Privacy notice
Come Recommended builds and looks after websites for tradespeople. Come Recommended is a trading name of Spectra Media Group Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 11668950. Registered office: Queens House, Queens Road, Chester, CH1 3BQ.
Spectra Media Group Ltd is the "controller" of the personal information described here. That means we decide how it's used and we're responsible for looking after it. We're registered with the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) under number ZC275679.
Questions about your information: email hello@comerecommended.co.uk, or call, text or WhatsApp 07412 346390. We reply Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm.
Our promise about your number
We'll only use your number for your website. No sales calls. No marketing messages.
- Before you pay, we only ever reply to what you send us or do on our site: your code, your preview link, the result of a change, and the payment link after you say go live. No reminders, no chasers. The one exception: if someone claims a website for your business from a number we don't recognise, we send one message to your business's listed number to check it's you.
- We never ring you unless you ask us to. If you tap "Call my business landline with the code", an automated call rings your listed landline once with a code.
- If you become a client, we also send service messages: your monthly numbers, payment notices, and up to two requests for a review. You can tell us to stop the review request and the monthly numbers at any time.
- Marketing from us only happens if you tick a separate box saying yes. It's never ticked for you.
What we collect and why
What we hold depends on how you've come across us. The law needs a reason (a "lawful basis") for each use, so it's listed too.
| Who you are | What we hold | Why | Lawful basis |
|---|---|---|---|
| A tradesperson we've built a preview for | Business name, trading address and business phone (from a licensed business directory), company details, trade body memberships, and the reference number of your Google listing. If we post you a card, a record of when and where we sent it | To build a preview of a website for your business and post you a card about it | Legitimate interests: offering a business a service it may want, using only what's already public |
| Someone who starts or claims a preview | Your name, business name, town, business address, mobile number, and the messages, photos and voice notes you send. The code on your card is checked, never stored | To verify your number, build and change your preview, and reply to you | Steps you've asked us to take before a contract |
| A client | All of the above, plus your email address, the numbers allowed to request changes, your consents, the history of changes, invoices, and payment details held by GoCardless. Before your site goes live we check the name on your Direct Debit against your business, so nobody can take over your website | To run your website, take payment, and keep proper accounts, and to understand how our service is used | Contract, and our legal duty to keep financial records. Legitimate interests, for understanding how our service is used |
| Someone who visits our site or a client's site | An anonymous visit count and taps on call, WhatsApp and quote buttons. Our server also logs your IP address for security | To count visits and enquiries without cookies, and to keep the sites safe | Legitimate interests |
| Someone who rings or messages our number | Your number, your message, and any voicemail you leave. Calls themselves aren't recorded | To reply to you | Legitimate interests, or contract if you're a client |
| Someone who opted in to marketing | Your name and how to reach you | To send you news from Come Recommended | Consent, which you can withdraw at any time |
| A business that asks us not to contact it | Business name, and where the source allows, its town, Companies House number and listing references | So we never post to it again | Legitimate interests: respecting your objection |
If you message us on WhatsApp, we see the profile name you have chosen there. We record it as your self-chosen name so we know who we are talking to.
Homeowners who contact a tradesperson through a site we built: that tradesperson decides how your details are used, and their own privacy notice explains it. We handle the details for them, as their supplier, and use them for nothing else.
Where it comes from
If we've posted you a card: we built your preview from business information that is already public: a licensed UK business directory (for your business name, address and phone), Companies House, OpenStreetMap, and the public registers of trade bodies such as TrustMark. From Google we keep only your listing's reference number. Your Google photos, rating and reviews are shown live in your private preview, credited to Google, and are never stored or used to decide who we write to. We keep a dated record of where each fact came from.
- Your preview is private: only someone with the link on your card can see it, and search engines are told to ignore it. The card also carries a separate code that proves it reached you.
- Photos and reviews from your Google profile appear only in your private preview, shown live from Google. They're never copied onto your website.
- Not interested? Ignore the card. If you don't start within 30 days, we delete your preview and everything we gathered for it. To have it deleted sooner, or to stop cards from us altogether, email hello@comerecommended.co.uk. We'll put your business on our do-not-contact list, which keeps only what we need to recognise the business again: its name and, where the source of its details allows, its town, its Companies House number and the reference numbers of its listings.
- Cards are addressed to the business, never to a person, and posted within a month of the business information we used.
Everything else comes from you: what you type on our site, and what you send us by WhatsApp, text, email or voicemail.
