Fitread privacy notice

1 Who we are

Fitread is run by Fitread Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 17499351, registered office 71-75 Shelton Street, Covent Garden, London, WC2H 9JQ.

Fitread Ltd decides how and why your personal data is used for Fitread. In data protection law, that makes us the controller.

How to contact us about your data:

• email: support@fitread.co.uk;
• our contact form;
• post: Fitread Ltd at the registered office above.

We have not appointed a data protection officer. Our director deals with privacy questions.

Fitread Ltd is registered with the Information Commission (the ICO) and pays its data protection fee.

2 The short version

• Without an account, your CV file is never stored, and nor is its full text. Your reading, which holds up to 3 short lines of your CV and an AI review written from it, is kept for 24 hours, then deleted.
• With an account, every CV you read is saved in your CV manager with its reading, until you delete it or all your data, close your account, or after 5 years without use.
• To write the AI parts, the text of your CV and the advert goes to Anthropic (in the US), which runs the Claude AI model for us. We do not add your account details. Your CV text goes as it is, including any contact details written in it.
• If you paste your LinkedIn profile link into the LinkedIn check, Mindcase, a profile data service, reads your public LinkedIn profile for that check. Fitread does not keep it.
• Fitread never sends your CV, score or reading to an agency or a job board. Auto apply sends an application only to a company job, and only when you press Apply on it (or Apply to all with it ticked) or under the Hybrid or Auto instruction you chose, after you set it up and agreed to it. Where Fitread can send it, its server sends your CV and answers to the employer: through the employer's recruiting system, or by filling in and sending the employer's own application form. For some recruiting systems that form is filled in and sent in a browser that Firecrawl runs for us (section 6). For systems that need your own account with the employer (Workday), Fitread's server sends it the same way, only where it can sign in with the employer login you authorised (section 3.11). Otherwise you finish it on the employer's own page. Your match score is never sent.
• Fitread pages carry no advertising and no third-party analytics or tracking scripts. We count some events ourselves, as totals, without cookies. Two outside scripts load only when needed: Stripe's on the checkout page, and Intercom's when you click "Help chat" (section 12). We do not sell your data.
• The Inbox, if you set it up: the job emails you forward to your private Fitread address are kept for 180 days, labelled by our own rules and, when they are not sure, by Anthropic's Claude. Images and attachments are never loaded or kept. Your applications keep your own email address, and Fitread never sends an email for you.
• Employer logins: where a company's recruiting system needs an account, you authorise Fitread to make one with your email and a password it generates, kept encrypted, so it can sign in and apply. We never store the password in the clear, and never show it to you unless you press Show. You can see or forget each login (section 3.11).
• Read and not kept: the letter check and the CV proofread read what you give them in memory, keep nothing and use no AI. A CV or LinkedIn PDF you upload to start the CV builder is read in memory and the file is not kept; what you then keep in the builder is stored like anything you type there (3.4). The LinkedIn checks keep nothing you paste.
• We never ask for your nationality. Right to work is in your own words.
• Fitread's pages do not repeat this notice: it applies whether or not a page says what happens to your data.
• You can download your data, or delete it, at any time from your account page.

3 What we use, why, our lawful basis and how long we keep it

The law lets us use personal data only for a lawful reason, called a lawful basis. We use these:

• Contract: we need the data to give you the service you signed up for (your account, readings, tools and plan).
• Legitimate interests: we have a good reason, and it does not override your rights. Section 10 explains your right to object to these.
• Legal obligation: the law requires it.
• Consent: you have agreed, and you can withdraw that at any time.

3.1 If you scan your CV without an account

3.2 Your account and signing in

3.3 Your CVs and readings (members)

3.4 The tools (members)

You do not need to give us any of this to use Fitread. But we need an email address for an account, a CV and an advert for a reading, and payment details for Pro (Stripe collects those).

3.5 Paying for Pro

3.6 Emails

Section 13 lists the emails and how to stop them.

3.7 Help and contact

3.8 Security, logs and counts

3.9 If you are named in a member's records

Members can put details of other people into Fitread as part of their own job search:

• an advert they paste can name a recruiter and give their contact details;
• a member may upload a CV for someone else who has asked them to (our Terms allow this only with that person's agreement);
• tracker cards and interview rounds can name recruiters, consultants and interviewers, with meeting links and notes;
• emails a member forwards to their Inbox (3.10) come from recruiters and employers, and hold the sender's name, email address, signature and what they wrote.

