Privacy policy

1. Who we are

VLAYER LABS LTD (company number 15480811, ICO registration ZC177705) runs CarCanny and is responsible for your data. Registered office: 101 New Cavendish Street, 1st Floor South, London W1W 6XH, United Kingdom. Contact us at support@carcanny.co.uk.

2. What we use, and why

Car searches

The registration or other text you submit in the registration field, or of a car whose report you choose to re-check, and the vehicle records we find for it, including MOT, mileage, finance, theft, write-off and valuation data from our vehicle-data providers, and adverts of similar cars that are listed for sale or have recently sold. The report states how many there are and the prices. It does not show those other cars. To write the short verdict on the free check, we send Google's Gemini only the car's make, model, year, fuel type and engine size and, for a model our used car record ranks, what that record says about the model. For a model the record doesn't rank, we also send Gemini only its make and model to estimate its model score. We keep one estimate per make and model, never with a registration or anything about you, and reuse it for every car of that model. To write the verdict on a full report, we send it those details and the records we found for the car. To show some cars on the free check and the full report with an illustration of their model, we send Gemini the car's make and model, once per model, to learn its generations, facelifts and body styles, and keep one answer per make and model. We then send it the car's colour, make, model, generation, body style and look (before or after a facelift), and the years that look was sold, to draw the illustration, and the illustration with that description to check it matches. We never send it the registration, the VIN or anything about you. We keep each illustration that passes the check in Vercel Blob, our host's file storage, under a random name, where anyone with its address can open it, and reuse it for every car of the same model, generation, look (before or after a facelift), body style and colour. It holds no registration or anything about you. If you tap "Not the right car?" under an illustration, your browser sends us the registration and the illustration's address, which we use only to find the illustration that car shows and check it's still the one you saw: if it is, we stop showing it to everyone and count the flag, without keeping the registration with it. We keep the free check's verdict with the car's records, and reuse it while the details it was written from stay the same. If we find no car for a valid registration, we also ask the DVLA about up to 5 registrations that differ from it only by characters that look alike, such as O and 0, without keeping its answers, and show you the make, year of manufacture, colour, fuel type and engine size of each car it knows, so you can pick the one you meant. If the text is not a valid UK registration, we find no vehicle details, or the providers cannot answer, we record a cleaned copy of up to 20 characters in our Vercel runtime logs. Every two hours, a private GitHub job copies the normalised registration, failure time and reason, and structured provider outcomes from valid searches that failed into its private report. It sends the registration, failure reason and provider outcomes to Anthropic's Claude to suggest a likely technical reason and next step. A person reviews that advisory diagnosis; it is never shown to the visitor or used to decide anything about them. The counts and provider metrics we keep for growth contain no registrations. We use this to run, troubleshoot and improve the free check, and to show on our site how many different cars have been checked with CarCanny, a total that never shows a registration (our legitimate interests), or to provide a full report under our contract with you. Vehicle records can relate to past keepers; we use them only to report on the car, never to look up people.

Orders

Your email address, order and payment confirmation, any promo code you used, and your agreement to immediate delivery when you buy for a car or unlock one with credits or a pass, to deliver your report, credits or pass, email your confirmation and keep accounts (contract and legal obligation). Each car you unlock with credits or a pass is recorded as an order too, with the payment that bought them. If we refund a payment, in full or in part, we record when. We also record when a browser first shows a report or MOT and mileage check you paid for, whoever opened its link, so our support team can tell whether it arrived. Our server logs note each later opening too, with the order but not who opened it. For an MOT and mileage check, we keep which of the car's records it showed, and, if you upgrade, which upgrade it counted towards. Stripe handles your card details; we never see your full card number.

Report copies

If you, or anyone with a full report's link, send it to another address from the report's page, we keep that address and when it was last sent there, linked to the order, for 12 months after that send. We use them to email that address the report's link, to allow at most 3 addresses per report, and so our support team can see where a report went. Each time, we email the order's own address that a copy was sent, with the other address mostly hidden, and when. The copy has no receipt, payment details or verdict. Sending a copy never changes the order's email address or moves its credits (legitimate interests).

