Privacy Policy

Last modified: 25/06/2021

About this policy

WhisperClaims provides a solution to improve the way organisations prepare and submit claims to HMRC for R&D tax relief. Our specialised tax software makes it easy for businesses to prepare clear and concise claims, either directly or through a business advisor.

Whether you are an existing customer of or service provider to WhisperClaims, or you just want to get in touch with us to find out more information about us and our solution, you can trust that we will respect your privacy and are committed to protecting your personal data.

This privacy policy will inform you as to how we look after your personal data when you visit our website, schedule a trial of the software, purchase a full subscription or otherwise deal with us. It will also tell you about your privacy rights and how the law protects you.

Please read the following carefully to understand our views and practices regarding your personal data and how we will treat it.

Who we are

Wobbegong Technology Ltd is a limited company incorporated in England. Our company number is 10754811, and we trade as WhisperClaims. When we refer to trading name or “we”, “us” or “our” in this policy, we are referring to Wobbegong Technology Ltd.

We are the data ‘controller’ in relation to the personal data you provide to us, which means we determine the purposes and the way in which your personal data is, or will be, processed and are responsible for it.

How to contact us

Questions, comments and requests regarding this policy are welcomed and should be addressed to our Data Privacy Manager by email or post at:

Email: dpo@whisperclaims.co.uk
Address: WhisperClaims, CodeBase, Argyle House, 3 Lady Lawson Street EH3 9DR

Purpose of this privacy policy

This privacy policy aims to give you information on how we collect and process your personal data so that you can be confident when you use our website, subscription service or otherwise interact with us that you know what your personal data is being used for and that it is being kept safe.

It is important that you read this privacy policy together with any other privacy notice we may provide on specific occasions when we are collecting or processing personal data about you, so that you are fully aware of how and why we are using your data. This privacy policy supplements the other notices and is not intended to override them.

Third-party links

You should be aware that our website or the platform on which we provide our services may from time to time include links to third-party websites, plug-ins and applications. Clicking on those links or enabling those connections may allow third parties to collect or share data about you. We do not control these third-party websites and are not responsible for their privacy statements. When you leave our sites, we encourage you to read the privacy notice of every website you visit.

How is your personal data collected?

We use different methods to collect data from and about you including through:

Direct interactions You may give us your personal data by filling in forms on our website or platform, or by corresponding with us in person, by email, by phone, by post or otherwise. This includes personal data you provide when creating a user account with us and when you request marketing communications to be sent to you.
Automated technologies or interactions As you interact with our site or platform, we may automatically collect information about your equipment, browsing actions and patterns. We collect this personal data by using cookies and other similar technologies. Please see below on Cookies for further information.
Third parties or publicly available sources We may receive personal data about you from various third parties and public sources. This includes, for example, information received from the organisation you work for (e.g. to set up a user account for you) and analytics providers such as Google.

What happens if you don’t provide us with personal data we have requested?

Where we need to collect personal data by law, or under the terms of a contract we have with you or the organisation you work for, we may not be able to perform the contract if you don’t provide us the relevant personal data when requested. In this case, we may have to cancel the contract but we will notify you if this is the case at the time.

What information do we collect about you

Personal data, or personal information, means any information about an individual from which that person can be identified. It does not include data where the identity has been removed (anonymous data).

We may collect and process different kinds of personal data about you depending on our relationship with you. This may include the following:

Identity data: includes first name, last name, title, organisation name, role at organisation
Contact data: includes email address, contact business address, telephone number
Sign-up data: includes username, password
Correspondence data: includes details of any correspondence between you and us prior to on-boarding you as a customer or engaging you as a service provider, including information provided via ‘contact us’ forms or equivalent
Account management data: Includes contract history, business discussions, email correspondence, information provided via ‘contact us’ forms or equivalent
Feedback data: includes any feedback you provide to us about your use of our platform and services generally
Marketing data: includes your preferences in receiving marketing from us and your communication preferences
Cookie data: includes internet protocol (IP) address

How do we use your personal data?

We will only use your personal data when the law allows us to. Most commonly, we will use your personal data in the following circumstances:

  • Where we have your prior consent to use your personal data (e.g. where you have consented to receiving marketing).
  • Where we need to comply with a legal or regulatory obligation.
  • Where it is necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party) and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests

We have set out below, in a table format, a description of all the ways we plan to use your personal data, and which of the legal bases we rely on to do so. We have also identified what our legitimate interests are where appropriate.

