Legal
Privacy Policy
Who we are. Stylist Checked Ltd ("Stylist Checked", "we", "us", "our") is a company registered in England and Wales, company number 16072163, registered office 20 Wenlock Road, London, England, N1 7GU. We are the data controller for the personal information described in this policy.
What this covers. This policy explains how we handle personal information in the Stylist Checked iOS app, on stylistchecked.co.uk and its subdomains, and in related services (together, the "Services").
Contact. privacy@stylistchecked.co.uk
The short version
- We collect your email address or phone number so you can create and recover an account.
- We collect the preferences and content you add: beauty preferences, saved professionals, saved looks, plans, notes.
- When you share a link into the app, we process that link to identify the professional or save the look.
- We show profiles of beauty professionals built from publicly available business information on social media. If that is you, section 4 explains how to claim, correct or remove your profile.
- Third-party product analytics is off unless you turn it on. We do keep a basic record of activity inside our own systems to make the app work and to fix what is broken. Section 2G explains the difference.
- We do not sell your personal information and we do not use it for third-party advertising.
- You can delete your account in the app (Settings, then Delete account).
1. Who this policy is about
This policy covers two different groups of people, and your rights differ depending on which you are.
App users. People who create an account and use the app. Most of this policy is about you.
Beauty professionals in our directory. People whose public business profiles appear in Stylist Checked, whether or not they have ever used the app. Section 4 is written for you and you have the full set of rights described in section 9.
2. Information we collect from app users
A. Account information
Your email address or phone number, which is required to sign up, sign in and recover your account. One-time passcodes are sent by our authentication provider. You may optionally add a display name and an avatar.
B. Your beauty preferences
Information you give us in the onboarding quiz and preference screens, which may include hair type and texture, hair length, skin type and skin concerns, lash and nail preferences, the service categories you care about, the areas you want to search, and free-text notes you write about your own preferences.
C. Content you create
Saved professionals, saved looks and boards, plans and appointments you record, past visits, private notes, private ratings, and photographs you add to a plan or a past visit.
D. Links and images you share into the app
Stylist Checked works mainly through the iOS share sheet. When you share something into the app we receive and process it:
- A link from TikTok or Instagram. We process the link to identify the professional it points to, and to build or update their profile. This is the core function of the app.
- A link from Pinterest. Saved to your private Inspo only.
- A screenshot or image. Saved to your private Inspo only. We do not attempt to identify anyone from an image.
- Anything else. We tell you plainly that we cannot use it.
Links and images you share are stored in your account. We use an automated classification service to work out which beauty category an image or profile belongs to.
E. Photos and camera
Only if you choose to use a feature that needs them, and only with your iOS permission. We do not scan your photo library.
F. Location
Only with your iOS permission, and only while you are using the app, to centre the map and sort results by distance.
G. Activity records and analytics
There are two separate things here and we want to be clear about which is which.
- Our own service records. We keep a record of certain actions inside our own database so the app can function and so we can see what is broken. This includes searches you run (including the words you typed and how many results came back), profiles you open, and saves and shares you make. We use this to fix search when it returns nothing, to spot failures in the share flow, and to understand which parts of the catalogue are thin. This is not optional, because without it we cannot operate or debug the Services. We rely on our legitimate interests, and we keep it for no longer than section 8 states.
- Third-party product analytics. Aggregated usage measurement through PostHog. This is off by default and only runs if you consent. You can turn it off at any time in Settings.
H. Device and diagnostics
Device type, operating system version, app version and crash reports. Used to keep the app working, never for advertising.
I. Purchases
If you subscribe, our subscription management provider tells us your subscription status. Apple processes the payment. We never see your card details.
3. Information about other people that you give us
You can add a beauty professional to your own private list by typing in their details yourself, for example a name, a phone number, a social media handle or an address. This exists for the professional who has no online presence at all.
Anything you add this way is private to your account. It is never published in our directory, never shown to other users, never enriched from other sources, and never used as a signal that this person should be added to our catalogue.
You are responsible for what you enter. Please only add details you are entitled to hold, and please do not add information that person would not expect you to keep. If someone contacts us about details held privately in another user's account, we will explain the position and, where the law requires it, act on their request.
4. Beauty professionals in our directory
Stylist Checked includes a directory of beauty professionals in the UK. We build these profiles from publicly available business information, principally public professional accounts on TikTok and Instagram. A profile may include a professional or trading name, a public handle, work photographs, services offered, indicative prices, and the general area worked in.