Credits and passes

The email address you paid with holds your credits or 14-day pass. We email it the 6-digit codes that let a device use them (contract), and our support team may email you about them, for example if we pause them for review. If you ask for a code when your credits or pass can't be used, because they're used up, ended, paused, suspended or refunded, we send no code and email you why instead, at most once an hour. If no credits or pass were ever bought with an email, the page says so, so anyone who types an email there can tell whether credits or a pass were bought with it. For each code we keep a hash, never the code itself, and the IP address that asked for it (only the network part of an IPv6 address), to limit how many codes are sent. For each device you set up we keep a hash of the token in its cookie, its browser's user agent, and when it was set up, last used and signed out: this lets up to 2 devices use each purchase's credits or pass (contract), and our support team sees it when reviewing how they're used.

Fraud prevention

For each time a device is set up with a 14-day pass, and each car the pass unlocks, we record the IP address (only the network part of an IPv6 address, as for codes), the approximate location our host Vercel gives for it (city, country and coordinates), the device's browser user agent, and the time. We also record each IP address that opens a report the pass unlocked, including people you share the link with, once the report shows in their browser. We use this to spot passes that are shared or resold, and to prevent fraud (legitimate interests). When a pass's use looks unusual, we email an alert to a person in our support team, with the buyer's email address, devices, locations and how many cars the pass unlocked; a person decides whether to pause or suspend it. Every report a pass unlocks shows the buyer's email address, with most of it hidden, to anyone who opens its link.

Price range emails

If you join CarCanny emails to get a car's price range: your email address, the registration, when you asked, the wording you agreed to, whether we sent the email, and the random code in its link, with when that link first showed the price range. We use them to email you the link, show you the price range through it, and limit how many emails go to one address (steps you ask us to take). When someone pays for a car, we check whether its price range was asked for, or shown, in the 30 days before, to count in our analytics how many sales follow a price range, without sending the registration or email address (legitimate interests). We look the price range up when you press Join: if the car has none, we say so then, send no email, don't sign you up and delete the request. If we can't look it up just then, we send nothing and you can try again. The link shows the price range for 7 days. After that, opening it asks for your email address again, so we can send you a new link; it never shows the address it was sent to. Pressing Join is also your consent to our marketing emails, as below. They start only once you open the link within those 7 days, which shows the address is yours: until then, no one is signed up, and if you had unsubscribed before, you stay unsubscribed. If you change the address on the page after pressing Join, we email a new link to the new address and delete the first address's pending sign-up, unless it had already subscribed, unsubscribed or opened its link. Opened after that, the first link still shows the price range but signs no one up. We keep the first request, as below, and it still counts towards our limits on emails. We used to offer to email you a free check on its own; we keep the same details of those requests, and how long is below.

Support

Messages you send us, to answer them (legitimate interests, or contract if about an order).

Creators and partners

If you apply to promote CarCanny: your name, email address, whether you're 18 or over and based in the UK, your channels or sites, and the audience details you send us, to decide on your application (steps you ask us to take). If we work together: your payment details, and how many paid orders used your follower code and when, to pay you and keep accounts (contract and legal obligation). We never show you who bought with your code.

Analytics

How the site is used, such as searches, report views, checkout steps and the answers you tap to questions we ask on a page, such as what stopped you at checkout, with the ad campaign and ad keyword that brought you, without your registration, email or order details, to improve the site. The ad keyword is the one we chose for our ad, never what you searched for. If you apply a promo code at checkout, we record the code and whether it came from a link, from an offer on a free check, or you typed it. When you open checkout, we pass the site and the ad campaign and keyword that brought you to Stripe with your order. When a payment completes, unless a promo code made it free, we also record the amount, what you bought, whether it was an upgrade from an MOT and mileage check, which site and ad campaign brought you, whether it's your first, second or later purchase (counted from our earlier orders paid with the same email address, leaving out MOT and mileage checks), and whether anyone asked for that car's price range, or opened its link, in the 30 days before, without your email or registration (legitimate interests). Only if you accept PostHog in Privacy settings, PostHog also records how you use our pages, to find what's confusing or broken: the same events, which site, ad campaign or ad keyword brought you, where you click and scroll, clicks that do nothing or are repeated in frustration, errors in the page, and recordings of your visits. Recordings show our pages' own words, the layout, your taps, scrolling and timing. They hide everything you type, your car's details and report results, and anything that looks like a registration, an email address or an order reference, except a promo code you've applied, which shows as it is. They leave out the support chat entirely. It also records your approximate location (country and city), worked out from your IP address, which it doesn't store. Our events from before you choose wait in your browser's memory: if you accept, they go to PostHog with the time they happened, and if you say no, we drop them. We remove your registration and report links from every address it records, and never send it your email (consent). Optional analytics cookies run only with your consent.

