Privacy policy

Gillie is booking software for independent fishing guides. This page explains what we keep about you, why, how long for, and who else sees it. We keep as little as we can, and we never sell it.

Gillie is a trading name of Sklabs Software Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales (company number 14676957), at 86–90 Paul Street, London EC2A 4NE. We’re registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office, number ZC286749. Write to us at [email protected] about anything on this page.

Who is responsible for your details?

It depends on who you are.

• If you’re a guide, or on a guide’s team, Gillie decides what happens to your details. We’re the “controller”.
• If you’re an angler booking with a guide, the guide is responsible for your details. They’re the controller, and Gillie holds your details for them and only does what they ask (we’re their “processor”). The guide’s business name and how to reach them are on their website and in your booking emails. If the guide has their own privacy notice, that applies too. To see, change or delete what a guide holds, ask the guide first. If you can’t reach them, write to us and we’ll pass it on.
• If you’re visiting usegillie.com or a guide’s website, see Visitor counts and cookies.

We also act for ourselves, even with anglers’ details, in a few places: stopping fraud and card disputes, checking photos and reviews for unlawful content, acting on reports, and meeting the law.

What do we keep about guides?

• Your email address, which is how you sign in. We email you a code; there’s no password.
• Your name, if you add it, and your business details: its name, address, phone number, website, trips, dates, prices, photos and words.
• Your Stripe account’s id. Your bank details and identity documents go to Stripe, not to us.
• Your Gillie Pro plan and payments. Stripe holds your card.
• The browsers you’ve signed in on, so we can email you about a new one, and the sign-in cookies described below.

If someone added you to their team, we got your email address from them. We need your email address to sign you in. We use these to run Gillie for you, under our contract with you. We email you about your bookings, your account and your plan. We don’t send you marketing you haven’t asked for.

What do guides keep about anglers?

When you book, or a guide adds your booking:

• Your name, email address and phone number.
• What you booked: the trip, the date, how many of you, and anything you wrote in the note.
• Whether and how you paid, and any refund. Your card details go only to Stripe.
• The guide’s own notes about you.
• Your review, if you leave one.
• If you join a waiting list or a guide’s email list, your email address.
• When you book online: your IP address, country and browser. We keep these to help with fraud and card disputes.

A guide needs your name and email address to book you. The guide uses these to run your trip, take payment and keep in touch about your booking. We send booking emails on the guide’s behalf.

Checking photos and reviews

We check new photos and reviews for unlawful or harmful content, using an automated checker from OpenAI. Only the photo or the review’s words go to it, with nothing about the guide or the angler, OpenAI keeps them for up to 30 days to check for abuse of its service, and doesn’t use them to train its models. Anything it flags is looked at by a person at Gillie, who can take it down. No decision about you is made by a computer alone.

If we take down something you posted, or you think we got a report wrong, email [email protected]. Someone who wasn’t involved will look again and reply within 14 days.

Anyone can report a website. We read every report, and we never tell the guide who sent one.

Why we’re allowed to use your details

• Running Gillie for guides: our contract with you.
• Stopping fraud and card disputes, keeping Gillie secure, counting visits and acting on reports: our legitimate interest in a safe, working service.
• Checking photos and reviews: our legal duties under the Online Safety Act 2023.
• Keeping payment and tax records: the law.

For anglers’ bookings, the guide decides why their details are used, and we follow the guide’s instructions.

Visitor counts and cookies

Guides see how many people visit their website. We count visits without cookies and without storing anything in your browser. Each visit is counted under a code made from your IP address and browser that changes every day and can’t be turned back into either. We keep those codes for no more than three days, then only the totals. If your browser sends Global Privacy Control, you aren’t counted at all.

On Gillie’s own pages, like usegillie.com, our docs and the dashboard, we count visits with Fathom Analytics, which uses no cookies either. Fathom sees your IP address and browser only for a moment, to make a code that changes every day. It keeps the page you opened (without anything after the “?” in its address, except which campaign link you followed), the website that sent you, your country and the kind of browser and device. Guides’ websites never use Fathom. If your browser sends Global Privacy Control or Do Not Track, Fathom doesn’t count you.

