Privacy Policy

This is the privacy notice of Public Internet Limited. In this document, “we” or “us” refers to Public Internet Limited. We are company number 4831797 registered in England and Wales. Our registered office is at Unit B, Oakfield Industrial Estate, Witney, OX29 4TH

Public Internet Limited is the data controller for the information described in this notice. We are registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office under registration number ZA157419.

If you have a question about this notice, or you wish to exercise any of the rights described in section 28, please contact our Data Protection Officer at Public Internet Limited, Unit B, Oakfield Industrial Estate, Witney, OX29 4TH, or by telephone on +44 1865 570570.

This is a notice to tell you our policy about all information that we record about you. It covers both information that could identify you and information that could not.

We are extremely concerned to protect your privacy and confidentiality. We understand that all users of our web site are quite rightly concerned to know that their data will not be used for any purpose unintended by them, and will not accidentally fall into the hands of a third party. Our policy is both specific and strict. It complies with UK law and with the laws of all jurisdictions of which we are aware. If you think our policy falls short of your expectations or that we are failing to abide by our policy, do please tell us.

If there are one or more points below with which you are not happy, please tell us. Section 28 sets out what you can ask us to do, how to raise a concern with us, and how to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office if you remain dissatisfied.

Except as set out below, we do not share, or sell, or disclose to a third party, any personally identifiable information collected at this site.

This notice was last reviewed on 30 August 2026.

Here is a list of the information we collect from you, either through our web site or because you give it to us in some other way, and why it is necessary to collect it:

