Privacy policy

This is the privacy policy of Pandemonium Software Ltd, trading as ModuForge. It explains what personal information we collect from people who visit this website, enquire or become our clients, and from businesses we contact about our services (section 7); why we collect it; and what your rights are.

We've written it in plain English on purpose. If anything isn't clear, email us at hello@modu-forge.co.uk and we'll explain.

Our clients' own websites have their own privacy policies. When a client's site collects details from its visitors (an enquiry, a booking, a newsletter sign-up), the client decides what happens to them, and we handle them on the client's behalf under our Data Processing Agreement.

1. Who we are

We are Pandemonium Software Ltd, a small software company based in Oxfordshire, United Kingdom (company number 16948391, registered office 10 Olivers Close, Long Hanborough, Witney, OX29 8GL, England). We build websites for UK trades and small businesses, under the name ModuForge. For the purposes of UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018, we are the data controller for the personal information this policy describes.

You can reach us at hello@modu-forge.co.uk.

2. What we collect, and why

We only collect what we need.

When you enquire

• Your enquiry: through the enquiry form, the chat on this site, the Bespoke form or by booking a call with us: your name, email address, phone number, business name and type, where you're based and your website situation, and for a Bespoke build, what you want built, your budget and your timeline. We keep it in our own systems (a database we run on Cloudflare), add you to our own contact list so we can follow up, and email ourselves a note so we can reply.
• Questions you type into the chat: if the chat can't answer from this site's own pages, your question is sent to our AI provider for an answer (section 5). We don't keep the question, only a one-way code made from it (a hash) and the answer, for 24 hours, so the same question gets the same answer.
• Emails you send us: they're forwarded to our mailbox, which Google runs for us (Gmail), and kept there.

When you become a client

• Your answers and your site's content: the follow-up forms and the Onboarding Hub collect your business's legal details, services and opening hours, your logo, photos and brand colours, your team's names and photos if you add them, which tools you want, and what you agree to. We hold these for as long as you're a client (section 6).
• Your account: your sign-in details. We store your password only as a one-way hash, never as you typed it.
• Payments: Stripe handles your card details directly; we never see or store them. We see your business name, what you were charged and when, whether it was paid, and Stripe's references for it. When you pay, we record the boxes you tick (that you're buying for your business, that you authorise future charges to your card, and that you accept our Terms of service), with the time and the exact words.
• Work you ask us for: your change requests and Manage+ requests, and what we write for you.
• Founding case study: if you take a Founding place, the short case study that comes with it (Terms 4.4) uses your business's name, a quote from you, your name and role if you agree, and what you tell us about how you use ModuForge. We publish only what you approve, and label it “Founding customer: discounted in return for a case study”. You can withdraw it at any time: we take it down from our website within 14 days and don't use it in anything new (copies already shared, such as social media posts or printed material, can't be recalled).
• Your customers' details: when your site's tools collect details from your customers (enquiries, bookings, newsletter sign-ups, loyalty cards, your contact list, and emails you forward to your forwarding address), you decide what happens to them, and we handle them for you under our Data Processing Agreement. Section 10.2 of our Terms explains your part.

Things your browser tells us

• Hosting logs: our host (Cloudflare) records things like your IP address, browser type and the page you visited. This is standard for any website and is used for security and to keep the site running.
• Limits on use: to stop abuse of our forms and the chat, we count requests from each IP address over short periods (from a minute to a day) and delete the counts within two days.
• Cookies and storage: see Cookies and storage on your device below. Our visitor numbers come from Cloudflare's own counts, which don't identify anyone.

The free website & Google check

When you ask for our free check at /check: We use what you give us to run the check you asked for and show you the result. If you tick the box, we may also email you about it.

