Privacy

Service Book is operated by Road & Race Ltd (the “controller” under UK GDPR). Questions: support@service-book.co.uk.

• Account data — email address, and optionally your name and phone number. We use one-time email codes (or Google sign-in), so we never hold a password.
• Vehicle data — registration, VIN, DVLA/DVSA records and the service stamps recorded against your vehicles.
• Documents you upload — invoices, photos, MOT certificates, V5C scans. Stored privately and openable only by the vehicle’s current keeper, plus our own staff when they are investigating a keeper dispute or an abuse report. A V5C scan detaches from the vehicle whenever it changes keeper and stays with you.
• Usage data — a hashed IP address on plate lookups, used solely for abuse prevention, and the browser user-agent string on a share-link view. We never store the raw IP against those records. Share-link views are fetched by our own server on your behalf, so the address recorded against them is our server’s, not yours — the owner of a link can see how many times it was opened, never by whom.

The website and API run on Vercel’s serverless platform, pinned to its London region. The database is Neon Postgres hosted in AWS eu-west-2 (London). Uploaded documents are stored in Vercel Blob as private files — they are never publicly addressable, and are only served through short-lived signed links after we re-check that you are the vehicle’s current keeper. Vercel Blob is a global object store operated by Vercel Inc.; we do not control which region a given file rests in.

Some of the processors we rely on are established in the United States and will process personal data there: Stripe (workshop billing), Resend (transactional email, which carries your email address), Expo (push delivery, which carries your device push token and the notification text) and Google (sign-in token verification). Vercel Blob storage may also sit outside the UK. Those transfers rely on the UK International Data Transfer Addendum to the EU Standard Contractual Clauses, or on UK adequacy where it applies. Our compute, database and DVLA/DVSA lookups stay in the UK. Ask support@service-book.co.uk for a copy of the safeguards.

Public plate lookups show a privacy-safe summary only: make, model, MOT status and stamp count — never keeper identity. Shared links show what the owner chose to share (full history or summary), described as “Keeper 2 of 3”, never by name. A full-history link carries the vehicle’s paperwork — invoices, job sheets, MOT certificates — only if the owner ticks that box when creating it; V5C logbooks are never shared. Share links are revocable at any time and can carry expiry dates and view limits.

• Account data — retained while your account is active, erased when you delete your account.
• Documents — kept while they sit in a vault you control, and erased with your account. Service documents you already handed to a new keeper stay with the vehicle (see erasure, below).
• Plate-lookup records — 13 months, then deleted automatically.
• Share-link view records — a hashed IP and a user-agent string, never a name. Kept for as long as the share link’s view count is part of the vehicle’s book; we do not currently age them out on a fixed schedule.
• Audit events — kept for legal and dispute obligations.
• Service stamps and keeper positions — permanent by design, held pseudonymously after you leave (see below).

You can access, export and correct your data from your account settings (on the web and in the app), and request erasure at any time — also self-serve from settings. Erasure anonymises your account, releases your vehicles, and deletes the documents still in your hands: everything on your personal shelf, everything in the vaults you still keep, and every V5C scan.

One deliberate exception: a service document you uploaded to a vehicle you have since sold or handed on is the new keeper’s service record by then, and stays with the vehicle. Hollowing out a stranger’s history would break the thing that makes it worth trusting. If a document like that carries something personal about you, email support@service-book.co.uk and we will deal with it case by case. Service stamps and keeper positions persist pseudonymously for the same reason — this is our documented legitimate-interest basis, and it is exactly what makes the history trustworthy for the next keeper.

You also have the right to complain to the ICO (ico.org.uk).

Processors and recipients we use to run the service:

• Vercel — hosting (London region) and private document storage.
• Neon — Postgres database (AWS eu-west-2, London).
• DVLA / DVSA — vehicle record and MOT lookups (we send the registration, nothing about you).
• Stripe — workshop billing; we never see card numbers.
• Resend — transactional email (sign-in codes, reminders).
• Google — the “Continue with Google” button on our sign-in and sign-up pages is Google’s own widget, so opening either page loads it from Google and Google sees that request. We only send Google a sign-in token to verify if you actually choose Google sign-in.
• Expo — push-notification delivery for the mobile app.

We do not sell personal data. Ever.

The website sets no advertising or analytics trackers and shows no cookie banner because it doesn’t need one. The only thing we store in your browser is your sign-in session (access and refresh tokens in local storage) — strictly necessary to keep you signed in, and removed when you sign out.

On the sign-in and sign-up pages only, Google’s sign-in widget also stores its own state in your browser (including Google cookies). That is Google’s, not ours, and it is there because the button is there — it is not analytics and we cannot read it. Blocking it, with an extension or by never visiting those pages, costs you nothing: the email-code sign-in works either way.