Privacy

The statistics pages

To learn which pages and tools are useful, each page sends one anonymous count to our own server when it opens, and another when you use an on-page tool (the car checker, a comparison link, a data download, "copy citation", "report an error"). A count records only the event name, the kind of page and the car model or brand the page is about, the page template version, the data release and the time. It records no IP address, no user agent, no identifier of you or your browser and never a vehicle registration. Counts are stored privately with our hosting provider, Vercel, and used only in aggregate. This own counter sets no cookies.

Google Analytics

Production pages also load Google Analytics 4 through Google Tag Manager. It measures visits, scrolling, outbound links and use of the on-page tools — for example that the car checker was run, never what was entered. Google Analytics sets first-party cookies (_ga, _ga_*) to tell visits apart and processes your IP address to estimate your country. Google acts as our processor, and the data is kept for 14 months. A vehicle registration is never sent to Google: it is not in any address, form contents are not collected, and our tag removes registration-like parameters from addresses before anything is sent.

We use no advertising cookies: for visitors in the UK, the EEA and Switzerland, advertising storage and ad personalisation are switched off. You can block Google Analytics with a content blocker or withGoogle's opt-out add-on.

Microsoft Clarity

Production pages also load Microsoft Clarity through Google Tag Manager. It records how pages are used — clicks, scrolling and page views — to build heatmaps and session replays. Text on the page and anything you type, including a registration in the car checker, is masked in your browser before anything is sent. Clarity may set first-party cookies (_clck, _clsk). Microsoft acts as our processor and keeps recordings for 30 days. You can block Clarity with a content blocker.

If you use "report an error", we store only which figure you flagged and the kind of problem you chose from a list; there is no free-text box, so nothing you type is kept.

Standard web-server logs (IP address, user agent, requested URL) are processed by Vercel for security and operations and are not used for profiling. The published statistics contain no vehicle-level or personal data — see the methodology for suppression rules.

The car checker

Who is responsible. MOT Risk Index is the controller for registrations entered in thecar checker. Contact: privacy@motriskindex.co.uk.

What we process and why. When you enter a registration, we send it to the DVSA MOT History API to retrieve that vehicle's MOT history, and compare the result with statistics for the same model and age. A registration can identify a vehicle's keeper, so we treat it as personal data for the moment we hold it.

Legal basis. Legitimate interests (UK GDPR Article 6(1)(f)): helping you judge a vehicle you are considering, using free public data. We keep the processing to the minimum that purpose needs.

What we keep. The registration is never put in a web address, never written to logs or analytics, and never linked to you. It is held only in the memory of the server that answers your request, under a one-way keyed code, and is deleted within 15 minutes. Separately we keep usage counts that contain no registration and no identifier of you: the hour of the check, the page it started from, the vehicle model and age band, and whether the check succeeded. No cookie or browser identifier is used. To stop the checker being abused, the server also counts requests per network address for one minute; the address is held only in memory as a one-way code and is never logged or stored.

Who else is involved. DVSA (Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency) receives the registration in order to answer. Vercel Inc. hosts the checker and processes the request on our behalf; its infrastructure may process data outside the UK under standard contractual safeguards. We share nothing with anyone else and sell nothing.

What this is not. MOT history is free on GOV.UK; we do not sell it. The result is statistical information, not vehicle condition advice.

Your rights. You can ask what we hold about you, object to processing, or ask for erasure by writing to privacy@motriskindex.co.uk — though because we keep nothing that identifies you after 15 minutes, there will usually be nothing left to return. You can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk.