it stop.
If you become a client
We hold what we need to do the work and to run the business: contact details, the systems we connect for you, and records of what our automation sent on your behalf and when. That last part is the point of the product, and it is covered by our agreement with you.
3. Our lawful bases
| What | Lawful basis |
|---|---|
| Analytics cookies | Consent. You can withdraw it at any time. |
| Cold business outreach | Legitimate interests |
| Answers you give us voluntarily | Legitimate interests, and consent where you have entered an email address to receive something |
| Doing the work for a client | Performance of a contract |
| Invoices and accounting records | Legal obligation |
| Keeping a record that someone asked not to be contacted | Legal obligation, and legitimate interests. We cannot honour an opt-out we have deleted. |
4. Cookies
This site sets no cookies of its own. Cookies are set by three third parties:
- Google Analytics, for the measurement described above. Loaded only with your consent.
- Google Ads, where we are running advertising, to understand which adverts lead to enquiries. Loaded only with your consent.
- YouTube, where a video is embedded in a page. These are set by YouTube when the video loads.
We also load fonts from Google Fonts, which means Google receives your IP address in order to serve them.
You can change or withdraw your cookie choice at any time using the cookie settings link in the footer of any page, or by clearing cookies in your browser.
5. Who we share it with
We do not sell personal data and we do not share it for anyone else's marketing. We use the following suppliers to run the business, and they process data on our instructions:
| Supplier | What for |
|---|---|
| Netlify | Website hosting and form submissions |
| Google (Workspace, Gmail, Drive, Calendar, Analytics, Ads, Fonts, YouTube) | Email, documents, bookings, measurement, advertising, fonts and video |
| Grist | The database where prospect and client records are kept |
| n8n, hosted on Railway | The automation that sends and logs messages |
| Slack | Internal notifications to us about activity |
| Tally | Some forms and questionnaires |
| Verifalia | Checking an email address exists before we send to it, which reduces bounces |
| Apify | Collecting business information from public sources |
| OpenAI | Used in some automations to read an enquiry and draft a reply. Where we run this for a client, it is covered by our agreement with them. |
We will also disclose data where the law requires it.
6. Where your data goes
Several of the suppliers above are based in the United States or store data there. Where that is the case we rely on the UK's adequacy regulations or on the International Data Transfer Addendum, together with the supplier's own safeguards. If you want to know how a specific supplier handles this, ask and we will tell you what we know.
7. How long we keep it
| What | How long |
|---|---|
| Prospect records and outreach history | 12 months from the last time you engaged with us, then deleted |
| Answers given on a report page | 12 months |
| Website analytics | As set in Google Analytics, currently 14 months |
| Client records, contracts and invoices | Six years after the end of the relationship, because HMRC requires it |
| A record that you asked not to be contacted | Indefinitely. This is deliberate. If we deleted it, we would have no way of knowing you had asked, and you would hear from us again. |
8. How to make it stop
Reply to any email from us with "no thanks" or "stop" and we will add you to our suppression list and not contact you again. You do not need to explain, and you will not get a follow-up asking you to reconsider.
You can also email john@jointhebots.com and ask us to delete everything we hold about you.
9. Your rights
Under UK data protection law you have the right to:
- ask what we hold about you, and get a copy
- have anything inaccurate corrected
- have your data deleted
- object to us processing it, including for marketing, which we will always honour
- ask us to restrict what we do with it
- receive it in a portable format
- withdraw consent at any time, where we relied on consent
Email john@jointhebots.com and we will respond within one month. There is no charge.
10. Complaints
If you are unhappy with how we have handled your data, please tell us first and we will try to put it right. You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint, or on 0303 123 1113.
11. Changes to this policy
If we change how we handle personal data, we will update this page and change the date at the top. If the change is significant and we hold your contact details, we will tell you.