• What we use: Your business name, town, kind of business, website and email address. We read your public website the way a visitor would, look up your Google Business Profile (keeping only Google's reference number for it, never what it says), and, if you tell us it's a limited company, look it up on Companies House to tell what trade it's in. If you leave your kind of business as "Not sure", we work it out from your Google listing's category, your business name, your site or Companies House, and keep only the kind of business we chose from our own list.
• Why: To run the check you asked for and show you the result: our legitimate interest in answering your request. No AI reads your site for this check.
• Following up: Only if you tick the box, which is optional and starts unticked. Then we may email you about the check and how we could help, and you can tell us to stop at any time. We keep the words you agreed to with the check.
• One a month each: To keep it free, it's one check per person every 30 days. We tell by your email address and by a one-way code made from your internet connection's address (we never keep the address itself). Ask again with the same email and we show you the check you already have.
• How long we keep it: Your result page works for 30 days. If someone checks the same website within 30 days, we show them the same findings, never your details. We delete the check and your details 12 months after you asked for it, unless you've become a customer or asked us something since.
• Where it's kept: In our own systems on Cloudflare, and as a contact in our own customer list. We never sell it or share it for anyone else's marketing.
• Telling people from robots: the form uses Cloudflare Turnstile, which runs in Cloudflare's own frame and tells us only whether the check passed. We also count tries from each connection for a day (3 at most) and delete those counts within two days.

Cookies and storage on your device

We use no tracking or advertising cookies, and no analytics tool, so we don't ask you to accept any. This is everything this website stores on your device, or asks your browser to fetch from someone else. (Our clients' sites are listed in our Data Processing Agreement.) Cloudflare, our host, may also set a short-lived security cookie to tell people from bots.

3. Why we're allowed to use it (legal basis)

Under UK GDPR, we have to tell you our legal reason for holding your data:

• Contract: to quote for, build and run the service you order from us, take your payments and support you; and, for a Founding customer, the case study that comes with the place. Your name and words appear in it only as you approve them: that approval is your consent to our using your name.
• Legitimate interests: replying to your enquiry and following it up; keeping our systems secure and stopping abuse; telling our clients about our other services (every such email has a one-click way to stop them); contacting limited companies about our services (section 7); keeping the record of what a client agreed to and paid, in case either of us needs to bring or defend a legal claim; and recognising a former client who comes back, so they get our prices for returning customers (section 6).
• Legal obligation: we're required to keep accounting and tax records under UK law.
• Consent: where we ask for it. You can withdraw it at any time.

Our marketing emails

If you're our client, or were one, we may email you now and then about our own services: asking for a review, a tool you could add, our referral scheme, yearly billing, a summary of your year before a yearly plan renews, and, a while after you leave, an invitation to come back. We do this under our legitimate interests, and under the "soft opt-in" that the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations allow for a business's own customers.

You can also say no when you first give us your details. Our enquiry form, the Bespoke brief and the sign-up form each have an unticked box, "No marketing emails, thanks", and the chat asks you the same question before it sends your details. Say no and we add you straight away to the same list our unsubscribe link uses.

Every one of these emails has a one-click unsubscribe link. Use it, or email us, and we stop them all at once. We keep your email address as a one-way code (a hash) so the choice sticks, even after we've erased the rest (section 6). Emails about your account, your payments and your site aren't marketing, so they carry on. We don't send marketing to people who enquired but didn't become clients: we only email them about their enquiry.

4. Who we share it with

We use a small number of providers to run the business, and share only what each needs to do its job. For the formal list of the providers who handle our clients' data, see the Data Processing Agreement.

• Cloudflare, Inc. hosts this website and our systems (our database and file storage), forwards the emails you send us to our mailbox, and keeps basic logs for security. Our clients' websites run on Cloudflare too, each in the client's own Cloudflare account.
• Resend sends our emails: replies to enquiries, sign-in links and account notices, and the emails our clients' tools send (booking confirmations and newsletters, for example).
• Stripe handles card payments and subscriptions. Stripe is PCI-DSS certified, and we never see your card details.
• Google runs our email: the mailbox the emails you send us are forwarded to and kept in (Gmail), and the mailboxes our outreach emails are sent from (Google Workspace). We also use Google's business listings (Google Places): to show our clients' Google reviews on their sites, and to find businesses for outreach (section 7). For outreach, Google's PageSpeed service checks whether a business's homepage fits a phone screen.
• Anthropic provides the AI model (Claude) we use. Section 5 says where, and what it sees.
• GitHub builds our clients' websites: a client's site content passes through GitHub's build servers while the site is built.
• Meta (WhatsApp): if you link a WhatsApp number to your account, your number, your messages to our assistant and its replies pass through Meta's WhatsApp Business Platform.
• Sentry receives error reports so we can fix faults. We remove email addresses, phone numbers and account codes from each report before it's sent.
• A partner who introduced you: if you came to us through a partner's link (an accountant, for example), we tell that partner each month that your business is still a paying customer, so we can pay them their introduction fee. We tell them your business name and the months, and nothing else.
• When the law requires it: for example, HMRC or the police, if we're legally required to.

