Cookies and local storage

LetBuddy sets no advertising cookies, no analytics cookies, and nothing that follows you to other websites. There is no consent banner on this site because there is nothing here to consent to: the only things we store on your device are the ones needed to run the service you asked for, which the UK's Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations specifically exempt.

We would rather say that on a page you can read than say nothing at all and leave you to guess.

What we store, and why

• sb-…-auth-token

  Cookie, set by Supabase (our authentication provider)

  Keeps you signed in as you move between pages. Without it every click would ask for your password again.

  Kept for: Until you sign out, or the session expires.

• hmrc_oauth_state, hmrc_oauth_verifier

  Cookie

  Set only if you choose to connect your HMRC account, and only for the length of that connection. They prove the request that comes back from HMRC is the same one you started, which is what stops someone else's authorisation being swapped into your session.

  Kept for: Ten minutes, then deleted automatically.

• letbuddy_hmrc_device_id

  Local storage

  A random identifier for the browser you file from. HMRC's Making Tax Digital rules require submitting software to send a device identifier with each submission as an anti-fraud measure. It is a random value — it carries nothing about you and is not shared with anyone but HMRC.

  Kept for: Until you clear your browser storage.

What we don't do

No Google Analytics. No advertising or remarketing pixels. No social media trackers. No selling or sharing of browsing behaviour. Our error monitoring (Sentry) records crashes so we can fix them, and it does not use cookies or session recording to do it.

We do count visits, and it is worth being precise about how. LetBuddy uses Vercel Web Analytics, which records that a page was viewed — the page, the referring site, a broad location, and the kind of device. It sets no cookies, writes nothing to your browser's storage, and gives you no identifier, so there is nothing that could follow you between visits or to another site. What we can see is how many people read a page, not who they were or what they did next.

That is a deliberate choice rather than an oversight. Analytics that sets cookies would have required a consent banner on every page of this site, and we would rather have the numbers without asking you to dismiss something first. Vercel already runs the servers this site is served from, so it is not a new company receiving your data.

Turning them off

Every browser lets you block or delete cookies and clear local storage, usually under Settings → Privacy. You are welcome to — but because everything above is doing a job you asked it to do, blocking it means you will not be able to stay signed in, and the HMRC connection will not complete. Nothing else about the service depends on it.

Questions

The fuller picture of what we do with your data, who processes it, and what rights you have is in our privacy policy. Anything this page doesn't answer, ask hello@letbuddy.co.uk and a person at LETBUDDY LTD will reply.