Walters Sentinel
Privacy Policy
Last updated: 8 October 2026
What changed on 8 October 2026 (later the same day): two rights this policy has always described are now things you can do yourself, without asking us and without waiting: downloading everything we hold about you, and closing your account. Both are in Settings, under "Your data". An owner or admin of an organization can also export everything in it from the organization's own settings. We have also said plainly, in section 8, what is kept after an account is closed and why.
What changed on 8 October 2026: we corrected the supplier list in section 4 - outbound email now goes through Amazon SES in London rather than Resend, which is kept as a standby, and our own mailboxes are now held by Microsoft. Nothing about what we collect changed. We also published two new pages: a Data Processing Agreement, which was already part of our Terms and is now a document you can read and file on its own, and a sub-processor page, which commits us to telling you 30 days before that list changes.
What changed on 17 September 2026: we added what we hold for certificates, Trust Centres and staff security training (sections 2A and 6), and for "Sign in with Walters Sentinel": the websites you allow to sign you in, what they receive, and the apps developers register (sections 2, 2B and 6).
1. Who we are, and who is responsible
Walters Sentinel is a set of business services - monitoring, status pages, email domain protection, electronic signatures, a helpdesk, compliance, HR and leave, asset tracking, bookings and forms - operated by Lewis Walters, a sole trader trading as Walters Sentinel, based in the United Kingdom.
We are the data controller for the personal data about our own customers described in section 2: your account, your sign-ins, your billing and your messages to us.
When you use a service to hold personal data about other people - your customers, the people you send documents to, your staff - you are the controller of that data and we act as your processor, under the terms in section 6B of our Terms of Service. If you are one of those people, contact the organization that collected your details: they decide how it is used.
You can reach us at contact@walterssentinel.com. We answer privacy requests at the same address.
2. What we collect about our customers
| What | Why we have it |
|---|---|
| Your email address and password | To create your account and sign you in. Passwords are stored as a one-way hash, never as text, so we cannot read yours. |
| Your name, company name, VAT number and profile picture | To set up your account. Your name and picture are shown to your own teammates. |
| Sign-in records | For each browser you sign in on: a random identifier for that browser (stored as a one-way hash), which accounts are signed in, whether you chose to stay signed in, when it was last used, and the IP address and browser type used to sign in. Used to keep you signed in across our services and to end sign-ins when you sign out or change your password. |
| Organization names, logos and members | To run your organizations. Names and logos appear in your dashboards, in emails, and on public pages you choose to publish. |
| How you configure each service | This is the service: the addresses you monitor, domains you check, form questions, booking availability, policy text and similar settings. |
| Credentials you give us for your own systems | If you monitor a page behind a login, you may give us a username and password, a bearer token, or an API key. They are encrypted before storage using AES-256-GCM, are never returned to your browser once saved, and are never shown to us in readable form in any interface. |
| Alert and notification email addresses | So we can email the people you nominate. If you add somebody else's address, you are responsible for having a basis to do so. |
| Messages you send us | Through the contact form on our website, or by emailing us. This includes your name, email address, any company name you give, and whatever you write. |
| Billing records | Which plans and services you bought, for which organization, when, how much, and Stripe's reference for it. We never see or store your card details - those go directly to Stripe. |
| Technical records | Your IP address and browser type when you use the service, kept in server logs, and used to rate-limit abuse. |
| Websites you sign in to with Walters Sentinel | Which websites you allowed to sign you in, what you allowed each to see, and when you last used it, so you can see and remove them from your account. Each website gets a random identifier for you that is different from the one given to websites run by anyone else. |
| Apps you register as a developer | The app's name, website, privacy policy link and redirect addresses, its client ID, a one-way hash of its client secret (we cannot read the secret), and how many times people have signed in with it. |
2B. Signing in to other websites
When you use "Sign in with Walters Sentinel" on another website, we first show you which website is asking and what it will receive. If you agree, we give that website only what you agreed to: your name, your email address, or both, plus the random identifier described above. We do not share your password, your organizations, anything in your services, or your activity. Once a website has your details, it holds them as its own controller under its own privacy policy. Removing its access in your account stops it receiving your details again, but does not delete what it already has: ask that website to do that.