Basic identification and contact information, such as your name and contact details.
This information is used:
1. to provide you with the services which you request;
2. for verifying your identity for security purposes;
3. for marketing our services and products;
4. information which does not identify any individual may be used in a general way by us or third parties, to provide class information, for example relating to demographics or usage of a particular page or service.
Market place information
When we obtain information from you specifically to enable you to buy a service offered on our web site by some other person, we assume that in giving us your information, you are also giving us permission to pass it to the relevant person.
Your domain name and e-mail address
Your domain name and email address are recognised by our servers and the pages that you visit are recorded. We shall not under any circumstances divulge your e-mail address to any person who is not an employee or contractor of ours and who does not need to know, either generally or specifically. This information is used:
1. to correspond with you or deal with you as you expect.
2. in a collective way not referable to any particular individual, for the purpose of quality control and improvement of our site;
3. to send you news about the services to which you have signed up;
4. to tell you about other of our services or services of sister web sites.
Information you post on our website
Information you send to us by posting to a forum or blog or in your advertisement is stored on our servers. We do not specifically use that information except to allow it to be read, but you will see in our terms and conditions that we reserve a right to use it in any way we decide.
Website usage information
We may use software embedded in our website (such as JavaScript) to collect information about which pages you view and how you reach them, what you do when you visit a page, the length of time you remain on the page, and how we perform in providing content to you.
Payment card information
We retain your credit or debit card information securely. We may keep your financial information to provide you with a better shopping experience next time you visit us and to prevent fraud. We use Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificates to verify our identity to your browser, and to encrypt any data you give us when you buy, including financial information such as credit or debit card numbers. Our SSL certificate encryption level is 256-bit. Whenever we ask for financial information, you can check that SSL is being used by looking for a closed padlock symbol or other trust mark in your browser URL bar or toolbar.
We take the following measures to protect your financial information:
1. We keep your financial information encrypted on our servers.
2. Access to your information is restricted to authorised staff only.
3. If we ask you questions about your financial information, we shall show partial detail, only enough to identify the card(s) to which we refer.
Credit reference
To assist in combatting fraud, we share information with credit reference agencies so far as it relates to clients or customers who instruct their credit card issuer to cancel payment to us without having first provided an acceptable reason to us and given us the opportunity to refund their money.
Business and personal information
This includes all information given to us in the course of your business and ours, such as information you give us in your capacity as our client. We undertake to preserve the confidentiality of the information and of the terms of our relationship. It is not used for any other purpose. We expect you to reciprocate this policy.
We keep information which forms part of our business record for a minimum of six years. That is because we may need it in some way to support a claim or defence in court. That is also the period within which our tax collecting authorities may demand to know it.
Third party advertising
Third parties may advertise on our web site. In doing so, those parties, their agents or other companies working for them may use technology that automatically collects your IP address when they send an advertisement that appears on our site to your browser. They may also use other technology such as cookies or JavaScript to personalise the content of, and to measure the performance of their adverts. We do not have control over these technologies or the data that these parties obtain. Accordingly, this privacy notice does not cover the information practices of these third parties.
Cookies
Cookies are small text files that are placed on your computer’s hard drive through your web browser when you visit any web site. They are widely used to make web sites work, or work more efficiently, as well as to provide information to the owners of the site. Like all other users of cookies, we may request the return of information from your computer when your browser requests a web page from our server. Cookies enable our web server to identify you to us, and to track your actions and the pages you visit while you use our website. The cookies we use may last for a single visit to our site (they are deleted from your computer when you close your browser), or may remain on your computer until you delete them or until a defined period of time has passed. Although your browser software enables you to disable cookies, we recommend that you allow the use of cookies in order to take advantage of the features of our website that rely on their use. If you prevent their use, you will not be able to use all the functionality of our website. Here are the ways we use cookies:
1. to record whether you have accepted the use of cookies on our web site. This is solely to comply with the law. If you have chosen not to accept cookies, we will not use cookies for your visit, but unfortunately, our site will not work well for you.
2. to allow essential parts of our web site to operate for you.
3. to operate our content management system.
4. to operate the online notification form – the form that you use to contact us for any reason. This cookie is set on your arrival at our web site and deleted when you close your browser.
5. to enhance security on our contact form. It is set for use only through the contact form. This cookie is deleted when you close your browser.
6. to collect information about how visitors use our site. We use the information to improve your experience of our site and enable us to increase sales. This cookie collects information in an anonymous form, including the number of visitors to the site, where visitors have come to the site from, and the pages they visited.
7. to store your personal information so that you do not have to provide it afresh when you visit the site next time. This cookie will last for 90 days.
8. to enable you to watch videos we have placed on YouTube. YouTube will not store personally identifiable cookie information when you use YouTube’s privacy-enhanced mode.
Calling our help line
When you call our help line, we collect Calling Line Identification (CLI) information. We use this information to help improve the efficiency and effectiveness of our help line.
This section concerns calls you make to us for support. Calls you make and receive using our telephone service, including through our mobile application, are covered by section 26.
Sending a message to our support system
When you send a message, we collect the data you have given to us in that message in order to obtain confirmation that you are entitled to receive the information and to provide to you the information you need. We record your request and our reply in order to increase the efficiency of our business / organisation.
Complaining
When we receive a complaint, we record all the information you have given to us. We use that information to resolve your complaint. If your complaint reasonably requires us to contact some other person, we may decide to give to that other person some of the information contained in your complaint. We do this as infrequently as possible, but it is a matter for our sole discretion as to whether we do give information, and, if we do, what that information is. We may also compile statistics showing information obtained from this source to assess the level of service we provide, but not in a way that could identify you or any other person.
