How Pingvella handles your data.
Last updated 20 October 2026. We collect what we need to run the service and nothing for advertising or tracking. Here’s exactly what that is.
1. Who we are
Ian Gunter, 58 Hookfield, Harlow, Essex, CM18 6QQ runs Pingvella and is the “controller” of the personal data described here, under the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018. You can contact us about your data at hello@pingvella.com.
2. What we collect
When you create an account
- Your name and email address, and your password, which we store only as a one-way hash so nobody, including us, can read it.
- Your plan and billing status, and when you agreed to our terms (and which version).
When you use the service
- Your checks: names, tags, schedules, and for website checks the address you want us to request.
- Check-ins: each time a job checks in we record the time, the IP address and user agent it came from, how long the run took, and any message body the job sent (up to 10,000 characters). Please don’t send personal data or secrets in a check-in body.
- Website checks: the result of each request (success or failure, the status code, and how long it took). We don’t store the contents of your pages.
- Incidents: when a check went down and recovered, and why.
- Alert destinations: email addresses, webhook addresses, and for Telegram a bot token and chat ID. Secrets such as bot tokens are encrypted when stored.
- Sharing: the names and email addresses of people you invite or share checks with, and their requests and responses.
Payments
- Our payment provider, SumUp, collects and holds your card details. We never see or store your card number. We keep a secure token (encrypted) so we can take your monthly payment, plus a record of each payment: its amount, date and status, and the receipt.
Technical information
- The cookies described on our Cookies page. They’re only the ones needed to keep you signed in and protect forms, plus your theme choice. There are no analytics, advertising or tracking cookies.
- Our servers keep ordinary logs (IP address, browser, the page requested and the time) to keep the service secure and to fix problems.
- A record of each alert we send for your checks: which destination, when, and whether it was delivered.
3. Why we use it, and our legal basis
- To provide Pingvella to you: running your checks, recording their history, sending your alerts and emails, and letting you share checks. (Performing our contract with you.)
- To take payment and keep records: billing, receipts, and the accounts we’re legally required to keep. (Contract, and legal obligation.)
- To keep the service secure and working: preventing abuse, fixing faults, and protecting the service and its users. (Our legitimate interests.)
- We don’t send marketing emails, and we don’t sell your data or use it for advertising. If that ever changes we’ll ask you first.
4. Who we share it with
- Service providers (processors) who help us run Pingvella, only for that purpose: Amazon Web Services (Amazon SES) sends our emails, SumUp takes payments, and our hosting provider runs the servers and database.
- Where you tell us to send alerts. The destinations you set up, such as Slack, Discord, Microsoft Teams, Telegram, your own webhook, or an email address, receive alert messages that include the check’s name and its status. What they do with them is up to them.
- People you share a check with can see that check’s data, as set out in our terms.
- Authorities, if the law requires it, or to protect our rights or the safety of others.
We don’t sell your personal data.
5. Sending data outside the UK
Some of the providers above, and the destinations you choose for alerts, may handle data outside the UK. When we send personal data to a provider that does, we rely on a UK adequacy decision or on appropriate safeguards, such as the UK’s International Data Transfer Agreement or the UK Addendum to the EU standard contractual clauses.
6. How long we keep it
- Your account: for as long as you have one. Ask us to close it, and we’ll delete your account and your checks’ data, apart from what we must keep by law.
- Check data: until you delete the check. The log of individual check-ins keeps only the most recent entries for each check; older ones are discarded automatically. Incident history is kept for the life of the check. Deleting a check deletes its records with it.
- Checks over your plan’s limit: as explained in our terms, these are deleted with their records 14 days after they’re locked, unless you unlock them first.
- Payment records: for six years, to meet our accounting and tax obligations.
- Server logs: for a limited time, then rotated out.
7. Keeping it safe
The site is served over HTTPS. Passwords are stored as one-way hashes, and secret values such as bot tokens and payment tokens are encrypted at rest. Check-in addresses are long, random and private, and website checks only ever request public web addresses, never private networks. No system is perfectly secure, but we take care to protect what you give us, and we’ll tell you and the regulator if a breach affects you, as the law requires.
8. Your rights
Under UK data protection law you can ask us to:
- give you a copy of the personal data we hold about you;
- correct anything that’s wrong (you can change your email and password yourself from your account);
- delete your data, in the circumstances the law provides for;
- restrict how we use it, or object to our use of it for our legitimate interests;
- give you your data in a portable form.
To use any of these, contact us at hello@pingvella.com. We’ll respond within one month. If you’re unhappy with how we’ve handled your data, you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk, and we’d appreciate the chance to put things right first.
9. Children
Pingvella is for people aged 18 and over. We don’t knowingly collect data from children. If you think we have, tell us and we’ll delete it.
10. Changes to this policy
If we change how we use your data, we’ll update this page and the date at the top, and tell you by email or in the service when a change matters.
11. Contact
Questions about this policy or your data: hello@pingvella.com.