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How Shields Group collects, uses, shares and protects personal information when you visit our website, ask for a quote, become a customer, act as a keyholder, appear on a camera we have installed, or work with us through our partner portal.
Effective 30 October 202636 minute read
Legal
In this document
This Privacy Notice is issued by Shields Group, the business that designs, installs, monitors and maintains intruder alarm, CCTV and video doorbell systems for homes and businesses under the Shields Group name (“Shields Group”, “we”, “us” or “our”).
We are the controller of the personal information described in this notice, except where we explain that another organisation is responsible or that we act on someone else’s behalf. This means we decide why and how the information is used, and we are responsible for using it lawfully.
Alarm monitoring is provided by our own monitoring team working together with an outside monitoring partner that acts on our behalf. Because our work concerns people’s homes, businesses and safety, we treat the information entrusted to us with particular care.
This notice is provided to meet our obligations under the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR), the Data Protection Act 2018 and the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003 (PECR).
This notice applies to personal information about:
Our Cookie Policy gives full details of the cookies on our website, and our Camera Privacy Commitment summarises how we protect privacy when monitoring cameras. Engineers and partners receive further information when they join us.
Our data protection lead oversees how we handle personal information and answers questions about this notice. We have not appointed a statutory Data Protection Officer. You can contact our data protection lead:
Please include your name, the best way to reach you and, if you are a customer, the address of the protected property. Please do not send passwords, alarm codes or payment card details by email.
If you need this notice in another format, such as large print or plain text, please email us and we will help.
| Term | What it means in this notice |
|---|---|
| Personal information | Information that relates to an identified or identifiable living person, including images, voices, location and online identifiers. It means the same as “personal data”. |
| Controller | The person or organisation that decides why and how personal information is used, and is responsible for complying with data protection law. |
| Processor | An organisation that processes personal information on a controller’s behalf and only on its instructions. |
| Special category data | Information the law treats as more sensitive, such as information about health, racial or ethnic origin, religious beliefs or sexual orientation, and biometric data used to identify someone. |
| Criminal offence data | Information about criminal allegations, offences or convictions, which can include footage of a suspected crime and reports made to the police. |
| Order | Your accepted quote and any confirmation we send you, setting out the equipment, services and package you have agreed with us. Our Customer Terms and Conditions explain more. |
| Monitoring team and operators | Our own operators and the operators of our monitoring partner, who receive and respond to alarms. |
| Monitoring partner | The outside company that works with our own monitoring team, on our behalf and on our instructions, to handle alarm alerts. |
| Alarm event | A signal or record generated by your system, for example when a detector or camera is triggered, a device is tampered with or a fault is detected. |
| Verification clip | A short video clip, which may include sound, or a still image, used by the monitoring team to check and respond to an alarm. |
| Camera app | The app provided with your system, which you use to arm and disarm, watch live, receive alerts and talk through your cameras. |
| Cloud service | The cloud storage service provided with your camera app, in which your camera recordings are stored. |
| Partner portal | Our secure online portal, used by engineers, partners and Shields Group to manage jobs and appointments. |
| ICO | The Information Commissioner’s Office, the UK’s independent data protection regulator, or any body that replaces it. |
What we collect depends on your relationship with us. We collect only what we need for the purposes explained in this notice.
