Privacy Policy

Last updated: 8 October 2026

1. Introduction

DormantFile ("we", "us", "our") is committed to protecting the personal data of everyone who uses our website and service. This privacy policy explains what information we collect, why we collect it, how we share it, and how we keep it safe. It applies to all users of DormantFile, whether you have a free account, a paid subscription, or are simply browsing the site.

2. Data controller

The data controller is Benjamin Davies, trading as DormantFile. If you have any questions about how we handle your data, contact us at privacy@dormantfile.co.uk.

3. What data we collect

We collect the following categories of personal data:

• Account information — your email address, name, and a securely hashed password.
• Google sign-in — if you choose "Continue with Google", Google sends us your name, email address and a stable account identifier. We store the identifier so we can recognise your account next time. If the email address Google has verified matches an existing DormantFile account, we link the two so you can sign in either way. We never receive your Google password, and we do not store your Google profile picture. An account created with Google has no DormantFile password at all.
• Company details — company name, Companies House registration number, Unique Taxpayer Reference (UTR), and accounting period dates. For an LLP filing an SA800, also the partnership UTR and each member's name and personal UTR (stored encrypted).
• Filing records — submission timestamps, correlation IDs, response payloads, and filing type (accounts, CT600 or SA800), and the figures in the accounts you file. That includes any balance sheet figures you enter or confirm, which we can read for you from the company's accounts already on the public Companies House register.
• Payment information — your Stripe customer ID and email address. We never store your card details; all card data is held by Stripe as an independent controller.
• HMRC Gateway credentials — your Government Gateway user ID and password are used only at the moment of filing. They are transmitted to HMRC over TLS, never written to our database, and discarded from server memory immediately after the submission completes.
• Companies House authentication code — entered at the point of filing and transmitted directly to Companies House over TLS. For one-off filings it is used transiently and not retained. It is stored — encrypted at rest (AES-256-GCM) — only if you choose to save it, for example for annual autopilot, and you can remove it at any time from the company's settings.
• Register information — what the public Companies House register shows about each company you add, including its filings and, for its directors, LLP members and people with significant control, their names, roles, appointment dates and identity-verification status and dates. We use it to work out your deadlines, spot changes to the register you didn't make, and remind you who still needs to verify their identity. Our lawful basis is legitimate interests: helping the company and its officers meet their legal duties, and protecting the company from fraud. See "People named on the register who aren't our customers" below.
• Due-diligence records — the name you confirm before each filing, whether it matches the public register, and any explanation you give us. See our anti-money laundering policy.
• Assistant conversations — the questions you ask our compliance assistant and its answers, stored encrypted at rest. Our team can read a conversation to investigate a problem you report or to improve the assistant's answers.
• Uploaded letters — if you use the letter decoder, the images you photograph of an HMRC or Companies House letter, and the verdict we produce from them (stored encrypted at rest). This is product data, not a compliance record: it is kept only while your account exists and is deleted with it (see section 8). If you try the tool before creating an account, the images and verdict are held for up to 48 hours so that signing up can save them, and are deleted automatically if you don't sign up. On a paid plan, the model that reads a letter is also given your companies' names, registration numbers, filing due dates and the last four digits of each UTR, so it can match the letter to the right company. We also keep a record of each change you confirm from a letter — which change, when, and whether it was made — showing at most the last four digits of a UTR and never an authentication code.
• Penalty appeal letters — if you buy an appeal letter: your name as the person signing it, the reply address you choose, an optional phone number, the facts you tick or type about the company and the penalty, and the finished letter itself. What you type and the letter we produce are stored encrypted at rest. We also keep a plain record of the appeal's progress — paid, written, posted — and whatever you later tell us the outcome was.
• Email log — for every email we send you, the address, subject, and whether it was delivered. When a member of our team writes to you directly, we also keep the text they wrote.
• Referral records — if you refer someone, or sign up through a referral link: who referred whom, and the status of the reward. The referral code is held in a cookie for 30 days so we can credit the right person (see our cookie policy).
• Security records — your IP address is used to rate-limit sign-up, sign-in and password-reset attempts, and free-tool usage is rate-limited by IP address and an anonymous cookie. These counters are kept for minutes, not months.
• Free-tool usage — when you use one of our free tools, we record which tool you used and when, what you asked it (a company registration number, or the answers and figures you entered), and what it told you. For a company check, that includes details it read from the public register, such as the company's status or filing dates. For the letter decoder, it says what kind of letter it was and who sent it, never the letter's text. We also record the page you used the tool from, the anonymous identifier in our free-tool cookie, which we use to spot automated abuse, and your account identifier if you were signed in. When an AI assistant uses our tools through our connector, we keep the same kind of record with no personal identifier at all.
• Prize postal addresses — if you claim a DormantCoin prize that is posted, we collect a postal address and use it only to send that prize. We delete it 90 days after the prize is sent or the claim is cancelled.

