Privacy Policy

1. The short version

• We use your information to run Tools Down for you. We don’t sell it or use it for advertising.
• Your customers’ details are yours. We use them to provide Tools Down to you, and to make statistics that can’t identify anyone.
• Tools Down asks your permission, after you sign in, before what you send goes to the AI providers it names. They’re set not to keep it or use it for training, with a few exceptions, web searches above all (section 4).
• If you allow location, we get only your town and postcode area, never your exact position.
• You can export your data, or delete your account, from Settings any time; section 6 says what that removes now and what waits.

2. Who we are

Tools Down is a trading name of Blue Ocean Code Ltd, company number 11626451, registered at 1 Cedar Office Park, Cobham Road, Wimborne, England, BH21 7SB. We are the controller for your account, how you use the app and this website. For your customers’ details we act for you (section 3). Contact us at hello@toolsdown.app.

3. Your customers’ details

You are the controller of your customers’ details and we are your processor: we use them to provide Tools Down to you, and to make statistics that can’t identify anyone, under our data processing terms. We use a little ourselves, as a controller, to keep Tools Down secure.

Their details come mostly from you: what you enter, say or send, and a contact you pick from your phone. Some come from your customers, on the pages and emails we provide for you: the pages your quote, invoice and gas safety record links open, and the emails we send in your name. We note when a page is opened, and if a quote is accepted or turned down there, so you can see it. Replies go straight to your business email address, not to us.

4. What we receive, and why

To use Tools Down you need an email address (or Apple or Google sign-in), your name and your business’s name. The rest is your choice, and for location, voice, photos and notifications your phone asks first.

To run your account and your admin

Lawful basis: contract.

• Your name, email address or Apple or Google ID, and your plan and, from Apple, your subscription’s status. We never see your card.
• Your business details (bank details for invoices, Gas Safe number and signature) and records: customers, jobs, the diary, quotes, invoices, payments you record, reminders, gas safety records and photos. If you give your website address, we read what it shows about your business, for you to check.
• A contact you choose from your phone: its name and one phone number, email and postal address. Tools Down never reads your address book. Apple Maps finishes an address as you type, and if you look up your company, the name or number you type goes to the public company register.
• Your notification address and choices (the words of each notification pass through our notification services), and the rough location of an outdoor job’s postcode area, never its address, for rain alerts.
• Your sign-in: each phone’s session (its IP address and app details), the codes we email you and, with Sign in with Apple, Apple’s token, so we can revoke it when you delete your account. They keep you signed in and secure, which is also in our legitimate interests.

AI: what we send, to whom, and why

Lawful basis: contract. Tools Down can’t do the work without sending what you write, say and photograph to AI.

Tools Down asks your permission on a screen after you sign in, and sends nothing to an AI provider until you say yes. Say “Not now” and nothing is sent: Tools Down tells you it needs AI to work, and you can go back or sign out. Our server checks your answer before every call to an AI provider. The permission isn’t what makes the sending lawful, which is the contract above. The other providers, by type, are in section 5.

Withdrawing it. In Settings, under Privacy & data, choose Stop using AI. From then on no new request goes to an AI provider, including work already waiting to run, because the server checks your answer each time. Tools Down asks again before it sends anything, and can’t work until you say yes. Stopping doesn’t delete what you have saved; section 6 says how to delete your account and what that removes.

What we send, and how we get it. Only what you give Tools Down as you use it, or have saved in it:

• What you type or say, your photos, the replies you get, and a searchable memory of earlier chats, with the titles and summaries Tools Down writes. AI models index your chats and photo descriptions, and read your message and the parts of earlier chats that look relevant.
• The customers, jobs, quotes, invoices and notes an answer needs, read from your records when you ask about them.
• The words of a reply, if you tap Play to hear it read aloud.
• Your voice, from when you tap the microphone until you stop. Amazon Transcribe turns it into text in Ireland. Tools Down doesn’t save the recording.
• If you allow location, your town and postcode area (such as “Stockport, SK4”), sent with each message so the AI knows roughly where you are. Your phone works it out from its approximate position, with Apple’s help. We never get your exact position and don’t store the area, though a “near me” question and its answer stay in your chat. Turn it off in your phone’s settings any time.
• Incognito chats aren’t saved to your history, memory or export, and can’t change your records. They still go to the AI that answers. We keep a count of them, what each cost and which tools it used, not what was said.

What we use it for. To write replies and do what you ask; read photos; remember earlier chats; find the right job or invoice; write titles and summaries; look things up on the web; turn speech into text; and read replies aloud. We don’t train AI on it.

Who gets it. These are the AI providers that receive it today, and where each runs:

We’re also authorised to use DeepInfra (United States), Anthropic (through its own service) and OpenAI (through its own service, and through Microsoft Azure), but they are sent nothing today. Any provider we’re authorised to use is used only on the same terms: set not to keep what we send or train on it, under a data agreement, and in the EU where it offers that. We tell you at least 30 days before a new AI provider receives your information, and this list changes with it.

How it’s protected. The AI providers are set not to keep what we send or train on it, and we don’t train on it either. We use EU services wherever a provider offers them. OpenRouter, the service that carries every request to them, works under its data processing agreement. There are small exceptions: a provider may hold a request briefly in a cache, or keep it where the law requires it or to deal with misuse, and OpenRouter keeps its own account and security records, which aren’t what you wrote.

