Privacy policy

When you use MOT Wise, we send the number plate you enter to the DVSA MOT History API and the DVLA Vehicle Enquiry Service. We don't ask for your name or email, and there's no sign-up. The main piece of personal data involved is the number plate you type in. Under UK law a number plate can count as personal data, because it can be linked to a vehicle's registered keeper. The sections below set out what we do with it, what we store, and for how long.

MOT history and DVLA vehicle data are fetched when you search, from UK government services. We keep the answer in memory for up to 24 hours, so a second look is quicker and we ask the government services less often.

When you search for a vehicle, we record information about the search on our server: the vehicle's make, model, body type, fuel type and age, the risk rating we gave it, when the search was made, which part of the site it came from, how long it took, and whether it worked. We also note which of our stock sentences the report used. Alongside that we store two forms of the number plate. One is scrambled one way, so it can't be turned back into the plate (we use it to count unique vehicles). The other shows only the first three characters (we use it on our internal tools, so a moderator can recognise a search without seeing the full plate). We don't keep your internet address, browser details, or any account information here.

This data is kept for up to 90 days and helps us understand which vehicles and features are most used. Our legal reason is legitimate interests (see below).

We use your internet address to limit how often any one visitor can search (30 checks a minute and 300 a day), which keeps the service available for everyone. These counts are held in our server's memory only, never written to disk, and cleared at midnight, UK time. Our web server also keeps a short visit log that shows only the first part of each internet address. It is overwritten within days.

If you tap “Use my location” on the MOT stations page, your browser asks your permission first. It then sends your position, rounded to about 1 km, to our server to find stations near you. We use it only for that search and don't store it. It appears in the page address, so it may be kept in your own browser history.

If you turn on “Remember the cars and stations I look up”, your browser keeps the last few cars you checked and stations you searched for, so you can go back to them. It's off until you turn it on. The list stays on this device and is never sent to us. Turning it off, beside your recent checks or on the cookies page, deletes it straight away. See our cookie policy for the details.

We keep improving the plain-English reports MOT Wise writes. When one of our moderators marks a sentence as wrong, misleading, or worth keeping, we record the sentence together with the number plate of the vehicle it was written about. That lets us see the exact report the sentence appeared in. We remove the plate from each record when the review ends, and after 12 months at the latest. We don't share these records outside MOT Wise. Our legal reason is legitimate interests: making the reports more accurate.

If you tell us a report or record is wrong, we save a copy of the report as it was shown, including the number plate, and show a short “being checked” note on that report while we look into it. We keep the copy for one year after we close the matter, because that's how long someone can bring a legal claim about something published, and then delete it. Our legal reason is legitimate interests: correcting mistakes, and being able to show what we published.

We don't use an analytics service to count visits. If we start, we'll name the company on this page and ask you first, before anything is collected.

• DVSA (MOT History API) and DVLA (Vehicle Enquiry Service) receive the plate you type, so they can send back that vehicle's records. Both are UK government bodies.
• Hetzner Online GmbH hosts our website on servers in Germany. As our hosting provider, it stores and processes data for us.
• Postcodes.io (run by Ideal Postcodes Ltd) receives a postcode you type on the MOT stations page, so we can find nearby stations.
• OpenStreetMap Foundation: when a station map loads, your browser fetches map images directly from its servers, which see your internet address. See its privacy policy.

Germany is covered by the UK's data adequacy rules, so no extra safeguards are needed for this transfer.

• Legitimate interests (UK GDPR Article 6(1)(f)). We use this for: looking up a vehicle's records when you type its plate and showing you the report; keeping the answer in memory for up to 24 hours; the 90-day search log; protecting the site from overuse; holding DVSA's national MOT dataset to work out statistics; answering messages; and keeping a copy of a report someone tells us is wrong. The interest, ours and yours, is letting people check a vehicle's public MOT record, whether they own it or are thinking of getting it. We've weighed this against the interests of vehicle keepers; ask us for a copy of that assessment.
• Consent (Article 6(1)(a)). We use this only for remembering the cars and stations you've checked on this device, which is off until you turn it on. You can turn it off at any time from “Cookie preferences” at the bottom of every page.

When someone types a plate, we get that vehicle's MOT history from DVSA and its basic details (make, colour, tax and MOT status) from DVLA, and show them to that person. We never receive or show the keeper's name or address, and we don't show where tests were done. A plate can still count as personal data, because it can be linked to a keeper. We keep the answer in memory for up to 24 hours, and a scrambled form of the plate for 90 days. We also hold a copy of DVSA's national MOT dataset, which is organised by plate, to work out statistics about makes and models; we only publish figures for groups with at least 50 MOT tests, and we keep the current copy and one earlier copy. We can't contact keepers directly, because we don't know who they are, so this page is how we tell you. If an MOT record is wrong, the test centre or DVSA corrects it: gov.uk/getting-an-mot/correcting-mot-certificate-mistakes.

MOT Wise gives each vehicle a risk rating (from Very Low to Very High) and cost ranges, worked out by fixed rules from MOT records and other public data, with a small adjustment from a statistical model built from past MOT results. They help you decide what to check. They aren't decisions about you and have no legal effect on you. To find out how a rating was reached, email hello@motwise.co.uk.

Under UK GDPR you have the right to: ask for a copy of the personal data we hold about you (Article 15); ask us to correct it (Article 16); ask us to delete it (Article 17); ask us to limit how we use it (Article 18); receive it in a form you can take elsewhere (Article 20); object to how we use it (Article 21, see below); and withdraw consent at any time where we rely on it (Article 7(3)).

To use any of these rights, email hello@motwise.co.uk. We'll reply within one month.

You can also complain to the Information Commission (still known as the ICO): ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint.

Where we rely on legitimate interests, you can object at any time. This includes a vehicle keeper who objects to us showing their vehicle's report. Email hello@motwise.co.uk with the plate and your reasons. We may ask for the reference number from the vehicle's log book (V5C) to check you're the keeper; we delete it once we've checked. We'll reply within one month. We'll stop unless we have strong reasons that outweigh yours: for example, DVSA shows the same record to anyone with the plate, and hiding one vehicle's history could stop a buyer seeing safety problems. If we say no, we'll explain why, and you can complain to the Information Commission (still known as the ICO).

MOT Wise is run by MOTWISE LTD, a company registered in England and Wales (company number 17236380). Registered office: 66 Paul Street, London, EC2A 4NA, United Kingdom. MOTWISE LTD is the controller: the company that decides how and why the personal data on this page is used, and that answers for the rights listed above.

MOTWISE LTD is registered with the Information Commission (still known as the ICO), registration reference ZC157604.

For anything about this policy or your data, email hello@motwise.co.uk. Other ways to reach us are on our contact page.