If PitchWhip holds information about you

1. How to have your details removed

Use the removal form. It asks for one thing: the email address or phone number you want out. An email removal happens the moment you click the link we send you; a phone number is reviewed by a person, because we cannot text you to check the number is yours and we will not remove one on somebody else’s say-so.

Or email hello@pitchwhip.com with the words “remove me” and a link to your LinkedIn profile, or your name and company. You do not need an account, you do not need to explain why, and we will not ask you to justify it.

We will:

• Stop PitchWhip looking you up again. Where our records link the email address or phone number you give us to a profile, that profile goes on our block list. PitchWhip will then not look up contact details for it for any customer. The block list keeps a one-way fingerprint of the profile address, not your details.
• Stop passing on the email address or phone number you give us. PitchWhip then won’t give it to anyone who doesn’t already have it, and PitchWhip’s customers can’t email a removed address through PitchWhip. Some organisations already had your details before your request, because they looked them up, called you, or hold them in their own records. They are separate organisations, responsible for their own use of them.
• Tell the organisations we can find through PitchWhip about your request, and tell you which ones they are if you ask. To stop one of them contacting you, ask them directly. Their copy is theirs to delete (see below).
• Delete anything we hold about you for ourselves, and confirm when it is done, normally within a few days and always within one month. The Companies House search is the exception: it reads the public register again the next time a customer’s search reaches your company (see “Your other rights”).

2. The four ways PitchWhip can hold your details

There are four, and they have different people responsible for them.

The removal route above covers the first two. To be kept out of the Companies House search, see “Your other rights”. Find investors keeps nothing that identifies a private shareholder, so there is nothing to remove. We keep a customer’s records separate from every other customer’s: what one sales team records about you is never shown to another.

3. When a PitchWhip customer holds your details

A customer’s records about you can hold only what that customer put there or asked PitchWhip to find:

We look only for business contact details. PitchWhip does not look for your personal email address, your home address or anything about your private life. A phone number found for you may be a mobile you use for work, and a customer can call any number they enter themselves. We do not look for special category data (nothing about health, ethnicity, religion, politics, sex life or sexual orientation, trade union membership or biometrics) and we do not infer it. A recorded or transcribed call does hold whatever is said on it. Details from a professional profile reach a customer’s records only because a person at that customer was looking at the page.

If you are a company director or owner. Some PitchWhip customers can search the public Companies House register for companies, and see their directors and owners. We read your name, role, ownership and month and year of birth from the register. We show customers only an age band, such as 60–64, never your age or your date of birth, and we never show anyone under 18. We keep these details for 24 hours. Your name can be shown with your company even when you don’t match what the customer searched for. A customer who adds you to a list or contacts you is responsible for that, and should tell you where they found your details.

If you hold shares in a UK company. PitchWhip reads the shareholder lists that companies file at Companies House. We use them to count how many private individuals hold shares, and to name investment firms and other organisations. We never show a private individual’s name, holding or what they invested, and we don’t keep their names. If an organisation you control is named and it is really your own investment company, email hello@pitchwhip.com and we’ll stop naming it. We don't send paper forms filed at Companies House to any AI provider.

The customer is responsible for having a lawful reason to contact you and for telling you where your details came from, usually in their first message or call. If you do not know which company has your details, email hello@pitchwhip.com and we will find out and tell you.

4. If a PitchWhip customer called you

Some customers call from inside PitchWhip. A call like that is carried by our telephony provider, Twilio. For each one we keep, for that customer, the time, how long it lasted, how it ended and the number dialled. Inside PitchWhip only the person who called you can see the number, and it is deleted when the customer deletes the call or their call log. If the customer has connected their own CRM (HubSpot or Salesforce), the number is also written to the record of that call there, unless they marked it a wrong number.

• Recording happens only if the customer has switched it on. It starts when you answer, or later in the call if the customer has chosen that the caller starts it; never while the phone is ringing. In that second case the automated message says the call may be recorded. The caller chooses whether an automated message tells you the call is being recorded, unless the customer requires it on every call. If it is off, the law may still require them to tell you themselves, and that is their responsibility. The caller can pause the recording during the call; a paused part is silent. The customer chooses how long recordings are kept: 90 days unless they choose 1 year, 2 years or to keep them until they delete them.
• Transcription: the caller may have live help on screen, which turns both sides of the conversation into text as you speak. That happens on the caller’s computer, so no audio of the call is sent to Google, to PitchWhip or to anyone else to be transcribed. The customer may also keep the text of the call, for the same period as the recording. Only the person who called you and their account admin can read it or play the recording.
• If you ask a caller not to call again, they must stop. The removal route at the top of this page works as described there: a caller who already had your number still has it. To stop them calling, ask them directly. If you do not know which company called you, email hello@pitchwhip.com and we will help you find out.

If you called a PitchWhip customer’s number. Some customers have a phone number from PitchWhip. If you call one, we keep for that customer your number (unless you withheld it), the time and length of the call and how it was answered. If you leave a voicemail, it is recorded, and only the person whose number it is can play it. Your voicemail and your number are deleted 90 days after the call, and the rest of the record after 12 months. If the customer records calls, the recording rules above also apply to a call you make to them that is answered. The customer is responsible for these records, and PitchWhip keeps them for the customer.

