What we do with data, ours and yours.

Who we are, and which hat we are wearing

Vetdost is practice management software. Whose data we are handling changes what we are allowed to do with it, and there are two quite different answers.

We are the controller for the data about you as our customer. Your name, your work email, your phone number, your practice details, what you do inside the software, and anything you send our support team. We decide why we hold that and how long for, and this notice covers it.

We are the processor for everything a practice puts into the system about its clients and their animals. Clinical records, appointments, invoices, addresses, phone numbers. That belongs to the practice. They decide what goes in, what comes out and how long it is kept. We only act on their instructions, and their own privacy notice, not this one, is what tells a pet owner what is happening to their data.

Vetdost is not yet an incorporated company. The trading name, the country of registration, the company number, the registered office and the data protection registration are all still to be settled, and this notice will name them the moment they exist. We would rather leave a blank here than put something in it that is not true.

This matters to you and not only to us. Until there is a registered entity there is nobody for a regulator to write to, so do not put a real practice's clinical records into this system yet.

What we collect, and why

When you sign up

• Your name, work email address and phone number if you give us one
• Your practice name, roughly how many vets work there and what system you use today
• The date you started, so we know where you are in a trial

We need this to give you an account and to talk to you about it. That is contract, not consent, so you cannot opt out of it and still have a login.

While you use the software

• Which screens are used and roughly how often, so we know what to fix first
• Errors and crashes, with enough detail to reproduce them
• Sign in times and the device used, because an account with clinical records in it needs an audit trail

When you contact us

• What you wrote and what we replied
• Any screenshots or exports you send us, which may contain practice data

Support attachments are the one place practice data lands in our inbox rather than in the system. We delete them once the issue is closed.

Marketing

Only with your consent, and it is a separate tick rather than a condition of anything. One click stops it and nothing about your account changes. We do not sell your details, we do not share them with anyone for their own marketing, and we do not run advertising trackers on this site.

Where it lives

Practice data is held in the United Kingdom. If that ever changes, every practice affected gets told before it happens rather than after, and told where it is going.

We use a small number of other companies to run the service. Each one is contracted as a processor, is allowed to use the data only to provide their part of it, and is listed here so you can see who touches what.

• Hosting and database: to be added
• Email delivery: to be added
• Text message delivery: to be added
• Card processing, where used: to be added
• Error reporting: to be added

How long we keep it

• Your account. While you are a customer, then twelve months, then deleted.
• Practice data. For as long as the practice tells us to. When a practice leaves, we keep it for thirty days so a change of mind is survivable, then delete it. You can ask us to delete it sooner and we will.
• Billing records. Six years, because HMRC requires it and we do not get a choice.
• Support conversations. Two years.
• Sign in and audit logs. Twelve months.

Getting your data out

Every plan includes export, in a format you can actually open, at any time, for nothing. There is no exit fee and no notice period on the export itself. A system that makes leaving difficult is telling you something about how confident it is, and we would rather not say that.

Keeping it safe

• Encrypted in transit and at rest
• Passwords stored as scrypt hashes, never in a form anybody here can read
• Sessions held in signed cookies rather than in a URL
• Access to production limited to the people who need it, and logged
• Backups taken daily and tested by restoring them, because a backup nobody has restored is a rumour

If we ever have a breach that puts anyone at risk, we tell the Information Commissioner within seventy two hours and we tell the practices affected at the same time, not after we have worked out how it looks.

Cookies

This site sets no advertising or tracking cookies, so there is no banner asking you to accept any. The software itself stores a session cookie once you sign in, and keeps some of your own settings in local storage on your device. Neither is shared with anybody.

What you can make us do

For the data we hold about you as a customer, you can ask us to show you a copy, correct it, delete it, restrict what we do with it, hand it to somebody else, or stop marketing to you. We answer within one month and we do not charge.

If the data is about a pet owner rather than about you, ask the practice rather than us. They are the controller and we are not allowed to act on it without them.

Complaining

Tell us first at to be added and we will try to put it right. If we do not, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk, and you do not have to talk to us before you do.

Changes to this notice

If we change anything that matters, customers get told by email before it takes effect. The date below is when this version was published.

Version A, draft. Published to be added.