Privacy Notice

Connection Intelligence System (CIS), run by Inspiring Connections and Rethinking Work

Last updated: 5 October 2026

This notice explains what personal data we hold, why, who sees it, how long we keep it and how to stop us or ask us to delete it. It is written for the people we hold professional details about, for members and clients who use CIS, and for anyone who has reached it from an email we sent, a call, or the SCOUT browser extension.

If you only want to be left alone, jump to Stop us contacting you. It takes one click or one reply.

Who is responsible for your data

The data controller is John Bennett, trading as Inspiring Connections and Rethinking Work. That is one person, so there is no data protection officer: you deal with John directly.

Email: john@rethinkingwork.life

Where a client or member brings their own contacts into their own private workspace in CIS, that client or member decides what happens to those contacts, and we handle them only on their instructions. If you are not sure whose data you are asking about, ask us and we will tell you.

What CIS is

CIS is a tool that helps people make useful professional introductions. It keeps a record of business contacts and the relationships between them, so that the right people can be introduced to each other for a good reason. A person reviews every introduction and every message before it goes. Nothing about you is decided by a machine alone.

What we hold about you

For a professional contact we may hold:

• your name, job title, employer and sector
• your business email address, and sometimes a business telephone number
• your LinkedIn profile address and publicly visible professional history
• notes and summaries from conversations and meetings we have had with you or about you
• a record of when we contacted you, how, and what happened (for example a reply, a bounce or an unsubscribe)
• information about your employer from public sources such as Companies House and company websites

We do not set out to collect sensitive information such as health, ethnicity, political opinions, religion, trade union membership, sexual orientation, genetic or biometric data, or criminal records. If a fact like that appears in a note, a call transcript or a web page we read, our systems remove it before the text is saved.

We do not read the content of your private messages or your inbox.

Where it comes from

• Public professional sources, such as your LinkedIn profile, your employer's website and Companies House.
• Network exports that a member of CIS chooses to contribute from their own LinkedIn connections, and John Bennett's own network.
• Conversations and meetings with us.
• Data services that supply verified business email addresses, telephone numbers and company details.
• You, when you reply to us, fill in a form or use the assistant on our website.

Why we use it, and our legal basis

• Understanding professional relationships and finding relevant introductions. Our basis is

legitimate interests (UK GDPR Article 6(1)(f)). We have weighed this against your rights and kept to business information, low volumes and an easy way out.

• Contacting you about a relevant professional opportunity. Our basis is legitimate interests.

We write to business addresses of people at companies. We do not cold-email sole traders or personal addresses, because the electronic marketing rules (PECR) treat them differently.

• Introductions between members. We only introduce two people when both sides have agreed, and

we ask you before we share your details with anyone.

• Members who contribute their own network, voice notes or call recordings. Our basis is that

member's consent, which we ask for directly and can be withdrawn at any time.

• Remembering that you objected, unsubscribed or asked us to delete your data. Our basis is

legal obligation and legitimate interests. We have to remember your request in order to honour it.

You can object to any use that rests on legitimate interests. See your rights below.

Why you may have received an email from us

If we have emailed you, it is because we think your work may be relevant to something we do: leadership development, coaching and introductions through Inspiring Connections and Rethinking Work. It is not a mass mailing. We hold only business details about you, taken from the sources above, and we keep the volume low. Every email includes a one-click unsubscribe. If you reply "stop", or tell us on a call, we treat that exactly the same way.

Stop us contacting you

Any of these works, and each is recorded straight away:

• Click unsubscribe in any email from us.
• Reply to any email with the word "stop".
• Tell us on a call.
• Email john@rethinkingwork.life.

An opt-out applies across everything we do, not just to one message or one member. Before we send anything, and before we add anyone to CIS, we check our list of people who have opted out. If the check cannot be completed, we do not send.

To keep honouring your request, we keep a minimal record: an email address, a LinkedIn address or an internal reference, the reason and the date. We keep it indefinitely, because an opt-out that expires is not an opt-out. We use it for nothing else.

