Privacy Policy

This policy applies to:

• Visitors to our public website and pricing pages.
• Organisers — the venues, planners, promoters and companies who hold a VenueWS account, and the team members they invite into it.
• Guests — people an organiser invites to an event, who receive an invitation, open a guest page, RSVP, or are scanned at a door.
• Door staff using a paired scanner device or a signed-in phone.

It does not cover the separate websites of our customers, the other products of DMS Workspace which have their own notices, or any third-party site we link to.

For organiser and visitor information we decide what is collected and why. In the language of privacy law we are the business or controller of it, and the rights in section 12 apply to us directly.

For guest information we are a service provider and processor acting for the organiser. They chose to invite you, they entered or imported your details, and they decide how long to keep them. We process that information only to provide VenueWS to them, under a written contract that forbids us from using it for our own purposes — our Data Processing Addendum sets out exactly what we may and may not do with it.

If you are a guest and want your details corrected or deleted, ask the organiser who invited you: they can do it themselves in the product in seconds, and they are the only party that can decide the question. Write to us at privacy@dmsworkspace.com if you cannot identify or reach them, and we will pass the request on and help; but we will not delete an organiser’s records on the instruction of someone who is not that organiser, except where the law requires it of us directly.

The table lists every category we collect, the statutory category it corresponds to under the California Consumer Privacy Act, where it comes from, why we have it, and who it goes to. “Sub-processors” means the vendors on our sub-processor list.

Organisers can also write a free-text note against a contact and flag them VIP or blocked. We do not read those notes and have no control over what is typed into them; our Terms require customers not to put sensitive categories of information there, and section 4 explains why.

We do not collect sensitive personal information as California defines it, and we do not collect the equivalent categories under other state laws. The product has no field for a government identifier, a financial account number, precise geolocation, racial or ethnic origin, religious beliefs, union membership, health data, biometric data, sexual orientation, or the contents of private messages. We do not use or disclose sensitive personal information for the purposes that would give you a right to limit it, because we do not collect it at all.

Two practical notes. Passwords are held by our authentication server as salted hashes and we never see them. Card numbers go to PayPal directly and never reach us. And because free-text fields can hold anything, our Terms prohibit customers from entering sensitive categories — including health information, government identifiers and payment card numbers — into guest notes or any other field. If you are an organiser: do not record a guest’s allergy, medical need or accessibility requirement in VenueWS. It is the wrong tool and it creates obligations for you that you probably do not want.

• To provide VenueWS: issuing invitations, sending them, taking RSVPs, admitting guests at the door, and reporting attendance to the organiser.
• To authenticate users and keep accounts, workspaces and devices separate from one another.
• To bill, to apply plan limits, and to collect payment.
• To support you when you ask for help, and to investigate a problem you report.
• To keep the service secure: rate limiting, abuse detection, audit logging, and investigating incidents.
• To improve the product in aggregate — how often a feature is used, where people abandon a flow — without analysing any individual guest’s behaviour.
• To send service messages: receipts, security notices, plan changes and the occasional product announcement to account holders.
• To comply with law, enforce our Terms, and establish or defend legal claims.

We do not use guest data to train machine-learning models, to build advertising audiences, or for anything other than providing the service to the organiser who entered it.

We keep the cookie list short enough to state in full:

Analytics runs on our public marketing pages and the sign-up page. It does not run on a guest’s invitation page, on the scanner, or anywhere inside the signed-in app — those addresses contain invitation codes and record identifiers that must not leave our systems. Google’s advertising features and Google Signals are turned off, so the data is not used to build advertising profiles and is not shared with advertising partners. IP addresses are anonymised before processing.

Global Privacy Control. If your browser or extension sends a GPC signal, we do not load analytics at all — nothing is requested from Google and no analytics cookie is set. We honour the signal for every visitor, not only those in states that require it. Because we do not sell or share personal information in the first place, there is no “Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information” link to operate; the GPC behaviour above is what such a link would do.

Do Not Track. Browsers send a DNT header inconsistently and there is no agreed standard for honouring it, so we do not respond to DNT. We respond to GPC, which is the signal with an agreed meaning.

When an organiser issues an invitation, we send it on their behalf — by email always, and by WhatsApp when the venue has enabled it and the guest gave a phone number. Those are transactional messages requested by the organiser, and the organiser is responsible for having the right to contact that person. See the Terms, which put that obligation in writing.

