1. Who we are
The “data controller” for this website and the MacHive service is Gekko I.T Ltd, trading as MacHive, registered in England and Wales, company no. 07923334, registered office at Concorde House, Margaret Street, Brighton, BN2 1TS, VAT no. GB 161 6932 1. Contact us about privacy via the contact form or in writing at the address above.
We don’t use cookies for tracking, profiling or advertising, and we don’t run third-party analytics.
2. What we collect
- Contact form submissions — your name, email address and the message you send us.
- Waitlist signups — your email address (that’s all).
- Billing and account data — when you rent a machine: your name, company (if any), address, VAT number, invoice details, and configuration choices. Payment card details are handled by our payment provider — they never touch our servers or our records.
- Technical logs — IP address, browser type, pages viewed and request timestamps, kept by our web server for security and anti-abuse purposes.
- Bot protection — our forms use a local proof-of-work check (ALTCHA). It runs in your browser, sends no data to any third party, and we keep only a short-lived record of used challenges to stop replays.
3. Why we process it (lawful bases)
- To perform the contract (UK GDPR art. 6(1)(b)) — provisioning, billing, renewals, support and delivering the machines you’ve ordered.
- Legitimate interests (art. 6(1)(f)) — keeping the service secure (logs, rate-limiting, bot protection), preventing fraud and abuse, and answering enquiries. Your interests and rights balance against these; if you object, we’ll tell you why we still need the data.
- Legal obligation (art. 6(1)(c)) — keeping tax and accounting records as required by HMRC and company law.
- We do not use your data for marketing, profiling or automated decision-making, and we don’t sell or share it with advertisers. Waitlist emails are only about the waitlist.
4. Who we share it with (processors)
We share personal data only with providers we use to run the service, each under a UK GDPR-compliant data processing agreement:
- Our datacentre providers — for physical hosting, access control and hardware logistics (they see equipment and rack records, not your files).
- Our payment provider — to take payments securely (card data stays with them under PCI-DSS).
- Our email/SMTP provider — to deliver transactional email (invoices, order updates, replies to your form).
We may also be required to disclose data to law enforcement or regulators where the law says so. We do not transfer personal data outside the UK for processing; any processor we add in future that works outside the UK will do so only with appropriate safeguards in place.
5. How long we keep it
- Enquiries and waitlist data — until the enquiry is resolved or 12 months, whichever is sooner (waitlist emails until the product ships or you ask us to remove you).
- Customer and billing records — for the life of the contract plus 6 years, as required for tax and company law.
- Server logs — typically 30–90 days, then deleted or anonymised.
- Backup data you store with us (Time Machine add-on) — for as long as you subscribe, deleted shortly after cancellation.
6. Your rights
Under UK GDPR you have the right to:
- ask what personal data we hold about you (subject access request);
- ask us to correct inaccurate data;
- ask us to delete your data, subject to our legal retention duties (e.g. tax records);
- restrict or object to certain processing;
- receive your data in a structured, machine-readable format where processing is by contract or with consent;
- withdraw consent at any time where we rely on it.
To exercise any right, use the contact form — we’ll respond within one month, free of charge, and we’ll never penalise you for asking.
7. Complaints
If you’re unhappy with how we’ve handled your data, talk to us first — we’d much rather sort it with you. You also have the right to complain to the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO): ico.org.uk, or 0303 123 1113.
8. Changes to this notice
If we change how we handle personal data in a way that matters to you, we’ll update this notice (and the date above) and, where appropriate, tell you by email before the change takes effect.