Privacy policy

Who we are

FirmSearch (firmsearch.co.uk) is operated by Vasia Media Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales (company number 13841574). Vasia Media Ltd is the controller of the personal data described in this policy.

For anything about your data, email our privacy address (show privacy email). For anything else, email our general address (show general email).

Information we publish about firms

FirmSearch publishes information from two public registers:

• The FCA Financial Services Register, published by the Financial Conduct Authority: a firm's name, reference number, status, permissions, and the address, phone number and website the register holds for it. We use this information with the FCA's permission.
• Companies House: a company's registered details, and the names of its officers as Companies House publishes them.

Most of this is information about businesses. Some of it is also information about people: a sole trader's name, a director's name, or a firm's address or phone number where that is also someone's home or personal line. We publish it because it is already public on the registers above, and because checking a firm's details against the regulator's record is how people protect themselves from scams and clone firms. That is our lawful basis for publishing it: our legitimate interest, and the public's, in being able to check a financial firm before dealing with it.

We do not add information about individuals from any other source, and we do not publish anything the registers do not. Our copy is refreshed from the registers, and we keep records for firms that are no longer authorised, because a firm's past status is part of checking it.

Asking us to remove something

If a detail on FirmSearch relates to you and you would like us to stop showing it, for example a home address listed as a firm's address, email our privacy address (show privacy email) with the firm's name or reference number and the detail concerned. We will reply within one month.

Removing a detail from FirmSearch does not remove it from the FCA register or Companies House. To change the source record, contact the FCA or Companies House, or for an appointed representative, its principal firm.

What we collect when you use the site

FirmSearch does not require you to create an account and does not ask for your name, email address, or any other personal details to use the site.

We do log search queries. When you search for a firm, we record:

• The text you typed into the search box
• The number of results returned
• A timestamp

Search queries are logged anonymously. We do not link them to any individual user, device identifier, or IP address in our application database. This data is used solely to understand which firms people are searching for, so we can improve the service, for example by prioritising data quality for high-demand firms.

Buying a report

Reports are paid for through Stripe. Stripe collects your payment details and email address directly; we never see your card details. We keep a record of each purchase (the firm, the amount, and Stripe's reference for the payment) so we can deliver the report and handle any refund.

Stripe passes us your email address once the payment is confirmed. We use it for one thing: to email you the link to download your report, sent through Cloudflare's email service. We do not store your email address or use it for anything else. We keep a copy of the report you bought, linked to Stripe's reference for the payment, so that you can download exactly the same report again.

Server and access logs

Like any web service, our infrastructure providers generate standard server-level access logs when your browser makes a request to our site. These logs can include your IP address, browser type, the page requested, and the time of the request. These logs are generated and retained by our hosting and infrastructure providers (see "Processors" below) for security and operational purposes. We do not have real-time access to or control over these logs.

Cookies and analytics

FirmSearch does not currently use tracking cookies or third-party analytics services (such as Google Analytics). No advertising cookies or persistent identifiers are set.

If we add analytics in future, we will update this policy before those services are switched on.

Processors

We use the following third-party services to operate the site. Each acts as a data processor on our behalf:

• Cloudflare, our hosting and content-delivery provider. Cloudflare processes web requests on our behalf and generates standard access logs (which may include IP addresses) for security and performance purposes.
• PlanetScale (Postgres), our database provider. Our application database stores the anonymised search-query log described above, the purchase records described above, and the firm information sourced from the FCA register and Companies House.
• Stripe, our payment provider, which processes report purchases.

Your rights

Under UK data protection law you can ask us for a copy of personal data we hold about you, ask us to correct it, object to our publishing it, or ask us to delete or stop using it. Email our privacy address (show privacy email) and we will reply within one month.

If you are unhappy with how we have handled your data, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time. The "last reviewed" date at the top of this page will reflect the most recent update.