We use only the cookies Gillie needs to work:

• A session cookie, which keeps a checkout or a form together while you use it. It goes about two hours after you leave.
• A security cookie that stops other sites sending forms in your name.
• For guides, a cookie that keeps you signed in on that browser for about 400 days, and one that remembers who has signed in on it, so we can tell you about a new device.

We don’t use advertising or tracking cookies, so we don’t ask you to accept any.

Who else sees your details?

We use a few companies to run Gillie. Each only sees what it needs, and is bound by a contract to protect it.

Company	What for	Where
Laravel Cloud, on Amazon Web Services	Hosting Gillie, its database, files and backups	London, UK
Stripe	Card payments for guides, and Gillie Pro billing	UK, EU and US
Resend	Sending Gillie’s emails	US
OpenAI	Checking photos and reviews	US
Fathom Analytics	Counting visits to Gillie’s own pages, not guides’ websites	EU and US
Cloudflare	Delivering Gillie and protecting it from attacks	Worldwide
Mapbox	Map pictures of meeting spots on guides’ websites (your browser loads them, so Mapbox sees your IP address)	US
Google Fonts	The typeface in Gillie’s emails (your email app loads it)	US

The Met Office and NOAA send us weather and tides for a trip’s place. We send them only the place, never anyone’s details.

When a guide takes a payment, Stripe is responsible for the payment details it collects, under Stripe’s privacy policy.

Where a company is outside the UK, we rely on the UK–US data bridge where the company is certified under it, and otherwise on the UK’s International Data Transfer Agreement or the UK Addendum to the EU’s standard contractual clauses. Ask us for a copy.

We also share details when the law requires it, or to protect someone from harm.

How long do we keep things?

What	How long
An angler’s details	Until three years after their last trip. Then their name, email, phone and notes are removed, and only the amounts and dates stay so the guide’s takings add up. A guide can remove them sooner with Delete customer.
IP address, country and browser from a checkout	12 months after the trip
Unpaid checkouts	7 days after the places stop being held
Waiting lists	30 days after the date
Email list sign-ups not confirmed	7 days. Someone who leaves a list is removed at once.
Record of emails sent (address and subject)	90 days
Payment messages from Stripe	30 days
Visitor codes	3 days, then totals only
Sign-in codes	A day after they run out
Photos	Until the guide deletes them. Then every copy goes.
A guide’s business	Until they close it. 30 days after closing, unless they reopen, we delete it all, including their sign-in.
Our record of who at Gillie looked at what	2 years

When we delete or remove your details, they’re gone from our live systems straight away. They can stay in our encrypted database backups until those backups expire on their own, and we never restore them except to recover from a failure.

Stripe keeps its own records of payments under its own rules.

How do we keep it safe?

Everything travels encrypted, and our database and files are encrypted where they’re stored. Original photos are private. Sign-in codes are never stored in a form anyone can read. Only a few people at Gillie can see a guide’s business, only to help them or keep Gillie safe, and every look is recorded.

Your rights

You can ask to see the details we hold about you, to have them corrected or deleted, to limit or object to how we use them, or to have a copy to take elsewhere. Write to [email protected] and we’ll answer within a month. If you’re an angler, ask the guide first, as above.

To complain to us about how we’ve handled your details, email the same address. We’ll confirm we’ve got it within 30 days, and look into it.

If you’re unhappy with how we’ve handled your details, you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office. We’d like the chance to put it right first.

If you live in the US

Some US states, like California, Virginia and Colorado, give you rights over your personal information. Wherever you live, you can use the rights above: to know what we hold, to have it corrected or deleted, and to get a copy. We don’t sell your personal information, share it for advertising that follows you across sites, or use it to profile you. We honour Global Privacy Control signals. Using your rights won’t change how we treat you. Someone you’ve authorised can ask for you, and we may check it’s really you first. If we turn a request down, reply to our answer to appeal, and we’ll answer within 45 days.

Children

Guides must be 18 or over. Anglers under 18 should be booked by a parent or guardian.

Changes to this page

If we change how we use your details, we’ll update this page and the date at the top. If it’s a big change, we’ll email guides first.