• Where it comes from: the member, or for an Inbox email, the member forwarding what you sent them.
• Shared with: Anthropic, when the member uses an AI tool on that text, and to label an Inbox email our rules could not label; Cloudflare, which receives an Inbox email for us and passes it on (section 6).
• We use these details only for that member's job search, and delete them with the member's data. We do not contact the people named.
• If you think we hold your details this way, contact us.

3.10 The Inbox (emails you forward)

You can give Fitread the replies employers send you. You get a private address (inbox+your code@in.fitread.co.uk) and set your own Gmail filter or Outlook rule to forward recruiting systems' emails to it. Your applications keep your own email address: employers never see the Fitread one.

• What we never keep: the email's HTML, its images (never loaded, so no tracking pixel reaches the sender), its attachments (only their names; there is no virus scanner), the other people it was sent to, or the raw message.
• Labelling: our own rules read the subject and the start of the text first. Only when they are not sure does Anthropic receive the sender's name and domain, the subject and the start of the text (up to 3,500 characters), never your CV. You can change any label.
• AI reply: when you ask for one (part of Pro), Anthropic receives the email, your CV and your saved answers. The draft is labelled as written by AI. You edit it and send it from your own email; Fitread never sends it.
• Shared with: Cloudflare, which receives each email at in.fitread.co.uk and passes it straight to us without keeping it; Anthropic, as above (section 6).
• Other people: the emails name the recruiters who wrote them. Section 3.9 explains how we treat their details.

3.11 Your employer logins

Some companies' recruiting systems (for example Workday) need an account before you can apply. When Auto apply meets one, Fitread makes an account for you, with your own email address and a strong password it generates, so it can sign in and apply (section 7B of the Terms). You can see or forget each login on "Your employer logins".

• How the password is kept: encrypted. Each password is sealed with its own key, and that key is sealed with a master key held only in the server's settings. We never store a password in the clear, never put it in a log or an export, and never send it to your browser except when you press Show (after you sign in again).
• We never store your Fitread password as an employer password: each employer login gets its own fresh, unique password.
• Email verification: if a system emails a verification link, we follow only a link on that same company or recruiting-system website, and no other link in the email. If your Inbox is not set up, we ask you to click it yourself.
• Sign-up terms we accept for you: creating the account, we accept that system's own sign-up terms and privacy notice on your behalf, because you authorised it (Terms section 7B). Your application records that, with links.
• A human check: if a sign-up or sign-in page asks you to prove you are a person, we do not create an account or sign in there, and we never answer or get past such a check.
• Deletion: forgetting a login removes our copy at once (the account stays on the company's site; we keep only a note of which site, so Auto apply makes no second account there until you allow it again). Deleting your data or closing your account removes every login and its access log.
• Off until it is set up: without the master key, this feature is off and no login is ever stored.

4 Sensitive details in your CV

Some CVs include details the law treats as sensitive: health or disability, ethnic origin, religion or beliefs, political opinions, trade union membership, sexual orientation, or criminal records (such as a DBS check or a conviction).

• We do not ask for these. You do not need any of them in a CV, and you can remove them before you upload.
• Fitread does not look for health, ethnicity, religion, politics, union membership or sexual orientation, and none of these is used in the score. The score uses skills, the job title and the sector.
• When an advert asks for a DBS check, we check whether your CV mentions one, and show only that. The CV builder can also ask whether you hold a DBS check, and adds your answer, in your words, to your CV.
• If your CV contains sensitive details, they are handled like the rest of the CV: saved in your CV manager with each reading until you delete it, and sent to Anthropic for the reading.

5 AI, the score and automated decisions

How the score works

• Our code compares the advert's skills with your CV. The advert's skills your CV shows earn up to 70 points, and the advert's job title up to 15. The sector earns 15 when the advert states a sector, and a pasted advert always gets them.
• The score is capped at 29 when your CV shows fewer than 2 of the advert's skills, or too few of its specific ones. It is capped at 49 when the advert names fewer than 3 skills we recognise, and it is 0 when the advert names none.
• The total, from 0 to 100, is your match rate. The AI cannot change it.
• Job Match ranks live jobs by how well they fit the skills in a CV you have saved.

