Privacy policy

Pegasus Legalisation Limited is the data controller for the personal information described here. We are registered in England and Wales under company number 16779341, at 11A Kilmersdon Road, Bristol BS13 9NQ, and we are registered with the Information Commissioner's Office as a data controller. Questions about this policy, or about your information, go to info@pegasusnotaries.com.

This policy covers our website, www.pegasusnotaries.com, and the legalisation, notarial and translation services we provide. It is written under the UK General Data Protection Regulation and the Data Protection Act 2018.

What we collect, and why

When you make an enquiry

If you use the enquiry form, email us or telephone, we collect what you give us: your name, email address, telephone number if you include it, the document you are asking about, the country it is for, how soon you need it and anything you write in your message. Scans of documents you email us are held with the enquiry.

We use this to answer you, to quote, and to check whether the document can be legalised in the way you have been asked. The lawful basis is that these are steps you have asked us to take before entering into a contract.

When you become a client

To carry out the work we collect the details needed to do it and to invoice for it: your name, postal and billing addresses, email address and telephone number; the documents themselves, which will contain personal information about you and sometimes about others, such as a spouse, parent or company officer; and the details of where the finished documents are to be sent.

For notarial work we must verify your identity, so we take a copy of your passport or other photographic identification and proof of your address. We keep records of every notarial act, as the rules of our profession require.

The lawful basis for the work itself is our contract with you. The identity checks and the notarial records are legal obligations under the Money Laundering Regulations 2017 and the Notaries Practice Rules.

When you order online

The online order form collects your name, email address, telephone number, billing address, the document and the number of copies, the country of use, and any notes. It creates an order reference, raises an invoice, and gives you a private tracking link. The tracking page shows only the order reference, its stage and, once posted, the courier tracking number. It holds no personal details, so the link cannot reveal who you are.

When you visit the website

Our website records how it is used so that we can keep it working and improve it. This includes the pages you visit, how you reached them, what you click, searches you make on the site, and the approximate location of your connection taken from your internet address. We do not record what you type into the enquiry form unless you send it. We do not use session recording or heatmaps.

We also measure whether visits that come from our advertising lead to an enquiry, so that we know whether the advertising is worth paying for.

The lawful basis for both is our legitimate interest in running and improving the website and in measuring our advertising. We have weighed this against your interests and limited what we collect accordingly. You can object at any time, and the cookies section below explains how to prevent it.

Who we share it with

We share personal information only where the work or the law requires it.

• The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, which issues the apostille, and the registered agents through whom we submit documents to it.
• Embassies and consulates, where a document needs consular legalisation after its apostille. This means your document, and the personal information on it, goes to the authorities of that country. That transfer is necessary to perform the service you have asked for.
• Sworn and certified translators, where you have asked us to arrange a translation.
• Couriers and Royal Mail, to deliver your documents, who receive your name, address and telephone number.
• Square, which issues and collects payment of our invoices, and which holds your name, contact details and billing address on an invoice record. Card details are entered on Square's own pages and never reach us.
• Service providers that run our systems: Microsoft, which hosts our email; Airtable, where order and tracking records are kept; Web3Forms, which delivers the enquiry form to our mailbox; Vercel, which hosts the website; PostHog, which provides our website analytics; and Google, for our advertising measurement and the map on our contact page.
• Our professional advisers, regulators and insurers, and anyone we are legally obliged to disclose to, such as a court or a law-enforcement body.

We do not sell personal information, and we do not share it with anyone for their own marketing.

Transfers outside the UK

Some of the providers above, including Airtable, Square, Web3Forms, Vercel and Google, process information in the United States. Where that happens, we rely on the UK's data bridge to the EU-US Data Privacy Framework for providers certified under it, or on the UK International Data Transfer Agreement. Our analytics provider, PostHog, holds our data in the European Union.

Documents sent to an embassy, consulate or other authority abroad go to that country because that is the service you have asked for. Those authorities are governed by their own country's law, not by UK data protection law.

How long we keep it

• Enquiries that do not become work are kept for twelve months after our last contact, then deleted.
• Client files, including correspondence and copies of documents, are kept for six years after the work is finished, which is the period in which a legal claim could be made.
• Identity records taken for the Money Laundering Regulations are kept for five years after our relationship with you ends, as those regulations require.
• Records of notarial acts are kept for the periods the Notaries Practice Rules require: permanently for acts in the public form, and for at least twelve years otherwise.
• Accounting records, including invoices, are kept for six years after the end of the financial year, as tax law requires.
• Website analytics are kept for up to twelve months.

Cookies and similar technologies

The website sets the following.

• Analytics (PostHog): cookies and browser storage that recognise a returning browser so that visits can be counted and the site's use understood. They do not identify you by name.
• Advertising measurement (Google Ads): a cookie that records whether a visit came from one of our adverts, so that an enquiry can be credited to it.
• Google Maps: the map on the contact page is loaded from Google, which may set its own cookies when the map is shown.
• Performance (Vercel Speed Insights): measures how quickly pages load. It sets no cookie.

None of these is needed for the site to work. You can block or delete cookies in your browser's settings; the website works without them. Most browsers also let you refuse cookies from particular sites.

Staff who sign in to our order tracker have a session cookie for that purpose. It is not set for visitors.

Keeping it secure

Documents in our care are stored securely and handled only by the people who need to. Our systems are protected by access controls and two-step sign-in, and the website is served over an encrypted connection. Documents in transit go by tracked delivery. We cannot control the security of information you send to us by ordinary email, and we suggest you avoid sending more than we have asked for.

Your rights

Under UK data protection law you can ask us:

• for a copy of the personal information we hold about you;
• to correct information that is wrong or incomplete;
• to delete information, where we have no continuing reason or legal duty to keep it;
• to restrict how we use it, in some circumstances;
• for a copy in a portable format, where you gave it to us and we process it by contract or consent;
• to stop processing based on our legitimate interests, including analytics.

To exercise any of these, email info@pegasusnotaries.com. We answer within one month. We may ask you to confirm your identity first, so that we do not give your information to someone else.

Some information cannot be deleted on request because the law requires us to keep it: in particular identity records and records of notarial acts, for the periods above.

If you are unhappy with how we have handled your information, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk or on 0303 123 1113. We would be grateful for the chance to resolve the matter first.

Children

Our services are for adults and businesses. We do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 18, except where it appears on a document, such as a birth certificate, that an adult has asked us to legalise.

Changes to this policy

We will update this policy when our practices or the law change, and show the date of the latest version at the top. Where a change affects you significantly, we will tell existing clients by email.