Special category data in an appeal

One of the ways to appeal a Companies House penalty is "exceptional circumstances", and the circumstances people describe are often the serious illness or the death of the person who should have filed. If you choose that ground, what you write may include health or bereavement information — about you, or about someone else. UK GDPR calls this special category data and holds it to a higher standard, so we want to be exact about how we treat it.

• We ask for it only because it is the substance of the appeal. A Companies House officer cannot weigh an excuse they have not been told.
• Our condition for processing it is Article 9(2)(f) — the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims. An appeal against a penalty is precisely that.
• It is stored encrypted at rest, it is used for nothing but writing your letter, and it is never used for analytics, marketing or training any AI model. No model is involved in writing an appeal at all: the letters are built from fixed templates in our code.
• Our own team cannot read that paragraph in the ordinary course of support. It is masked in our staff console, only the business owner can reveal it, and every reveal is recorded in an audit log.
• If the information concerns someone other than you — an ill or deceased director, for instance — please share only what you have a proper reason to share. Whatever you write goes to Companies House, who will read it.

If you would rather not give us any of this, don't choose that ground. You can write and send your own letter instead, and everything else on the site works exactly as before.

We also record help-centre searches — the words typed into the search box, the number of results returned, and which result was opened. These records are deliberately not personal data: they contain no account, session or IP identifier, and are automatically stripped of company registration numbers, Unique Taxpayer References and email addresses before they are stored. We use them for one purpose, which is to find out what our guides fail to answer so we can write the missing ones. They are never sent to any third party.

People named on the register who aren't our customers

If you are a director, LLP member or person with significant control of a company one of our customers has added, we hold some information about you even though you have no account with us. It is your name, your role, your appointment date, and your identity-verification status and dates, copied from the public Companies House register. We use it to show our customer the company's deadlines, who still needs to verify their identity, and changes to the register that nobody authorised.

Our lawful basis is legitimate interests: helping the company and its officers meet their legal duties, and protecting the company from fraud. We don't write to you separately to tell you this, because we hold no contact details for you and the information is already public.

Our free identity-verification checker also shows officers' names to anyone who searches for a company. Those names are read live from the register each time and are not stored.

You have the rights set out in section 9, including the right to object. To use them, email privacy@dormantfile.co.uk.

4. How we use your data and legal basis

We process your personal data under UK GDPR on the lawful bases set out below.

Deadline reminders, register and strike-off alerts, offers and upsells, and product news can each be switched on or off individually at any time, from the Emails section of Settings, or from the "Manage all emails" link in the footer of any of these emails — that footer link works without logging in. Turning a category off only stops the emails in that category. These are the only four categories that can be turned off: account, billing, plan-change, autopilot and filing-outcome emails always send while you have an account, whatever your settings above.

Offers and upsells, and product news go only to our own customers, about our own service — the "soft opt-in" under the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR), processed on the lawful basis of our legitimate interests. You can refuse them at the moment you create your account (the sign-up form has a checkbox for exactly this), and you have an absolute right to object to direct marketing at any time afterwards — turning either category off in the controls above does exactly that, immediately. Deadline reminders and register and strike-off alerts are sent on the basis of our legitimate interest in keeping you informed about your company's compliance position — you can still turn these off at any time, but doing so means we will not chase you if a deadline is missed or your company's record changes unexpectedly.