Where AI is used

• Claude, an AI model by Anthropic, writes the AI review, openers, suggestions and drafts. Each is labelled as written by AI.
• In Auto apply, Claude may write the answer to a required free-text question on an employer's form (such as "What makes you a good fit for this role?"). It is sent your CV text and the advert, and writes only from them. The answer is labelled "Written by AI from your CV" in What was sent. In Review you read it before it goes; in Hybrid and Auto your standing instruction covers it.
• Anthropic receives the text of your CV (up to 8,000 characters at a time), the advert (up to 5,000 characters), what you typed for a tool (up to 1,500 characters), LinkedIn profile text you paste (up to 6,000 characters) and figures our code has worked out.
• It does not receive your account number, or the email address you sign in with, unless that address is written in your CV. Your CV text, including any contact details in it, goes as it is.
• For the Inbox, Claude labels an email only when our rules are not sure what it is, from the sender's name and domain, the subject and the start of the text, without your CV. An AI reply sends the email, your CV and your saved answers (3.10).

Automated decisions

• Scoring your CV and ranking jobs is profiling, done for your own use.
• We make no decision about you that has a legal or similarly significant effect. Fitread sends nothing to agencies or job boards, and nothing to an employer unless you press Apply on a company job (or Apply to all with it ticked), or under the Hybrid or Auto instruction you chose, after you set up Auto apply and agreed that Fitread sends your applications. With "Let me check each application before it goes" on, nothing goes until you press Send on the application's own page. Fitread never guesses an answer. When an employer's form asks something your answers don't cover, it answers only from your own facts: worked out from your CV or taken from your profile ("From your CV", "From your profile"), or, for a required free-text question, written by Claude from your CV and the advert only ("Written by AI from your CV"). Anything else, and right to work, sponsorship, criminal records, health, equality monitoring, security clearance, qualifications your CV doesn't show, pay you haven't saved, consents and declarations, waits for you. The employer makes its own decisions about your application.
• Some routine steps are automatic: plan limits, AI limits, rate limits, and the check that a CV is in English. If you think one of these has gone wrong, contact us and a person will look at it.

6 Who we share data with

We use these suppliers. Each one acts for us, under our instructions, except where the table says otherwise.

• Each supplier that acts for us has a written contract with Fitread Ltd that limits what it may do with your data. Firecrawl's and Mindcase's are being put in place.
• Each supplier keeps its own records for its own period. When you delete your Fitread data, we cannot delete what a supplier keeps for itself: for example, your receipts at Stripe, your sign-in record at WorkOS, or your chats at Intercom. Ask us, and we will ask the supplier to delete what it holds for us.
• We may also share data if the law requires it, or to protect our rights, for example with the police or a court.
• If Fitread Ltd's business is sold or merged, the data may pass to the new owner, who must use it as this notice says.

7 Countries outside the UK

Some suppliers are in the US or the EU, or can reach our data from there.

• EU (Sentry, if switched on): UK law treats the EU as giving adequate protection.
• US (Anthropic, WorkOS, Intercom, Stripe, Resend, DigitalOcean, Laravel Forge, Cloudflare): each transfer is protected by one of these: the UK-US "data bridge", where the US company has joined it; or the UK's approved contract clauses (the International Data Transfer Agreement, or the UK Addendum to the EU clauses) in our contract with it.
• Support access: a US company may reach data held in the UK, for example to give support. The same safeguards apply.
• Employers' recruiting systems: an application you send with Auto apply goes to wherever the employer's system is, often the US (Greenhouse, Lever, Ashby) or the EU (Recruitee); Workable, Teamtailor, Pinpoint, Personio and Breezy say where in their own privacy notices; on Oracle Recruiting Cloud, it goes to that employer's own Oracle site, held in the Oracle data centre the employer chose; on Workday, it goes to that employer's own Workday site, held where Workday holds it for that employer. It goes there because you asked for it to be sent there.
• Firecrawl: a US company. The safeguard is the UK's approved contract clauses in our contract with it, which we are putting in place.
• ElevenLabs: a US company certified to the EU-US Data Privacy Framework and its UK Extension (the UK-US "data bridge"); its data processing agreement also carries the EU clauses with the UK Addendum.
• Google (Vertex AI), for ElevenLabs: the live interview's AI model runs on Google Cloud for ElevenLabs, in the US unless ElevenLabs keeps the work in the EU.
• Mindcase: an Indian company. The safeguard is the UK's International Data Transfer Agreement in our contract with it, which we are putting in place.

