Privacy Policy

Who Crier is for

Crier has two kinds of user. Locals follow venues, receive their promotions, and redeem offers in person. Venues are the pubs, bars, cafés and other places that publish those promotions and posters. What we collect depends on which of these you are, so we've split it out below.

What we collect and why

Your account

Signing in to Crier is passwordless — we send a one-time code to your email address, so there is no password for us to store or for anyone to steal. We keep your email address, and a display name if you set one. That's it for account data.

If you're a local

When you follow venues and use their offers, we store:

• The venues you follow
• Promotions you've pinned or saved
• Records of the offers you've redeemed — which promotion, at which venue, and when
• Your push-notification subscription, if you turn on notifications, so we can tell you when a venue you follow posts something

This is what lets Crier show you offers from places you care about and let staff confirm a redemption.

If you're a venue

When you run a venue on Crier, we store the details you give us: the venue's name, address, type and description, its logo and photos, the promotions and posters you create, and the staff you invite. We also keep aggregate figures — follower counts, scans and redemptions — so you can see how your promotions are performing. If you connect Facebook, Instagram or Google Business Profile, we store which accounts you've connected so we can auto-post your promotions there on your behalf.

If you subscribe, we keep your plan, its price, your billing dates and whether each payment went through. We never see or store your bank details — you enter those directly with GoCardless, our Direct Debit provider, and we receive only reference numbers and payment status back.

Session data

When you're signed in, we record your IP address and browser type as part of your session. This is used to keep you signed in and to detect suspicious access — nothing else. This information lives with the session and is deleted when the session is: you can end a session at any time by signing out, and every session is removed when you delete your account. Our server logs may briefly contain IP addresses for security and debugging — they're never used to build a profile of you, and are kept only as long as operationally necessary.

Preferences

We store your notification settings. Any display preference is kept in your browser and never sent to our servers.

Location

If you tap "Use my location" to browse Discover, your browser sends us a GPS fix — you don't need an account for this. We round it to about a kilometre before we do anything with it, and keep it only in your session, not the database, so it's gone the moment you turn location off or your session ends. We use it to sort Discover by distance and to name your area, which means sending those coarse coordinates to postcodes.io.

What venues can and can't see about you

This is the heart of how Crier works, so we want to be unambiguous about it.

When you follow a venue, the venue never learns who you are. Venues do not see your email address, your name, or your individual activity. They receive only aggregate, anonymised figures — how many followers they have, how many people scanned a promotion, how many redemptions there were. Your identity and your personal engagement stay with Crier and are never handed to a venue.

When you redeem an offer in person, you show the confirmation on your screen to a member of staff. The venue records that a redemption happened — it does not receive your Crier account details.

How we protect it

• Sign-in is passwordless, so there is no password database to breach
• Your email address and display name are encrypted in our database — they are not stored in plain, readable form
• All traffic is over HTTPS
• Session cookies are Secure and HttpOnly
• Sensitive fields are filtered from error reports before they leave our servers
• Uploaded images are served over signed, expiring URLs

How long we keep it

Your data stays with us for as long as your account is active.

• If you're a local and you delete your account, everything — your follows, pins, and redemption history — is removed immediately and permanently
• If you're a venue and you close your account, your venue, its promotions and its photos are removed. Where a grace period applies before permanent deletion, we'll make it clear at the point you close the account

We don't archive deleted accounts. When your data is gone, it's gone.

Who we share it with

We don't sell your data, and we never share it for advertising. We share it only with the services needed to run Crier, and only what each service actually needs.

Law enforcement and legal requests

We will only disclose your personal data to a public authority where we're compelled to by a valid legal request, such as a court order. We don't hand over data on informal request. Where we're legally allowed to, we'll tell you before we disclose anything, so you have the chance to respond.

International transfers

Crier's data is stored in the European Union. Two parts of the service involve a provider outside the EU:

• Cloudflare operates a global network, so requests may be handled at an edge location outside the EU. Only your IP address and basic request information are processed — not your account data.
• Web push: if you enable notifications, delivery may route through a push service operated outside the EU (such as Apple or Google). Only a technical token and the notification text are involved — no account details.

These transfers are made in accordance with applicable data protection law.

Your rights

Under UK GDPR, you have the right to:

• Access — request a copy of the personal data we hold about you
• Correction — ask us to correct anything inaccurate
• Deletion — if you're a local, delete your account and your data at any time from your settings; it's immediate and permanent. If you're a venue, email [email protected] and we'll erase your venue and everything in it
• Objection — object to how we're using your data by contacting us

If you have a concern you don't feel we've handled fairly, you can raise it with the ICO at ico.org.uk.

Cookies and local storage

Crier uses a session cookie that keeps you signed in. It is strictly necessary for the service to function and is deleted when you sign out or your session expires.

On the sign-in and sign-up pages, Cloudflare's bot-protection (Turnstile) may set its own short-lived cookie to tell humans from automated abuse. This is also strictly necessary — it protects the only door into your account.

We do not use tracking cookies, advertising cookies, or analytics scripts. Crier also stores a few UI preferences directly in your browser's local storage — such as your sidebar and notification settings — which never leaves your device and is not sent to us. Because every cookie and local storage item we use is strictly necessary or entirely your own choice, we are not required to ask for your consent under UK PECR (which treats cookies and similar technologies the same way) — which is why there is no cookie banner on Crier.

Changes to this policy

If we change this policy in a meaningful way, we'll let you know by email before the change takes effect. Minor updates — wording, clarity, a new third-party service — will be reflected here with an updated date.