In short
We use your answers only to calculate your result. Everything you enter is erased 30 minutes after you stop using the site. There are no advertising, tracking or analytics cookies, and we never sell or share your data for marketing.
A report you buy is erased the same way, 30 minutes after you stop using the site; you get it as a PDF attached to your confirmation email.
SolarCheckers is operated from the European Union and follows EU law, in particular the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
For visitors in the United Kingdom, we also follow the UK GDPR.
Who is responsible
SolarCheckers, Măldărești, Vâlcea, 247370, Romania. Email: contact@solarcheckers.com. SolarCheckers is responsible for your data (the “controller” under the GDPR).
What we use, and why
- The address you type, and the location and roof data found for it: to find the sunshine data and your roof.
- Your electricity use and your other answers: to calculate your result.
- Technical data our server records for every request (IP address, time, page requested, browser type; never what you type): to keep the site secure and stop abuse.
- If you use the contact form: your email address, your name if you give it, and your message, to answer you.
- If you buy the full report: your email address, which Stripe passes to us, to send your order confirmation and the link to your report.
Legal basis: for your answers and the address, providing the check you ask for (Article 6(1)(b) GDPR); for the technical data, our legitimate interest in keeping the site secure and available (Article 6(1)(f) GDPR).
For contact messages, the legal basis is our legitimate interest in answering you (Article 6(1)(f) GDPR).
For a purchase, the legal basis is the contract (Article 6(1)(b) GDPR); for payment records, our legal obligation to keep accounts (Article 6(1)(c) GDPR).
Who else receives data
- Google (Google Ireland Limited, with Google LLC in the United States): the text you type in the address field, the address you submit and its location, to suggest addresses, find the location and get the roof's shape. Google acts under its own responsibility; see the Google Privacy Policy and the Google Maps/Google Earth Additional Terms of Service.
- Google again, directly from your browser, when you open the map to confirm your home: your internet address and the part of the map you view. If you choose “Use my current location”, your browser asks your permission first and the position it gives is used to place the marker; it is handled like an address you submit.
- The official installer register of your country, when we can ask it (France): your location rounded to about 1 km, to find installers near you.
- The European Commission's Joint Research Centre (PVGIS): only the location's coordinates, to fetch its sunshine data. No name or address.
- Our hosting provider, hosting.fr, whose server in Germany stores the data until it is erased.
- Our email provider, Apple (iCloud Mail), which delivers contact messages to our mailbox and stores them there. Mail to our address, contact-form messages included, is also forwarded to a Gmail mailbox (Google) that we use to keep track of it, so Google also receives and stores contact messages.
- Apple (iCloud Mail) also sends your order confirmation, with the report attached.
- Stripe (Stripe Payments Europe Limited, Ireland), which takes the payment: your email address, card details and billing country. Stripe acts under its own responsibility for payment data; see Stripe's privacy policy. Your card details never reach our server.
Nobody else receives your data. Your browser never contacts Google or PVGIS directly: our server does.
Transfers outside the EU
Google may process data in the United States. Google LLC is certified under the EU–US Data Privacy Framework, and Google's terms include the EU's standard contractual clauses.
Stripe may process payment data in the United States; Stripe, Inc. is certified under the EU–US Data Privacy Framework.
Apple and Google may store contact messages in the United States; Apple Inc. and Google LLC are both certified under the EU–US Data Privacy Framework. Apart from that, we don't transfer data outside the EU.
Installer suggestions in the full report
The full report suggests a few installers near you. When you run the check and your address is in France, our server asks that country's official installer register for installers in your area. The register receives only your location rounded to about 1 km, never your address, your name or anything else about you. Our server then reads the public websites of the nearest of those companies, to see what they offer and where they work; nothing about you is sent to them.
The report also links to a Google Maps search for solar installers near your town. Google receives that search only if you open the link.
The installers found are kept only inside your report and erased with it, 30 minutes after your visit. We keep no register database.
The suggestions show business details from the register and from the companies' own websites (company name, town, website). Some installers are sole traders, so those details can be personal data. We show them because we have a legitimate interest in helping you find installers (Article 6(1)(f) GDPR), and we never show email addresses, certificate numbers, tax numbers or the names of individual people.
If you are an installer and object to appearing in these suggestions, write to us through the contact form.
How long we keep it
- Your answers, address, roof data, result and the weather data fetched for your location: erased 30 minutes after your last request. A clean-up runs every 5 minutes.
- Server logs: 14 days, then deleted automatically.
- A PDF you download stays on your device; we keep no copy.
- We make no backups of your data.
- Installer suggestions: kept only inside your report and erased with it.
- Contact messages: not stored on our server. In our mailbox we keep them only as long as needed to answer you, then delete them, unless the law requires us to keep one longer (for example, for a legal claim).
- A report you buy: erased 30 minutes after your last request, like the rest. The PDF goes to your email address; we don't store the address on our server.
- If the email with your report can't be sent at once, we keep the report and try again for up to 24 hours, then erase it. Your email address is read from Stripe at each try, not stored on our server.
- Payment records (date, amount and Stripe's reference; no name, address or card details): kept as long as tax law requires.
Cookies
We use two small cookies. Both are needed for what you ask the site to do, and both are deleted when you close your browser, so we don't need your consent for them:
- “session”: keeps the form secure by checking that a submission really comes from our page;
- “lang”: remembers the language you chose during your visit.
No advertising, analytics or tracking cookies, and no cookies from other companies.
Your rights
You can ask to see, correct or delete your data, to restrict or object to its use, and to receive it in a portable form. Write to contact@solarcheckers.com. Because we erase everything 30 minutes after your visit, we usually hold nothing about you by the time you write.
You can also use the contact form.
You can also complain to the data protection authority of the EU country where you live or work, or where you think the problem happened (list of EU data protection authorities).
In the United Kingdom: the Information Commission (formerly the ICO).
Automated calculation
Your result is calculated automatically. It is information for you and has no legal or similar effect on you.
Do you have to give us this data?
No. But without an address and your electricity use we can't calculate a result.