You can ask us for a copy of the safeguard for any supplier.

8 How long we keep your data

The tables in section 3 give each period. In short:

Deleting and backups. When you delete something, it is removed from Fitread at once. Copies stay in our backups until those backups are deleted, up to 4 weeks later. We do not restore deleted data from a backup, except to recover from a fault; if we ever do, we delete your data again.

The 5-year rule. If you have not signed in for 5 years, we email you first, then close your account and delete everything in it, including your account record and email address.

9 Your rights

You have these rights. Using them is free.

• We answer within one month. If a request is complex, we may take up to two more months; we will tell you within the first month.
• We may ask you to prove who you are. The time limit starts once you have.
• If we cannot do what you ask, we will tell you why.

10 Your right to object

You can object at any time to our use of your data where we rely on legitimate interests (the uses marked "legitimate interests" in section 3). Tell us which use, and why. We will stop, unless we have strong reasons that override your interests, or we need the data for a legal claim.

You can always object to any email that promotes Fitread, and we will stop. Switch it off in Settings, or use the link in the email.

To object, contact us (section 1).

11 How to complain

• Tell us first. Use the contact form, or email us at support@fitread.co.uk. We will acknowledge your complaint within 30 days, look into it without delay, keep you told how it is going, and tell you the outcome.
• You can also complain to the Information Commission (the ICO), the UK's data protection regulator: ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint.

12 Cookies and similar technology

Fitread sets only the cookies it needs to work. Fitread's own scripts store nothing else in your browser. Two outside services can set cookies or use your browser's storage, and only on the pages and after the clicks shown below.

Fitread's cookies are sent only to Fitread's own address. When you sign in with WorkOS, Google or Microsoft, they may set their own cookies on their own sites.

13 Emails

14 Children

Fitread has no minimum age. It is built for people looking for work, and we do not market it to children.

15 How we protect your data

• Saved CVs are kept as private files, outside the part of the server the web can reach. The database holds where each file is, a fingerprint, the skills found and the word count, never a CV's full text. Readings and drafts can quote short lines from your CV.
• Private reading links are stored only as one-way codes.
• Fitread's app pages are never cached by others or indexed by search engines.
• Our staff tools show counts and account records, never CV or advert text.
• Fitread's sender opens only recruiting systems' own application pages (Greenhouse, Lever, Ashby, Workable, Teamtailor, Pinpoint, Personio, Breezy and the employer's own Oracle Recruiting Cloud or Workday site), over https, in a new browser with nothing saved, one application at a time, and downloads nothing. Your CV goes to it from our server for that send only. Its logs hold codes and counts, never your answers. Where a recruiting system is known to show checks for people and you use Fitread for Chrome with Auto-submit turned on, the same application goes from your own browser through the extension instead, after the same press. Where Fitread uses Firecrawl's browser for a recruiting system, the same rules hold: only that system's own application page, Firecrawl's basic connection (never one built to get past a site's bot checks), nothing it adds to your answers, no check for people answered for you, and its browser closed when the send ends.
• On Oracle Recruiting Cloud, Fitread's sender enters your email on the employer's own Oracle site (its candidate profile), fills each page of the application from what you approved and presses their Submit once. A check for people on any Oracle page stops the send: nothing is answered for you. If Oracle emails you a code to confirm it is you, you finish that application on the employer's page.
• On Workday, Fitread's sender fills each step of the employer's own Workday application from what you approved and presses their Submit once. A check for people on any Workday page stops the send: nothing is answered for you and nobody waits for one. The sender's form-filling never writes into the employer's sign-in or account pages; signing in or making the account is the employer logins step (section 3.11), which stops at any check for people too.
• Our server and its backups are held by DigitalOcean in London, and only our server's own account can read them.

16 Changes to this notice

We will update this notice when what we do changes. The version and date are at the top. If a change matters to you, we will tell you by email or in the app before it takes effect.