Who we share data with

We do not sell personal data. We use a small number of service providers who process data for us under contract, in these groups:

• Hosting and database: Supabase and Vercel.
• AI services, used to draft, summarise and sort information: Anthropic, Google and Perplexity.
• Email, calendar and meeting tools: Google Workspace, Microsoft 365 (for members who connect it), Resend, Instantly, Calendly and Fellow.
• Telephony and transcription: CloudTalk, Twilio and Deepgram.
• Data and verification services: Apollo, Apify, Firecrawl, Companies House and email verification services.
• Other operations: Slack for internal alerts and Short.io for link shortening.

We share a person's details with another member only for an introduction that both sides have agreed to. Members' own contacts are never pooled into a shared list or matched against each other.

Moving data outside the UK

Some of these providers store or process data outside the UK, mainly in the United States. Where they do, we rely on the UK's adequacy arrangements, including the UK-US data bridge for certified providers, or on standard contractual clauses with the UK addendum.

How long we keep data

• Opt-out records: kept indefinitely, for the reason given above.
• Records of emails we have sent: 24 months, then deleted.
• Contact records: kept while they are useful to the relationships we are working on. If we have

had no contact with someone for 36 months, we review the record and delete or anonymise it.

• Call recordings and transcripts: 24 months from the call, unless we are still in active

contact with you. We only record or transcribe a call where everyone on it has been told.

• If you ask us to delete your data: we remove or anonymise your record and the notes,

transcripts and relationship links held about you, and keep only the opt-out record described above.

Your rights

You can ask us to:

• tell you what we hold about you and give you a copy
• correct anything that is wrong
• delete your data
• restrict how we use it
• stop using it for direct marketing (this right is absolute)
• object to any use that rests on legitimate interests
• give you your data in a portable format

Email john@rethinkingwork.life. We aim to reply within one calendar month, and we may ask you to confirm who you are. At the moment a person carries out access, correction and deletion requests by hand, rather than through a self-service button. We will confirm to you when it is done.

If you are unhappy with how we have handled your data, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk or on 0303 123 1113. We would like the chance to put things right first.

How we protect data

Data is held in one access-controlled database. Each client's workspace is kept separate by controls in the database itself. Passwords and keys are kept in managed secret stores, never in our code. Every contact with a person is logged. Access to tools that handle your requests needs sign-in and is denied if the check cannot be made.

SCOUT browser extension

SCOUT is a Chrome extension used by CIS operators. It is not for the general public and does nothing useful without a CIS account. This section is the privacy policy for the SCOUT listing in the Chrome Web Store.

What SCOUT reads.

• LinkedIn pages you open: profiles, company pages, posts and message threads. SCOUT reads a page

only while you are looking at it, so its side panel can show what CIS already knows and, when you choose to capture, file the details. It does not browse on its own, does not automate LinkedIn actions and does not collect profiles in bulk.

• Gmail compose windows that SCOUT itself opens for you. It fills in the draft and notes that you

pressed Send, with the subject line only. It does not read your inbox or any other email.

• The CIS web pages you use, so that the contact on screen stays in step.

What SCOUT stores and where it goes.

• What you capture (names, job titles, employers, emails, phone numbers, notes, call and email

outcomes) is sent only to your own CIS workspace, held on Supabase in the EU. Access needs your CIS sign-in. That is the only place captured data goes.

• Your sign-in session and preferences are kept in the browser's own extension storage on your

device.

Optional connections. Only if you paste in your own keys, SCOUT will also contact CloudTalk to start calls you ask for, Instantly for sequences you run, and Slack to notify your own workspace. With no keys, those services are never contacted.

What SCOUT does not do. It does not sell data, show adverts, use analytics trackers or record your browsing history, and it acts on no website on your behalf: you click, it logs.

Permissions. SCOUT asks the browser for storage (settings and sign-in), tabs (to open and reuse LinkedIn, CIS and Gmail tabs when you act), cookies (to read the CIS workspace you have selected), alarms (to check now and then whether a newer version of SCOUT is available) and identity (to sign you in). It is limited to LinkedIn, Gmail, CIS and the optional services above.

Retention and your rights. Captured data is kept as set out in this notice and your rights are the same. If someone you captured asks not to be contacted, CIS records that and stops all outreach.

Changes to this notice

If what we do with data changes in a way that matters to you, we will update this notice and its date before the change takes effect.

Questions about any of this: john@rethinkingwork.life.