Private by design.

Our privacy notice

Last updated: 30 September 2026.

Who we are

AskBritain is operated by Adam Niazi, trading as AskBritain, 124 City Road, London, EC1V 2NX. ICO registration number: ZB059402. Adam Niazi is the controller of your personal data for this website.

AskBritain is independent. It is not run by, or affiliated with, the UK Government, GOV.UK or any public body.

Contact: hello@askbritain.org.

What we collect and why

Information	Purpose	Lawful basis	How long
Your question text and chosen nation	To answer your question	Legitimate interests	Not stored after answering, except as described in the next row, and common answers, which are cached without any link to you for 30 days. In a single visit, your last few questions are sent with a new one so follow-ups make sense. They are not stored.
Missed questions: the text of a question we could not fully answer, or that you mark as unhelpful, with personal details automatically removed. Kept with the answer type, nation, date and topic only, with no IP address or visitor code	To improve answers	Legitimate interests	30 days
Daily visitor code made from your IP address and the date	Fair usage limits and abuse prevention	Legitimate interests	2 days
Usage statistics without question text (nation, answer type, topic, the benefit or scheme asked about, whether the answer passed our checks, number of sources, whether a file was attached)	To improve the service	Legitimate interests	6 months, then only monthly totals per scheme (counts, no individual records), kept indefinitely
Feedback you send: answer ratings (rating, answer type, nation, topic or guide, and date, with no question text), and ideas you write, with personal details automatically removed	To improve answers	Legitimate interests	6 months
Attachments (photos or PDFs)	To answer your question	Your explicit consent, because they may contain health or other sensitive details	Not stored. Sent to Anthropic only
Analytics cookies	To understand how the site is used	Consent	Up to 14 months
Voice input	To turn your speech into text	Processed by your browser provider, not by us	Not received or stored by us

Sensitive information

Please do not include health, religious, ethnic or other sensitive details in your questions. We do not store question text, except questions we could not fully answer or that you mark as unhelpful. Before saving those, we automatically remove emails, phone numbers, postcodes, National Insurance numbers, dates, card and account numbers, names given after "my name is" and any long numbers, and we delete them after 30 days. For attachments, which may contain sensitive details, we rely on your explicit consent, which you give by ticking the box before attaching. You can withdraw consent at any time by not attaching a file.

Who we share with

We use these service providers (processors) to run AskBritain:

Lovable: website hosting and database, provided with Supabase.
Anthropic: writes AI answers from your question and any attachment. Anthropic says inputs are not used to train its models under its commercial terms.
Google: Google Analytics, only if you accept analytics cookies.
Bot protection: we use Cloudflare Turnstile to check that questions come from people, not automated bots. It runs invisibly and processes technical information such as your IP address and browser details. It does not use tracking cookies. Cloudflare acts as our processor for this, and also uses this information to improve its bot detection. See Cloudflare's Turnstile Privacy Addendum: https://www.cloudflare.com/en-gb/turnstile-privacy-policy/.
Live official-site searches: for some questions we search official government websites live using Perplexity, through our hosting provider Lovable. Only the search terms are sent.
Your browser provider (for example Apple or Google): voice input, if you choose to use it.

Answers use public pages from official websites, including GOV.UK, the devolved governments and the NHS website (nhs.uk). We read those pages ourselves; nothing you type is sent to those sites.

We do not sell your data or share it with advertisers.

International transfers

Some providers may process data outside the UK, including in the United States. Where they do, we rely on the UK's approved safeguards, such as the UK Extension to the EU-US Data Privacy Framework where the provider is certified, or the UK International Data Transfer Agreement or Addendum.

Automated decision-making

Answers are generated automatically, but we make no decisions about you that have legal or similarly significant effects.

Your rights

Under UK data protection law you have the right to access your data, have it corrected, have it erased, restrict its use, object to its use (including where we rely on legitimate interests), receive it in a portable format, and withdraw consent at any time.

Because we only keep a small number of questions with personal details removed, and no identifiers that link records to you, we usually cannot find records about you. To make a request, email hello@askbritain.org. We respond within one month.

Complaints

Please complain to us first at hello@askbritain.org. We will acknowledge your complaint within 30 days and respond without undue delay. You can also complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk or on 0303 123 1113.

Children

The service is designed for adults. We do not knowingly collect data from children, and we apply the same privacy-by-default settings to everyone.

Cookies and storage

We only set analytics cookies if you accept them. You can change your choice at any time using "Cookie settings" in the footer.

_ga (Google Analytics): distinguishes visitors. Up to 2 years. Only with your consent.
_ga_* (Google Analytics): keeps session state. Up to 2 years. Only with your consent.

We also use your browser's local storage for two items that stay on your device and are not sent to us:

Your cookie choice, so we do not ask again.
Your nation preference, so answers match where you live.

Security

We use encrypted connections, restrict access to our database, and do not store raw IP addresses.

Changes to this notice

We may update this notice. When we do, we will change the date at the top of this page.