5. Third-party services

We share data with the following third parties, only as necessary to provide the service:

• HMRC — your company details and Gateway credentials are transmitted to HMRC to file your CT600 return (or, for an LLP, your SA800 partnership return). HMRC is an independent controller for data it receives.
• Companies House — your company details and authentication code are transmitted to Companies House to file your annual accounts (dormant, or FRS 105 micro-entity). Companies House is an independent controller for data it receives.
• Stripe — your email address and payment data are shared with Stripe to process subscription payments. Stripe acts as an independent data controller for payment data. See Stripe's privacy policy.
• Resend — your email address is shared with Resend to deliver every email we send you, including account and filing emails and any of the deadline reminder, register alert, offers or product news categories you have not turned off. Resend acts as a data processor on our behalf.
• Anthropic, via Vercel's AI Gateway — questions you ask our assistant (and, on paid plans, the company and filing data needed to answer them), and any letter images you upload to the letter decoder (and, on paid plans, the company details used to cross-check them), are processed by Anthropic's models to generate responses. Your data is not used to train their models. Both act as data processors on our behalf.
• Google Analytics — if you have consented to analytics cookies, your page views and actions on the site are reported to Google Analytics. Whether or not you consent, a small number of account milestones — sign-up, email verification, payment, and an accepted filing — are reported to Google Analytics from our servers under a pseudonymous identifier that is never placed on your device and cannot be linked back to you by Google. Google acts as a data processor on our behalf.
• Google Ads — if you have consented to cookies and you arrived by clicking one of our Google ads, Google Ads is told whether that visit led to a sign-up or a purchase, so we can see which ads work. Google Ads acts as an independent controller for this information, and we never allow it to be used to show you personalised ads. See how Google uses information from sites that use its services.
• Google (Google LLC) — optional sign-in ("Continue with Google"). This applies only if you use that option. We do not send Google any information about your DormantFile account or your companies. Your browser is sent to Google to sign in, and Google then sends us your name, email address and account identifier. Google acts as an independent controller for your Google account. See Google's privacy policy.
• Pingen — if you ask us to post an appeal letter, the finished letter, the address it is going to, and your company's own address and chosen reply address are sent to Pingen (Pingen GmbH, Zurich), which prints the letter and hands it to the postal system. Pingen receives the letter's full text, which on an exceptional-circumstances appeal may include the health or bereavement details described above. Pingen acts as a data processor on our behalf. If you print and post the letter yourself, nothing is sent to Pingen at all.
• Vercel — hosts the application, in its London region, and holds letters uploaded to the letter decoder in its private file storage in the UK. Vercel acts as a data processor on our behalf.
• Prisma — hosts our PostgreSQL database, in the European Union (Paris). Prisma acts as a data processor on our behalf.
• Sentry — receives error reports so we can fix faults. A report carries your account identifier and technical details of the error; credentials and filing content are stripped before anything is sent. Sentry acts as a data processor on our behalf.
• Slack — our team's internal alerts (a new sign-up, a payment, a filing outcome, a support message) name the customer and company concerned so we can act on them. These are seen only by our staff. Slack acts as a data processor on our behalf.
• Upstash — holds the short-lived rate-limit counters described above, keyed by IP address. Upstash acts as a data processor on our behalf.

6. International transfers

Our application runs in the UK (Vercel, London), and letters uploaded to the letter decoder are stored in the UK. Our database is hosted in the European Union (Paris), which the UK Government has found to provide adequate protection, so no further safeguard is needed for that transfer.

Pingen is based in Switzerland and holds letter data on Swiss servers. The UK Government has found Switzerland to provide adequate protection, so no further safeguard is needed for that transfer. Pingen prints letters in the country they are addressed to, so a letter to HMRC or Companies House is printed and posted in the United Kingdom.

Stripe, Resend, Google, Anthropic, Vercel, Sentry, Slack and Upstash are US-based companies, and some of their processing takes place in the United States. Each transfer is covered by the UK International Data Transfer Agreement or the UK Addendum to the EU standard contractual clauses, or by the UK Extension to the EU-US Data Privacy Framework where the provider is certified under it.

We do not transfer personal data outside the UK except through the services listed above.