2A. Data you put into the services
We hold this on your behalf, as your processor. It belongs to your organization, and only its members can see it, except where you publish it on a public page.
| Service | Personal data it may hold |
|---|---|
| Monitoring and Status Pages | Check results for the addresses you monitor, and anything you write in incident updates. |
| Mail Shield | The IP addresses and host names of mail servers sending as your domain, from DMARC reports you upload. |
| Sign | The documents you upload; each signer's name and email; their signature image, the name they typed, the time they opened and signed, and the IP address and browser they used; and a reason if they declined. |
| Desk | Names, email addresses and messages from people who raise tickets, and your team's replies and notes. |
| Bookings | Customers' names, email addresses, phone numbers, notes and appointment times. |
| Forms | Whatever the questions you write ask for, plus a one-way hash of the responder's IP address to help spot abuse. |
| People | Staff names, contact details, job titles, start dates, emergency contacts, notes, holiday allowances and leave records. Leave records can include sickness absence, which is health data and needs particular care from the organization that records it. |
| Assets | The names of people equipment is assigned to. |
| Comply | The names of policy owners and approvers, evidence files you upload, and entries in your processing and breach registers. For security training: each learner's name and email address, which lessons they finished, their scores, and when their certificate was issued and expires. |
| Certificates and Trust Centres | The organization name, the domain or website checked, the results of the checks, the name of the person who confirmed a self-assessment and, for a training certificate, the learner's name. Certificate pages, badges and published Trust Centres are public, including those names. |
The Service sends some emails on your organization's behalf: booking confirmations and reminders, requests to sign, and replies to tickets.
3. Our lawful basis
| Purpose | Lawful basis |
|---|---|
| Running your account, keeping you signed in, and providing the services you use | Performance of a contract |
| Sending alerts, sign-in codes, reminders and service notices | Performance of a contract |
| Taking payment and keeping billing records | Performance of a contract, and legal obligation for tax records |
| Replying to your messages | Legitimate interests - answering somebody who contacted us |
| Keeping the service secure, rate-limiting abuse, investigating misuse | Legitimate interests - protecting the service and its users |
| Keeping records we are required to keep | Legal obligation |
For data you put into the services (section 2A), your organization decides the lawful basis. We process it only to provide the service to you.
We do not sell data, we do not use it for advertising, and we do not profile anyone.
4. Who else handles data
We use a small number of suppliers to run the service. Each is bound to process data only on our instructions.
| Supplier | What they handle | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Oracle Cloud Infrastructure | Hosting for the application and its server logs. | UK (London) |
| Turso | Our database. All account, organization and service data. | Ireland (EU) |
| Stripe | Payments. They receive your card details directly; we receive only the result. | EU / US |
| Amazon Web Services (Amazon SES) | Sending our outbound email, including alerts, sign-in codes, signing requests and booking emails. | UK (London) |
| Resend | Sends the same email only while Amazon SES is failing, so an outage at one supplier does not stop an alert reaching you. | EU / US |
| TextMagic | Sending text messages: a code to confirm a phone number you add, and the outage alerts you ask for. They receive the phone number and the message. | UK / EU |
| Microsoft | Our own mailboxes, which receive messages you send to us. | UK / EU |
| Titan Mail (Hostinger) | A standby mailbox host for the same addresses. | EU |
| 123-reg | Hosting for our marketing website. | UK |
This table is kept in full, with what each supplier handles and where, on our sub-processor page - including how we tell you 30 days before the list changes, and your right to object. Our Data Processing Agreement sets out the commitments we make about all of it.
To perform checks, we also send the domain names and mail server addresses you ask us to check to public DNS resolvers and email blocklist operators. We fetch UK bank holiday dates from GOV.UK; nothing about you is sent.
We will also disclose data if we are legally required to, or where it is necessary to establish or defend a legal claim.
5. Data leaving the UK
Some of the suppliers above process data outside the UK. Where that happens, the transfer is covered by the UK International Data Transfer Addendum, Standard Contractual Clauses, or an adequacy decision, depending on the supplier and the country.
