Privacy notice

Version: 1.18
Effective date: 12 November 2026

This notice describes the English-only workspaces, the IQVS guide and the independent public measurement choices. This revision describes how IQVS checks uploaded files and how visitors can choose optional Google Analytics on public pages. The earlier notice, version 1.14 of 11 October 2026, remains available as a historical record. Existing order confirmations retain the exact notice accepted for that order.

International Qualification Verification Services (IQVS LTD) is a private limited company registered in England and Wales, company number 17485029. IQVS LTD is the controller responsible for the personal information described here. Our registered office and postal address is 4 Bolbury Crescent, Swinton, Greater Manchester, M27 8AX, United Kingdom. Contact privacy@iqvs.co.uk about your information or rights.

What this notice covers

This notice covers our website, support enquiries, accounts, qualification verification, qualification assessment and document translation, and Government Source Verification: Right to Work Verification, Right to Rent Verification in England and UK Immigration Status Verification. It also covers bespoke factual investigations and associated invoicing and payments. Government Source Verification produces a dated IQVS record of the relevant official online response. Your quote identifies the particular service, documents, purpose and deliverable. DBS is an enquiry service only: do not send criminal-record information. Business organisation accounts and monthly billing are subject to the separate Business Service Terms and Business Privacy Addendum. Courses and examinations remain deferred.

Use the client portal to select a service, submit a request, provide case instructions, upload requested documents through the secure upload available for your case, and view progress and released results. Email is for account support, exceptional requests, cancellations, complaints and privacy matters; do not email identity documents, qualification records, criminal-record information or other sensitive attachments.

Information we use and where it comes from

We use only information needed for the particular task:

• Account and contact information: name, email, account identifiers, password hash, recovery and sign-in events. We contact applicants by email. For an investigation only, you may request an optional telephone briefing and provide a number privately for that case; it is not a public contact or a requirement for other services. Any telephone number supplied previously remains subject to the retention periods and rights in this notice.
• Case and instructions: case reference, service, purpose, destination, institution, document type, language pair, deadline and correspondence.
• Profile or identity information needed to match the subject: name and, where a source or case requires them, date or place of birth, address or identity evidence. We do not require a passport for every translation.
• Qualification, assessment or translation material: submitted certificates, transcripts and other academic records; relevant employment history, roles, dates, work confirmations, learning portfolios, work samples and reflection; assessment evidence and results within scope; authenticated source replies; translation source and output; human review, findings and release records.
• Authority and disclosure information: the specific institution, workplace or recipient, purpose, documents or result authorised for disclosure, recorded permission wording and date, the permission PDF where prepared, and approval history.
• Billing: current legal billing name, confirmed billing address, email, accepted quote and order references, Stripe invoice/payment/credit-note references and status. Stripe collects card details through its secure payment form. The cardholder may differ from the applicant. IQVS keeps the applicant/customer and payer declarations separate and does not store full card numbers or CVCs.
• Security and technical information: connection and browser information, strictly necessary cookies, file type/size/hash, malware outcomes and access/audit events.

Information comes from you, the source institution, workplace or official government record, an authorised representative, a reviewer, or the authentication and technical providers involved in your service. We distinguish what you supplied, what a source stated at a particular time and our professional interpretation. If someone introduces a request about you, we provide the relevant information and establish authority before conducting case work or disclosing records.

Do not submit medical, criminal-offence, biometric identification or other special-category information without prior instructions for an approved service. Those services require an additional legal condition and safeguards. An ordinary identity photograph is not used for automated biometric identification. We restrict and assess unsuitable or inadvertently supplied information rather than treating its upload as blanket permission to use it.

Customer and staff accounts

Customer accounts let you manage your own requests. Optional Google sign-in or linking verifies control of an email account; it does not verify your legal identity or qualifications. Staff access is authorised and provisioned by the IQVS administrator, separately from customer registration. Staff work identifiers, name and work contact, password hash, role and case assignments, security and recovery events, and access approval or removal records are used to administer and protect their work access. Staff credentials are not an applicant identity record.