Account holders get service email from us — receipts, security alerts, plan changes — which we send because they are necessary to the service and which cannot be unsubscribed from while the account is open. Any marketing email we send carries an unsubscribe link that works, and we honour it promptly. We do not buy mailing lists and we do not send marketing to guests, ever.

WhatsApp Business Platform

VenueWS sends WhatsApp messages through the WhatsApp Business Platform, operated by Meta Platforms, Inc. and WhatsApp LLC (“Meta”). An organiser connects their own WhatsApp Business number using Meta’s sign-up flow: they sign in with Meta, choose their business portfolio and number, and grant VenueWS permission to send from it. We never see their Meta password.

What we receive from Meta (“Platform Data”):

• About the organiser’s account: the WhatsApp Business Account ID, phone number ID, business portfolio ID, display phone number, verified business name and its review status, quality rating, messaging limit, and the approval status of our message templates.
• An access token that lets VenueWS send from that number. We store it encrypted and delete it as soon as the number is disconnected.
• For each message we send: whether it was sent, delivered, read or failed.
• Replies from guests, which we read automatically for one purpose only: to recognise a request to stop (“STOP”, “BAJA”) or an RSVP confirmation (“YES”, “SÍ”). We do not keep the text of other replies.

What we send to Meta: the guest’s phone number and name, and the event name, venue, date and invitation link inside a pre-approved message template.

How we use it. Only to deliver the invitations, reminders and access passes the organiser asked us to send, to show the organiser whether each one arrived, to record RSVPs, and to keep the connection working. We do not use Platform Data for advertising, we do not sell it or share it with anyone else, we do not build profiles from it, we do not use it to train AI models, and we do not combine one organiser’s data with another’s. The only exception is an opt-out: a guest who replies STOP is not messaged by VenueWS again, by any organiser.

Meta processes these messages under its own terms and privacy policy, available at whatsapp.com/legal. An organiser can disconnect their number at any time in VenueWS or in Meta Business Suite. How to delete this data is explained on our data deletion page.

We disclose personal information to a small number of vendors who process it for us under contract, each seeing only what its job needs. The current list, what each does and where it operates, is on our sub-processor page, which we keep current. In summary: hosting and database storage; email delivery; WhatsApp delivery when a venue enables it; payment processing; analytics on public pages; wallet passes when a guest chooses to add one; and the guest-list sources an organiser chooses to connect.

We also disclose personal information:

• To the organiser whose workspace the data belongs to, and to the team members and door staff they have authorised.
• When the law requires it — a subpoena, a court order, or a valid request from a public authority. We review each request, object to over-broad ones, and notify the affected customer unless we are prohibited from doing so or there is a risk to someone’s safety.
• To establish, exercise or defend legal claims, and to our auditors, insurers and professional advisers under duties of confidence.
• In a merger, acquisition, financing or sale of assets — in which case the data moves with the business, the acquirer is bound by this policy until it is changed, and we will notify account holders before any material change takes effect.
• With your direction or consent, for anything not described above.

We do not sell personal information and have not done so in the preceding twelve months. We do not share personal information for cross-context behavioural advertising, and we do not process it for targeted advertising or profiling that produces legal or similarly significant effects. We do not sell or share the personal information of anyone under 16, because we do not sell or share anybody’s.

Guest records belong to the organiser and remain until the organiser deletes them or closes their workspace — their event records are theirs to keep. Everything else runs on the schedule below.

Where we are required to keep something for longer — an open legal hold, an unresolved dispute, a regulatory obligation — we keep only what that obligation needs and delete the rest.

• Encryption in transit (TLS) everywhere, and encryption at rest for the database and backups.
• Every record is scoped to one workspace and every query is constrained by it, so one customer’s data cannot be returned to another.
• An invitation QR code is a signed token verified server-side, revocable instantly, and never a bare identifier that could be guessed.
• Passwords are held by our authentication server as salted hashes; we never see them. Admin access to production is limited to staff who need it and is logged.
• A strict Content Security Policy, HTTP security headers, rate limiting on sensitive endpoints, and an audit trail of administrative actions.
• Backups taken regularly and restore-tested.

A fuller description is in the DPA. No system is perfectly secure and we do not claim otherwise. If a breach affects your personal information we will notify you and, where required, the relevant authorities, without undue delay and within the time the applicable law sets.