Advertising

Only if you accept them in Privacy settings, we use Google Ads and the Meta Pixel to measure how our ads perform and to show our ads again to people who have visited CarCanny (consent). Google Ads gets each page you view, with your registration and report links removed; when you open checkout for anything we sell, including an MOT and mileage check, that you did, valued at the single report's price whatever you're buying; and, when you buy, the amount you paid and a code that lets it count your order once without revealing it (nothing for a report a promo code made free). An MOT and mileage check is counted apart from other purchases. The Meta Pixel gets the pages you view, and the moment we find the car you searched for, with no details of the search or the car. It sends nothing from a car's pages, checkout, reports or the pages behind links we email you, and doesn't collect anything else from our pages by itself. Instead, when you open checkout for anything but an MOT and mileage check, which Meta hears nothing about, our server tells Meta, with Meta's identifiers for your browser (from its _fbp and _fbc cookies), your browser's user agent, your full IP address and the page's address with the registration removed. We keep the identifiers and user agent with your order, never the IP address. When you pay, our server tells Meta of the purchase, with them and the amount and currency, then deletes them from the order (for a report a promo code made free, it deletes them and tells Meta nothing; for an upgrade, the amount is what you paid for it); if you don't pay, we delete them when the checkout expires, usually within half an hour and always within 2 hours. If you withdraw consent before you pay, we delete them as you pay and tell Meta nothing of the purchase. Neither Google nor Meta gets your email address, name, registration, order reference or report links. Like any site your browser contacts, Google and Meta also receive your IP address and browser details, and they can match what they receive to people who use their services, to show them our ads. Only if you accept Reddit Advertising in Privacy settings, our server tells Reddit when we find the car you searched for and when you open checkout for anything we sell, including an MOT and mileage check, to measure and improve our Reddit ads (consent). It sends the kind of step and when it happened, an id that lets Reddit count it once, your browser's user agent, your full IP address, a fixed page address for that step, with no registration in it, and, if you arrived from a Reddit ad, the click id Reddit added to its link. No Reddit script runs on our pages. Reddit isn't told what you're buying or whether you pay, and it gets no details of the search or the car, and not your email address, name, registration, order reference or report links. Reddit can match what it receives to people who use Reddit, to count and improve our ads. We don't keep any of it with your order. Only if you accept Evangelist in Privacy settings, our server tells Evangelist, which runs our creator campaigns, each time you view our home page, when we find the car you searched for and when you open checkout for anything we sell, including an MOT and mileage check, to measure and improve our ads (consent). It sends the kind of step and when it happened, an id that lets Evangelist count it once, your browser's user agent, your full IP address, a fixed page address for that step, with no registration in it, a random id for your visit (see Cookies), and, if you arrived from a creator's link, the click id and referral code we saved from it. With a home page view, it also sends the home page of the site that sent you, never the page itself, and the tags in the link you followed, such as the ad campaign and ad keyword. No Evangelist script runs on our pages. Evangelist gets no details of the search or the car, and not your email address, name, registration, order reference or report links. We don't keep any of it. When you pay, Evangelist hears of the purchase too, as under Creator campaigns. Evangelist may pass these steps and the purchase on to Meta, even if you haven't accepted the Meta Pixel, and Meta can match what it receives to people who use its services, to count and improve our ads.