| Your relationship with us | Information we collect |
|---|---|
| Website visitor | Technical information such as your IP address, browser, device type and the pages you visit, recorded in our hosting provider’s server logs; your answer in our cookie banner and a random consent reference; the postcode you enter in our postcode checker; and, only if you click “Accept All”, a recording of how you use our pages. |
| Enquirer or quote request | Your name, phone number, email address, postcode and address; the type of property; your answers in our quote form; what you want to protect; the times that suit you; and anything else you choose to tell us. If we survey your property: notes about the property and its weak points, where cameras and sensors should go and, sometimes, photographs. |
| Customer | Contact and billing details, including the people authorised to deal with us for a business customer; your Order, account and payment records; details of your system, where each device is positioned and how it is configured; alarm events, arming and disarming history and system logs; verification clips; service, maintenance and repair history; messages, complaints and requests; your marketing preferences; and any property, access, health or mobility information you choose to give us for safety. |
| Keyholder or emergency contact | Your name and contact details, as given to us by the customer, and records of our contact with you about the customer’s system or an alarm. |
| Person captured by a customer’s camera | Images, video and sound of you, and when and where they were captured. We see these only in the circumstances explained in Alarm, camera and audio data. |
| Engineer or partner | Account and contact details; details of your business, where relevant; the jobs you are given and their outcomes; your location while you are on shift; and messages between us. See Engineers, partners and the partner portal. |
| Anyone who contacts us | Your contact details, your message and our reply, and records of any complaint or request. |
You do not have to give us your details, but without them we cannot arrange a survey, prepare a quote or provide our services.
At a free site survey, our engineer records notes about the property and its weak points, where cameras and sensors should be positioned and, sometimes, photographs, so that we can plan the installation and prepare your written quote.
If we send you a link to follow your engineer’s arrival, it shows their approximate location on the day of your appointment.
We do not ask for special category data as a matter of routine. However, some customers choose to tell us about health or mobility information, about themselves or someone who lives at or uses the property, so that we and the emergency services can respond safely. For example, a customer may tell us that a resident has limited mobility, is hard of hearing, or has a medical condition that responders should know about.
Our lawful basis is the explicit consent of the person concerned (Articles 6(1)(a) and 9(2)(a) of the UK GDPR). In an emergency where someone’s life may be at risk and they cannot give consent, we may share relevant information to protect their vital interests (Articles 6(1)(d) and 9(2)(c)). Where we need it for legal claims, we rely on Article 9(2)(f).
Footage can incidentally reveal sensitive information about a person, such as a health condition or religious belief. We do not use footage to draw conclusions about anyone’s characteristics, and smart detection on our cameras does not identify who anyone is.
Footage and records of a suspected crime, and reports we make to the police, may be criminal offence data. We use them only to verify and respond to alarms, to assist the police, to support an insurance claim at your request, and for legal claims. We do so in line with Article 10 of the UK GDPR and the conditions in Schedule 1 to the Data Protection Act 2018, including those for preventing or detecting unlawful acts and for legal claims.
Your system keeps a record of its activity: alarm events, such as when a detector or camera is triggered or a device is tampered with; arming and disarming history, showing when the system was set and unset and, where your system records it, by which user or device; and technical logs such as power, battery, connection, signal and jamming detection.
We use this information to monitor your system, respond to alarms, fix faults, maintain your equipment, answer your questions and deal with complaints, insurance claims and legal matters. Arming history can show when a property is likely to be empty, so we treat it as confidential and restrict access to the people who need it.
An operator from our monitoring team responds. Depending on what the situation requires, the operator may:
You also receive an alert on your phone.
These rules apply to every operator, in our own monitoring team and at our monitoring partner:
During an installation, service or repair visit you have booked, our engineer may need to view camera images to position and test your cameras.
Our cameras use smart detection to flag movement that is likely to be a person or a vehicle, to help operators focus on events that may need attention. It does not identify who anyone is, and a human operator always decides what action to take. See Automated decision-making.
Recordings are encrypted and stored in the cloud, in the cloud service provided with your camera app, under your own account. How long they are kept depends on that service and on your settings or plan. Some camera models can also record to an SD card inside the camera; those recordings stay on the device, and we have no access to them. We access recorded footage only to verify and respond to an alarm, when you ask us to, for example to check on your property or find a clip, or when the law requires us to.
When we respond to an alarm, we keep alarm events and verification clips for as long as we need them to deal with the incident, usually no more than 31 days, unless they are needed for a police investigation, an insurance claim or a legal matter.
