Privacy - VanCAD

This policy explains what personal data VanCAD collects, why, how long we keep it, who processes it on our behalf, and the rights you have. It covers both this website (vancad.com) and the design app (app.vancad.com). It is written in plain language on purpose.

If you only want the short version: we store the account and designs you create, we collect anonymous usage measurements to improve the product, we never sell your data or collect the content of your designs beyond storing them for you, and you can ask us to delete everything at any time by emailing hello@vancad.com.

Who we are

VanCAD is a browser-based 3D tool for planning camper van conversions. VanCAD is a trading name of HJT Engineering Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales (company no. 16640462), whose registered office is 61 Bridge Street, Kington, HR5 3DJ, United Kingdom. For the purposes of UK data protection law (the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018), HJT Engineering Ltd is the data controller for the personal data described here. The best way to reach us about privacy is hello@vancad.com.

What we collect and why

If you only browse this website, we collect no personal data that identifies you - see Cookies and analytics below.

If you use the design app, we may process:

Your account - the email address you sign up with, and a securely hashed password (we never see or store your password in readable form). This is needed to create your account, sign you in, and send you account emails (confirmation and password reset).
If you sign in with Google - we receive your email address from Google so we can create or recognise your account, and no password is involved. Google decides what it tells us, and your use of its sign-in is covered by Google’s own privacy policy. We tell Google nothing about you, and none of this applies if you sign in with a password.
Your designs - if you subscribe to VanCAD Pro and save a design, the design document is stored in your account so you can load it again and sync it across devices. A design is data you author (van model, components, layout); we store it to provide the service and do not use its contents for anything else.
A shared design - if you choose to share a design behind a link, we store the fact that it is shared, a share code that is not your design’s name, how many times the link has been opened, and, if you chose to freeze it, a copy of the design as it was at that moment. Sharing is what makes a design visible to other people, and nothing is shared unless you share it. Anyone holding the link can then see the design and everything in it, including any names you gave the things in it - so treat an object name the way you would treat anything you post publicly. What we do not show them is the name you gave the design, your name, or your email address. Stopping the share deletes all of this, and the link stops working for everyone at once.
A held design - when a free session’s timer runs out, the design you were working on is held in your account so you can pick it up again on any device you sign in on, rather than losing it. We keep one held design per account, and only the most recent one. It is treated exactly like a saved design above: stored to provide the service, contents never used for anything else, and deleted when you subscribe and it becomes a saved design, or after 90 days (see below).
Your subscription - if you subscribe, our payment processor (Stripe) handles your card details and tells us your subscription status. We never receive or store your full card number.
Anonymous usage analytics - measurements about how the product is used, and a recording of how the app is used, with anything you type masked out (see below).
Your email preference - whether you want the monthly roundup, when you decided, from which screen, and which rule we are relying on to send it. See Marketing emails below.
Basic technical data - like any web service, our hosting provider processes the network requests needed to serve pages, including your IP address, transiently, to deliver content and protect against abuse.

We ask for the minimum needed to run the service. We do not collect the content of your designs for any purpose beyond storing them for you, we do not run advertising trackers, and we do not sell or share your personal data.

Cookies and analytics

This website uses no cookie consent banner, because it stores nothing on your device for analytics - no cookies, no local storage, no durable identifier. We collect anonymous, aggregate measurements (which pages are viewed, which links are clicked) so we can see whether the site works and improve it. This is never linked to you or any account, and falls outside the scope of personal data.

The design app collects usage analytics at two levels:

Anonymous, always on. By default every measurement is anonymous - not linked to you or your account, and nothing analytics-related is stored on your device - so it falls outside the scope of personal data. This is always collected; there is no separate opt-out for it (turning it fully off would leave us unable to see whether the product works at all). We never collect the content of your designs (no geometry, no design names).
Account-linked, optional. When you are signed in, we additionally link your usage to your account, so we can understand the experience of real customers and support you better. The lawful basis is our legitimate interest in improving VanCAD. You can turn this off at any time in Account → Privacy → “Link usage analytics to my account”; we also honour your browser’s Global Privacy Control and Do Not Track signals as an automatic opt-out. Turning it off stops the account link immediately - anonymous, aggregate collection continues.

