DRAFT FOR LEGAL REVIEW - NOT FINAL. This text has not been checked by a solicitor. Do not publish until reviewed.

Privacy notice

Controller: Plain Jobs, a trading name of SITE SECRETARY LTD (SC906455), registered in Scotland. Registered office: 3F Camphill Court, Paisley, Renfrewshire, PA2 6BU. Contact: hello@plainjobs.uk. ICO registration: application C2074461 (registration number pending).

What we collect

Employers: employer name, email address (never shown publicly), the advert text.
Removal requests: if someone asks us to take down a linked job, we keep their email address, name (if given), their relationship to the employer and any note, only to reply and to keep a record that the employer must not be listed again. [LEGAL REVIEW: lawful basis (legitimate interests / legal obligation), retention period, whether the do-not-list record is needed.]
Linked jobs: we store the job's public details (title, employer, place, pay, a link) and our own summary. We do not store recruiter or contact names from the employer's feed.
Job seekers: no account is needed to look or apply. If you apply through a form here, your name, email and message are passed to the employer. [In this draft the message is not stored.]
Members (free, optional): email address (never shown to anyone), the profile details you choose to add (name, town, headline, skills; for employers also company name, website, description), your sign-in sessions, and a record that you applied to a job through the site while signed in (job, time, and whether the employer marked you hired or engaged). Employers you apply to can see your profile. Nobody else can.
Ratings: a star score and fixed tags that you give, or receive. Who gave a rating is visible only to our moderators, never to the person rated and never publicly. Replies are short text written by the person or company rated. [LEGAL REVIEW: ratings of identifiable people, lawful basis, DPIA, Article 22 and fairness, defamation risk for employer/listing ratings.]
Reports: the reason and any details you give, plus a one-way scrambled code of your connection (not your IP address) so we can count separate reporters. [PERIOD]
Safety screening: each advert gets an automatic risk score (kept with the advert, seen only by moderators). We keep a log of what the rules caught with no names or email addresses, and a ban list of email addresses, domains and employers. Limits on posting, applying and reporting use scrambled one-way codes of your connection or email address, deleted after about two days. If you apply without signing in, your application waits for your one-time code and is deleted after 30 minutes, after five wrong codes or once sent. [LEGAL REVIEW: lawful basis legitimate interests (fraud prevention); automated scoring of employers and Article 22]
Technical: basic logs (IP address, browser) for security and to stop spam.

Why (lawful basis)

[LEGAL REVIEW] Legitimate interests (running the site, preventing fraud, passing applications on); contract (employer posting); legal obligation.

How long

Adverts and related records: [PERIOD TO BE SET, e.g. 12 months after expiry]. Reports: [PERIOD].

Your rights

You can ask to see, correct or delete your data, or object to its use. Contact us above, or complain to the Information Commissioner's Office (ico.org.uk).

CVs and job suggestions (optional; draft, awaiting legal review and a DPIA)

What: the CV file you choose to upload, the text taken from it, the choices you make (storing, suggestions, alerts and how often), and a record of which applications you attached it to.
Why and lawful basis: your consent, asked separately and unticked, for (1) storing the CV, (2) using its words to suggest jobs, (3) emailing you suggestions. You can withdraw any of these at any time on your CV page, as easily as you gave it; withdrawing does not affect anything done before.
Sensitive details: a CV can reveal special-category data (health, religion, ethnic origin, sexual orientation, politics, trade union membership) and criminal-conviction data. We ask you not to include it, we warn you if we spot such words, and we leave them out of job matching. If you include it anyway, our basis for holding it is your explicit consent to storage, which you can withdraw by deleting the CV.
Who sees it: only you. Not employers, unless you attach it to a specific application. Not our admins in the normal course (admin pages show counts only). It is not used to train AI models and not sold or shared with advertisers.
Automated processing: job matching is done by comparing words on our own server; no outside AI service is used unless we say so here first. It only suggests jobs. It makes no decision with a legal or similarly significant effect about you (UK GDPR Article 22) and employers never see scores.
How long: until you delete it, or 12 months after you last signed in or used it, whichever is first. We email you before we delete. Alert and sharing records go with it. Deleting your account deletes all of this at once.
Your rights: see it, correct the text, download it (CV page, "Download all my CV data"), delete it immediately, object, and complain to the ICO.
Where: stored privately on our hosting provider (in this local draft, in the site's own database). [LEGAL REVIEW: hosting location, international transfers, processor contracts, retention schedule, DPIA.]

AI jobs

Posters give a contact email (never shown publicly). If you reply to an AI post, your name, email and message go to the poster only. Tasks that involve personal data must be declared by the poster, who is then responsible for it.

Cookies and browser storage

We set no cookies for visitors. The only cookie is pj_session, set only after you sign in as a member: it keeps you signed in (up to 30 days or until you log out), is HttpOnly and SameSite=Lax, and is strictly necessary for the sign-in you asked for, so it needs no consent. We use no analytics, advertising or tracking tools, and no third-party scripts. So there is no cookie banner. [REVIEW if analytics or Turnstile are added: those would need a notice and consent.]

We do keep a few small items in your browser's own storage (localStorage). They stay on your device and are never sent to us:

Light / dark choice (pj-theme): remembers the mode you picked. Without it the site follows your device setting.
Saved jobs (pj-saved): only if you press Save on a job.
Recently viewed (pj-recent, pj-recent-on): off unless you turn it on on the Saved jobs page.

These are used only because you asked for them (a display preference or a feature you switched on), so we do not ask for consent. You can remove all of it at any time with the clear button on the Saved jobs page, or by clearing your browser data. [LEGAL REVIEW: confirm this reading of PECR reg. 6 and the exemptions, as amended by the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025.]

Deleting your account

You can delete your account yourself at any time (Account, then Delete). It deletes for real: your profile, email, sessions, sign-in links, recorded applications, and ratings and replies about you. Ratings you gave to others stay, but anonymised, so they no longer link to you. Employers' adverts are closed. [LEGAL REVIEW: retention of moderation records and anonymised ratings; sole traders as data subjects.]

Marketing email

We only send job alerts if you opt in (tick box, then a confirmation email), with an unsubscribe link in every email. [Alerts are a placeholder: nothing is stored or sent yet.]