Please note that we may rely on more than one lawful basis depending on the specific purpose for which we are using your data. Please contact us if you need details about the specific legal ground we are relying on to process your personal data where more than one ground has been set out in the table below.

Purpose/activity
Type of data
Lawful basis for processing
To respond to any query you make via our website or as a result of visiting our website
Identity, contact and correspondence data
To comply with our legal obligations. Necessary for our legitimate interest (to run our business) and those of a third party (to help the business of the organisation you work for)
To manage our business relationship with our customers, including to discuss work to be undertaken, fees and payments, notify of updates to contractual terms and privacy policies and other information relevant to user accounts.
Identity, contact and account management data
To comply with our legal obligations. Necessary for our legitimate interest (to run our business) and those of a third party (to provide our services to the organisation you work for)
To provide our services to our customers, which includes setting up a trial of our services, creating user accounts and providing email/telephone support services.
Identity, contact, sign-up and account management data
To comply with our legal obligations. Necessary for our legitimate interest (to run our business) and those of a third party (to provide our services to the organisation you work for)
To send you promotional or marketing materials and contact you about informative and/or commercial content (e.g. new features and services)
Identity, contact and marketing data
Necessary for our legitimate interest – in developing and growing our services. Consent
To contact you about feedback you have provided or to ask you to provide feedback, complete surveys or for other market research purposes and to use such information to improve our service
Identity, contact, marketing and feedback data
Necessary for our legitimate interest (to analyse and improve our services). Consent
To use cookies to operate and customise our website, including to identify when you use our site or platform, recognise you when you return to our site or platform (e.g. we may show you relevant content or provide functionality you used previously) or store information about your site/platform preferences
Cookie data
Necessary for our legitimate interests (to operate our site and platform, and to improve client interactions and user experience). Consent
To manage our business relationship with our service providers, including discussing goods or services to be provided by you or your organisation, discussing fees and payments and other business terms.
Identity, contact and account management data
To comply with our legal obligations. Necessary for our legitimate interest (to receive goods/services) and those of a third party (to enable the organisation you work for to run its business)

We will only use your personal data for the purposes for which we collected it, unless we reasonably consider that we need to use it for another reason and that reason is compatible with the original purpose. If you wish to get an explanation as to how the processing for the new purpose is compatible with the original purpose, please contact us.

If we need to use your personal data for an unrelated purpose, we will notify you and we will explain the lawful basis which allows us to do so.

Please note that we may process your personal data without your knowledge or consent, in compliance with the above rules, where this is required or permitted by law.

If you want any further information about how we might collect or use your personal data, please contact us.

Disclosure of your information  

We may have to share your personal information for the purposes set out above with the following third parties:

Third party
Detail
Service providers:

including those who provide:

  • Webhosting, IT and system administration services
  • Metrics and analytics
  • Financial services
  • Marketing services
Authorities:
including HMRC, regulators and other authorities who require reporting of processing activities in certain circumstances. This includes exchanging information with other companies and organisations for the purposes of fraud protection and credit risk reduction
Professional advisers & Corporate partners:
includes lawyers, bankers, auditors and insurers, or third parties who may invest in our business or to whom we may choose to sell, transfer, or merge parts of our business or our assets. If a change happens to our business, then the new owners may use your personal data in the same way as set out in this privacy notice

We require all third parties to respect the security of your personal data and to treat it in accordance with the law. We do not allow our third-party service providers to use your personal data for their own purposes and only permit them to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.

International transfers

Some of our external third parties may, from time to time, be based outside the EU so their processing of your personal data will involve a transfer of data outside the EU.

If we transfer your personal data out of the EU, we ensure a similar degree of protection is afforded to it by ensuring at least one of the following safeguards is implemented:

The table below sets out details of the service providers we use outside of the EU and the relevant safeguards in place.

Service provider Description of service Safeguards
Amazon Web Services Cloud/platform hosting Privacy Shield
Heroku Cloud/platform hosting Privacy Shield
Stripe Payment processing Privacy Shield

Please contact us if you want further information on the specific mechanism used by us when transferring your personal data out of the EEA.

