Personal data
Privacy policy
This policy explains how findmydentist.uk collects and uses personal data under the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018. It covers patients using the directory and practices that manage a listing.
Last updated: 1 January 2026
Who we are
findmydentist.uk is the data controller for the personal data described in this policy. We are a private limited company registered in England and Wales, with our registered office at Knutsford Rd, Latchford East, Warrington WA4 1JH, United Kingdom.
We run findmydentist.uk, a directory of dental practices in England.
Write to us about this policy or about your rights at hello@findmydentist.uk, or by post to the registered office above. Say that it is a data protection request and it will be handled as one.
Data we collect
We collect only the data we need to run a directory, to connect patients with practices and to keep the service secure.
- Account data: your first and last name, email address, a hashed password, your role, and the practice you belong to. Practice accounts are for dental professionals and the staff who manage listings.
- Practice profile data: the practice name, address, contact details, opening hours, treatments, indicative fees, photos, team details, GDC or practice registration numbers and, where provided, a VAT number. Most of this is business information rather than personal data, but a team member’s name, role, biography and photograph are personal data.
- Enquiry data: the name, email address, optional telephone number and message content you submit when you contact a practice or the FindMyDentist team.
- Technical data: a truncated IP address, the time of your request, the pages you visited, your browser user agent and error logs. These are used for security, rate limiting and diagnosing faults.
Our lawful bases
Under the UK GDPR we must have a lawful basis for every processing activity. The bases we rely on are set out below.
- Contract: creating and managing a practice account, publishing and maintaining a listing, and passing your enquiry to the practice you contacted.
- Legitimate interests: keeping the service secure, preventing spam and abuse, producing aggregated statistics, and improving how search and listings work. We have balanced these interests against your rights and you may object at any time.
- Legal obligation: keeping invoices, accounting records and, where required, records relating to a complaint or a legal claim.
How long we keep data
We keep personal data only as long as we need it for the purpose it was collected for, then delete it or anonymise it.
- Practice account: while the account is active, then three years from your last contact with us.
- Published listing: while the listing is live. Draft and suspended listings are deleted twelve months after the practice account closes.
- Enquiries sent to a practice: thirty-six months from the last exchange, so that follow-up and dispute handling remain possible.
- Technical and security logs: twelve months at most.
- Invoices and accounting records: six years, in line with UK tax requirements.
- Complaints and legal correspondence: six years from the date the matter is closed.
Who we share data with
We never sell personal data, and we do not share it for advertising. Data is available to our own authorised staff and to a small number of processors who are bound by written contracts under Article 28 of the UK GDPR.
- Hosting: Hetzner Online GmbH, which provides the servers, database infrastructure and encrypted backups on which FindMyDentist runs.
- Email delivery: a transactional email provider that sends account notifications, password resets and enquiry alerts.
- Mapping: a mapping provider used to place a practice on the map and to geocode an address you enter. Only practice addresses are sent, not personal data about patients.
- Professional advisers: our accountants, auditors and lawyers, where necessary and under duties of confidence.
- Authorities: a regulator, the police or another public body, but only where we are legally required to disclose and after checking that the request is valid.
International transfers
FindMyDentist serves England, and our directory data is stored on infrastructure in the European Union. Where personal data leaves the UK — for example to our hosting or email providers — we rely on an adequacy regulation made under UK law, or on the International Data Transfer Agreement (IDTA) or the UK Addendum to the EU Standard Contractual Clauses.
Before making a transfer we assess the provider’s security measures and the law of the destination country, and we put a written contract in place. You can ask for more detail about the safeguards we use by writing to hello@findmydentist.uk.
Cookies
A cookie is a small file stored by your browser. FindMyDentist sets only the two cookies listed below. Both are strictly necessary, which is why you are not asked to consent to them.
We do not set advertising, retargeting or social media cookies, and we do not run third-party analytics that track you across other sites. The cookies we set cannot identify you by name outside your own session; one keeps you signed in, the other records that you are on the UK English version of the site.
| Cookie | Purpose | Duration | Category |
|---|---|---|---|
| findmydentist_session | Keeps you signed in to a practice dashboard as you move between pages, and protects forms against cross-site request forgery. | Session — removed when you close the browser | Strictly necessary |
| findmydentist_locale | Stores your language and market preference — English (United Kingdom) — so the site serves the same version on your next visit. FindMyDentist is a single-market service, so this cookie holds one value only. | 12 months | Strictly necessary — preference |
No third-party analytics, advertising or retargeting cookies are set on this site.
Your rights under the UK GDPR
You have the following rights over the personal data we hold about you. You can exercise any of them by writing to hello@findmydentist.uk, and we will normally respond within one month. There is no charge unless a request is manifestly unfounded or excessive.
- Access: a copy of the personal data we hold about you, together with information about how we use it.
- Rectification: correction of data that is inaccurate or incomplete.
- Erasure: deletion of your data, where we have no overriding legal reason to keep it. We may need to retain limited records to comply with tax or accounting law.
- Restriction: a pause on processing while a dispute about accuracy or lawfulness is resolved.
- Portability: the data you gave us, delivered in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format, where processing is based on consent or contract.
- Objection: an objection to processing based on our legitimate interests, including any profiling. We do not carry out advertising profiling.
How to complain
If you are unhappy with how we have handled your data, write to us first at hello@findmydentist.uk so that we can put it right. We acknowledge data protection complaints within five working days and aim to give a full reply within one month.
If you are not satisfied with our response, you have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK supervisory authority for data protection. You can raise a concern online at ico.org.uk, or call the ICO helpline on 0303 123 1113. You can contact the ICO at any time, and you do not have to complain to us first.
Our postal address for data protection matters is: findmydentist.uk, Knutsford Rd, Latchford East, Warrington WA4 1JH, United Kingdom.
ico.org.uk (opens in a new tab) — Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire SK9 5AF.
Our terms of use and our legal notice explain the rest of the arrangement between you and findmydentist.uk.