Session recording (in the design app only). We record how the app is used - which controls you click, what moves on screen, and what the 3D view looked like - so we can see where the app gets in the way rather than guessing from counts. The lawful basis is our legitimate interest in improving VanCAD, and we have kept it as narrow as we can:

Anything you type is masked before the recording leaves your browser, so passwords, what you write to us, and anything else you enter into a box are never in it. Your email address is masked too, wherever the app shows it.
A recording is a picture of your screen, so it does show the design you were working on as it was drawn, and the name you gave it. It is not a copy of your design file, and we do not extract anything from it - but if you would rather we did not see your screen at all, turn it off.
It also holds the app’s own diagnostic messages. As it runs, VanCAD writes short technical notes to the browser’s developer console, usually to record that something did not work, and those are captured alongside the picture. They are how we work out why the app broke for someone rather than guessing. They describe what the app was doing and are technical rather than personal, but unlike the boxes you type into, they are recorded as written.
No identifier for this is kept on your machine. A recording covers a single page load and is sent as it happens, which is why this still needs no cookie banner. (If you turn recording off, we remember that one choice on this device.)
You can turn it off at any time in Account → Privacy → “Record how I use VanCAD”, which stops the recording in progress. We also treat Global Privacy Control and Do Not Track as an instruction not to record at all - here those signals stop recording outright, not just the account link.

Our analytics is handled on our behalf by a specialist provider, hosted in the EU (Frankfurt); your IP address is discarded at collection. Measurements reach it through an address on our own domain, carried by our content-delivery and security provider - so while the analytics data is stored and processed in the EU, that routing step may pass through servers outside the UK/EU (see International transfers). The app does use first-party storage for essential functions (keeping you signed in), which does not require consent.

One display preference is stored on your device, and it is not analytics. If you switch this website or the app between the light and dark themes, we remember that one choice in your browser so the next page opens in the theme you picked. It is a single word, it identifies nothing and nobody, it is never sent anywhere, and it is not linked to you, your account or any measurement - which is why there is still no cookie banner. Clearing your browser’s data for this site removes it, and the theme goes back to dark.

Marketing emails

The only marketing we send is a monthly roundup, and there are three ways onto that list - all of them a box you can see.

When you create your account, the sign-up form carries a ticked box offering the roundup. Untick it and you are not on the list. This is the one place the box starts ticked, and we rely on the soft opt-in rule in the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations for it, which requires us to offer you that refusal at the moment we take your address - which is what the box is. It can also appear on the log-in form, because “Continue with Google” creates an account for a first-time visitor - when it does it says so, and it changes nothing for an account that already exists.
In the app’s account menu, ticking Email me a monthly roundup.
On the card that offers it, by pressing Yes please. Ignoring that card puts you nowhere.

The last two are consent: nothing is pre-ticked there, and nothing about subscribing or dismissing a card can put you on the list.

Whichever way, we record what you chose, when, which screen you chose it on, and which of the two rules above we are relying on. We keep that record because we have to be able to show where your permission came from - it is the only reason we hold it, and it is deleted with your account.

Getting off the list is one click and needs no password. Every roundup carries an unsubscribe link that works signed out, and your email program’s own Unsubscribe button works too. Both take effect immediately. You can also untick the box in the app at any time, and unticking it at sign-up means you are never added in the first place. Coming off the list is recorded as a refusal, so we do not ask you again.

None of this affects the emails we have to send you to run your account - confirming your address, resetting your password, or telling you a van you asked to be notified about is now in the library. Those are not marketing and you cannot unsubscribe from them while you have an account.

Who processes your data

We use a small number of trusted service providers to run VanCAD. Each only processes what it needs to provide its part of the service, under a data-processing agreement, and we choose providers that host data in the UK or EU wherever we can:

Cloud hosting and database (EU) - stores your account and your saved designs.
Payment processing - subscriptions are handled by Stripe, our payment provider. You are taken to Stripe’s secure checkout, so we never receive or store your card number; Stripe is an independent controller of your payment data under its own privacy policy, and tells us only your subscription status.
Product analytics (EU, Frankfurt) - anonymous usage measurement.
Transactional email - sends your account emails (sign-up confirmation, password reset).
Sign-in with Google - only if you choose that button instead of a password. Google tells us your email address so we can create or recognise your account.
Content delivery and security - serves the site and app, runs the sign-in challenge, protects against abuse, and carries analytics measurements to our analytics provider.

We’re happy to tell you the specific companies behind each of these - email hello@vancad.com for our current list of providers.

Performance of a contract - creating and running your account and, if you subscribe, providing and billing VanCAD Pro.
Legitimate interests - improving the product (analytics), keeping the service secure, and preventing abuse. Where we rely on legitimate interests, we have weighed them against your rights; you can object at any time (see Your rights).
Consent - sending you the monthly roundup, where you asked for it in the app. You can withdraw it at any time, from the unsubscribe link in any of those emails or from the account menu, and withdrawing affects nothing else.
Soft opt-in (PECR reg 22(3)) - sending you the same monthly roundup where you left the box ticked as you created your account, having been offered the refusal there. Identical mail, an identical unsubscribe, and identically nothing else attached to it.
Legal obligation - retaining what we must for tax and accounting where a payment is involved (handled largely by Stripe as the payment processor).

How long we keep it

Account and designs - kept while your account exists. If you delete your account or ask us to delete your data, we remove your account and designs.
A held design (from an expired free session) - kept for 90 days from the last time it was written, then deleted automatically. Deleting your account removes it immediately.
A shared design - kept while you keep it shared. Stopping the share, or deleting the design, deletes it at once, and so does deleting your account.
Your email preference - kept while your account exists, including after you unsubscribe, so we have the record of what you asked for and can honour a refusal rather than asking again. Deleting your account removes it.
Analytics - retained for 1 year, then deleted.
Session recordings - retained by our analytics provider under its own, shorter retention policy, and in no case longer than the 1 year above.
Payment records - Stripe retains transaction records for as long as its own legal obligations require.
Backups - we keep an encrypted daily backup of our database, stored in the EU, for 30 days and then delete it. When you delete your account or ask us to delete your data, the deletion is complete when the last backup holding it expires, at most 30 days later. A backup is only ever restored to recover from a failure, never to bring deleted data back into use.

International transfers

Your account, designs and analytics are hosted in the EU/UK region. Some providers (for example our payment provider, and our content-delivery and security provider) are global and may process limited data outside the UK/EU; this includes the routing of analytics measurements described under Cookies and analytics, which reach our EU-hosted analytics provider by way of a global network. Where data does leave the UK/EU, those providers rely on appropriate safeguards such as the UK International Data Transfer Agreement or Standard Contractual Clauses.

Your rights

Under UK GDPR you have the right to access the personal data we hold about you, to have it corrected or deleted, to restrict or object to processing, and to data portability. Your designs are yours: ask us and we will send you a copy of any design held on your account, in a structured, machine-readable format.

To exercise any of these, email hello@vancad.com and we will respond within one month. You also have the right to complain to the UK’s supervisory authority, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), though we’d appreciate the chance to put things right first.

Children

VanCAD is not directed at children and we do not knowingly collect personal data from children under 13. If you believe a child has given us personal data, contact us and we will delete it.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as the product changes. When we make a material change we will update the “Last updated” date above, and - if the change affects how we use your personal data - tell account holders by email. Adding any new analytics or tracking that stored data on your device would re-open the question of consent, and we would address it before doing so.

Contact

Questions about this policy, or a data request? Email hello@vancad.com.

Privacy policy