We share clips and alarm records only with the police when a threat is confirmed, with your insurer if you ask us to, or where the law requires us to, for example under a court order. We never sell footage, and we never use it for advertising, marketing or profiling.
| Who | Role | What that means |
|---|---|---|
| You, the customer | Controller of your own footage, where data protection law applies to it | You decide where your cameras point, what they record, how long recordings are kept within your plan, and who you share them with. See Your responsibilities when your cameras capture others. |
| Shields Group | Controller of the information we create and hold to provide our service | Your account, alarm events, arming history, system logs, verification clips, our records of how alarms were handled, and any footage we access to verify an alarm or at your request. |
| Our monitoring partner | Processor, acting on our behalf | Handles alarm alerts with our own monitoring team, on our instructions. It may use your information only to provide that service to us, and the camera access rules above apply to its operators. |
| The provider of your camera app and cloud service | Responsible under its own terms and privacy information for its own purposes | Runs the app and stores your recordings. We tell you which app your system uses when we install it. |
If you are a business customer and need written terms covering our access to your CCTV system, please contact our data protection lead.
This section summarises how we use information when you visit shieldsgroup.co.uk. Our Cookie Policy gives full details of each cookie and similar technology and how to control them.
Our hosting provider, IONOS, records technical information in server logs when you visit, such as your IP address, browser and device type, and the pages you request. These logs keep the site running and secure, and are kept for a short period set by IONOS.
We use a small number of essential cookies and similar technology, such as local storage, which do not need your consent: shieldsCookieConsent, which remembers your answer in our cookie banner, and shieldsConsentId, a random reference saved with it. Sign-in cookies are set only for engineers, partners and staff who sign in to our partner portal or the website’s admin area.
Only if you click “Accept All” do we also use sg_rv, a random visitor number, and sg_rs and sg_rq, which link and hold the parts of one visit, for visit recording. “Reject All” keeps only the essential cookies. You can change your answer at any time from Cookie settings at the bottom of every page.
We do not use advertising cookies, we do not use cookies to build a profile of you for anyone else, and we do not track you across other websites.
Some parts of our pages load from other providers, so your browser sends them your IP address: Google Fonts (typefaces), Unsplash (some photographs), OpenFreeMap and unpkg (our coverage map), postcodes.io (our postcode checker), FormSubmit and Web3Forms (when you send us a form), and jsDelivr (our visit recording software, only if you click “Accept All”). Each handles that information under its own privacy policy.
If you use our postcode checker, the postcode you type is sent to postcodes.io, a free UK postcode lookup service, to find your area. We do not keep it. Forms you send us, such as our quote form, are delivered by FormSubmit or Web3Forms to our email, which is hosted by IONOS and Google.
If, and only if, you click “Accept All” in our cookie banner, we record your visit to shieldsgroup.co.uk so that we can see how people use the site, where they get stuck and what we should improve. If you click “Reject All”, or do not answer, nothing is recorded. Our lawful basis is your consent, which also meets PECR’s rules on storing information on your device.
Recordings are stored on our website hosting with IONOS and can be viewed only by Shields Group’s senior management, through our private, password-protected portal. We do not share them or use them for advertising. They are deleted automatically after the period we set, never more than 90 days. Our heatmaps keep click positions and scroll depth for the same period, without anything that identifies you.
The recording software is open-source software called rrweb. Your browser downloads it from jsDelivr, a public content delivery network, which can see your IP address when it does.
You can withdraw your consent at any time: open Cookie settings and choose “Reject All”. Recording stops straight away and the visitor number is removed from your browser. To have a recording deleted, email contact@shieldsgroup.co.uk with roughly when you visited and which pages you looked at, so that we can find it.
If you are an engineer or partner who works with us, you have an account on our partner portal. We process:
On the day of an appointment, a customer may receive a link showing their engineer’s approximate location, so that they know when to expect them.
