Who we are

Copperline is software operated by Business Growth Insight Ltd (company number 15370177), registered at 260 South Lane, New Malden, London KT3 5RN.

You can reach us about anything on this page at privacy@usecopperline.com.

Two different relationships, and which one applies to you

This matters more than anything else on the page, because it decides who you should contact about your own data.

If you are a plumbing or electrical company using Copperline, we are the controller of your account: the people you add, their names, email addresses, phone numbers and roles, and how your company uses the product.

If you are a customer of one of those companies, we are not the controller of your data. The company you contacted is. They decide what to record about you and how long to keep it, and we process it on their instructions under a written agreement. If you want your data corrected or deleted, ask them first. If you cannot reach them, write to us at the address above and we will help you find them.

What we hold

For the companies that use Copperline:

• Account details: name, email address, phone number, job role, and which parts of the product each person may use.
• Sign-in records, so we can tell you who did what and when.
• Billing details for the subscription. Card numbers are handled by Stripe and never reach us.

For their customers and the work done for them:

• Contact details: name, phone number, email address, and the addresses where work happens.
• What was asked for and what was done: enquiries, jobs, appointment times, notes.
• What an engineer recorded on site: voice recordings, the text those are transcribed into, photographs, and the readings written onto certificates.
• Where engineers are, as described in the section on that below.
• Messages: WhatsApp conversations, emails and web form submissions sent to the company, including any photographs, documents or voice notes in them.
• Money: invoices, what was charged, what was paid and how.
• Signatures given on a phone or tablet to accept work or a certificate.

WhatsApp

Companies using Copperline can connect their own WhatsApp Business account so that messages from their customers arrive in the product rather than only on somebody's phone. If you message a company on WhatsApp and they use Copperline, this is what happens.

• We receive the message, your WhatsApp phone number, the name you have set on your WhatsApp profile, and anything you attached.
• Photographs, documents and voice notes are downloaded from WhatsApp and stored on our servers, because WhatsApp deletes them after seven days.
• Voice notes are transcribed into text so the office can read and search them, and translated into English where they were spoken in another language. The original recording is kept alongside the text and is never replaced by it.
• Delivery information from WhatsApp is recorded: whether a message was sent, delivered and read.
• The company you messaged can see and reply to all of this. We do not read it, except where we have to in order to fix a fault, and we never use it to advertise anything to you.

We hold a credential from each company that authorises us to send and receive on their WhatsApp account. It is encrypted before it is stored and is used for nothing but that company's own messages.

WhatsApp is operated by Meta Platforms Ireland Limited, and their handling of your message is governed by their own privacy policy, not this one.

Why we are allowed to hold it

• To provide the product our customers pay for, which is our contract with them and our legitimate interest in running a business.
• To meet legal obligations, including gas and electrical safety records that must be produced and kept, and tax records.
• For the safety of engineers working alone at addresses they have not been to before.

We do not sell personal data, we do not use it to train artificial intelligence models that serve anybody else, and we do not use it for advertising.

Where engineers are

• While somebody is signed in to the Copperline Field App on a phone, the app sends that phone's location to their company about every half hour, including when the app is closed. In a web browser it is sent only while the page is open. The Copperline One app does not read or share the location of the phone.
• The company sees it on its dispatch map, so the nearest engineer can be sent, and Copperline uses it to tell which job somebody is at and how far they are from the address when a visit starts.
• The apps say this before the phone asks for permission. Signing out stops it, and it can be turned off in the app at any time or in the phone's settings.
• Only the most recent position for each person is kept; each new one replaces the last. The distance from the address when a visit started is kept with that visit.

Automated processing

Copperline uses machine learning to read what engineers say and write. It transcribes voice recordings, translates them, suggests which parts were used, drafts descriptions and fills in parts of certificates from what was said on site.

To do that it sends voice recordings, typed notes, photographs and the messages on a job to AI services: OpenAI reads and writes the words and transcribes recordings that are not in English, from Ireland and the United States, and Speechmatics transcribes English recordings in the United Kingdom. Neither uses what we send to train its models. Everybody signing in to the Copperline apps is told this and asked to agree before they start, and can read it again here.

Everything it produces is marked as machine-derived and can be corrected or undone by a person. Nothing it produces is a decision about you with legal effect. A certificate is only issued, and an invoice only sent, when somebody at the company has agreed to it.

Who else sees it

We use the following processors. Each is bound by a data processing agreement and may only act on our instructions.

Where a processor operates outside the United Kingdom or the European Economic Area, the transfer is covered by the UK International Data Transfer Addendum or Standard Contractual Clauses.

Our databases and stored files are held in London. Voice recordings are sent to a transcription provider and returned as text; they are not used by those providers to improve their own models. Recordings in a language other than English are transcribed by OpenAI, which may process them in the United States.

How long we keep it

• Jobs, invoices, certificates, voice recordings, photographs and messages are kept for as long as the company uses Copperline, because they are that company's records. A company can delete records itself.
• Records the law requires a company to keep, such as tax records and gas and electrical safety records, are its to keep for as long as the law says, usually six years.
• Only the most recent position reported for each person is kept, as described above.
• A person's sign-in and profile are kept until they delete their account or their company removes them.

When a company stops using Copperline we send it a copy of its records if it wants one, and delete or return its data within thirty days of being asked. A company's only owner can ask for this from inside the Copperline One app.

Deleting your account

Anybody with a Copperline sign-in can delete their own account from inside the app: in the Copperline Field App under Me, then Your profile; in the Copperline One app and on the web under More. Their sign-in, name, email address, phone number, photograph and location are removed at once, and their phone stops reporting anything.

The jobs, notes, invoices, certificates and money they worked on belong to their company, which has to keep them, so those stay on the company's records under “Former team member”. See deleting your data for the details.

Keeping it separate, and keeping it safe

Every record in Copperline belongs to exactly one company, and that boundary is enforced by the database itself rather than only by the application. One company cannot see another's customers, jobs or messages.

Data is encrypted in transit and at rest. Credentials belonging to our customers are encrypted separately again. Access by our own staff is limited to what is needed to run the service and to fix faults.

Children

Copperline is a business product for people at work. It is not meant for anybody under sixteen, and we do not knowingly hold an account for a child.

Your rights

Under UK data protection law you can ask for a copy of your data, ask for it to be corrected, ask for it to be deleted, object to how it is used, or ask for it in a portable form.

If you are a customer of a company that uses Copperline, ask them, because they decide what happens to your records. If you are one of our own customers, write to privacy@usecopperline.com and we will answer within one month.

You can also complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk, though we would rather you told us first so we can put it right.

Changes

If we change this policy we will update the date at the top, and we will tell the companies using Copperline before anything material takes effect.