We use legitimate interests for necessary work-access administration and proportionate security, with specific legal duties where applicable. Routine staff directory and contact information is removed when no longer needed, normally no later than 12 months after access removal or the end of the relationship. Ordinary security events follow the 12-month period below; substantive access approvals and case or release audit follow the 6-year evidence period. Staff have the same applicable privacy rights and contact routes described below.

Qualification assessment

For this service we use the academic and employment learning evidence requested for your agreed scope: qualifications, transcripts, course descriptions, relevant roles and dates, work samples, reflection and authorised source confirmations. We also use the intended subject, destination, purpose and recipient requirements, the named learning benchmark, outcome mapping, competence and currency evidence, assessment gaps, academic review and the released IQVS assessment certificate and report.

This evidence supports a human assessment of demonstrated learning; employment duration alone does not determine an academic level. Upload only material needed for the case, remove unrelated personal or confidential information from work samples and obtain any necessary permission to provide them. An employer or institution receives only the information needed for the specific authorised enquiry. An assessment certificate or report is shared with a recipient only under the recorded disclosure authority and controlled delivery route. Private portfolios and source files are not published through a report QR.

Government Source Verification

For Right to Work Verification, Right to Rent Verification in England or UK Immigration Status Verification, we use the share code for that specific purpose, the matching date of birth, the recorded authority and any employer, landlord or other checking-party details required for the request. The system submits the required access inputs to the relevant GOV.UK service and automatically records the returned result, check date and time, conditions, expiry and any stated follow-up. The report is a snapshot of that response; IQVS does not grant or determine immigration permission, employment eligibility or tenancy rights. UK Immigration Status Verification uses a separate official service and is not a right-to-work or right-to-rent check. IQVS is independent of, and is not endorsed by, the Home Office. We perform no live identity comparison or automated biometric identification.

The source evidence stays private. Raw share codes and dates of birth are excluded from released report metadata and public QR pages. A QR confirms the issued historical report, not current or future entitlement. Employers and landlords, or properly appointed agents where applicable, remain responsible for the prescribed checking, identity comparison, evidence retention and follow-up requirements; an IQVS support report does not itself provide a statutory excuse.

Share codes and lookup instructions are retained in the private case while needed for the order or a documented review, then assessed for removal within 90 days of closure. Reviewed findings and proportionate source evidence follow the substantive service-evidence period below. Our report storage is not a substitute for an employer’s or landlord’s own statutory evidence retention. No automated biometric identification is performed.

Optional printed-copy delivery

If you select a printed copy, we use the recipient name and postal address you confirm for your own delivery, together with the carrier, tracking reference and dispatch date needed to fulfil and follow that order. We use this information to perform the optional delivery contract; invoice and payment records remain subject to the billing purposes above.

Only the released report pages are supplied for printing. Source uploads, identity documents and private government evidence are not printed. Access is limited to staff handling fulfilment and the printing or delivery provider that needs it. If we use an external printing or delivery provider, we identify its role and establish the applicable confidentiality, contract and data-protection safeguards before sharing the minimum report pages or shipment details needed. A printing provider acting as our processor works on documented instructions; a carrier may also have its own delivery or legal duties. The international-transfer safeguards below apply where relevant.

Delivery details and proof are kept under the case and financial retention rules below, limited to what is needed for fulfilment, accounting or a documented delivery dispute. Temporary print, spool and download copies are removed when fulfilment and reconciliation are complete; they are not retained as an additional long-term case set. Selecting print does not make your case files or postal address public.

Bespoke investigations

You can request factual research about a company, property, vehicle, investment background, legal matter or employment history without an initial payment. We record your objective, subject identifiers, relevant countries, instructions and optional supporting evidence. A written briefing, or an optional telephone briefing you request, defines the scope before a quote. The private case records the agreed scope, source and privacy review, dated findings, limitations and accountable human decisions. Telephone calls are not automatically recorded.