We rely on the performance of our contract with you or your business, our legitimate interests in coordinating jobs and keeping customers informed, and our legal obligations, for example to keep financial records. We give engineers and partners more detail when they join.
Data protection law says we must have a lawful basis for each way we use personal information. We rely on:
| What we use it for | Information used | Lawful basis |
|---|---|---|
| Answering your enquiry, arranging your survey and preparing your quote | Contact and property details, quote form answers, survey notes and photographs | Contract. For enquiries on behalf of a business: legitimate interests. |
| Managing your Order and account, including billing and payments | Identity, contact, account and payment records | Contract; legal obligation for accounting and tax records. |
| Installing, maintaining and repairing your system | Contact, property and system details, service history | Contract. |
| Monitoring your system, verifying alarms, and checking your cameras when you ask | Alarm events, arming history, system logs, video and sound | Contract with the customer. For other people captured: legitimate interests, ours and our customer’s, in protecting people and property. |
| Responding to a confirmed threat: speaking through the camera, sounding the siren and strobe, escalating to the police and arranging a security response | Video, sound, alarm events, address and access information | Contract; legitimate interests in protecting people and property and preventing crime; vital interests where life may be at risk. |
| Contacting keyholders and emergency contacts | Their contact details, alarm information | Contract with the customer; legitimate interests. |
| Using health or mobility information to keep people safe | Information you choose to give us | Explicit consent; vital interests in an emergency. |
| Sending service messages, such as appointment confirmations, arrival links and alerts | Contact and appointment details, engineer’s approximate location | Contract; for the engineer’s location, legitimate interests. |
| Sharing clips with your insurer | Verification clips, alarm records | Your request and consent; for other people shown, legitimate interests. |
| Managing engineer and partner accounts, jobs and location while on shift | Account, job and location information | Contract; legitimate interests. |
| Customer service, complaints and data protection requests | Contact details, records, correspondence | Contract; legal obligation; legitimate interests. |
| Running our website and keeping it secure, including server logs, essential cookies and our postcode checker | Technical information, postcodes | Legitimate interests. Essential cookies are strictly necessary, so do not need consent under PECR. |
| Keeping a record of your cookie choice | Consent reference, answer and date | Legal obligation to show consent was given. |
| Recording visits to our website | See Recordings of website visits | Consent. |
| Sending news, security advice and offers | Contact details, marketing preferences | Consent; or legitimate interests where the law allows us to market similar services to existing customers and people who asked for a quote. |
| Reviewing how alarms and service requests were handled, to maintain and improve our service | Alarm and service records, feedback | Legitimate interests. |
| Keeping our systems secure, preventing fraud and recovering money owed | Account, payment and technical information | Legitimate interests; contract. |
| Establishing, exercising or defending legal claims | Any relevant information | Legitimate interests; for sensitive information, Article 9(2)(f) of the UK GDPR and Schedule 1 to the Data Protection Act 2018. |
| Meeting accounting, tax and other legal obligations, and responding to court orders | Financial records and any relevant information | Legal obligation. |
| Reorganising or transferring our business, for example to a new legal entity | Relevant business records | Legitimate interests. |
Where we rely on legitimate interests, we have weighed our interests, and those of others, against your interests, rights and freedoms, and concluded that our use is necessary and proportionate. Our legitimate interests are:
We keep the impact on you low through the camera access rules, short retention of alarm records and restricted access described in this notice.
You can object to our use of your information based on legitimate interests (see Your rights), and ask our data protection lead for more information about how we have balanced these interests.
We may send you news, security advice and offers about our services by email or text message where you have agreed to receive them.
Where the law allows, we may also tell existing customers and people who have asked us for a quote about our own similar services by email or text message, but only if you were given a simple way to opt out when we collected your details, and in every message. If you are a business contact, we may send marketing to your business email address where the law allows.
Use the unsubscribe link in any marketing email, follow the opt-out instructions in any marketing text message, or email contact@shieldsgroup.co.uk. Opting out is free. We keep a record that you have opted out, so that we do not contact you again by mistake.