The larger exception is a web search. The search engine may keep the search words and use them to improve its service, as its own policy says. So every search is checked first. One that holds a person’s name, a customer’s address, a phone number, an email address or a full postcode isn’t sent, and nor is one the check can’t finish. A “near me” search adds your town and postcode area after the checks. No check is perfect, so the AI is also told to leave personal details out.

To keep Tools Down safe, working and better

Lawful basis: legitimate interests, ours in keeping Tools Down secure, working and used for what it’s for, and in looking after the people who contact us.

• Which parts of the app you use, what you created, changed or deleted, how many messages you’ve sent, and what each AI request cost: never what you wrote or said.
• We may also make statistics from what’s in Tools Down that can’t identify you or anyone else, such as how quickly invoices get paid, and use them to improve Tools Down and to talk about it.
• Technical logs (times, error codes, and account and request IDs), and what you tell us when you contact us.

On this website

Lawful basis: legitimate interests in running a safe, working website.

• Server logs (IP address, browser and time), kept by our hosting provider, and anonymous visit counts, which use no cookies and can’t identify you. You can switch the counting off on our cookies page.

Our Cookies and browser storage page explains what the site keeps in your browser.

5. Who receives it next, and transfers abroad

We share your information with the providers who help us run Tools Down, only as far as they need it. They come in these groups:

• AI providers. They process what you send to write replies, read photos, find earlier chats, look things up on the web, turn speech into text and read replies aloud. They are named in section 4.
• Hosting, storage and email delivery. They run the app and its database, keep your files and send the emails Tools Down sends.
• Sign-in, subscriptions and notifications. Apple and Google for signing in, Apple for subscriptions, and the services that deliver notifications and app updates to your phone.
• Address and company lookups. They suggest addresses as you type, work out your town if you allow location, and find your company in the public register.
• Website hosting and visit counts. They serve this website and count visits without cookies.
• Our own email and domain services. They carry the email you send us and keep our domain working.

We may change or add providers within these groups without updating this page, as long as everything this policy says stays true; the AI providers are the exception, and are named in section 4. Email hello@toolsdown.app for the current list. If a change affects your customers’ details, our data processing terms say how we tell you.

Each of these works under a written agreement and gives your information the same protection as this policy, or an equal one: it keeps it secure and uses it only to do this work for us. The exceptions are Apple and Google, who also have their own relationship with you and look after what they hold under their own privacy policies, the public company register, which works under its own rules, and the search engine, which may keep web search words (section 4).

We don’t sell personal information. Beyond the providers above, we share it only with professional advisers, insurers, courts, regulators or authorities where reasonably necessary or legally required.

If Tools Down is ever sold, your information would pass to the new owner, who would have to look after it as this policy says.

Transfers abroad

Some providers handle information outside the UK, for example in the United States. We choose EU routing wherever a provider offers it. When information leaves the UK, it is protected by UK adequacy regulations, which cover the EU, or by another lawful safeguard, such as the UK International Data Transfer Addendum or the UK Extension to the EU–US Data Privacy Framework. For a copy of the safeguard a provider uses, email hello@toolsdown.app.

6. What deleting does

What you add stays until you delete it or delete your account. Some of it you may have to keep, such as VAT records and a landlord’s gas safety records. We can’t advise on that, so check what applies to you.

Gone at once

• A customer. Their contact details, notes, jobs and diary entries, photos, drafts, the quotes they never accepted, chat messages only about them, and what Tools Down remembers of them. Issued records that name the customer stay (below).
• A chat. Its messages, and any photos from it that weren’t filed on a job or a customer. Anything it made, such as a quote or a job, stays.
• Your account. In Settings, under Account, choose Your details, then Delete account. Your records, chats, photos and files go; backups, logs and emails sent to us follow the timetable in section 7. Deleting your account doesn’t cancel Pro, which is with Apple: cancel it first, in Settings under Plan.

Hidden now, erased when your account closes

Other things you delete, such as a job or a diary entry, disappear at once. We keep a copy so you can undo, until your account closes or you delete the customer they belonged to.

What stays

Issued invoices, issued quotes and gas safety records can’t be deleted one by one: a mistake is voided, cancelled or corrected, and they go when you delete your account. If you delete a customer, their accepted quotes, issued invoices and gas safety records, and any quote an issued invoice came from, stay and still show their details.

7. How long we keep it

This is what we keep, and for how long.

8. Your rights, and complaints

UK data protection law gives you rights over your information. You can see it, correct it, ask us to erase or restrict it, take a copy in a portable format, and object to us using it where we rely on legitimate interests or for direct marketing. Where we rely on your consent, you can withdraw it at any time without affecting what we did before.

In the app you can see and change your details, and take your data away, chats included, with Export everything in Settings.

Email hello@toolsdown.app to use a right. We’ll reply within one month and may need to verify your identity. If a tradesperson who uses Tools Down holds your details, we’ll pass your request to them and help them answer it.

No decision that has a legal or similarly significant effect on you is made by automated means alone.

Complaints

To complain to us about how we handle personal information, email hello@toolsdown.app. We’ll acknowledge it within 30 days, look into it and tell you what we found and what we’ll do. This is separate from asking to use a right above. If your complaint is about a tradesperson’s records, we’ll pass it on to them.

If you’re not happy with our answer, you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint. The ICO usually expects you to have complained to us first.

9. Children

Tools Down is a business service, for people running a business, and not intended for anyone under 18.

10. Changes and contact

We may update this policy. We’ll change the date above, and if a change affects how we use your information, we’ll tell you before it takes effect, in the app or by email if you have an account. Questions: hello@toolsdown.app. Our Terms of Service set out the rest of our agreement with you.