Creator campaigns

When you open a page from a creator's link, we save that link's click id and any referral code in it, so we can tell which creator's link a later purchase came from (legitimate interests). The click id lasts 30 days and the referral code a year, including on a later visit that doesn't come from a link. A newer click id replaces the one we saved and clears a code from an earlier link. A newer referral code replaces the code and clears a click from an earlier link. When you then pay by card, our server tells Evangelist the amount and currency, a one-way hash of the email address you paid with, your browser's user agent, the page's address with the registration and the query removed, the click id and referral code, what you bought (including an MOT and mileage check), an id for the order, so the purchase can be counted once, and any campaign tags we already passed to Stripe for that checkout. If you had accepted Evangelist in Privacy settings when you opened checkout, and still allow it when you pay, our server tells Evangelist of your card purchase in the same way even if you didn't arrive from a creator's link, and adds the random id for your visit (consent). Accepting only after checkout opened doesn't count for that checkout. If you withdraw that consent before you pay, we delete that you accepted and your visit's id from the order as you pay: we then tell Evangelist of the purchase only if you arrived from a creator's link, as above, and otherwise tell it nothing. We keep the click id, referral code, user agent and page address, and, if you accepted Evangelist, that you did and your visit's id, with the order until we report the purchase, then delete them, and we still delete them if that report doesn't get through. If you don't pay, we delete them when the checkout expires, usually within half an hour and always within 2 hours. With a purchase, we don't send your name, the registration, the email address itself, your card details, your IP address, the order reference we show you, a link to a report, or anything about a car you unlock later with credits or a pass. We don't send it for a report a promo code made free, or for a purchase our team makes to test the site. Evangelist uses it to attribute the purchase to a creator's campaign, or to measure our ads, and may pass the purchase on to Meta, even if you haven't accepted the Meta Pixel. We don't give Evangelist a Meta pixel id or token.

Marketing

Only if you opt in, by ticking the box at checkout or by pressing Join to get a car's price range and then opening the link we email you within 7 days: CarCanny news, car-buying tips and offers by email (consent). We keep when you opted in and the wording you agreed to, as a record of your consent. If you're already subscribed when you press Join, we keep your earlier opt-in as that record. You can unsubscribe at any time through the link in each email, or, if the car has no price range, with one tap on the page the price range email's link opens.

You need to give a registration to run a check, and an email address to buy a report, an MOT and mileage check, credits or a pass, or join CarCanny emails for a car's price range. Limits on credits and passes apply automatically and are the same for everyone, such as how many devices they work on, how fast they unlock cars and the slow-down of a pass after heavy use (see our terms). On a very busy day, new orders for a car and new unlocks with credits or a pass also stop automatically, the same for everyone, until our vehicle-data provider's daily limit resets (see our terms). Pausing or suspending credits or a pass is always a person's decision. Otherwise, we don't make decisions about you based solely on automated processing.

3. Who we share it with

We never sell your data. We share it only with providers who help us run CarCanny: Vercel (hosting and analytics), GitHub (private automated jobs and reports, including the registration, failure time and reason, and provider outcomes from failed valid searches), Neon (database), Stripe (payments), Resend (email), Trustpilot (a copy of your report-ready email when you pay for a car by card, or of the confirmation when you buy credits or a pass with no car, or of the receipt when you buy an MOT and mileage check, as below), Google (Search Console, and Gemini, which receives a car's details to write the verdict on the free check and estimate its model's score, its details and records to write the verdict on a full report, and its make, model, generation, look, body style, colour and the years of that look to draw and check an illustration of its model, never its registration, VIN or anything about you), Anthropic (Claude, which receives the registration, failure reason and provider outcomes to suggest why a valid search failed, and where our team also reads analytics summaries, including PostHog's summary of visits that didn't finish checkout, with links to their recordings), Crisp (support chat), Usercentrics (cookie choices), our vehicle-data providers (who receive registrations only), Evangelist (creator-campaign measurement, and, with your consent, measuring our ads, as above), and, with your consent, PostHog for analytics and session recordings, Google Ads and Meta (Meta Platforms Ireland, through the Meta Pixel and from our server) for advertising and to show our ads again to people who have visited CarCanny, and Reddit (from our server) to measure and improve our Reddit ads.