Your account, instructions and quotation are processed to take steps you request before a contract and to provide the accepted service. Information about other people, including information from public sources, requires a separately assessed lawful basis, necessity and proportionality. Where we rely on legitimate interests, we document the balancing assessment and respect rights to object. We provide the applicable information to affected people unless a specific lawful exception applies. Client instructions do not themselves permit restricted source access, indefinite retention or publication.

Health and other special-category information, allegations, offences or criminal proceedings need the applicable additional legal condition and safeguards before that part of a case is processed. We do not offer indiscriminate intrusive employment vetting or create a public criminal-record blacklist. Unauthorised access to private financial, medical or other protected records is excluded. International work is assessed against the source permissions and applicable local rules for the accepted scope.

The report, evidence and correspondence stay in the private case and may be accessed only by the applicant and authorised assigned staff or specifically agreed recipients. A report does not become a public case study. Public examples are separate editorial records, based on actual work, requiring documented confidentiality, accuracy, source-rights and effective anonymisation review. Removing a name alone is insufficient. Identifiable reporting or allegations require a separate lawful publication assessment and are not released through this ordinary case-study route.

Investigation source uploads and ordinary working copies are normally reviewed for removal within 12 months of closure. Agreed instructions, lawful-scope assessments, reviewed substantive findings, approval records and released reports follow the six-year service-evidence period where needed for the agreed service or claims. Unnecessary sensitive raw data is reviewed for earlier removal. A justified legal hold is limited to its documented purpose; confidential archived cases are not a public register.

Purposes and lawful bases

Permission to contact a named institution or workplace, or to share specified documents or a result, is recorded for that purpose separately from our lawful basis. Reading or acknowledging this notice is not consent to every use of your information. A contract with a business customer is not a contract with every applicant and does not authorise access to all of an applicant’s records. For business-introduced records, we establish the relevant controller or processor role: where IQVS is a controller, the purpose needs its own documented lawful basis, such as necessary and proportionate legitimate interests with a balancing assessment; where IQVS is a processor, it acts on the controller’s documented instructions. The separate business privacy arrangements explain the agreed roles. Any new use or additional legal condition is assessed and explained before it begins. Without necessary information or specific authority we may be unable to provide that part of the service; we explain the missing requirement.

Accuracy, discrepancies and suspected misuse

We may ask for clarification or further evidence, pause an affected check or record that a fact could not be confirmed when documents, instructions or source responses are inconsistent or insufficient. A failed lookup, missing reply, discrepancy or adverse finding is not itself proof of fraud or intentional misrepresentation. We distinguish source observations from allegations and conclusions, consider relevant explanations and provide the correction and complaint routes below. If a referral to an authority or another disclosure is proposed, we assess its necessity, lawful basis and permitted information separately. Information alleging a criminal offence, and special-category information, requires the applicable additional condition and safeguards. This is not a public blacklist or automatic reporting of every unsuccessful check.

Who receives information

Access and sharing are limited to what the task requires:

• Authorised IQVS staff and assigned translators or reviewers, with confidentiality and restricted access.
• GoDaddy for application hosting, account and case data, backups and hosting security.
• Google Workspace and Google Drive for email and private document storage; Google also receives the information required for optional Google sign-in when you choose it. Google sign-in is not qualification or legal-identity verification.
• IQVS checks uploaded files for malware with ClamAV running on its hosting infrastructure. A clean scan does not establish document authenticity or an academic finding.
• Stripe for IQVS LTD’s invoices, credit notes, hosted payment and payment reconciliation. Stripe also uses information for its own regulatory, security and fraud-prevention obligations, as described in its privacy notice.
• The authenticated awarding institution or recorded workplace needed for the specific authorised academic or employment enquiry; the GOV.UK service receiving the access inputs for your selected government check; and an employer, landlord or other recipient specifically authorised to receive the agreed result. Sharing is limited to the relevant task and information.
• If you use address lookup, the postcode lookup service receives the entered postcode and our server connection details for a geographic suggestion; manual address entry is available. A suggestion is not proof of your home or identity. Choosing an external map link sends the address to that provider. An optional address API is assessed and disclosed before it is enabled.
• A printing or postal delivery provider, if used for your selected printed copy, receives only the report pages or shipment details needed under the arrangements described above.
• Our bank for necessary settlement and banking records, our accountant or professional advisers, and a court, regulator or other authority, where necessary and lawful. There is no automatic Xero or other accounting-system handoff.

