Privacy on Your Voice Matters
This board is anonymous by design. Here is, in plain words, what happens to a note you share and what we do to keep you safe. If anything isn’t clear, email info@empoweredinsights.co.uk.
Who we are
Your Voice Matters is run by Empowered Insights CIC, a survivor-led Community Interest Company that supports people affected by domestic abuse. We are responsible for the notes shared here (the “controller”). Our main website’s privacy notice covers everything else we do.
What we collect
When you add a note we keep:
- the words of your note (up to 300 characters);
- the colour you chose;
- the time it was added, to the minute (not the second);
- where it is in our checks (waiting, shown or not shown), when that was decided, which member of our team decided, and, if it isn’t shown, a short reason from a fixed list;
- a private flag for our team if the words suggest someone may be in danger, so the note can be checked with care. The flag is never shown on the board.
Our records also note that a note was added and how long it was, never its words. We keep those records for 24 months.
What we don’t collect
- We don’t ask for your name, email address or anything else about you.
- We don’t keep your IP address (your device’s internet address) or details of your browser or device with your note.
- This board uses no cookies, no tracking and no visitor statistics, and stores nothing on your device.
- Our server’s everyday logs for this board don’t record IP addresses. Only a rare serious server error can note the address of the visit that caused it; those error logs are seen by the person who looks after the server and are cleared out over time.
What passes through briefly
- Cloudflare. Our websites reach you through Cloudflare (Cloudflare, Inc.), a company that carries the traffic and helps protect it from attacks. Like any website’s carrier, it sees your device’s IP address while it passes your visit on.
- Our spam check. To stop people or programs flooding the board, we count how many notes come from the same internet connection. The count is kept under a scrambled code made from your IP address, never the address itself. It only counts posts from the last hour. Older times stop counting and are removed the next time that count is updated, and a regular tidy-up deletes counts nobody has used for a while, so a count can stay on our server for some days before it goes.
Why and our lawful basis
We run this board so people in Bedfordshire can share their experience of the police, magistrates and family courts around domestic and post-separation abuse, and so we can put together an anonymous report of what needs to change. We never use notes for marketing and we never sell them.
Sharing is your choice: you decide what to write and whether to press “Add to the board”. A note about abuse can touch on very personal things, such as health or relationships, which the law treats as special category information. We rely on your consent, and for that special category information your explicit consent, which you give by choosing to post your note. You can change your mind: see asking for a note to be taken down.
Who sees your note
- Every note is checked by our founder, signed in with their own account, before anything is shown. A note that names a person or gives details of someone’s case isn’t shown. We never change your words: a note is either shown as you wrote it or not shown.
- Once approved, your note is public on the board: its words, its colour and the date it was approved. Nothing else about it is shown.
- When a new note arrives we get an email saying only that something is waiting, with nothing from the note in it.
- The person who looks after our server can reach its database, only to keep it working.
How long we keep it
- Waiting to be checked: kept until we have decided.
- Not shown, or taken down: deleted 30 days after that decision.
- Shown on the board: kept for as long as it is shown, until it is taken down or the project ends. When the project ends we will delete the notes, or keep only anonymous counts.
- Our server keeps backup copies of its database for 30 days, so a deleted note can stay in those copies until they expire.
Asking for a note to be taken down
Because we don’t know who wrote any note, we can’t look one up by person. If you’d like a note taken down (or not shown, if it is still waiting), email info@empoweredinsights.co.uk and tell us roughly when you added it and what it said. You don’t need to tell us who you are. Once it is taken down it is deleted 30 days later.
Your rights and the ICO
You have the right to ask what information we hold, to ask us to correct it, to ask us to delete it, and to withdraw your consent. As we can’t link notes to people, the way to do this here is the take-down request above. We’ll reply within one month.
If you’re ever unhappy with how we’ve handled your information, you can contact the Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk.
Changes
We may update this notice from time to time and we’ll always show the latest version here. Last reviewed: October 2026.