Draft for legal review. This notice is written to accurately describe what the current codebase actually does — the data it collects, where it sends it, and why. It has not been reviewed by a qualified lawyer and should be before this site accepts real users or payments. In particular: confirm the correct lawful bases under UK GDPR/EU GDPR, whether a Data Protection Officer or representative is required, the exact retention periods you intend to enforce, and requirements for any regions your users are actually in.

Privacy notice

Last updated: 11 August 2026

Who we are

IT Troubleshooters ("we", "us") operates this website and the AI troubleshooting service on it. Contact: [email protected].

What we collect

Account details — name, email address, and a securely hashed password (we never store your plain-text password).
Troubleshooting conversations — the messages you send the AI assistant, any screenshot or log file you attach, and the AI's replies. If you're signed in, these are saved to your account so you can resume them; if you're not signed in, they exist only for your browser session.
Devices you add — name, type, operating system and any notes you enter, used only to organise your own troubleshooting history.
Support tickets — name, email and the message you send us.
Billing information — if you subscribe to a paid plan, payment is handled entirely by Stripe; we store your Stripe customer/subscription IDs and plan status, never your card details.
Technical data — IP address (stored as a one-way hash, not in plain text, for rate-limiting and abuse prevention), browser user-agent, and basic usage logs (timestamps, request counts, credit usage).
Newsletter — if you subscribe, your email address and topic preferences, held separately from your main account and requiring email confirmation before we send anything.

Who we share it with

We use a small number of external processors to run the service. We don't sell your data, and we don't use advertising or tracking cookies.

OpenAI — your troubleshooting questions, and any screenshot/log you attach, are sent to OpenAI's API to generate the AI assistant's answer. Do not paste passwords, recovery keys, or other people's personal data into the assistant.
Stripe — handles all payment processing for paid plans. Stripe's own privacy policy applies to the payment details you give them directly.
Cloudflare (Turnstile) — used on some forms to distinguish humans from bots; Cloudflare may set its own cookie when this runs.
Google, Microsoft or Apple — only if you choose to sign in using one of these providers, in which case that provider shares your name and email with us as part of the sign-in.
Our email/hosting provider, solely to deliver transactional emails (ticket confirmations, newsletter confirmations, notifications you've opted into).

Some of these processors are based outside the UK/EEA (for example, OpenAI and Stripe are US companies). International transfer safeguards (such as Standard Contractual Clauses) need to be confirmed and documented as part of legal review.

How long we keep it

Account data and conversation history are kept until you delete your account or ask us to remove them. Support tickets, security and rate-limit logs are kept for a limited period for abuse prevention and are not indefinite. Specific retention periods should be finalised and stated precisely here as part of legal review.

Your rights

Subject to applicable law, you can ask to access, correct, delete or export your data, and you can withdraw newsletter consent at any time using the unsubscribe link in any email. Contact [email protected] to make a request.

Cookies

We use cookies that are strictly necessary for the site to function: keeping you signed in, protecting forms against cross-site request forgery, and (when active) Cloudflare Turnstile's bot-protection cookie. We do not currently use analytics or advertising cookies. If that changes, this notice and the cookie banner will be updated accordingly, and a proper opt-in consent mechanism will be added for any non-essential cookies at that time.

Children

This service is intended for adults and businesses. It isn't directed at children, and we don't knowingly collect data from children.