Job application and employment
If you send us information in connection with a job application, we may keep it for up to three years in case we decide to contact you at a later date.
If we employ you, we collect information about you and your work from time to time throughout the period of your employment. This information will be used only for purposes directly relevant to your employment. After your employment has ended, we will keep your file for six years before destroying or deleting it.
Content you provide to us
If you provide information to us with a view to it being read, copied, downloaded or used by other people, we accept no responsibility for what that third party may do with it. It is up to you to satisfy yourself about the privacy level of every person who might see your information. If it is available to all the World, you have no control whatever as to how it is used.
Marketing information
With your permission we pass your email address and name to selected associates whom we consider may provide services or products you would find useful.
Information we obtain from third parties
Although we do not disclose your personal information to any third party (except as set out in this notice), we do receive data which is indirectly made up from your personal information, from software services such as Google Analytics and others. No such information is identifiable to you.
Affiliate information
This is information given to us by you in your capacity as an affiliate of us or a customer or client of ours. Such information is retained for business use only. We undertake to preserve the confidentiality of the information and of the terms of our relationship. It is not used for any other purpose. We expect any affiliate to agree to reciprocate this policy. As an exception to this, we have the right to disclose your first name and URL of your affiliate connection to other affiliates and to any other person or organisation, on and off site. The reason is solely to enable us to mention winners and others whose performance as an affiliate is in some way outstanding.
Use of site by children
We do not market to children, nor do we sell products or services for purchase by children. We do sell products and services for end use by children, but for purchase by adults. If you are under 18, you may use our site only with consent from a parent or guardian.
Our mobile application is provided only to people whose organisation holds an account with us and who have been issued sign-in details. It is not offered to the general public and it is not directed at children.
Disclosure to Government and their agencies.
We are subject to the law like everyone else. We may be required to give information to legal authorities if they so request or if they have the proper authorisation such as a search warrant or court order.
Reviewing the information we hold
At any time you may review or update the personally identifiable information that we hold about you, by contacting us at the address at the top of this document. To better safeguard your information, we will also take reasonable steps to verify your identity before granting access or making corrections to your information.
Sale of your personal information
Except as set out in this notice, we do not rent, sell or otherwise disclose any of your information to any person outside our business.
Data may be “processed” outside the UK
Our web sites are hosted in England. We also use outsourced services in countries outside the United Kingdom from time to time in other aspects of our business. Accordingly data obtained within the UK may be “processed” outside the UK and data obtained in any other country may be processed within or outside that country.
Diagnostic reports from our mobile application are processed in the European Union.
Compliance with the law
This confidentiality policy has been compiled so as to comply with the law of every jurisdiction in which we aim to do business. If you think it fails to satisfy the law of your country, we should like to hear from you. Section 28 sets out how to raise a concern with us, and how to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office.
Removal of your information
If you wish us to remove personally identifiable information from our web site, or from the records we hold about you, you may contact us at the address at the top of this document. Your rights and how to exercise them are set out in section 28. To better safeguard your information, we will also take reasonable steps to verify your identity before granting access or making corrections to your information.
If you use our mobile application, you can also remove the information held on your own device at any time, by signing out from the application’s Settings screen as described in section 26.
Our mobile application
This section applies to the Public Internet Phone application for iPhone. It does not apply to our web site, and the parts of this notice dealing with cookies, web site usage and online advertising do not apply to the application.
1. Signing in. To use the application you sign in with the account details we have issued you. Your user name and password are sent to our server so that we can identify your account and return your extension number and display name. Your password is not sent in a readable form. Once you have signed in, your details are held in your iPhone’s keychain, which is the secure storage Apple provides for passwords, rather than in ordinary application storage.
2. Your device identifier. The first time you run the application it creates a random identifier for that installation and keeps it until you remove the application. It is sent to us when you sign in and each time your device registers to make and receive calls. We use it so that your device holds one registration with our platform rather than accumulating a new one every time the application starts. It does not identify you personally on its own, and we do not use it for advertising or for tracking you across other apps or web sites.
3. Making and receiving calls. The application uses your microphone for the duration of a call. Call audio is carried across our telephone platform in the same way as any other call on our service.
  Our platform includes a call recording feature. Whether it is switched on for your extension is not our decision. It is your organisation’s, and your organisation turns it on and off itself through its own account portal. Your organisation chooses which calls are recorded and why, how long the recordings are kept, and who is allowed to listen to them.
  Because your organisation makes those decisions, it is the data controller for the recordings and we act on its instructions. Your organisation, not us, is responsible for telling you, and telling the people you speak to, that calls may be recorded and why. If you want to know whether recording is switched on for your extension, what the recordings are used for, who can hear them, or how long they are kept, please ask your organisation. They hold that information; we do not decide it.
  What we do is keep the recordings safe. Recordings are encrypted, and they are stored in the United Kingdom. Every access to a recording is logged, whoever makes it. We do not listen to recordings and we do not use them for any purpose of our own. We may have to disclose one where the law requires it, as described in section 20.
4. Being told about incoming calls. So that the application can ring when it is closed, Apple issues it a notification token for your device. We register that token with our call platform so incoming calls can reach you. When you sign out, we withdraw that registration and the platform can no longer reach your device by that route.
5. Your contacts. If you allow it, the application reads the contacts stored on your iPhone so it can show you a name instead of a number. This happens entirely on your device. Your contacts are not sent to us and are not sent to anyone else. You can refuse or withdraw this permission in your iPhone settings at any time; the application will carry on working and will show numbers without names.
6. Your camera. The application makes voice calls only and never uses your camera. Your iPhone lists a camera permission against it because the calling technology the application is built on includes video features that this application does not use.
