Notice to businesses in our database

Last updated: August 23, 2026

Why you are reading this

If you have arrived here, you may have found your business listed in a message sent using Polinary, or followed a link from one. This page is for people whose contact details are in our system but who are not our customers and have never signed up for anything. Our Privacy Policy is written for customers; this notice is written for you, and it is required by Article 14 of the GDPR, which applies when personal data is collected from somewhere other than the person it describes.

Who we are

Polinary operates the lead-research service described at polinary.com. For the processing described on this page, we are the data controller. You can reach us at the address in the last section.

What we hold, and where it came from

We collect business contact information from sources the business itself has made public. In practice that means two things:

  • Public advertising libraries — Meta Ads Library, Google Ads Transparency Center and LinkedIn Ad Library. These are published by the platforms themselves. We record the advertiser name, ad copy, creative and landing-page links, and how long an ad ran.
  • The business's own website — principally a contact or about page, where a business has chosen to publish an address. We respect robots.txt when we do this.

The categories of personal data involved are: a name where the business publishes one, a business email address, a business website and domain, and the advertising activity above. We do not collect or want personal addresses, phone numbers of individuals, financial details, or anything in a special category under Art. 9.

We do not buy contact lists, and we do not sell, rent or pool the data we hold.

Why we hold it, and on what legal basis

We hold it so that our customers — usually small marketing agencies and service businesses — can identify businesses that are actively advertising and might want to hear from them, and can contact them about their services.

Our lawful basis is legitimate interests under Art. 6(1)(f) — specifically the interest in direct B2B marketing recognised in Recital 47. We have assessed that interest against your rights and freedoms, taking into account that the data is business-context rather than private, that it was published by the business itself, that we collect the minimum needed to make contact, and that we never sell it. You have an unconditional right to object to this, described below.

Who else sees it

Our customers see the leads in their own account. Beyond that, the data is handled by the service providers we use to run the product — our database and hosting providers, an email verification service, and the email provider used to send messages. Each acts on our instructions or on our customer's, under contract.

Some of these providers are located outside the UK and EEA. Where that is the case, transfers are made under the safeguards permitted by Chapter V of the GDPR.

How long we keep it

If we discover an email address and nobody ever contacts you using it, we delete that address after 12 months. Where a customer has actually sent you a message, the record of that contact is kept while their account remains open, and is deleted when they close it.

We keep business contact records only for as long as they are useful for the purpose above, and remove records that have gone stale. If you ask us to remove your details, we do so immediately and additionally record enough information — an irreversible fingerprint of your email address, not the address itself — to make sure the same details are not collected again the next time someone researches your company. Without that step, deletion would only last until the next search.

Your rights

You have the right to:

  • Object to this processing (Art. 21). Where the objection is to direct marketing, it is absolute — we must stop, and we do not get to weigh it against our own interests.
  • Erasure of your data (Art. 17)
  • Access to what we hold about you (Art. 15)
  • Rectification if it is wrong (Art. 16)
  • Restriction of processing (Art. 18)

You also have the right to complain to a supervisory authority — in the UK, the Information Commissioner's Office; in the EU, the authority in your member state.

Remove your details now

This is the fastest route and needs no account. Enter the email address you want removed. We will delete every copy we hold and make sure it is not collected again.

Contact us

If you would rather write to us, or you want to exercise a right other than removal, email privacy@polinary.com. We respond to requests within one month, as required by Art. 12(3).