6. How long we keep things
| What | How long |
|---|---|
| Your account | Until you delete it, or we terminate it under the Terms |
| Sign-in records for a browser | Until you choose "Forget this account" on that browser, or the account is deleted. A signed-out record stays listed so signing back in is quick. |
| Anything in a service - monitors and their history, status pages, documents and signatures, tickets, bookings, form responses, staff and leave records, assets, policies, evidence and registers | Until you delete it, or delete the organization it belongs to. Deleting either destroys it immediately and permanently. A paid plan ending does not delete anything. |
| Stored credentials for your monitored systems | Deleted with the monitor they belong to |
| Certificates | Until the organization is deleted. After a certificate expires or is withdrawn its public page stays, saying so, so that anyone who checks an old copy is not misled. |
| Training records | Until the learner is removed from training, or the organization is deleted |
| Sign in with Walters Sentinel | Sign-in codes: 10 minutes. Access tokens: 1 hour. Websites you allowed: until you remove them, the developer deletes the app, or your account is deleted. Registered apps: until the developer deletes them or their account is deleted. |
| Messages sent to contact@walterssentinel.com | Deleted after 15 days |
| Mail sent to no-reply@walterssentinel.com | Deleted automatically. That inbox is not monitored. |
| Billing records | Six years, as UK tax law requires. If you close your account before then, what is kept is the amount, the date and the payment reference, with your name and address removed. |
| Server logs | Up to 30 days |
7. How we protect it
- Everything travels over HTTPS.
- Passwords are stored as a one-way hash. Nobody at Walters Sentinel can read your password.
- Sign-in cookies cannot be read by scripts on the page, and browser identifiers are stored only as one-way hashes.
- Credentials you give us for your own systems are encrypted at rest with AES-256-GCM, and are never sent back to a browser once saved.
- Every organization's data is separated: members of one organization cannot reach another's.
- Changing your password, or an account being locked, ends every sign-in on every device at once.
- Access to production data is limited to those who need it to run the service.
No system is perfectly secure. If a breach affects your rights, we will tell you and the Information Commissioner's Office within the timescales the law requires. If it affects data we hold for your organization, we will tell your organization without undue delay.
8. Your rights
Under UK GDPR you have the right to:
- Access the personal data we hold about you, and get a copy. You do not have to ask: Settings → Your data → Download gives you the whole thing as a file, immediately.
- Rectification - have inaccurate data corrected. Most of it you can correct yourself in Settings.
- Erasure - ask us to delete your data. You can close your own account at Settings → Your data, and delete an organization from its own settings. Both are immediate and permanent, we keep no copy for you, and you are shown exactly what would go before anything does. Closing an account cancels any subscription on it, so nothing is charged afterwards.
- Restriction - ask us to stop processing while a dispute is resolved.
- Portability - receive your data in a structured, machine-readable format. That is what the download gives you: JSON, with one section per place we keep something. An owner or admin of an organization can export everything in it the same way, from the organization's own settings.
- Object to processing we carry out on the basis of legitimate interests.
- Withdraw consent at any time, where we relied on consent.
If your data was collected by one of our customers - through a form, a booking, a ticket, a signing request or a staff record - please ask that organization first. We will help them respond.
For anything the buttons do not cover, email contact@walterssentinel.com and we will respond within one month. There is no charge for any of it.
One thing we do not delete when you close your account: the record of what was sold. UK tax law requires six years of it, and the right to erasure does not override a legal duty to keep records. So the amount, the date, the currency and our payment provider's reference are kept, and your name, your email address and the link to you are removed from them. What is left is a sale, not a person. It is deleted automatically six years after the payment.
If you think we have got something wrong, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk, or call 0303 123 1113. We would rather you told us first so we can put it right.
9. Cookies and local storage
We only use cookies that are needed to sign you in:
| Cookie | What it does | How long |
|---|---|---|
| ws_device | Identifies this browser, so the accounts signed in on it can be found | Up to 400 days |
| ws_live | Ends sign-ins without "stay signed in" when the browser closes | Until the browser closes |
| ws_active | Remembers which signed-in account you are using | Up to 400 days |
| netsentinel_pending | Holds a sign-in while you enter your emailed code | 15 minutes |
Browser local storage remembers your theme and the organization you last used. There is no advertising, no analytics tracking you across sites, and no third-party cookies - which is why you are not being asked to accept anything. Public pages such as forms, booking pages and status pages set no cookies at all.
10. Children
Walters Sentinel is a business tool for adults. We do not knowingly collect data from anyone under 16, and accounts are not intended for them.
11. Changes to this policy
If we change how we handle data we will update this page and the date at the top. Where a change materially affects you, we will email you about it rather than relying on you noticing.