privacy

How Scout handles data

Last updated 2026-07 · Scout, United Kingdom

Scout analyses public company records to indicate which businesses may be approaching a transition. This page explains what we hold, why, and what you can ask us to do about it. Plain English on purpose.

Who we are

Scout is operated from the United Kingdom and is the data controller for the personal data described below. For any privacy question, or to exercise the rights set out here, write to us via our contact form.

Data about you, as a visitor

• Your email address, if you create an account, request a brief, or subscribe to the field report. Used to sign you in, to reply to you, and to send the report you asked for. Never sold, never shared with third parties for their own marketing.
• Anything you tell us in a brief — your name, firm, and the thesis you describe. Used to prepare what you asked for and to continue the conversation.
• A session cookie when you're signed in. Strictly necessary for the service to work, so it does not require consent.
• Analytics, only if you accept it. Until you do, our analytics runs without cookies. You can decline and the site works exactly the same.

We keep account data for as long as you have an account, and enquiry correspondence for up to three years so we can pick a conversation back up. Ask us and we'll delete it sooner.

Data about companies and the people who control them

Scout is built on public records — principally the UK statutory registers, which contain company filings and the details of persons with significant control, alongside other public sources such as insolvency notices and public contract awards. Some of this is personal data: an owner's name, their month and year of birth, their role, and which companies they are connected to.

Our lawful basis for processing it is legitimate interests — enabling professional users to identify businesses that may be approaching a sale, refinancing or succession. That interest is balanced against the individuals concerned as follows:

• The source records are public by design: company control is a matter of public record precisely so that it can be examined.
• Publicly visible pages are anonymised and banded, with a minimum cohort size, so no filter can single out an individual business or person.
• We never make, and never enable, an automated decision that has a legal or similarly significant effect on anyone. Our scores are prompts for a human to look closer.
• We do not publish contact details, and Scout is not a contact-scraping tool.
• Figures are shown with their provenance so anything can be checked against the source.

Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

Your rights

Whether you are a visitor or a person named in the public records we process, you can ask us to give you a copy of your data, correct it, delete it, restrict how we use it, or object to our processing it at all — including on legitimate-interest grounds. Tell us and we will act on it; where the source record is wrong, we will also point you to the registry that holds it, since we cannot amend someone else's register.

Email you receive from us

Sign-in links are sent because you asked to sign in. The field report is sent only if you subscribed to it, and every issue carries a one-click unsubscribe that takes effect immediately. If we contact you about your enquiry, you can tell us to stop at any point and we will.

Sharing and location

We do not sell personal data. We use a small number of processors to run the service — hosting, email delivery, and analytics if you consented — under contract and only on our instructions. Where a processor operates outside the UK, transfers rely on the UK's approved safeguards.

Complaints

If you think we've handled your data badly, please tell us first — we would rather fix it. You also have the right to complain to the UK Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk.