Privacy Notice

Who controls your data

Pixel Goblin Ltd (company number 17201045), trading as PostOwl, is the controller. Our registered office is 66 Paul Street, London, United Kingdom, EC2A 4NA. Privacy enquiries can be sent to hello@postowl.org.

What we collect

We process your email address, recipient name and postal address, uploaded PDF, order and service choices, price, provider references, tracking events, support messages and limited technical records needed to operate and secure the site. Stripe gives us a payment status and transaction reference, not your full card number. A private tracking code is generated for each letter; anyone who has that code can see its limited status view, so do not share it publicly.

If you subscribe to the optional PostOwl Business plan, we also keep an account record: your email address, your Stripe customer and subscription references, your plan, billing periods, how many allowance letters you have used and a list of your orders. Signing in uses a single-use emailed link and a signed session cookie that is strictly necessary for the account area. Single letters do not create an account.

Why we use it

We use order data to take payment, fulfil the contract, send receipts and status messages, support cancellations and refunds, prevent abuse and keep accounting and legal records. These uses rely on performance of our contract, compliance with legal obligations and our legitimate interests in operating and securing the service. Where the law requires consent, we ask for it separately.

After a purchase, we may send one optional email inviting you to share honest feedback on Trustpilot, at least a week after payment. We do not send reminders. You can unsubscribe using the link in that email without signing in; essential order updates continue. We keep a record of the invitation and your unsubscribe preference to avoid contacting you again. We do not send your email address or order details to Trustpilot through the invitation link. If you choose to visit Trustpilot, its own privacy terms apply.

If you enter your email and reach the payment step but do not finish paying, we may send one reminder email about an hour later with a private link back to that unpaid letter. We rely on our legitimate interests in helping you complete an order you started; the reminder is about that order only and is never used for marketing. You can switch it off at checkout, and the link in the reminder stops all future checkout reminders without signing in. We do not remind you if you pay, if you start a newer checkout with the same email, or more than once for the same letter. We keep a record of the reminder and your preference so we do not contact you again.

Who receives it

We disclose only what is needed to service providers involved in the order: Stripe for payment, our print-and-post providers and their postal partners, Amazon SES for order emails, checkout reminders and optional feedback invitations, and Cloudflare for hosting and object storage. We also use self-hosted Plausible for aggregate, cookie-free site measurement. Information may be disclosed to professional advisers, regulators or authorities where legally required. Providers may process data outside the UK; where required, we rely on recognised adequacy arrangements or contractual safeguards.

For UK orders, we send only the postcode—not the recipient name, street, email or PDF—to Postcodes.io to check whether the postcode exists. This check does not verify the full postal address, a particular property or the recipient.

If you use the optional UK address search, we send the text you type in that search field to the Photon service operated by komoot to retrieve OpenStreetMap address suggestions. We do not include the separate recipient name, email or letter contents in these requests. PostOwl does not save these search terms or send them to analytics. Photon receives the search text and the connection from our server and may process its own service records. Suggestions may be incomplete and do not verify a delivery address. You can enter all address fields manually without using this search.

How long we keep it

The uploaded PDF is deleted from PostOwl storage after successful dispatch. If production fails, it may be kept while the problem is investigated or retried, then deleted. If you start checkout but never pay, the PDF is deleted 72 hours after checkout starts. Order, payment, refund and support records are kept only as long as reasonably needed for customer service, fraud prevention, disputes, contracts, tax and accounting—generally no longer than six years where those obligations apply. Print, payment, hosting and email providers retain their own service records under their privacy and retention terms.

Your rights

Depending on the circumstances, you can ask for access, correction, deletion, restriction, portability or object to processing. You can complain to the UK Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk. Contact us first if you would like us to investigate. We may need to verify your identity and some records must be retained where the law requires it.