Legal · Data protection
What we hold, why, and for how long.
This statement covers the public Inference Institute website and direct email enquiries. Client engagements carry their own contractual terms, including any processing of client or personal data.
Sell or share data for advertising
Use your data to train models
Reply from a person, not a sequence
Delete on request, without argument
Who controls this data
The data controller is Inference Inst Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales, company number 16676252, trading as Inference Institute. UK GDPR gives you the right to know who holds your data under a name you can look up, which is a different thing from the name on the door.
Public site
The site is statically published. There are no user accounts, no on-site form and no application backend. There are no advertising trackers, no profiling and nothing sold to anyone. One measurement tag counts page views, and it stays off until you say otherwise — see Cookies & analytics.
Email enquiries
Every contact route on this site opens your own email client with a subject line pre-filled. That means the message is sent by you, from your provider, to our inbox — it does not pass through a form handler or any third-party service we operate.
We receive what you choose to send, and use it to respond, assess the enquiry and keep an appropriate business record. Please do not send confidential system detail, personal data or production records by email; we will agree a secure route before receiving anything sensitive.
Why, and on what basis
| Purpose | Lawful basis |
|---|---|
| Answering your enquiry | Legitimate interests — responding to someone who contacted us |
| Scoping and quoting work | Steps prior to entering a contract |
| Delivering an engagement | Performance of a contract |
| Business records and tax | Legal obligation |
| Security of our systems | Legitimate interests |
| Counting page views | Consent — and nothing is stored before you give it |
Technical records
The hosting and network providers that deliver this site may process ordinary request information — IP address, user agent, timestamps — for security and service operation under their own terms. We do not receive, query or retain those records.
Client data during an engagement
Documents, interviews and system detail obtained during an engagement are used for that engagement only, held under the confidentiality terms of the contract, and are not reused for other clients. Client material is never used to train any model, ours or anybody else's.
Cookies & analytics
This site runs Google Analytics 4, and it is off until you turn it on. On a first visit a bar asks whether you consent. Until you accept, your browser makes no request to Google Analytics and we do not count the visit. Declining is one press, we do not ask again, and nothing on this site is gated on the answer. If you later change your mind on this page, the choice takes effect then.
If you accept, Google sets its _ga cookies in your browser to recognise a
returning device, and we see aggregate page views, referrers, country-level location
and device class. We do not enable advertising features, remarketing or Google
Signals, we do not join this data to anything else we hold, and we do not use it to
identify a reader. There is no other cookie on this site of any kind.
Your decision is kept in your browser's local storage rather than in a cookie, so clearing this site's data puts the question back. Consent is the lawful basis, under regulation 6 of the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations, and you can withdraw it at any time — it should be no harder to take back than it was to give.
Who else sees it
Enquiry correspondence sits with our email provider. Engagement material is shared only with the people working on that engagement, and with any sub-processor named in the contract before work starts. We do not sell, rent or broker any information, ever.
How long we keep it
Enquiries that do not become engagements are kept for up to twelve months and then deleted. Engagement material is held for the term of the contract plus the period our professional and tax record-keeping obligations require, and returned or destroyed on request in line with the contract.
Your rights
Under the UK GDPR and EU GDPR you may request access to the personal data we hold about you, its correction or erasure, a restriction on how we use it, or a copy in portable form; and you may object to processing carried out under legitimate interests. Write to us and we will respond within one month.
If you are not satisfied with our response you may complain to the Information Commissioner's Office in the UK, or to your local supervisory authority in the EU.
Changes
Material changes are published here with a new version number and effective date. We do not backdate.
Contact
Send privacy questions to hello@inference.institute, or in writing to Inference Inst Ltd, company number 16676252. If you are not satisfied with the response you may complain to the Information Commissioner's Office.
This page is provided for information and does not constitute legal advice. Questions to hello@inference.institute.