We do not sell personal information. Current academic and workplace enquiry emails provide a temporary private link and access details; the selected documents, including the recorded permission PDF where selected, are available through the protected page rather than as raw email attachments. An old enquiry retains its original selected-document scope. We do not send live case contents to an external AI or OCR provider unless its purpose, data handling and safeguards have been assessed and you have been told about the relevant use. A person approves qualification source correspondence, substantive academic findings, translations and their release. The three Government Source Verification reports are produced automatically from the official response with system provenance; this does not imply a human source review or live identity comparison. IQVS does not decide whether an employer hires you, a landlord grants a tenancy or the Home Office grants immigration permission. AI guidance and technical file checks do not decide document authenticity. You can ask for human consideration of an error or disputed finding through the service and privacy contact routes.

International transfers

An institution, workplace, recipient, assigned supplier or a technology provider’s support infrastructure may be outside the UK. Making information accessible to a separate overseas organisation through a protected link can still be an international transfer. We identify the recipient, purpose and minimum necessary information and assess the applicable UK adequacy arrangements, an approved transfer safeguard such as the UK IDTA or UK Addendum, or a lawful exception whose requirements are met. Where required, the assessment includes the data-protection test, also called a transfer risk assessment, and any additional protection. A secure link or a general authorisation to verify records does not by itself supply the transfer mechanism. If the proposed route cannot lawfully be used, we pause it and explain the alternative. Contact privacy@iqvs.co.uk for information about the safeguard relevant to your case.

Payment authorisation and dispute evidence

For payment security and the handling or defence of payment disputes, we keep a restricted evidence record linked to the actual application and transaction. It includes the authenticated applicant/customer, the separately supplied cardholder name and any payment email, the person’s declaration of authority to pay, server timestamps, the observed request IP and its source, the exact accepted terms and instructions, and the relevant payment and service-delivery references. Cardholder declarations and an observed IP are supporting information; they are not independent identity verification. Stripe supplies the available billing information, masked card summary and authentication or address/security-check results for the actual payment. We do not record a full card number, CVC, password or payment secret in this archive.

Our lawful basis for this proportionate security and claims-defence record is legitimate interests, supported by a documented necessity and balancing assessment. Accounting records required by law are kept under our legal obligations. Archive information is available only to authorised finance and privacy staff for those purposes; it is excluded from public results, QR pages, general AI assistance and marketing. A proposed dispute response is reviewed by an authorised person before it is sent.

The minimal dispute-evidence record is kept for three calendar years from confirmed payment; actual later service completion or cancellation sets a new three-year expiry from that event. Paid services that remain open at the review point are reviewed rather than kept indefinitely without a reason. Personal details in uncompleted payment-attempt records are kept for up to 90 days from the first recorded payment attempt for that order. A minimal reference and date record may remain while an unfinished invoice is open to prevent retries from restarting that period; it excludes names, IP addresses and card details and has a recorded reason and review date. Ordinary logins, page views and failed retries do not restart these periods. A current dispute or documented legal hold can require relevant records to be retained longer, with a recorded reason and review. Statutory invoice, payment and accounting records follow their separate period below. Access, correction, restriction, objection and erasure requests are considered under the rights described in this notice.

Retention and security

We use the following periods, measured from the stated event rather than an arbitrary upload date:

• Ordinary enquiries: 12 months after the last meaningful contact.
• Accounts with no active case: review after 24 months of inactivity; remove unnecessary information.
• Abandoned drafts: 90 days after the last activity.
• Identity-document copies: normally 90 days after case completion, cancellation or the identity decision.
• Applicant qualification and employment portfolio source files, assessment working files and translation source/working files: normally 12 months after closure or delivery.
• Released results, authenticated findings, authority, approvals and substantive service evidence: 6 years after release or closure.
• Routine case messages: 2 years after closure, unless they are substantive evidence subject to the longer period.
• Invoice, payment and accounting records: the applicable statutory record period, normally at least 6 years.
• General security logs: 12 months; rights-request or privacy-complaint decision records: 3 years after closure.

