Privacy policy
Last updated 16 October 2026
Who we are
Second Wind is a trading name of Highfold Group Ltd (company number 17521208, registered in England and Wales). Registered office: Office 21848, 182-184 High Street North, East Ham, London, E6 2JA. The "controller" of the personal data described here ("we", "us") is Highfold Group Ltd.
Questions about your data? Email hello@secondwindcv.co.uk. We read every message and reply by email as soon as we can.
What we collect
- Details you give us - what you type into a letter or the CV builder (your name, contact details, employer, dates, job history and anything else you choose to write), kept on your private desk; your email address, if you ask us to email your desk link or you buy something; purchase records: what you bought, the amount and when (card details are handled by Stripe, never by us); anonymous counts of how often the calculators are used (no answers are stored); Match Check results: your score, the job title, the advert's key terms and the checks we ran on your CV, and your email address if you ask for the full report (we don't keep your CV or the advert itself).
- Payment details - handled entirely by Stripe. We never see or store your full card number.
- Messages - what you send us by email or through our contact forms.
- Basic usage data - we count page views without cookies. To count unique visitors we use a one-way, daily-changing hash of your IP address and browser; we can't use it to identify you and it resets every day. For each visit we keep the pages viewed, the kind of device, the country (worked out from your IP address, which isn't stored) and whether the visit ended in a purchase, chat or message, for 90 days, without cookies.
- Security logs - like most websites, our web server and mail server keep logs of each request: your IP address, the date and time, the page or service requested and your browser details (and, for emails, the sender and recipient addresses). We use them only to keep our services secure and working.
- Live chat - the messages you type into our chat assistant and any details you choose to send through it (see Live chat below).
Why we use it, and our lawful basis
| Purpose | Lawful basis (UK GDPR Art. 6) |
|---|---|
| Providing what you've ordered or signed up for, and talking to you about it | Contract |
| Replying to your messages and enquiries | Legitimate interests (or steps you ask us to take before a contract) |
| Taking payment, keeping accounts and tax records | Legal obligation |
| Keeping our services secure and preventing fraud and abuse | Legitimate interests |
| Improving our website using cookieless statistics | Legitimate interests |
| Sending you news and offers (only if you opted in - unsubscribe any time) | Consent |
Who we share it with
We never sell your data. We share it only with the suppliers below, who help us run Second Wind. Suppliers that act for us may use it only on our instructions, under contracts that require them to protect it. Where a supplier also uses data for its own purposes (as the table says), its own privacy policy covers that use.
| Supplier | What for |
|---|---|
| Contabo GmbH (servers in United Kingdom) | hosting: the server that runs this website and stores its database and files, and our own mail server on it, which sends and receives our emails |
| Stripe Payments UK Ltd | card payments and billing (Stripe is also an independent controller for fraud prevention and its own legal obligations) |
| Abacus.AI, Inc. (USA) | AI suggestions in the CV builder: only the text of the one box you ask about, with the job titles it relates to, and only when you press "Suggest improvements" |
| Abacus.AI, Inc. (USA) | AI processing of live chat messages to write the assistant's replies |
Some of these suppliers may process data outside the UK (for example in the USA). Where they do, the transfer is protected by UK adequacy regulations (including the UK–US data bridge), or the ICO's International Data Transfer Agreement or the UK Addendum to the EU standard contractual clauses.
How long we keep it
- Your desk (letters and CV): deleted 90 days after you last use it if you haven't bought anything, or 12 months after you last use it if you have. You can delete it yourself at any time from the desk.
- Match Check results: deleted after 30 days.
- Purchase records (reference, what you bought, amount, date and email address): 6 years, for our accounts (UK tax rules).
- Enquiries that don't lead anywhere: 2 years.
- Emails to and from our hello@secondwindcv.co.uk mailbox: deleted from our mail server 2 years after they arrive.
- Our log of the emails we send you (address, subject and whether it was delivered): 1 year.
- Security logs on our servers: 14 days.
- Cookieless page-view and visitor counts: about 13 months (400 days).
- Backups: anything we delete stays in our nightly backups for up to 14 days, then it's gone.
- Live chat conversations: 180 days after the last message; details you send through the chat, with the recent part of the conversation, are kept like other enquiries.
Live chat
Our website has a chat assistant. It is an automated AI assistant, not a person: it answers questions using Second Wind's own web pages and information we've written for it, and it can make mistakes. If it can't help, it can take your details so our team can reply to you by email.
- What we keep - the messages you type, the assistant's replies, the page you started the chat on, when it happened, and a one-way hash of your IP address that changes every day (only to stop one connection using up the assistant - we don't use it to identify you). Please don't type card details or sensitive personal information into the chat; card numbers are removed automatically, from the chat and from details you send.
- AI processing - to write its replies, your messages and the relevant parts of our website are sent to Abacus.AI, Inc. in the United States, which acts as our processor under a contract that requires it to protect your data. The transfer is protected by UK adequacy regulations (including the UK–US data bridge), or the ICO's International Data Transfer Agreement or the UK Addendum to the EU standard contractual clauses.
- Details you send us - if you choose to leave your details (for example your name, email address and phone number) they reach the Second Wind team in the same way as a message through our contact form, together with the recent part of your conversation (so the team has the context), we email you to confirm we've got them, and we reply by email. Nobody from the team joins the chat itself.
- Why (lawful basis) - legitimate interests (answering questions about our redundancy tools, letters and CV builder), and steps you ask us to take before entering into a contract when you ask us to get back to you.
- How long - chat conversations are deleted 180 days after the last message. If you send your details, they and the recent part of the conversation that goes with them are kept like other enquiries (2 years).
- On your device - once you start a chat, your browser keeps the conversation (in local storage, not a cookie) so it stays open as you move between pages. It's cleared the next time you visit after 24 hours without using it, or straight away when you choose "Start a new chat" or clear this site's data. Once you've sent your details, your browser no longer keeps them.
Your desk, your letters and your CV
When you start a letter or the CV builder, we create a private desk for you with its own link. There's no account or password: anyone with the link can open the desk, so keep it to yourself. Your browser remembers the desk you started (in our session cookie), and you can ask us to email you the link.
- What's on it: only what you type, used only to build your documents. No person at Second Wind reads your letters or your CV in the normal course of things; we'd only look if you ask us to help with a problem.
- Health and other sensitive details: you never have to tell us about your health, pregnancy, religion or anything similarly sensitive (UK GDPR calls this "special category" data). If you choose to include it in a letter (for example, to ask for the priority you have during pregnancy or family leave), it's used only to build that letter, at your request, and deleted with your desk.
- AI suggestions: when you press "Suggest improvements" on a box in the CV builder, the text of that one box (plus the job title you're aiming for) goes to our AI provider, Abacus.AI, to suggest new wording, and the suggestion comes back to you. Nothing else on your desk is sent, and we don't keep the text of your request. Don't press it on a box that holds anything you'd rather not share.
- How long: an unpaid desk is deleted 90 days after you last use it; a desk with a purchase 12 months after you last use it. You can delete your desk yourself at any time, straight away.
Desk pages never load advertising or analytics tags, and they're hidden from search engines.
Your rights
You can ask us for a copy of your data, to correct it, to delete it, to restrict or object to how we use it, or to receive it in a portable format. You can withdraw consent at any time. Email hello@secondwindcv.co.uk for anything else - we'll respond within one month.
If you're unhappy with how we've handled your data, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk or on 0303 123 1113. We'd appreciate the chance to put things right first.
Changes
If we make important changes we'll update the date above and, where appropriate, tell you by email.