Last updated: 15 August 2026
This privacy notice explains how CrackingBuy handles personal data when you use crackingbuy.co.uk, follow one of our retailer or affiliate links, contact us, or interact with CrackingBuy content on connected social platforms.
1. Who we are
CrackingBuy is a UK shopping and deal-discovery service. We compare and organise product information, validate price and availability evidence where possible, and send shoppers to the relevant retailer to complete a purchase.
CrackingBuy determines how the personal data described in this notice is used for this service. For privacy questions or data-rights requests, contact [email protected].
2. Information we process
CrackingBuy is designed to work without customer accounts. Depending on how you use the service, we may process:
- Shopping activity: product impressions, product or category identifiers, outbound retailer clicks, on-site search terms, search result counts, timestamps, and similar interaction data used to understand which products and searches are useful.
- Referral and affiliate activity: information needed to route an outbound click to a retailer or affiliate network and measure whether a referral is working. Affiliate networks and merchants may process the request and their own identifiers under their privacy notices.
- Social interaction data: where you follow a CrackingBuy link from a social platform, we may record basic campaign, platform, post or product attribution so we can understand which content is useful.
- Technical and security data: our hosting, security and database providers may process standard request information such as IP address, browser or device headers, request timing and security signals to deliver, protect and troubleshoot the service.
- Communications: if you email or otherwise contact us, we process the contact details and message you provide so we can respond and keep an appropriate record of the conversation.
3. What we do not collect through checkout
CrackingBuy is not the retailer and does not operate the merchant checkout. Purchases are completed on the merchant's website. We do not ask shoppers to provide payment-card details to CrackingBuy and we do not receive the merchant's full checkout payment data.
4. Why we use this information
We use information to operate and secure the website, validate and improve product discovery, measure whether searches and referrals are useful, rank products and categories, prevent abuse, diagnose faults, operate authorised social publishing, respond to enquiries, and administer affiliate relationships.
Our ranking system may use aggregate signals such as clicks, searches, product freshness, merchant performance and measured conversion information where available. CrackingBuy does not use this activity to make solely automated decisions about an individual that produce legal or similarly significant effects.
5. Our legal bases
Where UK data-protection law applies, we generally rely on:
- Legitimate interests to operate, secure, measure and improve CrackingBuy, maintain accurate affiliate links, understand aggregate shopper behaviour and prevent abuse, where those interests are not overridden by your rights.
- Consent where permission is required for non-essential cookies or similar storage/access technologies, or for optional marketing activity that requires consent.
- Legal obligations where we need to retain or disclose information to comply with applicable law, accounting, tax, regulatory or legal-process requirements.
6. Cookies and similar technologies
CrackingBuy does not require a customer account to browse its core storefront. Security, content-delivery or hosting providers may use technologies that are necessary to deliver or protect the service.
If CrackingBuy introduces non-essential analytics, advertising, social tracking or other storage/access technologies that require permission, we will provide an appropriate consent choice before using them. You can also control cookies and site storage through your browser settings.
7. Affiliate links and retailers
Some CrackingBuy links are affiliate links. When you choose to follow one, your browser is directed to an affiliate network and/or merchant. Those organisations may receive technical request information and may use their own cookies or identifiers. Their processing is governed by their own privacy and cookie notices.
Affiliate commission does not increase the price you pay to CrackingBuy, and the normal customer journey is CrackingBuy → affiliate link → merchant website → merchant checkout.
8. Social platforms
CrackingBuy may publish or link content through services such as Pinterest, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok or X. When you use those platforms, the platform processes your activity under its own terms and privacy notice. Our own social integrations are intended to manage CrackingBuy's business content and measure basic attribution, not to obtain unrelated private social-profile data.
9. Who we share information with
We only share or make information available where needed to run the service. This can include:
- hosting, content-delivery, security and infrastructure providers, including services used to run and protect crackingbuy.co.uk;
- database and operational service providers used to store and process CrackingBuy data;
- affiliate networks and merchants when you follow a retailer link or where referral/conversion reporting is supplied to us;
- social platforms where CrackingBuy publishes or manages authorised business content;
- professional advisers, regulators, courts or authorities where disclosure is reasonably necessary or legally required.
We do not sell personal data to advertisers.
10. International processing
Some service providers, affiliate networks, merchants or social platforms may process information outside the UK. Where UK data-protection law requires safeguards for an international transfer, we rely on the applicable transfer mechanism or contractual safeguards provided for that service.
11. How long we keep information
We keep personal data only for as long as it is reasonably needed for the purpose for which it was collected, including service operation, security, affiliate administration, accounting and legal obligations. Shopping and search signals may be retained while they remain useful for ranking, fraud prevention and service improvement; records may be aggregated or anonymised when individual-level detail is no longer needed. Provider security and infrastructure logs may have their own limited retention periods.
12. Your rights
Depending on the circumstances, UK data-protection law may give you rights to request access to your personal data, correction, deletion, restriction, portability, or to object to certain processing. Where processing is based on consent, you can withdraw that consent without affecting processing that was lawful before withdrawal.
To exercise a right, email [email protected]. We may need enough information to verify your request and locate the relevant records.
13. Complaints
If you have a privacy concern, please contact us first so we can investigate it. You also have the right to complain to the UK's data-protection regulator, the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO). You can find current complaint information at ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint/.
14. Children
CrackingBuy is a general shopping and product-discovery service and is not designed to knowingly collect personal data from children. If you believe a child has provided personal data directly to us, contact us so we can review it.
15. Security
We use technical and organisational measures intended to protect the service and its data. Administrative credentials, affiliate secrets and database service keys are kept server-side and are not intended to be exposed through public storefront pages.
16. Changes to this notice
We may update this notice when the service, its integrations or applicable requirements change. The date at the top of the page shows the latest revision.
17. Contact
Privacy and data-protection enquiries: [email protected]