7. Data storage and security

Your data is stored in a PostgreSQL database hosted by Prisma in the European Union. All data is encrypted in transit using TLS. Passwords are hashed using bcrypt before storage — we never store your password in plain text. Accounts created with Google have no password to store; we hold only Google's account identifier. LLP members' personal UTRs and assistant conversations are encrypted at rest.

HMRC Gateway credentials are never persisted. They are held in server memory only for the duration of the submission request and discarded immediately after HMRC responds. Companies House authentication codes are used transiently for one-off filings and not retained. If you choose to save yours — for example for annual autopilot — it is stored encrypted at rest (AES-256-GCM), never logged, and you can remove it at any time from the company's settings.

8. Data retention

• Account data — kept for as long as you have an account. Cancelling a subscription does not close your account: it moves to the free deadline watchdog and stays until you delete it, which you can do at any time from Settings (or by contacting us if you have filings we must keep). Deleting your account removes your account details, assistant conversations, uploaded letters, penalty appeal records, email log and notification history straight away, keeping only the records below.
• Filing progress diagnostics — retained for 24 months, then deleted automatically.
• Free-tool usage records — kept for as long as we run the free tools. Telling one filing season from the next takes years of history, and what these records hold is public-register information or the answers typed into a tool. If you were signed in when you used a tool, deleting your account removes your account identifier from those records.
• Filing records — kept while your account exists, including the figures in the accounts. If you close your account, we keep the records of filings we submitted until six years after the end of the accounting period each one covers, as HMRC's record-keeping rules require.
• Register information — refreshed from the register while the company is on your account, so someone who leaves the company drops off at the next check. If you remove the company, we stop checking it and keep the last copy with its record until your account is deleted; deleting your account deletes it.
• Uploaded letters — product data, not a compliance record: retained only while your account exists and deleted with it. A scan made before you sign up is held for up to 48 hours so that signing up can save it, and deleted automatically otherwise.
• Penalty appeal records — the facts you gave us, the letter, and its progress are kept while your account exists and are deleted with it. Two things survive that deletion and are not ours to remove: the payment record held by Stripe, and the dispatch record held by Pingen for a letter it printed and posted. Both keep those in their own right as financial and postal records.
• Due-diligence records — customer identity and due-diligence records are retained for 5 years after our business relationship ends under our anti-money laundering and fraud-prevention policy. See our anti-money laundering policy.
• Help-centre search records — retained for 12 months, then deleted automatically. Filing demand is seasonal, so a full year is the shortest window in which a rising search can be told apart from a recurring one.
• When you delete your account, or ask us to in writing, we delete the personal data associated with it, except records we must keep by law (such as the filing records described above), which we keep only for the period stated.

9. Your rights

Under UK GDPR you have the right to:

• Access the personal data we hold about you.
• Rectify inaccurate personal data.
• Erase your personal data (subject to legal retention obligations — for example, records of filings we submitted must be kept until six years after the end of the accounting period each one covers).
• Restrict processing of your data in certain circumstances.
• Data portability — receive your data in a machine-readable format.
• Object to processing based on legitimate interests.
• Withdraw consent for analytics and ad measurement cookies at any time, using the "Cookie preferences" link in the footer. Withdrawal does not affect the lawfulness of processing carried out before you withdrew consent.
• Complain to us — you can complain to us first at privacy@dormantfile.co.uk; we acknowledge complaints within 30 days.
• Complain to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) at ico.org.uk.

To exercise any of these rights, email us at privacy@dormantfile.co.uk.

10. Children's data

DormantFile is not directed at persons under 18. We do not knowingly collect personal data from minors. If you believe we have inadvertently collected data from someone under 18, please contact us and we will delete it promptly.

11. Automated decision-making

We do not use automated decision-making or profiling that produces legal or similarly significant effects. Our due-diligence checks run automatically against the public register, but any decision to pause, decline or end service is made by a person.

12. Cookies

We use a small number of cookies to operate the service and, with your consent, to understand how it is used and whether our ads work. For full details, see our cookie policy.

13. Changes to this policy

We may update this privacy policy from time to time. We will notify you of material changes by email or by placing a prominent notice on the website. Your continued use of the service after any changes constitutes acceptance of the updated policy.