Data Security

We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. In addition, we limit access to your personal data to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to know. They will only process your personal data on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality. All information you provide to us is stored on secure servers.

Where we have given you (or where you have chosen) a password which enables you to access certain parts of our site, you are responsible for keeping this password confidential. We ask you not to share your password with anyone.

How long we store your personal data for

We will only retain your personal data for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements.

To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data, the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal requirements.

Below we set out the key retention periods. Further details can be obtained by contacting us.

Data type How long will you keep my data?
Identity, contact, sign-up and account management data A maximum of 12 months from termination of our contract (unless our customer requests us to delete this sooner, or we are required by law to retain this information for longer)
Correspondence data A maximum of 12 months from when we last interacted with you, or, where we have a contract in place, a maximum of 12 months from termination of such contract (unless our customer requests us to delete the data sooner, or we are required by law to retain the information for longer)
Marketing data A maximum of 12 months from when we last interacted with you
Feedback data A maximum of 12 months from termination of our contract
Cookie data Please see our Cookie Policy for details.

Where we anonymise your personal data (i.e. so that it can no longer be associated with you) for further research or statistical purposes, then we may use this information indefinitely without further notice to you.

Cookies

Our website uses cookies to help it function and to improve it. Cookies are small files saved to the user’s computer’s hard drive that track, save and store information about the user’s interactions and usage of the website. For information about the cookies we use, please see our Cookie Policy.

Your rights

Under certain circumstances, you have rights under data protection laws in relation to your personal data. Please read through the table below to find out more about these rights.

Your right
What this means
Access to your information
You have the right to ask for a copy of the information which we hold on you (commonly known as a ‘data subject access request’). This enables you to receive a copy of the personal data we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.
Correcting personal data
You have the right to request that we correct personal data that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate information we hold corrected, though we may need to verify the accuracy of the new data that you provide to us. It is important that the personal data we hold about you is accurate and current, so please keep us informed if your personal data changes during your relationship with us.
Deleting personal data
You may ask us to delete or remove personal data where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it. This is more commonly known as the ‘right to be forgotten’. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your personal data where you have successfully exercised your right to object to processing (see below), where we may have processed your information unlawfully or where we are required to erase your personal data to comply with local law. Please note, however, that we may not always be able to comply with your request to delete or remove personal data for specific legal reasons which will be notified to you, if applicable, at the time of your request.
Objecting to processing
You have the right to stop us processing your personal data for direct marketing purposes. Often, you can exercise your right to prevent such marketing by checking certain boxes on the forms we use to collect your data. You can also exercise the right at any time by contacting us. You may also object to us processing your personal data where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground as you feel it impacts on your fundamental rights and freedoms. In some cases, we may demonstrate that we have compelling legitimate grounds to process your information which override your rights and freedoms.
Restriction of processing

This right enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of your personal data in the following scenarios:

  • if you want us to establish the data’s accuracy;
  • where our use of the data is unlawful but you do not want us to erase it;
  • where you need us to hold the data even if we no longer require it as you need it to establish, exercise or defend legal claims; or
  • where you have objected to our use of your data but we need to verify whether we have overriding legitimate grounds to use it.
Withdrawing consent
Where we are relying on consent to process your personal data you can withdraw your consent at any time. Please note that this will not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before you withdraw your consent.
Review by an independent authority
You will always have the right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory body. The relevant authority in the UK is the Information Commissioner’s Office. If you do have a complaint, we would appreciate the chance to deal with your concerns before you approach the ICO, so please do contact us in the first instance if possible.

If you wish to exercise any of the rights set out above, please contact us. You won’t normally have to pay a fee to access your personal data (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive or excessive. Alternatively, we may refuse to comply with your request in these circumstances.

We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access your personal data (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is a security measure to ensure that personal data is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it. We may also contact you to ask you for further information in relation to your request to speed up our response.

We try to respond to all legitimate requests within one month. Occasionally it may take us longer than a month if your request is particularly complex or you have made a number of requests. In this case, we will notify you and keep you updated.

Changes to our privacy policy

This version was last updated on 20th August 2019.

Historic version of this policy can be obtained by contacting us.