Who is responsible for your data
The data controller is Be Free Driving School — Ailbhe, ADI no. 41102, an ADI approved driving instructor covering Wicklow and Dún Laoghaire. For anything about your data, email hello@befreedrivingschool.ie.
What we collect
We only collect what you give us and the little a website records by itself:
Your enquiry. When you use the contact form we store your name, email address, phone number, the service and transmission you are interested in, your location, your message, and, if you arrived from one of our other sites, which site sent you.
Technical details. Like every website, our servers and security services see your IP address and browser details when you visit. We use them to keep the site running and to block abuse, not to identify you.
Visit statistics, if you say yes. With your agreement on the cookie banner, we use Google Analytics to see how many people visit and which pages they read. It records the pages you view, how you got here, your device and browser, and roughly where you are. It also notes when you tap the phone number or WhatsApp link, but not the number you dial or anything you send. It does not store your IP address. Say no and none of this is recorded. See Cookies and analytics below.
Which link brought you here, if you say yes. A link from one of our Google ads carries a click identifier and campaign labels. If you agreed on the cookie banner and then send the form, we store them with your enquiry so we can see which link led to it.
Why we use it
We use your details to reply to your enquiry and arrange lessons with you. This is the step before any agreement between us, and it is the only reason we ask for your details.
We also use them to keep the website secure and stop automated abuse, which is our legitimate interest in running a working site, and to understand whether advertising brings genuine enquiries so we can spend sensibly.
We never sell your details and never use them for marketing you did not ask for.
Who handles it for us
Your details are only ever passed to services we use to run this website and to reach you:
Render hosts the website (Frankfurt, Germany, EU). PostgreSQL stores enquiries in our database. Email delivers a new enquiry to the instructor. Cloudflare sits in front of the site to protect it and speed it up, so it sees your IP address and requests. Google Fonts serves the typeface the pages are set in, so Google sees your IP address when those files are fetched, and nothing else. Google Analytics, from Google Ireland Limited, counts visits and page views as described under Cookies and analytics.
Each of these acts on our instructions under its own data-processing terms. Where a service is based outside the EU, transfers are covered by the European Commission's standard contractual clauses or the EU–US Data Privacy Framework.
How long we keep it
Enquiries are kept while we are dealing with your enquiry and any lessons that follow, then deleted. You can ask for yours to be deleted at any time.
Suspected spam. A submission the site thinks is automated is set aside for 30 days so that a real enquiry mistaken for spam can be recovered, then deleted automatically. No IP address is stored with it.
Technical and security logs are kept briefly and cleared automatically; the rate-limiting that blocks abuse forgets your IP address within an hour.
Cookies and analytics
The website does not need cookies to work for you: blocking or deleting them does not stop you using the site or sending the form.
Nothing from Google loads until you choose Yes, go ahead on the cookie banner. No thanks keeps it all off, and the site works the same either way. You can change your answer at any time with Cookie settings, at the bottom of every page.
The cookies this site sets itself
bf_consent — remembers your answer on the cookie banner, so it does not ask on every page. It holds only "granted" or "denied" and lasts six months, then the banner asks again.
bf_ad — set only if you arrive on a link from one of our Google ads, or on a campaign link from one of our other sites, and only once you have said yes on the cookie banner. It holds the click identifier and campaign labels from the link, so the form can record which link led to your enquiry. It lasts 24 hours, and saying no removes it.
bf_cg — set when you send the form. It holds a random code, matched by a record on our server, so that the thank-you page counts your enquiry once and no more. Neither says anything about you. It lasts 10 minutes and is deleted as soon as the thank-you page has used it.
A login cookie and a security token on the admin pages, which only the instructor uses.
Cookies set by anyone else
Only if you say yes: Google Analytics then sets two cookies, _ga and _ga_QP0PWXVD2X, so it can tell a returning visitor from a new one. They last up to two years. When you send the form, it records that an enquiry was sent, but none of the details you entered. A tap on the phone number or WhatsApp link is recorded the same way: that you tapped, and nothing about the call or message. If you change your answer to no, the site deletes them.
The pages do load our typeface from Google Fonts, so Google's servers see your IP address and browser details when the font files are fetched. That sets no cookie and tells them nothing about what you do on the site.
Whether an ad led to an enquiry is worked out from the bf_ad cookie and our own database, after you send the form.
Google Ads uses the same measurement to count which ads lead to an enquiry. It is never used to follow you with ads on other websites.
Your rights
Under the GDPR you can ask us at any time to tell you what details we hold about you and give you a copy, correct anything that is wrong, delete your details, limit what we do with them or object to our using them, or hand them over in a form you can take elsewhere.
Deleting your enquiry deletes the whole record, including the ad click identifier stored with it. Nothing about it has been sent anywhere else, so there is nothing left to withdraw.
Email hello@befreedrivingschool.ie and we will answer within a month. If you are not happy with how we handle your data, you can complain to the Data Protection Commission at dataprotection.ie.
Other websites
Links to other sites — the RSA, the NDLS, theorytest.ie and DriverTheory.online — take you to sites with their own privacy policies, which we do not control.
Changes to this page
If the way we handle your data changes, this page changes with it, and the date at the top moves.