Sending data outside the UK

Several of these providers are based outside the UK, mostly in the United States. When personal data goes outside the UK, it is protected by one of the safeguards UK law allows: the UK–US data bridge (the EU–US Data Privacy Framework with its UK Extension) for a US company certified under it; or the UK's International Data Transfer Agreement, or the EU standard contractual clauses with the UK Addendum, in the provider's data processing terms. Ireland and the rest of the EEA are covered by the UK's adequacy regulations. Here is each one, and the safeguard its own terms give:

Companies House, which we use to check businesses before outreach (section 7), is in the UK.

We don't sell your data. We don't rent it. We don't swap it with anyone for marketing. Ever.

5. How we use AI

We use Anthropic's Claude to help with routine work. Here is where, and what it sees:

• The chat on this site: a question the chat can't answer from our own pages is answered by Claude straight away. Nobody checks those answers before you see them.
• Enquiries: whether we can take a project on is decided by fixed rules, not by AI. If the rules say yes, or need you to clear up an answer, we email you automatically. If they say no, or that we need a closer look, a person at ModuForge reads our reply before it's sent; AI may write its friendly opening line, and nothing else.
• Building and running your site: AI drafts and polishes your site's words from what you tell us, reads your old website if you're moving from it, checks your Google profile against what you've told us, and sorts the changes you ask for. For a simple change it prepares the edit; once your site is live, you approve the change before it goes live, and anything else goes to a person.
• Manage+: each piece is drafted with AI from your request and your business's details, and delivered to you, never to your customers. By default, a person at ModuForge checks each piece and you OK it on your dashboard before it's delivered. Routine work can be set to go ahead without one or both of those checks. Quotes, campaigns to your customers, review requests, and anything that mentions money, makes a promise or a claim, or replies to an unhappy customer always wait for both of you.
• Outreach: the opening line of an email to a business may be written by AI from that business's own homepage (section 7).
• No decision with legal or similarly significant effects on you is made by AI alone: a "no" to an enquiry is always read by a person before it's sent.
• Anthropic's commercial API does not use your data to train its models, under its commercial terms.
• If you'd rather your enquiry wasn't handled with AI, email us at hello@modu-forge.co.uk instead of using the forms, with "no AI" in the subject line, and we'll handle it by hand.

6. How long we keep it

• Enquiries that don't become projects (Bespoke briefs and calls you book with us included): erased automatically 24 months after our last contact with you.
• Client records: we keep them for as long as you're a client. When your subscription ends, we wait 30 days (so you can change your mind or download your data), then erase your personal details automatically: your name, email, phone number and password, everything you wrote during onboarding, your change requests and Manage+ work, the photos and files you gave us (and our backup copies of them), and every record of your own customers: their bookings, their loyalty cards, your contact list and your newsletter subscribers.
• If your account is paused instead: when we pause your account rather than close it (we call it dormant), we keep your details so you can come back without starting again, for up to 24 months after it was paused. Then we erase them in the same way.
• What survives that, and why:
  • The financial record: your business name, type and town, what you were charged and when, and your payment references, kept for 7 years from the end of our financial year (to 31 January) in which they arose. We keep them to meet our accounting and tax duties, and in case either of us needs to bring or defend a legal claim. Stripe keeps its own record of your payments (including the name and email address they were made under) for the same reasons.
  • Your checkout confirmations: that you were buying for your business, what you authorised us to charge to your card, and that you accepted our Terms, with the time and the exact words (no names). They are kept with the financial record, because they are what settles a dispute about a charge.
  • A site you keep: if you keep your site (section 5.3 of our Terms), we don't delete the photos, logo and other files it loads from our storage, so it keeps working; the rest of your files there are deleted as above.
  • A record that you were a client: so that if you come back we can give you our prices for returning customers, we keep the least we need to recognise you: your email address, your website's domain, your email's domain and your Companies House number if you have one, each only as a one-way code (a hash) made with a secret key, so it can't be read back or matched without our key; the date you left; and whether you were a Founding member, your Founding price and how many Founding payments you had made. No names, and no contact details we could read. We use it only to price your return, never for marketing. We delete it when you come back or when you ask us to, and otherwise erase it 24 months after you left. If you ask us to delete it, we keep only a one-way code of your account and of your email address, so that we never record you again.
  • Your choice not to hear from us: if you opted out of our marketing emails, we keep your email address as a one-way code (a hash), so we can go on honouring it.
• Businesses we contact: see section 7.
• Emails in our mailbox: emails you send us, and our replies, aren't deleted automatically. Ask us and we'll delete them.
• Hosting logs: typically kept for up to 30 days by Cloudflare.