Opting out does not stop service messages, such as appointment confirmations, engineer arrival links, alarm alerts and messages about your account, which we need to send to provide our service.
We share personal information only where it is necessary for the purposes in this notice, where you have asked us to, or where the law requires it, and we share only what the recipient needs. We never sell it or share it for anyone else’s marketing.
| Recipient | Why we share | Their role |
|---|---|---|
| Our engineers and our own monitoring team | To survey, install, maintain and repair systems and respond to alarms. | Act under our authority |
| Our monitoring partner | To handle alarm alerts with our own monitoring team, on our behalf. | Processor |
| Engineers and partners who work with us | To carry out jobs at your property. They see the details needed for the job. | Act on our behalf and instructions |
| IONOS | Website and email hosting, and storage of website visit recordings. | Processor |
| Email hosting. | Processor | |
| FormSubmit and Web3Forms | Delivering the forms you send on our website to us. | Processor |
| ClickSend | Sending our text messages. | Processor |
| The provider of your camera app and cloud service | Running the app and storing your recordings. | Under its own terms and privacy information |
| Equipment and app providers | Where needed to set up and run your system. | Depends on the service |
| Google Fonts, Unsplash, OpenFreeMap, unpkg, jsDelivr and postcodes.io | Delivering content and postcode lookups on our website. | Independent providers |
| The police, and the fire and ambulance services | Responding to a confirmed threat or emergency, and where the law requires. | Independent controllers |
| Security and guard response providers | Attending your property where a security response is needed. | Receive only what they need |
| Your keyholders and emergency contacts | Telling them about an alarm or a problem with your system. | People you have chosen |
| Your insurer | Supporting a claim, if you ask us to. | Independent controller |
| Our bank and payment providers | Taking and refunding payments. | Independent controllers or processors |
| Our professional advisers | Accountants, solicitors and insurers, for advice, accounts and claims. | Usually independent controllers |
| HMRC, regulators, courts and public authorities | Where the law requires, for example under a court order. | Independent controllers |
| A buyer or successor | If our business is reorganised, transferred to a new legal entity or sold. | New controller, bound by this notice |
| Anyone else you ask us to share with | At your request. | Depends on the recipient |
When we use a processor, data protection law requires, and we require, that it:
Where a provider offers standard data processing terms that meet these requirements, we rely on those terms.
Some of our providers, including Google and our form and text message providers, may store or process personal information outside the UK, and providers whose content loads on our website may receive your IP address outside the UK. If any of our processors, including our monitoring partner, processes personal information outside the UK, the same protections apply. We make sure each transfer is protected by one of these safeguards:
If the provider of your camera app or cloud service stores information outside the UK, it is responsible for explaining this, and its safeguards, in its own privacy information. Our data protection lead can tell you more about the safeguards for a particular transfer.
We keep personal information only for as long as we need it for the purposes in this notice, including to meet legal and accounting obligations and to deal with complaints and claims. When a period ends, we delete the information securely or anonymise it.
| Information | How long we keep it |
|---|---|
| Enquiries and quote requests that do not go ahead, including survey notes and photographs | Up to 12 months after we last hear from you. |
| Customer records, including your Order, account, system details, service history and correspondence | While you are a customer, then 6 years after our agreement ends, in case of questions or claims. |
| Accounts, invoices and tax records | As long as HMRC requires. |
| Alarm events and verification clips held by us | As long as we need them to deal with the incident, usually no more than 31 days, unless they are needed for a police investigation, an insurance claim or a legal matter. |
| Camera recordings in the cloud service | Depends on the cloud service provided with your camera app and on your settings or plan. |
| Keyholder and emergency contact details | While they remain on the customer’s account. Records of our contact with them about an alarm are kept with the customer record. |
| Health or mobility information given for safety | Only while it is relevant to your service, and no longer than your customer record. You can ask us to remove it at any time. |
| Marketing preferences | Until you unsubscribe, then a record that you did. |
| Website visit recordings and heatmap data (only if you clicked “Accept All”) | Deleted automatically after the period we set, never more than 90 days. |
| Your answer in our cookie banner | A record of your answer (a random reference number, the answer and the date) for up to 2 years, so that we can show we asked. |
| Website server logs | A short period set by our hosting provider, for security. |
| Postcodes entered in our postcode checker | Not kept by us. |
| Engineer and partner records, including location while on shift | As long as needed to manage our working relationship and meet legal and accounting obligations. We give engineers and partners more detail when they join. |
| Complaints and data protection requests | As long as needed to resolve the matter and show how we handled it, and with the customer record where it concerns a customer. |
We may keep information for longer where the law requires it, or where it is needed for a police investigation, an insurance claim, a complaint or a legal claim.