5. The prospect index (switched off)

The prospect index is not in operation and holds no records. Nothing is being collected for it and nothing is being shown to anyone. It was designed as PitchWhip’s own working list of people who may be worth contacting, built from profiles a customer viewed or lists a customer uploaded. A record in it could be shown to more than one customer. We have left this description up, because a removal recorded now is permanent and would keep you out if the index is ever switched on. We would publish a new version of this page, and tell people as the law requires, before switching it on.

The customer records described above are not the index: each belongs to one customer and is never pooled across customers.

6. Why, and on what lawful basis

So that a salesperson can see whether you are actually relevant to what they sell. If you are, they can reach you at work; if you are not, they can leave you alone.

For a customer’s records, the lawful basis is the customer’s to choose and to answer for. For business-to-business outreach in the UK and EU that is usually legitimate interests (UK and EU GDPR Article 6(1)(f)). UK law now names direct marketing as an example of a legitimate interest, which still has to be weighed against your interests and rights. Our part is limited to what our agreement with the customer allows.

For what PitchWhip holds for itself, our basis is legitimate interests. For the block list, your removal request and our correspondence with you, that interest is honouring your objection and proving we did. For the details the Companies House search reads from the register, it is helping businesses find the companies, and the people who run them, that fit what they sell. For Find investors, it is helping founders find organisations that invest as a business, from public filings, while never showing or keeping a private shareholder’s name. We have written that assessment down, and you can ask us for it.

You can object at any time, and we will stop. We do not weigh your objection against our interests. See the removal route above. For the Companies House search, see “Your other rights”.

If someone then contacts you, they are responsible for that contact, including under the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations and the rules on calling numbers registered with the Telephone Preference Service. We are not the caller or the sender.

7. How long details are kept

• A customer’s records are kept while that customer is a customer, and deleted within 90 days after they leave, or sooner if they delete them.
• Call recordings and saved call transcripts are kept for the period the customer chooses: 90 days after the call unless they choose 1 year, 2 years or until they delete them. They are deleted within 90 days after that customer leaves.
• Details read from the Companies House register for a customer’s search are kept 24 hours.
• Shareholder lists read for Find investors are read in memory and not kept. We keep only the counts, organisation names and company figures, for up to 30 days, and the figures from a filing for up to 400 days.
• Your objection to the Companies House search is kept indefinitely, on purpose, so that you stay out. We keep your name, the companies we found you at, and one-way fingerprints of your name with your month and year of birth and of your officer link on the register.
• The prospect index holds no records. Were it running, a record would expire 12 months after we last saw it published.
• Block-list entries are kept indefinitely, on purpose: a block list that expired would let your details reappear, which is the opposite of what you asked for. It holds a one-way fingerprint and no readable personal data.

8. Who can see them

A customer’s records are seen by that customer’s own team, as its settings allow, and by the providers that run our service for them. They are never shown to another customer. Details read from the Companies House register are different: they are shown to any customer who can use the Companies House search and whose search reaches your company. Find investors shows customers only counts of private shareholders, never a name. The prospect index is switched off, so nobody sees anything from it.

We do not sell your personal data, we do not use it for advertising, and we do not use it to train AI models. Our contact-data provider receives only what a lookup needs: a name, company and profile address. Our terms forbid customers from reselling or republishing it. Under US state privacy laws we act as a service provider to our customers, and we do not sell or share your information. If you are a US resident you can use the same removal route, and we treat your request identically.

Our providers are listed in the Privacy Policy. They process on our instructions and do not use the data for their own purposes. Our contact-data provider also acts on our instructions for the look-ups we send it, and is separately responsible for its own database; its own privacy notice applies to that.

9. Your other rights

Alongside objection and erasure, you can ask for a copy of what is held about you, ask for it to be corrected, and ask for its use to be restricted. For a customer’s records, where we can identify the customer, we pass your request to them, help them answer it, and tell you who they are. For what we hold for ourselves, we answer directly. Email hello@pitchwhip.com. We will not charge you and we will not make it difficult.

If you object, email hello@pitchwhip.com with your name and a company you are a director or owner of. We will keep you out of the Companies House search for every PitchWhip customer, and tell you when it’s done. Customers who added you to a list before then are responsible for their own lists.

For Find investors, email hello@pitchwhip.com with the company number of an organisation you control that is really your own investment company, and we will stop naming it for every PitchWhip customer. A private shareholder is never named and we keep no name, so we cannot find one in our records; if you write about your own shares, we will tell you so.

Automated decisions

Nothing here makes a decision about you that has legal or similarly significant effects. A relevance score may be calculated to help a salesperson decide whether to get in touch; it has no bearing on your employment, your credit, or any service you receive.

10. Contact and complaints

PitchWhip Ltd, 96A Wandsworth Bridge Road, London SW6 2TF, United Kingdom: hello@pitchwhip.com. We have not appointed a Data Protection Officer, as we are not required to.

If you are unhappy with how we have handled this you can complain to us (your right under section 164A of the Data Protection Act 2018). We will acknowledge your complaint within 30 days and reply within one month. You can also complain to the UK Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk, or to your local supervisory authority in the EU. You do not have to come to us first.