When your report is ready for a car you paid for by card, we also send Trustpilot a blind copy of that email, so it can invite you to review CarCanny. You won't see Trustpilot's address on the email. Trustpilot receives the whole email: your email address and order reference, the registration, a short description of the car, a short verdict of the checks, and the link to the report. Anyone with that link can open the report. If you paid by card, the copy includes the amount and, when we know it, how you paid. For a card, that includes the last four digits. If the email mentions credits or a pass, it includes that too. We don't send your name, because we don't store one. We don't send this copy for a car you unlock later with credits or a pass, so we ask you once, for the purchase. We don't send it for cars we use to test the site.

When you buy credits or a pass with no car, that order never gets the report-ready email. We send Trustpilot a blind copy of the purchase confirmation instead, so it can invite you to review CarCanny. You won't see Trustpilot's address on that email either. Trustpilot receives the whole email: your email address and order reference, what you bought (credits or a pass), how to use it, and the amount. When we know it, the copy also includes how you paid. For a card, that includes the last four digits. The link in that email goes to our home page, not to a report. It has no registration, no verdict and no name. We don't send the report copy or this confirmation for purchases our team makes to test the site.

When you buy an MOT and mileage check by card, we send Trustpilot a blind copy of its receipt, so it can invite you to review CarCanny. You won't see Trustpilot's address on that email either. Trustpilot receives the whole email: your email address and order reference, the registration, the link to the check, the amount and the price of the upgrade to the full report. When we know it, the copy also includes how you paid. For a card, that includes the last four digits. Anyone with that link can open the check, and, once you've upgraded, the car's full report. It has no verdict and no name. If you upgrade, Trustpilot also gets a copy of the full report's email, as above. We don't send this copy for cars we use to test the site, or purchases our team makes to test it.

Staff at our Polish group company, VLAYER LABS sp. z o.o., may access data to run and support the service. We may also share data with advisers, authorities when the law requires, or a buyer of our business.

4. Where it's stored and for how long

Our database is in London and our hosting in Paris. PostHog stores what it records in the EU. Some providers, such as Stripe, GitHub, Google, Anthropic, Meta and Reddit, may process data in the US or elsewhere; when they do, we rely on UK adequacy regulations, including the UK–US data bridge, or the ICO's approved contract clauses.

Searches and reports

12 months

Report copies

12 months after the last send to that address

Price range emails, and free checks we emailed before

12 months, or, if it holds the record of the marketing opt-in we rely on, as long as we keep that opt-in

Failed-search runtime logs and private workflow reports

Up to 12 months

Orders and accounting records

6 years, as tax law requires

Support messages

2 years after we close them

Partner applications we don't take up

12 months

Partner agreements, payments and sales records

6 years after we stop working together

Security logs

12 months

Fraud-prevention records

12 months

Marketing

Until you unsubscribe; we keep a note of the opt-out so we don't email you again. A Join whose link is never opened: 7 days

PostHog analytics events

12 months

PostHog session recordings

30 days

Creator-campaign and Evangelist details kept with an order

Until we report the purchase (we delete them even if the report fails), or within 2 hours if you don't pay

Creator-campaign cookies

30 days for the click id (carcanny_ev_click); a year for the referral code (carcanny_ev_ref)

Evangelist visit id (carcanny:evangelist-session)

Until you close the tab, or until you withdraw consent: at once in that tab, and in other tabs the next time they load one of our pages

