Privacy policy

Providence Auto is the trading name of Providence Trading Limited, whose registered head office is at 468 Church Lane, Kingsbury, London NW9 8UA, United Kingdom. We are the controller of the personal data described on this page.

For any privacy question or request, email [email protected], call +44 208 004 3000 or write to us at the address above.

When you send a car inquiry — from a car page, a campaign page or the request form: your name, email address, phone number and dialling code, the country you are importing to, the car you want (make, model, grade, year, mileage, colour, steering side, budget and timing), anything you write about the specification, and when and how you would like us to contact you.

When you send a dealer inquiry — your name, job title, WhatsApp number, email address and country, your dealership's name, website and social media if you give them, the market you want to import from, the cars you list and any notes.

When you open an account — your name, email address and password (stored only in hashed form), and a WhatsApp number if you add one. If you sign in with Google, Facebook or Discord, we receive the name, email address and profile picture that service shares with us. While you are signed in we record your IP address and browser type against the session, to keep it secure.

While your import is under way — shipping details (vessel, container and ports), the documents your import needs, payment records and our team's notes of our conversations with you.

How you reached us — depending on the form, an inquiry stores the page you first landed on and the page you sent it from, the site that referred you, any campaign tags in the link, the advert click identifiers Google and Meta add to a link (and Meta's cookie values described below), and the code from a consultant's referral link if you used one.

How you use the website — Google Tag Manager loads Google Analytics, Google Ads and the Meta pixel, which record the pages you visit and the forms you send, along with technical details such as your browser and device.

UK data protection law requires a lawful basis for each use of your data. These are ours:

When you send an inquiry we tell Meta that it happened, and as it progresses — to a qualified lead, an order or, for a dealer, an opened account — we may tell Meta and Google Ads again. With each notice we send your email address and phone number in hashed form (SHA-256), together with the advert click identifier from your visit. Hashing turns them into a code that Google and Meta match against their own users to tell us which advert worked; they do not receive the readable address or number from us.

You can object to this by emailing [email protected]. You can also limit ad tracking in your Google ad settings and Meta ad preferences.

• Sign-in cookie — set by us to keep you signed in to your account. It ends when you sign out or the session expires.
• Meta cookies (_fbp and _fbc) — set by the Meta pixel to connect your visit to a Meta advert. Our forms read them so the inquiry can be matched to that advert.
• Google cookies — set by Google Analytics and Google Ads to count visits and connect your visit to a Google advert.
• Browser storage — we keep a consultant's referral code for seven days so an inquiry you send later still reaches them, and small preferences such as the market you last chose in a guide. These never leave your browser except as part of an inquiry you send.

You can block or delete cookies in your browser settings. The site works without the Google and Meta cookies; without the sign-in cookie you cannot stay signed in.

• Our own teams in the countries we work in — the consultant handling your inquiry and the colleagues working on your import.
• Service providers acting for us: Railway (website hosting and database), Cloudflare (website delivery and file storage), Resend (email delivery), Google (Tag Manager, Analytics, Google Ads and Google sign-in), Meta (the Meta pixel, conversion reporting, Facebook sign-in and WhatsApp, if you message us there) and Discord (sign-in, only if you choose it).
• Those your import needs: export and inspection authorities in the country your car leaves from, and the shipping line and agents that carry it.
• Authorities where the law requires us to share it.

Our teams work in the UK, Japan, the UAE, India, Thailand, Australia and New Zealand, and several of the providers above are based in the United States, so your data may be accessed or stored outside the UK. When it is, we rely on UK adequacy regulations or on the safeguards UK data protection law provides for international transfers.

• Inquiries that do not go ahead — for as long as we have a business reason to, such as answering a follow-up about the same car.
• Imports, orders and payments — for as long as tax, accounting and customs law requires, which in the UK is at least six years.
• Accounts — until you ask us to close yours.

Under UK data protection law you have the right to:

• Access — ask for a copy of the personal data we hold about you.
• Correction — ask us to fix anything that is wrong or incomplete.
• Erasure — ask us to delete your data where we no longer have a reason to keep it.
• Restriction — ask us to pause using your data while a question is resolved.
• Objection — object to anything we do on the basis of legitimate interests, including advertising measurement.
• Portability — ask for the data you gave us in a machine-readable format, or for us to send it to someone else.

To use any of them, email [email protected]. We reply within one month. If you are unhappy with how we have handled your data, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk or on 0303 123 1113.

The website is served only over encrypted connections, passwords are stored hashed, and inquiries are visible only to staff signed in to our admin system.

When we change this policy we update this page and the date at the top. For anything else, see our about page or email us.