Privacy notice
Last updated: 1 August 2026
This notice explains what GenoVaq does with your personal data, why, and what you can do about it. It is written to be read rather than to be survived, so it is longer than the version it replaces and plainer.
The short version
You can download everything we hold about you right now, without asking us, and see on the same page whether anyone here has ever opened one of your conversations.
Who we are
GenoVaq Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales (company number 16998945), is the data controller for personal data processed through this marketplace. We are registered with the Information Commissioner's Office as a fee-paying data controller, registration ZC145872 — you can check that entry on the ICO's public register. You can reach us at info@genovaq.co.uk.
What we hold, and why
| Data | Why | Lawful basis |
|---|---|---|
| Name, email, password hash | Running your account | Contract |
| Seller identity and KYC documents, trading name, address, vet reference | Verifying that a seller is who they say they are before they can take money | Legal obligation and legitimate interests |
| Orders, payments, payouts | Processing transactions and meeting tax obligations | Contract and legal obligation |
| Messages between buyers and sellers | Letting you arrange a mating, and investigating disputes and welfare concerns — see below | Contract and legitimate interests |
| Animal health records you upload | The health record you asked us to keep. Free, and not shared with anyone unless you generate a share link | Contract |
| Testimonials you write about a breeder | Published on that breeder's page under your name | Consent — you chose to write and publish it |
| Staff access logs | Showing that our own people only looked at what they were entitled to look at | Legal obligation and legitimate interests |
Where we rely on legitimate interests, our interests are: operating a marketplace people can trust, resolving disputes fairly, protecting animal welfare, preventing fraud and misrepresentation, and being able to answer to a regulator. We have assessed those interests against your rights and you can ask us for that assessment.
Private messages — when we can read them
This is the part most worth reading, so we have set it out properly rather than burying it.
By default, nobody at GenoVaq reads your messages. There is no browse-all view of conversations in our admin tools, no keyword scanning, and no automated flagging. We removed the ability to browse messages because holding a searchable index of every private conversation is not limited to what we actually need.
Our staff can open a conversation in two situations, and only two:
- A dispute is opened on an order. We can then read the messages between the two people involved, about that listing, within a date window running from 30 days before the order to the day the dispute closes. Not your other conversations, and not an unlimited date range.
- A welfare concern is raised about an animal. Same scope, same limits.
Whenever that happens:
- The member of staff must write down why, before anything is shown to them. That reason is kept.
- The access is logged — who, when, which case, how many messages, and the written reason. The log is visible to everyone else with admin rights, and it cannot be edited or deleted from within our systems.
- You can see your own log entries here — the same rows our admins see, without asking us and without waiting.
Where we have reason to believe an offence has been committed — against an animal, or against you — we may pass the relevant part of a conversation to the police, a local authority, or another body with statutory enforcement powers. We pass on the part that is relevant, not your history. Where a live criminal investigation would be prejudiced by telling you, the law allows us to delay telling you, and we record why each time we rely on that.
Our lawful basis for all of this is legitimate interests. We have deliberately not asked you to consent to it, because consent you cannot refuse without losing access to the service is not real consent, and because a consent that the subject of a complaint could simply withdraw would make the whole thing useless. Being honest about the basis seemed better than dressing it up.
You have the right to object to this processing. Write to info@genovaq.co.uk. We have to stop unless we can show compelling grounds that override your rights, and if we think we can, we will tell you what they are rather than simply asserting them.
How long we keep things
| What | How long | Why that long |
|---|---|---|
| Messages on a conversation that never led to a transaction | 24 months | No contract was formed, so there is no claim for us to defend |
| Messages on a conversation that led to a transaction | 6 years from the transaction | The limitation period for a contract claim (s.5 Limitation Act 1980) |
| Anything pulled into a dispute or welfare case | 6 years from the case closing | A claim can arise after the case ends |
| Order and payment records | 6 years | Tax and accounting requirements |
| KYC documents | As required by anti-money-laundering rules, then deleted | Legal obligation |
| Staff access logs | 7 years | Longer than the messages, because the log is the evidence that access was justified |
| Your animal health records | Until you delete them or close your account | They are yours |
When we delete something, we delete it from backups on their normal expiry cycle too. We do not keep data indefinitely on the basis that it might one day be useful.
Who else sees your data
- Stripe — payments and payouts. Card details go to Stripe, not to us; we never see or store a card number.
- Vercel and our database host — the infrastructure the site runs on.
- The other party to a transaction — a seller sees the name and delivery details of a buyer who orders from them, and vice versa.
- Police, local authorities and other statutory enforcement bodies — only as described above, or where we are legally required to.
We do not sell personal data, we do not share it with advertisers, and we do not use it to train anyone's models.
Your rights
Getting a copy is self-serve — one button, no request, no waiting. It includes your account, seller profile, animals and their health documents, listings, orders, disputes, testimonials, vet reviews, the full text of every message you have sent or received, and any staff access to your conversations.
For the rest, email us and we will answer within one month. You can ask us to:
- correct anything that is wrong;
- delete it, where we do not have a reason to keep it;
- restrict what we do with it while a dispute about it is resolved;
- stop processing it where we rely on legitimate interests — the right to object.
Write to info@genovaq.co.uk.
Two things the download deliberately leaves out, because a script should not be making the judgement: internal staff assessment notes, and the name of any staff member who opened one of your conversations. Ask, and a person will weigh the other individual's rights properly and tell you what is being withheld and why rather than leaving a silent gap.
One honest caveat about messages. A conversation contains two people's personal data. We include the full text in your download because you can already read every one of those threads in your own inbox — withholding them there would protect nobody. If you ever ask for something you cannot already see, we have to weigh the other person's rights, and we will tell you what we have withheld rather than pretending the gap is not there.
If you are not satisfied with how we have handled something, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk, or on 0303 123 1113. You do not have to come to us first, though we would rather you did.
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Changes
If we start using your data for something new, we will update this notice and tell you directly rather than quietly editing the page.