We use appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect personal information against unauthorised access, loss, misuse and alteration. They include:
No method of storing or sending information is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee the security of information sent to us over the internet. Please keep your camera app sign-in details, passwords and alarm codes secure, and tell us promptly if you think they have been compromised.
If we have a personal data breach that is likely to result in a risk to people’s rights and freedoms, we will report it to the ICO, where feasible within 72 hours of becoming aware of it. If it is likely to result in a high risk to you, we will tell you without undue delay and explain what you can do to protect yourself.
You have the rights below over your personal information. Some apply only in certain circumstances. To exercise any of them, email our data protection lead at contact@shieldsgroup.co.uk, or write to us.
| Your right | How to exercise it | When limits apply |
|---|---|---|
| Access: to a copy of your personal information and details of how we use it (a subject access request). | Email us with what you want. For footage, give the address, date and approximate time, and describe yourself or send a photograph. | We may withhold or blur information about other people. Exemptions in the Data Protection Act 2018 may apply, for example where disclosure would prejudice the prevention or detection of crime. For recordings in a customer’s cloud service, ask the customer. |
| Rectification: to have inaccurate information corrected and incomplete information completed. | Email us with the correction. | We may need to check accuracy. If we disagree that a record is wrong, we will explain why and can add a note of your view. |
| Erasure: to have your information deleted in certain circumstances, for example where we no longer need it or you have withdrawn consent. | Email us with what you want deleted. | This right is not absolute. We may keep information we need for our contract with you, to meet legal obligations such as tax records, for a police investigation, or for legal claims. |
| Restriction: to limit how we use your information, for example while we check its accuracy or consider an objection. | Email us explaining why. | We may still store it, and use it with your consent, for legal claims, to protect another person’s rights, or for important public interest reasons. |
| Objection: to object to our use of your information based on legitimate interests. | Email us explaining your particular situation. | We may continue if we have compelling legitimate grounds that override your interests, or need the information for legal claims. |
| Objection to direct marketing. | Unsubscribe, use the opt-out instructions in any message, or email us. | None. We will stop. |
| Data portability: to receive information you gave us in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format, or have it sent to another organisation. | Email us with what you want and where it should go. | Applies only to information you provided, processed by automated means on the basis of consent or contract, and where transfer is technically feasible. |
| Withdrawing consent, where we rely on it. | For website recording, choose “Reject All” in Cookie settings. For marketing, unsubscribe. Otherwise, email us. | Does not affect our use of your information before you withdrew it, or on another lawful basis. |
| Automated decisions: not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing with legal or similarly significant effects, without safeguards. | Email us. | We do not make decisions of this kind. See Automated decision-making. |
| Complaint: to complain to us and to the ICO. | See Complaints. | None. |
To protect your information, we may need to confirm your identity before acting on a request, and will ask only for what is reasonable. If someone acts for you, such as a solicitor or relative, we will need evidence of their authority. The time limit for responding starts when we have what we need to confirm your identity.