Stripe's fraud-prevention cookies

A year for __stripe_mid; 30 minutes from your last activity for __stripe_sid

Analytics and advertising cookies

As listed in our privacy settings

5. Cookies

Essential cookies make the site and checkout work. Stripe, which takes our payments, sets two of them to help prevent fraud: __stripe_mid, which lasts a year, and __stripe_sid, which lasts 30 minutes from your last activity. It sets them only once you start to buy: when a checkout opens, or, after you press a button to buy, once we've found the car and get its checkout ready. Until then our pages don't load Stripe, so it sets nothing. Once loaded, it stays loaded as you move to other pages of the site in that tab, until you leave the site, close the tab or reload the page. Another, carcanny_pass, lets a device use your credits or 14-day pass: we set it once you type the code we email you, at a car's checkout or on the page you see after buying without a car, and it lasts until the last of the credits or pass it can use ends, at most 6 months. It holds a random token, and we store only a hash of it. When you arrive, we save the site that sent you and the tags in the link you followed, such as the ad campaign and ad keyword, in your browser's session storage, which your browser clears when you close the tab. We do this whether or not you accept optional cookies, so that our analytics and your checkout can tell which site or ad led to them. It holds no registration, email address or other details you type. Our team leaves its own visits out of our analytics by opening a page with ?team=1 at the end of its address: we then save carcanny:team in that browser's local storage, whether or not it accepts optional cookies, and from then on that browser sends nothing to Vercel Analytics or Speed Insights, and, if it accepts PostHog, its events there are marked as our team's. Its checkouts tell Stripe they are our team's, so their payments are left out of our analytics too. carcanny:team holds nothing else, and opening a page with ?team=0 removes it. If you follow a link with a promo code at the end of its address (?code=), we save the code in your browser's session storage, so your checkout can apply it, and take it out of the address. A creator code is one we give a creator or an affiliate so they can try CarCanny: once one is applied at checkout, we save carcanny:creator in that browser's local storage, whether or not it accepts optional cookies, so that someone trying CarCanny this way isn't counted as a visitor or a sale. From then on that browser sends nothing to Vercel Analytics or Speed Insights, its events in PostHog, if it accepts PostHog, are marked as a creator's, and its checkouts tell Stripe to leave their payments out of our analytics. carcanny:creator holds nothing else, and stays until you clear your browser's storage. A free check may offer you money off a full report, once per car and at most once a day, and not for a car whose checkout you've opened. To keep to that, and so that car's checkout can apply the offer's code for you, we save carcanny:discount-offer in your browser's local storage, whether or not you accept optional cookies: the day it last made the offer, and the registrations of up to 50 cars it made it for and up to 50 cars whose checkout you opened. It never leaves your browser: we don't send it to our servers or anyone else. It stays until you clear your browser's storage. The Crisp support chat sets its cookies only once you open it. If you accept PostHog, it keeps a random identifier for your browser in a cookie and in your browser's local storage, to tell your visits apart; we never link it to your name or email, and if you change your mind, PostHog stops recording and we delete that identifier, keeping only a note in your browser's local storage that you said no. If you arrive from a Reddit ad, we save the click id Reddit added to its link in your browser's session storage, carcanny:reddit-click, whether or not you accept optional cookies, and your browser clears it when you close the tab. Our server sends it to Reddit only if you accept Reddit Advertising; if you accept and then change your mind, we delete it and our server stops telling Reddit anything. If you accept the Meta Pixel, it sets a cookie, _fbp, with a random identifier for your browser, and _fbc if you arrive from a Meta ad; if you change your mind, it stops sending anything to Meta, and so does our server. Optional analytics and advertising cookies run only if you accept them, and you can change your choice at any time in Privacy settings at the bottom of every page. Saying no doesn't stop you buying or using a report, credits or a pass.

When you arrive from a creator's link, we also save its click id and any referral code in cookies named carcanny_ev_click and carcanny_ev_ref, whether or not you accept optional cookies, so a purchase can be matched to that link. These are not essential to buying or using a check. carcanny_ev_click holds the click id and lasts 30 days. carcanny_ev_ref holds the referral code and lasts a year. A newer click id replaces the one we saved and clears a code from an earlier link. A newer referral code replaces the code and clears a click from an earlier link. They hold no registration, email address or other details you type. Only if you accept Evangelist, we save a random id for your visit in your browser's session storage, carcanny:evangelist-session, which your browser clears when you close the tab. Our server sends it to Evangelist with each step and purchase it tells Evangelist of, so Evangelist can tell one visit's steps apart. It holds nothing else. If you change your mind, we delete it and our server stops telling Evangelist of your steps, and, unless you arrived from a creator's link, of your purchase, even from a checkout you opened before: at once in the tab where you choose, and in any other tab the next time it loads one of our pages.

6. Your rights

You can ask to see, correct or delete your data, to restrict or object to how we use it, or for a copy to take elsewhere, and you can withdraw consent at any time. Email support@carcanny.co.uk. It's free, and we'll reply within a month. We may ask you to confirm who you are.

If you're unhappy, tell us first: we'll acknowledge your complaint within 30 days. You can also complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk or on 0303 123 1113.

We'll update this policy when our practices change and show the new date at the top.