Who We Are
This website, mrautofixer.co.uk, is operated by a professional UK mechanic. If you have any questions about this privacy policy, or want to exercise any of the rights described below, email [email protected] or contact us via the YouTube channel at youtube.com/@MrAutoFixer.
What Data We Collect
You can read every guide, look up any fault code, and use every tool on this site without giving us anything at all. We only hold personal data in five situations, each of which you choose to start: joining the email list, creating an account, adding a vehicle to your garage, asking the AI Mechanic a question, or checking a car with the MOT read on this site or in our Forewarned iPhone app. Each is explained below. Separately, the third-party services listed further down may collect data about your visit.
Accounts and Saved Diagnoses
You can create an account to save your AI Mechanic diagnoses. This is entirely optional, and the AI Mechanic works fully without one. If you do sign in, this is everything we hold:
- Your email address. That is the only personal detail we ask for. We never ask for your name, address, phone number, or payment details.
- Your saved diagnoses: the questions you asked while signed in and the answers you got back.
- A session record that keeps you signed in, which expires on its own after 30 days, or 14 days without use.
- Any vehicles you choose to add to your garage, covered in its own section below.
There are no passwords. Signing in works by emailing you a single-use link that expires after 15 minutes, so there is no password database here to be stolen. The sign-in link is stored only as a one-way hash, and so is your session, meaning neither can be read back out and reused by anyone.
Signing in does not subscribe you to anything. The account system and the email newsletter are completely separate. Creating an account never adds you to the mailing list, and sign-in emails are sent as one-off transactional messages.
The lawful basis for holding this is your consent, given when you create the account, and you can withdraw it at any time by deleting the account.
Your Garage and MOT Reminders
If you have an account, you can add up to five vehicles to your garage. This is optional and separate from having an account at all. For each vehicle we hold:
- The registration number you entered, and the details we read back from it: make, model, year, engine size, fuel, colour, MOT status and expiry date, and the vehicle's MOT test history including any advisories.
- An optional nickname and mileage, if you choose to add them.
- Whether you asked for MOT reminders on that vehicle, and a record of the reminders we have actually sent.
The vehicle details come from the DVSA MOT History service, a public UK government API, looked up using the registration you entered. We do not receive or hold the registered keeper's name or address, and the DVSA is not told who is asking.
Reminders are off unless you switch them on. Adding a vehicle sends you nothing. If you tick the reminder box, we email you about that vehicle only: once around 30 days before its MOT expires, once about a week before, and once if it lapses. Nothing else is ever sent to that address because of a vehicle. Every reminder tells you how to turn them off, and you can switch them off per vehicle on the garage page at any time, or remove the vehicle to stop completely. The lawful basis is your consent, given when you tick the box.
Please only add vehicles you have a legitimate reason to look up, such as your own car or one you are buying. A registration is personal data about the vehicle's keeper, and the same information is publicly available from the DVSA's own MOT history service.
The MOT Read and the Forewarned App
The MOT read on this site, our Forewarned iPhone app and the Forewarned web app at forewarned.co.uk/check all do the same job: you give us a registration, and we read that car's MOT history and tell you what it shows. None of them needs an account. When you run a check, this is what happens:
- The registration you type is sent to our server, which looks it up with the DVSA MOT History service, the same public UK government API described above. We do not receive the registered keeper's name or address, and the DVSA is not told who is asking.
- The report is kept for 12 months, then deleted automatically. It holds the registration, the vehicle details and MOT history we read back, and our findings. We keep it so the report can be opened again and shared by link while you are looking for a car. A report you run while signed in to an account is kept with that account instead, and is deleted with it.
- The summary paragraph at the top of a report is written by our AI provider. It is given the car's make, model, year and fuel type, and our findings about its MOT record. It is never given the registration.
- Daily limits keep the service free and fair. We count each day's checks against your IP address, and in the Forewarned app and web app also against a random identifier Forewarned creates the first time it is opened. That identifier is not your name, your Apple ID or your device's identity, and it is used for nothing else. These counts delete themselves after about 25 hours.
- Usage figures, such as how many checks were run and which verdicts they reached, are recorded without the registration.
- Our server runs on Cloudflare, which processes each request, including your IP address, to deliver the service and protect it from attack.
In the Forewarned app there is no account, no advertising and no tracking. The app does not use your camera. Your list of checks and your shortlist are kept on your iPhone, not sent to us, and you can remove them in the app's Settings or by deleting the app.
