What we hold, why, and how to ask about it.

1. Who is responsible for your data

Gototherapy is the data controller for the personal data described here. For anything about your data, email anh@talkingcounselling.co.uk.

2. If you are looking for a therapist

Gototherapy is built so that you can use it without telling us anything about yourself. There is no enquiry form and no account for visitors. Searches are not stored against you. The six questions run in your browser and the matching happens on your own device; the answers are never sent to Gototherapy.

If you choose to keep a shortlist, your answers are encrypted on your device before they are sent, the key is in the link you are given and never reaches us, the row is deleted after thirty days, and one button deletes it sooner. We cannot read what you saved.

When you contact a professional, you contact them directly. What you tell them is between you and them and is covered by their own confidentiality and privacy obligations, not by this policy.

Opening a profile page adds one to a count of views for that day, which the professional sees on their account. The count holds nothing about you: no address, no browser, no page you came from.

The web host keeps ordinary server logs of requests, which include the address a request came from, for the short period its own policy sets. The only analytics tool is Google Analytics, and it runs only if you accept it; see Cookies and analytics below. There is no advertising pixel, tag manager or session recorder.

3. If you are a professional member

To check and list you, Gototherapy holds: your name and contact details; your professional role and register entry, including registration number and expiry date; your insurance certificate and its expiry date; your supervisor's name and contact details, and their written confirmation; a proof of identity, used to match you to your register entry; your profile text, fees, availability and, if supplied, your photograph and video introduction; and your membership status.

Documents sent for checking are stored in private storage, never in the database and never shown publicly, and every time a reviewer opens one it is recorded. A view of your profile adds one to a daily count that you can see; nothing about the viewer is kept.

4. Why we are allowed to use it

For members, the checks and the listing are the service you have asked for, so the legal basis is the contract between you and Gototherapy. Checking a register entry, an insurance certificate, a supervision arrangement and an identity document is also in the legitimate interest of the people who use the directory to find somebody safe, which is the site's whole purpose.

Emails about your own checks and documents are part of the service. Gototherapy sends no marketing email.

5. Who we share it with

The web host, which runs the site and stores the database and documents. The email provider, which carries the emails about your account. Your professional body, when a person checks your entry on its register. Your supervisor, when a person confirms the arrangement with them. Google, only if you choose to sign in with a Google account, and then only your email address.

No payment provider holds anything, because no payment is taken. Nothing is sold, and nothing is shared for advertising. All of the services above are in the UK or the European Economic Area, or hold data under the UK's international transfer rules.

6. How long we keep it

Everything about a member is kept while the account exists, because the annual recheck needs it. When you close your account, or Gototherapy removes it, your profile, photograph, video, availability, documents, the record of the checks and the account itself are deleted at once.

One small record stays for twelve months: your name, your email address, the dates you were a member, and whether you left or were removed. It exists so that a complaint or a question arriving after you have gone can be answered, only staff can see it, and the nightly job deletes it when the twelve months are up. Nothing in it is a document or a check.

A saved shortlist is deleted thirty days after it was saved, or sooner by its own button. The web host's server logs are kept for the period its own policy sets.

7. Your rights

You can ask to see the personal data Gototherapy holds about you, ask for it to be corrected or deleted, object to some uses, and complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk.

Members can see and change most of it from their account, and can delete all of it by closing the account. For anything else, email anh@talkingcounselling.co.uk from the address on your account. We reply by email and, where the law sets a time limit, within it.

8. Cookies and analytics

Two cookies are set without asking, because neither tracks you: a session cookie for members and staff who log in, and a cookie that remembers your answer to the cookie question, for a year.

If you press Accept all cookies, Google Analytics loads from Google and sets its own cookies, named _ga and similar, for up to two years. It tells Google which pages were opened, from roughly where, on what kind of device, so that we can see which pages help people. Google processes this as our processor, under its data processing terms, and some of it is held in the United States under the safeguards the UK allows. It is never joined to a name or an account, and nothing you type, on the six questions or in any form, is sent to Google.

If you press Reject, nothing from Google loads and any of its cookies from an earlier visit are removed. The site works the same either way. To change your answer, use Cookie choices in the footer of any page, and your choice takes effect at once.

9. Security

Everything travels over an encrypted connection. Documents sent for checking are stored outside the public web root and served only to staff, through a route that checks who is asking; every opening is recorded. Staff accounts are separate from member accounts. If a breach ever affected your data, Gototherapy would tell you and the Information Commissioner's Office as the law requires.

10. Contact and complaints

Email anh@talkingcounselling.co.uk, or see the complaints page for how to raise a concern about Gototherapy or about a listed professional.