We will respond without undue delay and within one month. If your request is complex, or you have made several requests, we may extend this by up to two further months; if so, we will tell you within the first month and explain why. If we need more information to identify what you are asking for, the time limit is paused until you reply. We will make reasonable and proportionate searches.
There is normally no fee. If a request is manifestly unfounded or excessive, for example because it repeats an earlier one, we may charge a reasonable fee based on our administrative costs, or refuse to act on it. If we cannot comply with a request in full, we will explain why, unless the law prevents us, and tell you about your right to complain to the ICO and to seek a remedy through the courts.
We do not make any decision based solely on automated processing, including profiling, that produces legal effects concerning you or similarly significantly affects you.
Smart detection on our cameras flags movement that is likely to be a person or a vehicle, to assist our operators. It does not identify who anyone is and does not decide what happens. A human operator always reviews the situation and decides what action to take, including whether to speak through the camera, set off the siren and strobe, or contact the police.
Your answers in our online quote form help us prepare for your survey. They do not lead to any automatic decision about you: your written quote is prepared by us after a survey of your property.
We do not build profiles of website visitors for advertising, and we never use camera footage for profiling.
Our services are for adults, and our website is not aimed at children. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children through our website or forms. If you believe a child has given us personal information, please contact us and we will delete it where appropriate.
Children may be captured by cameras at a customer’s property, as members of the household or as visitors. The camera access rules and other safeguards in this notice apply in full, and we share footage that includes a child only in the circumstances this notice describes. If a customer tells us about a child as part of safety information about the household, we use it only for that purpose.
A child’s data protection rights belong to the child. A parent or guardian can usually exercise them for a young child. Where a child is mature enough to understand their rights, we may respond to the child directly.
Security cameras protect your property, but they can also capture other people. Data protection law, and the ICO’s guidance on using CCTV at home, set out what is expected of you.
If your cameras capture images only within your own boundary, your use of them is generally treated as purely personal or household activity, outside the UK GDPR. If they capture images beyond your boundary, such as the street, a shared path, or a neighbour’s garden or windows, data protection law is likely to apply to that footage and you will be its controller. You should then:
At your survey, our engineers explain the ICO’s guidance and position cameras to keep neighbours’ property out of shot where possible. Where your cameras support privacy masking, you can use it to block out areas you do not need to record.
Tell household members, guests and anyone who works in your home, such as cleaners or carers, where indoor cameras are and whether they can record sound. If you employ people in your home, further responsibilities may apply. Consider switching indoor cameras off in the camera app when they are not needed. Use live view and two-way talk lawfully, and never to harass or intimidate anyone.
Business customers are controllers for their own CCTV, and are responsible for clear signs, a CCTV policy, deciding how long recordings are kept, considering whether a data protection impact assessment is needed, telling staff about monitoring in line with the ICO’s guidance on monitoring workers, and responding to requests about their footage.
If you give us information about anyone else, such as a keyholder, emergency contact, household member or member of staff, please make sure you are entitled to do so, and that they know you have shared it and where to find this notice.
If you have a concern about how we have handled your personal information, please contact our data protection lead first at contact@shieldsgroup.co.uk. We aim to acknowledge your complaint within 2 working days and to respond in full within 10 working days. If we need longer, we will explain why and tell you when to expect our response. Our Complaints Procedure explains our process in more detail.
You also have the right to complain to the ICO, the UK’s data protection regulator, at ico.org.uk. The ICO usually asks people to raise their concern with the organisation first, so we would welcome the chance to put things right.
You may also have the right to seek compensation through the courts if you suffer damage because of a breach of data protection law.
We update this notice when the way we use personal information changes, or when the law or regulatory guidance changes. This version was last updated on 30 October 2026.
If we make a significant change, such as using your information for a new purpose, we will tell customers directly, for example by email, before the change takes effect, and ask for consent where the law requires it.
If our business is transferred to a new legal entity, we will update this notice to identify the new controller and tell customers.
Email our team and we will respond to your query.