7. Call history on your device. The application keeps a list of your recent calls: the number, the name shown, whether the call was made, received or missed, when it happened and how long it lasted. That list is held on your device only, is limited to the most recent 100 calls, and is not sent to us. It is separate from the records our telephone platform keeps in order to operate and bill the service.
8. Calls in your iPhone’s Recents list. Calls you make and receive in the application also appear in your iPhone’s own Recents list, alongside ordinary telephone calls, so you can return a call from there. That list belongs to Apple rather than to us, and if you use iCloud it may appear on your other Apple devices. Your iPhone settings control this.
9. Diagnostics. When the application encounters a fault it sends a diagnostic report to Sentry, a third party that provides error reporting for us, on servers in the European Union. A report describes the fault, the version of the application you are running, and a trail of the application’s own log entries leading up to the fault, which is what allows us to diagnose a problem that happened on your phone rather than ours.
  We have deliberately kept personal information out of that trail. It does not carry the numbers you dialled, the digits you press during a call, the names of the people you speak to, or the signalling messages your calls generate. The service does not record your screen, and it does not attach personal information automatically. Diagnostic reports do not contain the content of your calls, your contacts or your call history.
10. Signing out, and removing your data from your device. The application’s Settings screen has a Sign Out option. Signing out withdraws your device’s registration from our platform, so calls stop reaching it, and removes your saved sign-in details, your profile and your call history from your device. It does not close your Public Internet account, which is opened and closed by your organisation, and it does not remove the records our telephone platform holds. If you want your account closed, or you want to ask us to remove information we hold about you, contact us at the address at the top of this notice.
The basis on which we use your information
Data protection law requires us to have a lawful basis for each use we make of your information. This section sets out the bases we rely on. Where we rely on our legitimate interests, we have considered whether those interests are outweighed by your own rights and freedoms, and you may object as described in section 28.
1. To provide the service. We use your information to set up and maintain your account, to sign you in, to connect your calls, to tell your device about incoming calls, and to bill for the service. Our accounts are held by organisations rather than by individual users, so where you use an extension provided by your employer or another organisation, we process your information in our legitimate interest, and that of that organisation, in delivering the service it has asked us to provide to you. Your organisation decides who is given an extension, and it may have its own privacy notice covering how it uses the service.
2. Call recording. Our platform includes a call recording feature which the organisation holding the account switches on and off itself. That organisation decides whether to record, why, how long recordings are kept and who may listen to them. For those recordings it is therefore the data controller and we are its processor: we act only on its documented instructions, under a written contract that meets the requirements of Article 28 of the UK GDPR.
  The lawful basis for recording is that organisation’s to choose and to explain. So is the duty to inform the people affected, both the people using the extensions and the people they speak to.
  We do not decide why calls are recorded and we do not use recordings for any purpose of our own. If that ever changed we would become a data controller for that use, and we would say so here before we did it.
3. To keep the service working and secure. We use technical information, fault reports and records of your contact with our help line to find and fix problems, to keep the service reliable, and to detect and prevent misuse. We do this in our legitimate interest in running a service that works and is not abused.
4. To meet our legal obligations. We keep business and accounting records for the periods the law requires, and we disclose information where we are legally obliged to do so, including in response to a warrant or court order as described in section 20.
5. To recover money owed to us. Where charges are unpaid without acceptable justification we may share information with credit reference agencies as described in section 7. We do this in our legitimate interest in recovering money owed to us.
6. For marketing. Where we send you marketing, or share your name and email address with a selected associate as described in section 16, we do so only with your consent. You can withdraw that consent at any time and we will stop.
7. Information we do not process. Where our mobile application reads the contacts held on your phone, that happens entirely on your device. The information is never sent to us, we do not receive it, and we do not process it.
8. Decisions made by automated means. There are two situations in which a decision about you may be made without a person being involved. The first is where a credit reference check returns a result that leads us to refuse an account or to suspend a service, as described in section 7. The second is where our systems detect what appears to be fraud or misuse of the service and bar an extension or block outbound calling.
  We do this because it is necessary in order to enter into, or to perform, the contract for the service. If a decision of this kind is made about you, you have the right to ask for it to be looked at again by a person, to tell us your side of it, and to challenge it. Contact our Data Protection Officer at the address at the top of this notice and we will arrange for someone to review the decision.
Your rights
You have the following rights over the information we hold about you. They are not absolute, and there are circumstances in which we may be entitled to refuse a request. If we refuse, we will tell you why.
1. What you can ask us to do. You may ask for a copy of the information we hold about you, and to be told how we use it. You may ask us to correct it if it is wrong or incomplete. You may ask us to delete it where we no longer have a good reason to keep it. You may ask us to stop using it for a while, if you have questioned whether it is accurate or whether we should be using it at all. You may ask us for a portable copy of information you gave us, or ask us to send it to another provider. You may object to our using it where we rely on our legitimate interests, as described in section 27, and where we use your information for direct marketing you may object at any time and we will stop. You may withdraw your consent where we rely on it, which does not affect anything we did lawfully before you withdrew it. And you may ask for a person to review a decision that was made about you by automated means alone, where it has a legal effect on you or affects you in a similarly significant way, as described in section 27.
2. How to ask. Write to our Data Protection Officer at the address at the top of this notice, or telephone the number given there. We may ask you for proof of identity before we act, so that we do not give your information to somebody else. We will respond within one month. If your request is complicated, or you have made several, we may extend that by up to two further months, and we will tell you if we do. We do not normally charge for this.
3. If you are not satisfied. We would ask you to raise any concern with us first, so we have the chance to put it right. You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office at any time, at ico.org.uk, by telephone on 0303 123 1113, or by writing to Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF.

If you have any question about this notice, please contact our Data Protection Officer at the address at the top of this notice.