Legal
Privacy statement
Last updated: 27 August 2026
This statement sets out what data MapAlert processes, why, and what rights you have. It is written in plain language, because a privacy statement nobody reads protects nobody.
1. Who we are
MapAlert identifies newly opened businesses within a defined area and delivers them weekly to business subscribers. MapAlert is the data controller for the processing described here. For any question or request about your data, write to info@mapalert.me. You will get a considered answer from a person.
2. What we process about visitors to this site
Almost nothing. You can read this entire site without leaving anything behind. We use no analytics, no advertising pixels and no tracking cookies. One cookie is set, sm_locale, and only if you click the language switch yourself; it remembers whether you want Dutch or English and holds nothing else. Our hosting provider keeps standard technical server logs, as any web server does, for security and fault-finding.
3. If you contact us
If you use the contact form we process your name, your email address, your message and your language preference. That is stored in our database and forwarded to us by email so we can reply. Your IP address is used briefly to limit abuse of the form and is not stored. Lawful basis: your request to be contacted, and our legitimate interest in being able to respond.
4. If you are a customer
For a subscription we process what is needed to provide and invoice the service: company name, contact person, email address and billing details. Payment details are handled by our payment provider; full card details never reach our systems and are not stored by us. Lawful basis: performance of the contract and, for tax retention, a legal obligation.
5. Access to the client portal
The portal works from a signed personal link rather than an account. There is no registration, no password and no profile. That also means we do not track who views which page or when. Treat the link as confidential: anyone holding it can see your subscription’s data.
6. Information about businesses
Our service consists of information about businesses: trading name, premises address, category and, where publicly available, telephone number and website. It comes from public sources that businesses themselves publish about their premises. We do not collect data about private individuals, we do not collect named contacts, and we take nothing from private or closed environments. For sole traders, business information can also be personal data; the basis for that is our legitimate interest in providing business information, weighed against the limited sensitivity of premises details that are already public.
7. Is your business in our data?
Then you can object and ask to be removed, and that is not a theoretical option: we have a mechanism for it. Email info@mapalert.me from an address that can be linked to the business and we will add your premises to our exclusion list. You will then disappear from future reports and from the portal. We will not ask you for a reason.
8. Who we share data with
We do not sell personal data and we do not share it for third-party marketing. We work with a small number of suppliers who process on our behalf: a hosting provider for the website, a database provider with storage inside the European Union (Ireland), an email provider for our messages, and a payment provider for subscriptions. Beyond that we disclose data only where the law requires it.
9. Transfers outside the EEA
Our database sits inside the European Union. Where a supplier processes data outside the European Economic Area, that transfer is made under the European Commission’s standard contractual clauses or another valid transfer mechanism.
10. How long we keep data
We keep contact messages for as long as we need them to deal with your question and to find our correspondence again. Customer and invoicing records are kept for the life of the agreement and then seven years, because Dutch tax law requires it. Information about businesses is kept for as long as it forms part of the service, or until you ask us to remove it.
11. Security
Traffic to this site and to the portal is encrypted. Access to our systems is limited to those who need it, and portal links are signed so they cannot be guessed or altered. No one can guarantee complete security, which is why we deliberately keep the amount of data we hold small.
12. Your rights
You have the right to access your data, to have it corrected or erased, to restrict processing, to data portability, and to object to processing based on legitimate interest. Send a request to info@mapalert.me and we will respond within one month. If you disagree with how we handle your data you may complain to the Dutch Data Protection Authority (Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens). We would rather hear it from you first.
13. Changes
When our practices change we will update this statement and the date at the top. The current version is always on this page.
14. Contact
Questions, requests or objections: info@mapalert.me.