Depending on where you live, you have some or all of these rights. We extend them to everyone in the United States rather than sorting requests by state:

• Know and access — what we collect about you, why, where it came from, who we disclosed it to, and a copy in a portable format.
• Delete — subject to exceptions the law allows, such as completing a transaction, security, and legal obligations.
• Correct — inaccurate personal information.
• Portability — a machine-readable copy. Organisers can export their own data from the product at any time without asking.
• Opt out of sale, sharing, targeted advertising and significant automated decisions. We do none of these, so there is nothing to opt out of.
• Limit the use of sensitive personal information. We do not collect any.
• Non-discrimination — we will not deny service, charge a different price, or give a lower quality of service because you used a right.

How to make a request. Email privacy@dmsworkspace.com with what you want and the email address or phone number your records are under. Step-by-step deletion instructions, including for WhatsApp, are on our data deletion page. We will acknowledge within 10 business days and respond within 45 days, extendable once by a further 45 days if the request is complex, in which case we will tell you why before the first period ends.

Verification. We will ask you to confirm details we already hold, or to reply from the address on the account, before we act — acting on an unverified deletion request would itself be a breach. We use what you send only to verify you, then delete it. An authorised agent may act for you with written permission signed by you, and we may still ask you to confirm it directly.

Guest requests. As explained in section 2, a request about guest data goes to the organiser who invited you. Send it to us if you cannot reach them and we will help you get to the right party.

This section supplements the rest for California residents under the CCPA as amended by the CPRA. The categories of personal information we have collected in the preceding twelve months, their sources, business purposes and the categories of recipients, are the table in section 3. The categories we have disclosed for a business purpose in that period are the same, to the recipient categories named there. We have not sold or shared any personal information in that period, and we do not collect sensitive personal information.

Our retention periods are in section 10. Your CCPA rights — know, access, delete, correct, portability, opt out, limit, and non-discrimination — and how to exercise them, including through an authorised agent, are in section 12.

Shine the Light (Cal. Civ. Code § 1798.83). We do not disclose personal information to third parties for their own direct marketing purposes. You may request confirmation of this once a year at privacy@dmsworkspace.com.

Minors. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 13, and we do not sell or share the personal information of anyone under 16.

Notice at collection. This policy, linked from every page that collects personal information, is our notice at collection; no category is collected for a purpose beyond those stated here without a new notice.

Residents of Virginia, Colorado, Connecticut, Utah, Texas, Oregon, Montana, Delaware, Iowa, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Tennessee, Minnesota, Maryland, Indiana, Kentucky, Rhode Island and other states with comprehensive privacy laws have rights equivalent to those in section 12, exercised the same way. We do not sell personal data, process it for targeted advertising, or profile anyone in furtherance of decisions producing legal or similarly significant effects, so no consent or opt-out is required for those activities.

Appeals. If we decline a request, we will tell you why. You may appeal by replying to that decision with the word “appeal” or writing to privacy@dmsworkspace.com; a different person will review it and we will respond within 45 days with our reasoning. If we deny the appeal we will give you a way to contact your state Attorney General.

Nevada. Nevada residents may submit a verified request not to have covered information sold. We do not sell covered information, but you may still submit a request to privacy@dmsworkspace.com.

Washington and Nevada health privacy. We do not collect consumer health data as those laws define it, and organisers are contractually prohibited from entering it.

VenueWS is a business product, sold to and used by adults, and is not directed to children. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 13, and no part of the product asks a guest their age. An organiser may invite a guest of any age to their own event and is responsible for having the right to hold those details. If you believe a child’s information is in our systems in a way it should not be, write to privacy@dmsworkspace.com and we will delete it promptly.

VenueWS makes no automated decision that produces a legal or similarly significant effect about anybody. Admitting a guest at a door is determined by rules the organiser set — whether the invitation is valid, in its time window, not already used, and within capacity — and a human at the door can always override the result. We do not profile guests, score them, or infer anything about them.

VenueWS is operated from the United States and personal information is stored there. Our sub-processors may process limited data elsewhere; the sub-processor page says where. If you use VenueWS from outside the United States, you are sending your information to the United States, where privacy laws differ from those of your country. We do not currently offer EU Standard Contractual Clauses or a UK IDTA; customers who need them should contact us before subscribing.

We update this page when the product changes, and the date at the top changes with it. When a change materially affects how we use personal information we will notify account holders by email at least 14 days before it takes effect, and will keep the previous version available on request.

DMS Workspace LLC, Florida, United States. Privacy requests: privacy@dmsworkspace.com. Everything else: hello@dmsworkspace.com. We will provide this policy in an alternative accessible format on request.

See also our Terms of Service, our Data Processing Addendum and our sub-processor list.