We do this on the basis of our legitimate interests: helping people find beauty professionals, particularly for textured hair, where discovery is genuinely difficult. We consider this also serves professionals, whose public accounts exist to be found.
What we do not do. We do not publish home addresses. We do not publish personal, non-business content. We do not publish contact details that were not already public. We do not publish reviews or star ratings of any professional, and we never will.
If you are featured and you do not want to be:
- Removal. Email privacy@stylistchecked.co.uk and we will remove your profile. You do not need to give a reason and we will not ask you to justify it.
- Correction. Tell us what is wrong and we will fix it.
- Claim. You can claim your profile and manage it yourself.
We will act on removal requests promptly and in any case within one month.
Saved by others. Where enough people have saved a professional, we may show an anonymous count on that profile. It is a plain number. It shows no names, it is never a rating, and it can never be used to say anything negative about anyone. Below a small threshold we show nothing at all.
5. How we use information
- To create and secure your account
- To operate the core features: sharing in, saving, boards, plans, the map and search
- To personalise what you see, based on the preferences you gave us
- To manage subscriptions and unlock paid features
- To improve how we find, categorise and rank beauty professionals. Aggregated activity, including anonymous save counts and corrections users make to a category, helps us make discovery and categorisation more accurate.
- To keep the Services secure and to prevent fraud and abuse
- To meet our legal obligations
We do not sell your personal information. We do not share it for third-party advertising. We do not use your content to train third-party AI models.
6. Legal bases under UK GDPR
| What we do | Our legal basis |
|---|---|
| Account, core features, subscriptions | Performance of a contract with you |
| Beauty preferences that may reveal ethnicity or relate to health | Explicit consent, withdrawable in Settings |
| Third-party product analytics (PostHog) | Consent, off by default |
| Our own service records, security, fraud prevention, improving discovery | Legitimate interests |
| The directory of beauty professionals | Legitimate interests, with an absolute right to object under section 4 |
| Meeting legal obligations | Legal obligation |
7. Who we share information with
We share personal information only with providers who process it for us under contract:
| Provider | What for |
|---|---|
| Clerk | Authentication and one-time passcodes |
| Convex | Our database and backend |
| PostHog | Product analytics, only with your consent |
| RevenueCat | Subscription status management |
| Apple | App distribution and payment processing |
| Vercel | Website and supporting page hosting |
| Airtable | Managing the directory of beauty professionals |
| Anthropic | Automated classification of beauty categories |
| Apify | Collecting public business information for the directory |
We may also disclose information where the law requires it, or as part of a business sale or transfer, in which case we would tell you first. We may publish aggregated statistics that cannot identify anyone.
8. How long we keep things
| What | How long |
|---|---|
| Your account and your content | While your account exists. Deleted when you delete your account. |
| Our own service records (section 2G) | 12 months, then deleted or anonymised |
| Third-party analytics events | 12 months, then deleted or anonymised |
| Emails to us | 24 months |
| Directory profiles | While the profile is live. Removed on request under section 4. |
| Records we must keep by law, for example transaction records | As long as the law requires |
9. Your rights
Under UK data protection law you can ask us to give you a copy of your data, correct it, delete it, restrict how we use it, or send it elsewhere. You can object to processing we do on the basis of legitimate interests. You can withdraw consent at any time.
- To delete your account: Settings, then Delete account, inside the app. This removes your account and your content from our active systems. There is also a guide at links.stylistchecked.co.uk/delete-account.
- For anything else: email privacy@stylistchecked.co.uk. We respond within one month.
If you are unhappy with how we have handled your information you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire SK9 5AF, ico.org.uk. We would rather you came to us first so we can put it right.
10. International transfers
Our database is hosted in the EU. Some providers process data in the United States. Where personal information leaves the UK we rely on UK adequacy regulations, the UK Extension to the EU to US Data Privacy Framework, or the UK International Data Transfer Agreement and Standard Contractual Clauses, as applicable.
11. Children
Stylist Checked is not for anyone under 16. We do not knowingly collect information from children under that age. If we discover we have, we will delete it.
12. Security
We use encryption in transit, access controls, and hosted infrastructure from established providers. We never store your card details. No service can promise perfect security, so please use a secure device and keep your sign-in codes to yourself.
13. Changes to this policy
We will post changes on this page and update the effective date. Where a change is significant we will tell you in the app before it takes effect.
14. Contact us
Stylist Checked Ltd
20 Wenlock Road, London, England, N1 7GU
Privacy and data rights: privacy@stylistchecked.co.uk
Everything else: support@stylistchecked.co.uk