7. Businesses we contact (outreach)

We sometimes email a business we think we can help, when we can show something wrong with its own website: no way to call it from a phone, for example, or no way to book. This section is for the people at those businesses.

• We only email limited companies: companies and other incorporated businesses (such as LLPs) that Companies House shows as active. We never send these emails to sole traders or ordinary partnerships. We only write to an address on the company's own web domain. If the only address a business publishes is on a free email service, such as Gmail, Hotmail or BT Internet, we don't email it, because it may be a person's own account rather than the company's. We don't keep that address. We keep what we found about the business, so we don't look at it again.
• Where we got your details: your business's Google listing, which is how we found you (we keep only Google's reference number for the listing, never what it says); your own website, from which we take your business name, an email address your business published (and where), the words and main colour of your homepage, and the faults we found on it; and Companies House, where we check your company's number, name, status, type and registered address. We never buy lists or guess email addresses.
• Our legal basis is legitimate interests: telling businesses about a service that could help them. We keep to these safeguards: we only write to incorporated businesses, at an address they published themselves; we send at most three short emails (a first one, and one 2 and 5 days later), and none after you reply or ask us to stop; every email says who we are, where we got your details and how to stop; and a stop works at once, on every address we send from. You can ask us for our assessment of these interests.
• The page we make for you: our email links to a page about your business, with a mock-up of what we'd change. It stops working 90 days after we make it. Google's PageSpeed service checks only whether your public homepage fits a phone screen (a yes or no). No screenshot of your homepage is kept or shown.
• AI: the opening line of our first email may be written by AI (Anthropic's Claude) from the first 1,500 characters of your homepage's words, about something your homepage says. We check that line against your homepage and drop it if it says anything your page doesn't; AI writes nothing else in the email (section 5).
• Your right to object is absolute. To stop us, use the link in any of our emails, reply STOP, or email hello@modu-forge.co.uk. We stop at once, and never email your business again from any of our addresses.
• How long we keep it: if you never reply, we erase what we hold about your business 12 months after we last did anything with it. If we had emailed you, we keep your business on a stop list for ever, so we never contact you again; so does a request to stop. The stop list holds your email address only as a one-way code (a hash), with your business's web address and company number. If you reply, it's a conversation: we keep it as a business contact, without that 12-month limit, until you ask us to delete it.

8. Your rights under UK GDPR

You have the right to:

• Ask us what personal data we hold about you.
• Ask us to correct something that's wrong.
• Ask us to delete your data (apart from the records we must keep).
• Ask us to stop using it for a particular purpose.
• Object at any time to our using it for direct marketing. We always stop (see Your right to object at the top).
• Withdraw consent at any time, if consent is the basis.
• Receive your data in a portable format.
• Make a data protection complaint directly to us (see section 9 below).

To exercise any of these rights, email hello@modu-forge.co.uk and tell us which one. We'll reply within 30 days.

9. Data protection complaints

Under the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025, you have the statutory right to make a data protection complaint directly to us. If you believe we have mishandled your personal data, here is how the process works:

How to complain

Email hello@modu-forge.co.uk with the subject line "Data protection complaint" and describe the issue. You can also raise a complaint by post to our registered office: 10 Olivers Close, Long Hanborough, Witney, OX29 8GL, England.

What happens next

• Acknowledgement: we will acknowledge your complaint in writing within 30 calendar days of receiving it, with a summary of your complaint and a reference number.
• Investigation: we will begin investigating without undue delay, taking into account the complexity of the issue.
• Outcome: we will send you a written response explaining our conclusions, any remedial action we have taken or will take, and your right to escalate to the ICO if you are not satisfied.

Escalation to the ICO

If you are not satisfied with our response, or at any time, you have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO):

• Website: ico.org.uk
• Phone: 0303 123 1113

10. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time, for example if we change providers or add a new service. If the change is significant, we'll say so on this website and email our clients. The "Last updated" date at the top always tells you when the policy last changed.

11. Contact

For any privacy question, email hello@modu-forge.co.uk.