Legal

Privacy Policy

Last updated: 21 July 2026

Draft — not for publication

This page is a working draft and has not received professional legal review.

DIY Sidekicks is operated by Ben Black, a sole trader in the United Kingdom. We use personal information to create and secure accounts, provide Sidekick discovery, booking requests and live video guidance, support users and improve the service. We do not currently take customer payments or process Sidekick payouts.

1. Who is responsible for your information?

Ben Black is the controller of personal information processed through DIY Sidekicks. You can contact Ben at ben@guidrdiy.com.

Correspondence address: [Business correspondence address required before publication]

2. Information we collect

Account and authentication information

This includes your name, email address, password credential, selected account type (Hero or Sidekick), account identifiers, authentication events and password-recovery information. If you choose Google sign-in, Google and the authentication provider also process the information needed to complete that sign-in.

Profile and service information

Depending on how you use DIY Sidekicks, this may include:

  • your name, country and other location details, including city or postcode in historical profile records, profile photograph and biography;
  • DIY project descriptions, notes and photographs you choose to provide;
  • Sidekick trades, additional skills, years of experience, portfolio photographs and captions, and profile-review information; and
  • availability, booking and service-request information.

Sidekick profiles are intended to display country only as public location information. Please do not include a home address, bank details, identification documents or other unnecessary private information in free-text fields or photographs.

Historical waitlist and scorecard information

DIY Sidekicks previously collected waitlist and research scorecard information. Historical records may include a name, email address, role, location, contact details, project or trade information, experience, product preferences, pricing views, referral source and other answers. New scorecard collection and reminder emails are intended to be disabled.

Contact, email and administration records

We may keep correspondence you send us, account and security email records, delivery status, bounce or complaint information, suppression records needed to honour an opt-out, administrator actions and temporary exports used to administer the service.

Technical information

When you use DIY Sidekicks, DIY Sidekicks and its hosting, authentication and security providers may process IP address, date and time, requested page, browser or device information, authentication tokens, error details and security logs. DIY Sidekicks does not currently use this information for advertising or remarketing.

Information you choose to provide

Free-text fields and uploaded images may reveal more than the fields request. Please check descriptions and photographs before submitting them and avoid information that is not needed for DIY Sidekicks to provide the relevant feature.

3. Age requirement

DIY Sidekicks accounts are for people aged 18 or over. DIY Sidekicks is not intended to collect personal information from children. If you believe a person under 18 has provided personal information, please contact us so that we can investigate and take appropriate action.

4. How and why we use information

Create and operate accounts

To register you, preserve your selected role, authenticate you and provide requested DIY Sidekicks features. Proposed lawful basis: contract.

Security and service administration

To protect accounts, prevent misuse, diagnose problems, review profiles and administer the service. Proposed lawful basis: legitimate interests.

Support and communications

To answer requests and send essential account, confirmation, recovery and security messages. Proposed lawful basis: contract and legitimate interests, depending on the message.

Improve DIY Sidekicks

To understand proportionate, non-advertising service use and improve usability and reliability. Proposed lawful basis: legitimate interests for non-tracking improvement; consent for non-essential analytics storage.

Meet legal responsibilities

To respond to lawful requests, protect legal rights and keep records where the law requires it. Proposed lawful basis: legal obligation or legitimate interests, as applicable.

DIY Sidekicks does not send marketing emails. Essential account and security messages do not include marketing consent, and creating an account does not sign you up for marketing.

5. Browser storage and analytics

Supabase authentication sessions are stored in your browser's local storage so you can remain signed in and so protected requests can be authenticated. Temporary PKCE and other security values may also be stored while an authentication or recovery flow is completed. These technologies are necessary for the account service you request.

Google Analytics is planned for basic measurement only. It is not currently installed and must not load unless a visitor actively consents. Advertising features, remarketing and Google Signals will remain disabled. See the Cookie Notice for more detail.

6. Who receives information?

DIY Sidekicks currently uses or contains integrations with the following provider categories:

  • Supabase for authentication, database services, file storage and related infrastructure;
  • Cloudflare for the configured website hosting and delivery environment;
  • Lovable for authentication and email-related services used by the application;
  • relevant email-delivery providers used to deliver essential messages and handle delivery events; and
  • Google if you choose optional Google authentication.

Providers may act as processors or independent controllers depending on the service. We may also disclose information where required by law, to protect users or the service, or in connection with professional advice or a lawful business transfer.

7. International processing

DIY Sidekicks is available worldwide and some providers may process information outside the United Kingdom. DIY Sidekicks reviews relevant account regions, contractual arrangements and transfer safeguards. Where UK data-protection law requires a safeguard, DIY Sidekicks relies on a lawful mechanism that applies to the particular transfer, such as applicable UK adequacy regulations or approved contractual safeguards.

You may contact us for more information about the safeguard used for a particular transfer for those provider arrangements.

8. How long we keep information

  • Unconfirmed accounts: 30 days.
  • Inactive accounts: reviewed after 24 months.
  • Closed accounts and profile media: deleted within 30 days, subject to necessary legal or security records.
  • Historic waitlist and scorecard information: deleted or anonymised within 12 months.
  • Contact correspondence and email-delivery logs: 12 months.
  • Security and runtime logs: up to 90 days, subject to provider settings.
  • Temporary administrator exports: deleted within 30 days.
  • Suppression records: kept only as long as necessary to honour an opt-out.

Information may be kept longer where reasonably necessary to establish, exercise or defend legal claims, investigate security incidents or meet a legal obligation. Where possible, information no longer needed in identifiable form will be deleted or anonymised.

9. Your rights

Depending on the circumstances and applicable UK data-protection law, you may have the right to request access to your information, correction, deletion, restriction, portability or to object to processing. Where processing is based on consent, you may withdraw consent at any time without affecting earlier lawful processing.

To exercise a right, close an account or raise a data-protection complaint, email ben@guidrdiy.com. We may need to verify your identity and some rights are subject to legal limits.

You also have the right to complain to the UK Information Commissioner's Office. You can find its complaint service at ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint. We would appreciate the opportunity to address your concern first.

10. Automated decisions

DIY Sidekicks does not currently make decisions based solely on automated processing that produce legal or similarly significant effects for users.

11. Calls, payments and video

DIY Sidekicks provides booking requests and built-in live video calls. Current calls are free, so DIY Sidekicks does not currently process customer payments or Sidekick payouts. Video service providers process the technical information needed to connect a call. Calls are not recorded by DIY Sidekicks.

12. Changes and contact

We may update this draft as DIY Sidekicks changes or legal requirements develop. A published policy will show its effective date and material changes will be communicated appropriately.

Questions can be sent to ben@guidrdiy.com.