We limit a longer retention or legal hold to a documented need and delete or anonymise information when it is no longer necessary. Automated retention covers specified draft, completed-case document and closed rights-working categories; staff review other due records, including correspondence, staff access, print fulfilment and provider-held copies. A retained invoice or finding does not automatically retain every raw attachment or working copy. Temporary working copies used for file safety checks are removed after processing. Protected backup copies expire on the provider’s recovery cycle; deletion instructions also apply before restored records return to use. Contact us for the period relevant to a particular record or backup.

We use encrypted connections, private document storage, malware checks, account and staff access controls, scoped downloads and audit records. We limit access to the work assigned. No internet system can guarantee absolute security.

Your rights and complaints

Depending on the processing and applicable law, you can request access and a copy, correction, deletion, restriction, portability or an objection to processing. You can withdraw consent for a consent-based use without affecting earlier lawful processing. Some records must be retained for legal duties or justified claims; we explain any limitation rather than treating every deletion request as automatic.

You may object at any time to processing based on legitimate interests. Contact privacy@iqvs.co.uk; no special subject line or form is required. Direct-marketing objections are honoured. Contact us in writing or otherwise for a rights request. We request proportionate identity evidence only where needed and ordinarily respond within one calendar month. If a lawful extension or clarification affects the deadline, we explain it.

For a privacy complaint, contact privacy@iqvs.co.uk or our postal address. We acknowledge a complaint within 30 days, investigate without undue delay, keep you informed and explain the outcome. You can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office. Raising a complaint does not remove your right to make a separate information-rights request.

Cookies and changes

We use strictly necessary cookies for authentication, security, preferences and essential site functions. Hosting security may also use Cloudflare bot-protection cookies, independently of IQVS account cookies, as explained in Cloudflare's cookie information. On eligible public website pages, Google Analytics and Google Ads page-view measurement each have their own choice in Cookie preferences. Google Analytics measures how visitors use public pages after they choose to allow it. It may use an analytics cookie, the public page path and browser or device information. Previous GoDaddy or Google Ads choices do not give permission for Google Analytics. GoDaddy analytics is not currently active on the Next.js site, but its separate preference is preserved. If you allow Google Ads measurement, Google may receive the public page path, advertising-click information, IP address and device information, and may use advertising measurement cookies. You can withdraw either Google choice at any time in Cookie preferences. Personalised advertising, remarketing features and enhanced conversions remain off. IQVS does not supply account details, email addresses, case identifiers, form values or sensitive URL parameters to that tag. Sign-in, customer, business, staff and administration workspaces, and case, invoice and payment routes do not run this optional public measurement. You can reject either optional choice, reopen Cookie preferences and withdraw permission; withdrawal reloads the page to stop an optional provider already loaded. Google site verification, Google sign-in, essential account security and the guide's functional cookie are separate from optional measurement. Choosing an external provider's page, including Google sign-in or Stripe payment, also involves that provider's own privacy information and cookies.

We show the notice version and effective date and notify affected users of material changes where appropriate. A new service or materially different use receives the necessary information before it begins.

Task guidance and optional AI assistance

Customer and staff workspaces use English. Type form information in English and use the English or Latin-script spelling shown on the relevant identity or other source record. Form fields are validated instead of being translated automatically; continuing an application step does not depend on an AI translation. Use the supplied date and controlled-choice fields. Uploaded source documents can be in other languages, and their original file names may be retained. Selecting a document's source and target languages is part of the translation service and does not change the workspace language. A staff member may separately use enabled document-assistance tools for their permitted case work, subject to the controls described here; that is not an automatic translation of customer form fields.

