Privacy Notice
Niche Clever | 4 November 2026
1. Who operates this website
Niche Clever is the professional practice and website of Jacob Bettany, trading as Niche Clever. Jacob Bettany is the data controller for the personal information described in this notice. This notice concerns nicheclever.co.uk, including Ask Niche Clever, and not every separately operated client website or product installation.
For questions about privacy or to exercise your rights, email jacob@www.nicheclever.co.uk.
2. What information we handle
You can read public material without creating an account. We do not offer public visitor registration, comments or a website contact form. If you email us, we receive your email address and the contents of your message.
When you visit, our website and its hosting or security services may process technical information such as network (IP) addresses, requests, dates, browser details and diagnostic records. We use these for delivery, troubleshooting and security.
When you use Ask Niche Clever, we process the question you submit, the answer returned and technical details needed to handle the request. The service can retain a conversation identifier, questions and answers, relevant timestamps, configuration/version information, short-lived conversation context and cached answers. These are separate from optional visitor analytics.
If you choose Ask usage in Privacy settings, the additional Niche Clever Interactive Premium recording feature can use a random browser identifier to link questions from the same browser and record the question, network address, browser/user-agent details, time and related request information. Ask works without this additional recording. This optional feature does not operate as the site’s abuse-prevention mechanism.
If you choose Analytics, Google Analytics may use cookies and similar technologies to measure use of the website. We do not run advertising or remarketing on this website.
Some published writing, project pages and linked material may identify authors, collaborators or other people. Contact us if you have an accuracy or privacy concern about published material.
3. Why we use this information
| Purpose | Information involved | Legal basis |
|---|---|---|
| Deliver pages and respond to enquiries | Technical requests and correspondence | Legitimate interests in operating the website and responding to enquiries; where an enquiry relates to a contract, taking steps requested before entering that contract may apply |
| Answer a question through Ask Niche Clever | Question, answer, conversation and provider request | Legitimate interests in supplying the service the visitor has requested |
| Maintain the quality and continuity of Ask | Limited conversation history, follow-up context and candidate/approved answers | Legitimate interests in maintaining and improving an accurate, useful service, subject to necessity and minimisation |
| Protect the website and Ask from misuse | Input checks, pseudonymous allowance counts, server and login security information | Legitimate interests in security, prevention of abuse and availability |
| Optional additional Ask usage measurement | Premium visitor record and ncip_vid | Consent |
| Optional website measurement | Google Analytics and its cookies | Consent |
| Publish attributed work and respond to accuracy concerns | Publicly sourced and authorised project or editorial information | Legitimate interests in explaining our work and publishing relevant material, balanced against individuals’ rights |
We balance these legitimate interests against the rights and interests of people whose information is affected. Consent can be withdrawn through Privacy settings where that control applies. Withdrawing optional tracking consent does not erase information that was previously processed lawfully or stop essential server-side operations; you can contact us about your rights.
4. Ask Niche Clever and OpenAI
Ask Niche Clever is an automated question-and-answer facility intended to help visitors explore selected Niche Clever projects and published material. Its answers may be mistaken, incomplete or out of date; please verify important information independently.
When a fresh answer is needed, our server sends a request to OpenAI. The request includes instructions for the service, your current question and access to search selected material in an OpenAI-hosted vector store. If follow-up context is enabled, earlier questions and answers in the same conversation are included. A previously saved answer may sometimes be returned instead of making a new OpenAI request.
The inspected Niche Clever Interactive integration does not add your IP address, browser identifier, cookies or browser user-agent string to that OpenAI request. However, text you choose to put in a question can itself contain personal information. OpenAI processes material under the terms and data controls applicable to the API account; this website does not promise that OpenAI immediately deletes every request or response.
Do not submit sensitive personal information about yourself or anybody else, including information about health, children, criminal matters, private relationships, passwords, payment details or identity documents. Do not include unnecessary information that identifies another person. If such information is nevertheless submitted, it may already have reached OpenAI and may be present in local history, context or cache records. Contact us to raise a concern or request deletion where possible.
5. Security and prevention of misuse
Ask checks the format of incoming questions and applies limits to protect the service from excessive or hostile requests. To apply daily limits, Core derives a keyed pseudonymous code from the network address of a request and stores counts against it. That rate-limit record does not contain the original address or the question, but it may link activity from the same address over time. Network addresses may also appear in hosting and login security logs.
These controls operate on the server and do not require the optional ncip_vid visitor cookie. Declining Analytics or Ask usage does not disable security protections. We may assess credible reports of misuse and take proportionate steps to protect the service, including limiting access. We do not claim to have automatic detection of every kind of harassment or an operational cross-conversation incident-tracking system.
6. How long information is kept
We seek to retain information only while needed for the purpose for which it was collected. Different kinds of information have different retention arrangements:
- Ask conversation history: we apply a 90-day retention setting, after which records are scheduled for deletion.
- Additional Ask usage records: where enabled and consented to, the retention setting is 365 days, after which records are scheduled for deletion.
- Follow-up conversation context: temporary information used for continuity is held for up to one hour.
- Pending answer-cache candidates: we review candidates under a 30-day review rule; this is not a promise that every candidate is deleted at 30 days. Approved cached answers remain available until removed following administrative review.
- Rate-limit counters: stored as daily-period pseudonymous counts. Historical count records may outlast the day to which the limit applies. We keep these under review as part of service security and maintenance and remove them when no longer needed.
- Hosting, login-security logs and backups: their actual periods depend on the relevant systems and provider arrangements. We will use the minimum periods appropriate for security, recovery and applicable obligations. A restored backup can temporarily reintroduce records that had been removed from the active database.
- Email correspondence: retained while needed to deal with the enquiry and any related business or legal obligation.
- Google Analytics: the account currently shows a two-month event-data retention setting, 14 months for user data, and resetting user retention on new activity. Those Google account controls are different from the lifespan of cookies in your browser and do not govern all aggregated reports.
7. Cookies and choices
Our Cookie and Storage Notice describes the technologies used by the site. A strictly necessary preference cookie remembers the choice you make. Optional Analytics and Ask usage functions are subject to the choices you make in Privacy settings. You can reject or withdraw optional consent without losing the basic Ask function. Device-storage choices do not automatically turn off the ordinary server-side processing described above.
Optional tracking is intended to run only when a valid choice permits it. The Privacy settings control remains available for changing your choice.
8. Who receives information
OpenAI processes questions, service instructions and retrieved source material for fresh Ask responses. Google may receive website-measurement information when Analytics is permitted. The website’s hosting, backup and security providers may process technical data needed to operate and protect it. Your email reaches the providers used for ordinary email delivery and storage.
These organisations may process information outside the UK. We assess the relevant contractual terms and safeguards for international transfers where these are required. We do not sell visitor information to advertisers or use an advertising programme on this site.
9. Your rights
Under UK data protection law, you may have rights to information, access, correction, erasure, restriction, objection, data portability in applicable cases and withdrawal of consent. Some rights depend on the circumstances and legal basis.
Email jacob@www.nicheclever.co.uk with your request. For an anonymous Ask interaction, we may need enough information to locate the relevant record without disclosing another person’s information. Avoid sending unnecessary identification documents. We will respond within applicable legal timescales and explain any lawful reason why a request cannot be met in full.
10. Changes
We will update this notice when the website’s information practices, technologies or suppliers materially change. The date at the top identifies this version of the notice.