How I handle your information

Design by Raf · Last updated 19 September 2026

If you've had an email from me and want to know how I got your details, what I'm keeping, or how to make it stop — that's all below, in plain English.

If you just want me to stop emailing

Reply to any email with "stop" and I'll remove you straight away, across every address I send from. You don't need to explain yourself, and I won't email again to check.

You can also email privacy@rafmitchell.com.

Who I am

I'm Raf Mitchell. I run Design by Raf, a one-person design studio in Cardiff making branding and promotional design for businesses. I'm the data controller for anything described on this page — there's no one else behind it.

Contact: privacy@rafmitchell.com

What I hold about you

Your details: Your name, your job title, and your work email address.
Your business: Its name, website, location, social accounts, publicly listed activity, and its registered company details from Companies House.
My own notes: Publicly available research about the business, so that an email to you isn't generic.
Contact records: Whether I've emailed you, whether you replied, and whether you asked me to stop.

I don't hold anything about your personal life, and I don't want to. No payment details, no ID documents, nothing sensitive.

Where I got it

Not from you — which is exactly why this page exists and why the first email tells you so.

Your business's own website, listings and social accounts
Business contact data providers
Companies House, which is a public register
Press coverage and public industry sources

Why I'm allowed to email you

My lawful basis is legitimate interests — running and growing a small design studio by contacting the people who'd actually decide whether to hire one.

I only write to named people in marketing, management or ownership roles at registered companies, about design work directly relevant to their job. I don't email sole traders or ordinary partnerships, and I don't email personal addresses.

I've weighed that against your privacy: it's a small number of emails, to a work address, about something within your remit, and you can stop it with one word. If you'd like a copy of that assessment, ask and I'll send it.

What I use it for

Contacting you by email about design services for your business, and keeping a record of that contact so I don't approach you twice or after you've asked me not to. That's all of it.

Choosing which businesses to contact is partly automated — a system checks public information against a set of criteria. It doesn't profile you personally, and nothing it decides has any legal effect on you or affects you in any significant way.

I don't sell your details or share them for anyone else's marketing.

How long I keep it

Your name and email — 24 months: Then deleted. In this industry people move on within a couple of years, so anything older is usually wrong anyway.
The business information — kept: What the business is, where it is, and what it does. That's information about a business, not about a person.
If you opt out — kept permanently: Just your email address, on a suppression list. It's the only way to guarantee you're never contacted again. It's never used for anything else.

Who else sees it

Only the services I need to send an email and keep records:

My email provider, for the mailboxes themselves
An email sending platform, which handles the sending and shows me replies
The business data providers described above

Some are based outside the UK, including in the United States. Where that's the case, transfers are covered by the safeguards in UK data protection law, such as approved contractual clauses.

Your rights

You can ask me to:

Tell you what I hold about you, and give you a copy
Correct anything that's wrong
Delete it
Stop using it, or restrict what I do with it
Object to it entirely — because my basis is legitimate interests, you can object at any time, and for direct marketing I have to stop. No justification needed.

Email privacy@rafmitchell.com and I'll deal with it within a month. It's free.

If you're not happy with how I've handled it

Tell me first and I'll try to put it right. You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk or on 0303 123 1113.

Changes to this page

If I change how any of this works, I'll update this page and change the date at the top.