When you upload a document, IQVS may use its existing Google Cloud model in the EU to check page readability, orientation, cropping and the apparent document type or side. This is technical upload guidance only; it does not verify authenticity or approve an application. Only your current clean stored file is used. Short technical flags stay with the document and follow its access, restriction and deletion controls. AI availability does not block submission.

English help text explains IQVS services, application steps and file preparation. Form validation and technical file messages work separately from model-generated answers. Samanta opens only when you choose the guide; it does not play audio or open a blocking chat window. A guide answer does not save or change an application, make a payment, send correspondence, approve a document or release a result. You can close the guide and continue using the form.

Samanta provides service and navigation guidance in English. This does not change the languages selected for a document translation. A model request is made when you submit a question, using the existing authorised Google Cloud connection and finite usage budget. Its context contains your question, server-selected IQVS service and price information, and a small number of recent exchanges. In a signed-in application, the guide may also use the service and status of your own permitted application; it does not retrieve uploaded files, names, addresses, identity evidence, private correspondence or another person's case for that guidance. Public website guidance does not retrieve private case contents.

Opening the public guide creates a strictly functional, secure, HttpOnly guide cookie lasting up to 24 hours to keep that browser's temporary conversation separate. It is not advertising or analytics permission. Signed-in guide conversations are bound to the account and separately to each application or the new-request form. Guide questions and answers are encrypted and retained within an absolute 24-hour conversation window; further questions do not extend that window. The guide displays a bounded recent history, and up to three recent completed exchanges may accompany a follow-up question. Clear chat removes saved question and answer text from active history; material already processing may remain until its outcome and provider usage can be reconciled, and minimal usage records may remain for accounting and security. Clearing one conversation does not clear another. Records under a legal hold may be retained but are excluded from active guidance. Access, restriction and reviewed deletion controls apply. These are assistance notes, not messages to staff or decisions about an application. Do not enter passwords, card details, share codes or unrelated personal records. A question whose provider outcome is unconfirmed is not automatically sent again.

Private document analysis is a separately controlled function. Assigned staff select the exact clean documents needed for an authorised case task. The system may propose cited observations, questions, correspondence or translation and assessment drafts. These proposals remain separate from actual source confirmation and released results. Responsible staff accept, edit or reject proposals; a model alone does not decide authenticity, award a qualification or release a report.

The configured model processing location is Google’s EU multi-region, which is separate from the UK. The existing dedicated connection supports the enabled model functions under accepted processor terms and a finite usage allocation; private evidence processing has an additional enablement control. Existing Google Workspace mail and Drive permissions do not authorise this separate model connection. Google Cloud’s applicable data-processing and transfer terms must cover the enabled processing. Submitted evidence is request context, not an IQVS training dataset. We do not authorise Google to use it to train its models. Zero provider retention is not assumed: applicable abuse-monitoring records can be held for up to 90 days and the documented default in-memory caching period is up to 24 hours.

Private proposals, evidence references and accountable review decisions follow the relevant case and working-evidence purposes above. Temporary file copies are removed after use. Native reviewed erasure and approved document retention remove the matching assistant working content within the same subject scope, subject to legal holds; minimum actor, decision and evidence hashes remain proportionate audit proof. You can request access, correction, restriction or a human review through the existing privacy channels. No diagnostic log is used as a repository for question or document content.

Optional service-update emails

Signing up for a service or asking the guide does not subscribe you to advertising. Optional IQVS service updates require a separate unticked choice and confirmation through the email address you provide. We keep the exact permission wording and version, source, date, verification and withdrawal evidence. Contact details are protected in storage. No campaign is sent merely because you opened the guide or supplied a case email address.

You can unsubscribe through a service-update email or contact privacy@iqvs.co.uk. Withdrawal stops optional updates and removes the working contact; a minimum keyed suppression record is retained to respect your choice. Essential account, security, case and invoice messages continue under their existing purposes. Unconfirmed requests expire after 24 hours and are removed within 30 days. Campaigns require approval of the actual message and recipient scope; a model does not approve its own marketing.