The Forewarned web app works the same way in your browser, with no account, no advertising, no tracking and no cookies. It is for Android phones and computers, and it does not use your camera. Your list of checks, your shortlist and the random identifier are kept in your browser's storage on your own device, because the web app needs them to work, and they are not sent to us. You can remove them in the web app's Settings, or by clearing your browser's data for forewarned.co.uk. So that it still opens without a connection, your browser also keeps a copy of the web app's own files, which holds nothing about you or the cars you check.
The lawful basis for this processing is our legitimate interest in providing the check you asked for and keeping the service secure. If you would like a report deleted before the 12 months are up, email us the registration and we will remove it. As with the garage, please only check vehicles you have a legitimate reason to look up, such as a car you are thinking of buying.
How Long We Keep It, and How to Delete It
Saved diagnoses and garage vehicles are kept for as long as your account is active. If an account goes 24 months without being used, it is deleted automatically along with everything saved to it. MOT reads are kept for 12 months, as described in the section above, unless you ran them while signed in, in which case they are kept with your account.
From your account page and garage page you can, at any time and without asking us:
- Download everything we hold about you as a JSON file, including your vehicles, every reminder we have sent, and any MOT reads saved to your account.
- Delete a single saved diagnosis. This one is a soft delete: the diagnosis disappears from your account immediately, but the record stays in our database until the account itself is deleted. Your data export will show it, labelled as deleted, because we are still holding it.
- Remove a vehicle from your garage. Unlike a diagnosis, this is a genuine deletion straight away: the registration, its details and its reminder history are removed from our database, and no further reminders can be sent for it.
- Delete your entire account. This is a genuine deletion, not a hidden flag. Your email address, every vehicle, every saved diagnosis, every MOT read saved to the account, and every session are removed from our database and cannot be recovered, and we email you to confirm it has happened.
AI Mechanic Questions
When the AI Mechanic cannot answer a question well, we log the question itself so we know which guides to write next. This happens whether or not you are signed in, and the log is not linked to your account or your identity. Please do not type registration numbers, your name, or other personal details into it, because the question is stored exactly as you wrote it. Questions are sent to our AI provider to generate an answer, and we keep anonymous records of how much each answer cost to produce.
Email Newsletter
If you sign up for the free checklist or the newsletter, your email address is stored by Brevo, our email provider, and used to send you the guides you asked for. Every email carries an unsubscribe link, and unsubscribing removes you from the list. This is separate from any account you may have.
Third-Party Services
The following services are used on this site and may collect data about your visit:
Google Analytics
We use Google Analytics (ID: G-1LHP4CG7NT) to understand how visitors use our site. This collects anonymised data including pages visited, time on site, device type, and approximate location. This data is processed by Google and is subject to Google's Privacy Policy. You can opt out of Google Analytics tracking using the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on.
Google AdSense
We display advertisements via Google AdSense (Publisher ID: ca-pub-3762173800113866). Google may use cookies to serve ads based on your prior visits to this or other websites. UK and EEA visitors will be shown a consent notice before personalised ads are served, in accordance with Google's EU user consent policy. You can opt out of personalised advertising at any time by visiting Google's Ads Settings.
Amazon Associates
Some guide pages contain affiliate links to products on Amazon. These are identified by links containing the tracking ID mrautofixer-21. If you click an affiliate link and make a purchase, we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. Amazon may use cookies in connection with these links. This is subject to Amazon's Privacy Notice.
Payhip
Our shop uses Payhip (payhip.com) to process digital product sales. When you purchase a product, your payment and order data is handled by Payhip. Please refer to Payhip's Privacy Policy for details of how they handle your data.
YouTube Embeds
Guide pages include embedded YouTube videos. When you interact with these videos, YouTube (owned by Google) may set cookies. This is subject to Google's Privacy Policy.
Cookies
We set exactly one first-party cookie, and only if you sign in. It is called maf_session, it holds nothing but a random session identifier, and its only job is to keep you signed in. It is not used for tracking or advertising, it is never read by any third party, and signing out or deleting your account removes it. If you never sign in, we set no first-party cookies at all.
Other cookies may be set by the third-party services listed above (Google Analytics, Google AdSense, Amazon, Payhip, YouTube). You can control cookies through your browser settings. Blocking cookies may affect the functionality of some features on this site, and blocking the session cookie will stop you being able to sign in.
Changes to This Policy
We may update this privacy policy from time to time. Any changes will be posted on this page with an updated date. Continued use of the site after changes are posted constitutes your acceptance of those changes.