Who we share it with
We never sell your information. We use a small number of suppliers to run the service, each under a contract that limits them to doing the job for us.
| Supplier | What they do for us | Where they process it |
|---|---|---|
| Fasthosts, our hosting provider | Hosts our server and the websites | UK |
| Backblaze, our backup storage provider | Encrypted off-site backups | EU (Netherlands) |
| Twilio, our phone and text provider | Our phone number: calls, texts, voicemail and the codes that check your number | USA and elsewhere |
| Meta (WhatsApp) | WhatsApp messages | Ireland and USA |
| Our AI provider (Anthropic) | Claude, the AI that reads your messages and writes and changes your website's words | USA |
| Our email, finding your Google listing and showing it live in previews, Search Console, our staff sign-in and our team's notifications | UK, EU and USA | |
| Microsoft (Bing) | Bing Webmaster Tools, so your site shows up in Bing | USA |
| GoCardless | Direct Debit and instant bank payments | UK |
| Xero, our accounting software | Invoices and our accounts | USA |
| Nominet and our web address registrar | Registering your own web address in your name, as the law requires for .uk addresses | UK |
| Stannp, our print and post supplier | Printing and posting cards | UK and EEA |
Voice notes are turned into text on our own server, not by an outside service.
Outside the UK: where a supplier handles information outside the UK, we rely on the protections UK law requires, such as the UK-US data bridge or the UK's approved contract terms. Our phone provider and WhatsApp keep their own copies of messages for a time, under their own policies.
We only share it with anyone else if the law requires us to.
How long we keep it
We keep information only as long as we need it, then delete it.
| Information | How long |
|---|---|
| A preview we built for a card, if you never start | Deleted within 30 days of the card. A record that we sent a card (business name, address, date) is kept for 3 years, so we never send more than one further card |
| Cards we post, held by our print supplier | Deleted by Stannp within 3 months of posting |
| A preview you started but didn't go live with | Paused after 14 days, deleted with your number at 30 days |
| A client's website, photos and change history | While you're a client. When you leave, we send you one download of your website's words, photos and reviews, then take the website down and delete its words and photos within 60 days |
| Messages between a client and us (texts, WhatsApp messages, voicemails, emails, and the replies we send) | While you're a client and for 6 years after you leave, so we can answer any question about your service or your payments, and to understand how our service is used. Codes and links in them are never kept. Then deleted |
| Enquiries sent through a tradesperson's website | Passed to the tradesperson straight away. Our copy is kept for 12 months so they can look it up by message, then deleted, or 60 days after the tradesperson leaves if that is sooner |
| Invoices and payment records | 6 years, because accounting rules require it |
| Voicemails | Removed from our phone provider as soon as they reach us. A client's voicemails are kept with their messages (above). Anyone else's are deleted after 30 days |
| Server logs, including IP addresses | 30 days. Preview links are shortened in our logs |
| Backups | Anything about people who never became clients leaves our backups within 30 days. A client's data stays in backups for as long as this table says we keep it, and no longer than 6 years after they leave |
| Visit counts | Anonymous statistics (monthly counts and rates by trade, area at county level and how people found us, with nothing that identifies a business or a person): kept indefinitely |
| Marketing consent | Until you withdraw it |
| Our do-not-contact list | Kept for as long as we send cards, so we never write to you again |
Visits, cookies and AI
No cookies. Our site and the sites we build don't use cookies or store anything on your phone or computer, so there's no cookie banner. We don't use Google Analytics.
How we count visits: a small piece of code tells our own server that a page was viewed. To count unique visitors without tracking anyone, it uses an anonymous code that changes every day and can't be traced back to you. Visits from automated bots are left out. We also count taps on the call, WhatsApp and quote buttons, and note which website or link sent you to us and which pages you viewed in that visit, without cookies and without identifying you.
How we use AI: Claude, an AI made by Anthropic, reads the messages you send us, writes the words on your website from the facts you and public sources give us, and makes the changes you ask for. It only uses facts we hold about your business, never invented ones.
- Nothing you ask for goes live on your website until you've approved it, and our team checks the first sites by hand.
- Anything the AI can't handle, or that needs a judgement, goes to a person.
- No decision with legal or similar effects on you is made by AI alone.
- Anthropic's commercial terms don't allow it to train its models on what we send it.
Your rights
You can ask us to:
- see the information we hold about you, free of charge
- correct anything that's wrong
- delete it, unless we have to keep it by law (such as invoices)
- stop or limit how we use it
- give it to you in a form you can take elsewhere. When you leave, we send you one download of your website's words, photos and reviews anyway
- stop marketing at any time. We'll always do this, no questions asked
You can also object to us using your information for our legitimate interests, for example to the preview we built from public information. We'll stop unless we have a strong reason not to.
How to ask: email hello@comerecommended.co.uk or message us on 07412 346390. We'll reply within one month.
Complaints: if you're unhappy with how we've handled your information, please tell us first so we can put it right. You can also complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint or on 0303 123 1113.
Changes to this notice
We'll update this notice when how we use information changes, and put the date of the latest version here. If a significant change affects clients, such as using your information for something new or keeping it for longer, we'll tell you by message before it applies. Smaller changes, such as clearer wording, are made here with the date updated.
Last updated: 25 October 2026.