Privacy policy

Who is responsible

Stumpdesk is run by Lara Könen, trading as Stumpdesk, Holunderweg 3, 65510 Idstein, Germany. She is responsible (the controller) for the personal data described here, except the data firms keep in Stumpdesk about their own customers (see “A firm’s own records”).

For anything about your data, email [email protected] or ring +49 1511 4929959. Stumpdesk is for businesses: tree surgery and arborist firms in the United Kingdom and Germany.

Visiting this website

When you open a page, your browser sends what every browser sends: your internet address, the page asked for, the time, the browser and device, your language and the page you came from. The website reaches you through Cloudflare (see “Other companies we use”), which needs these details to deliver the page and to keep attacks out. Our own server keeps no log of the visits.

The website sets no cookies and stores nothing on your device. Its fonts and pictures come from our own server; nothing is loaded from Google or other companies.

Legal basis: our legitimate interest in a website that works and is safe (Article 6(1)(f) GDPR).

Visitor statistics

We count visits with Umami, which runs on our own server: nothing goes to another company. For each visit it records the page, the website or search engine you came from, your country, the kind of device, the browser and operating system, the screen size and the language, and whether you opened the booking, booked a call or pressed a button for the free trial. It sets no cookies, stores nothing on your device and keeps no internet address, so it cannot tell who you are or follow you to other websites.

Legal basis: our legitimate interest in knowing how the website is used, so that we can make it better (Article 6(1)(f) GDPR). The counts hold nothing that points to a person; we keep them to compare one month with another.

Booking a call

The form under “Book a call” asks for your name, company, business email, phone number and country, and, if you like, your website and the plan you are interested in. We use them to book the call, to send you the invitation, the confirmation and the reminders, and to prepare for the call.

Booking puts the call, with a Google Meet link, in the Google Calendar of the person in our sales team you speak to. Your business email is added as a guest, so Google emails you the invitation. The calendar entry holds your company, name, email, phone number, website and the plan you chose. The confirmation, the reminders and the link to move or cancel the call come from Stumpdesk by email.

Your details are kept as a lead in our sales records, with the call. If you already have a Stumpdesk account with that email, the call goes on your firm instead; if you open an account later with the same email, the lead becomes your firm’s record with us.

To stop the form being misused, each booking counts towards a limit of 3 a day for each email address and 10 a day for each internet address. Both are kept only in a scrambled form that cannot be turned back (a hash).

Legal basis: the steps you asked for before a possible contract (Article 6(1)(b) GDPR), and our legitimate interest in answering businesses that ask about Stumpdesk (Article 6(1)(f) GDPR).

How long: a lead that does not open an account is erased 12 months after anything last happened on it. A call still ahead is then taken out of our calendar, without anybody being emailed; calls that took place stay in the salesperson’s calendar as past appointments. To be erased sooner, email [email protected].

Using the Stumpdesk app

If you work in a firm that uses Stumpdesk, we keep your account: your name, email address, password, the language you chose, your role and the firms you belong to, and, if you turn them on, two-step sign-in and passkeys. The password is kept only in a form that cannot be turned back into it.

Signing in sets cookies that keep you signed in, and, if you tick “Remember this device for 30 days”, one that spares you the code for 30 days. They are needed for the service you asked for, so they need no consent. A device stays signed in for 30 days after you last used Stumpdesk on it. For each session we keep the device and browser, the internet address and the time, so that you can see where you are signed in and sign out elsewhere (Settings › My account › Sign-in).

Stumpdesk writes down every change with who made it and when, so that the firm can see and undo changes. We email you about your account (confirming your address, a new password, invitations) and about what you choose to be told of in the app. On the phone app, alerts reach your phone through Google’s Firebase Cloud Messaging (Android) or Apple’s push service (iPhone); they carry only what kind of alert it is and the firm’s name.

A firm pays for Stumpdesk through Stripe: the firm’s name, the owner’s email address and the payment details typed on Stripe’s page.

Legal basis: to provide the account you signed up for or were invited to (Article 6(1)(b) GDPR), and our legitimate interest in keeping accounts and firms safe (Article 6(1)(f) GDPR).

How long: as long as you have the account. When a firm ends its plan, Stumpdesk stays readable for 6 months; the firm’s data is then deleted, except the invoices tax law requires to be kept. To have your own account deleted, email [email protected].

What your firm records about you in Stumpdesk (your hours, holidays, certificates, chats) is your firm’s data, like its customers’ (below).

A firm’s own records

A firm keeps its customers, enquiries, quotes, jobs, invoices, photos, emails, texts and calls in Stumpdesk. For that data the firm is responsible (the controller). Stumpdesk handles it only for the firm, on its instructions and to run the app (the processor), under the data-processing agreement every firm accepts (Article 28 GDPR). We do not use it for advertising, do not sell it and do not use it to train AI models. Stumpdesk’s staff look inside a firm only when the firm allows it, to help it.

Stumpdesk sees how much and when a firm uses the app: counts and dates, such as how many quotes it sent in the last 30 days and the last day someone opened the app, and its people’s names, roles and email addresses. We use them to look after the firms on Stumpdesk. We never see the firm’s records.

If you are a customer of a firm that uses Stumpdesk, ask that firm about your data. If you write to us instead, we pass your request on to the firm.

The companies that help us run the app for the firms are listed below and in the agreement.

Other companies we use

These companies handle personal data for us, each under a written contract that protects it. Where one is outside the United Kingdom and the European Economic Area, the transfer is covered by an adequacy decision or by the standard contractual clauses.

• Hosting. Stumpdesk runs today on a server of our own in the United Kingdom, for which the European Commission has made an adequacy decision. It holds only test data of firms, and the calls booked on this website. Before real firms keep their data in Stumpdesk, it moves to a hosting provider in the European Union, named here once chosen.
• Cloudflare, Inc., San Francisco, United States: the network in front of the website and the app. It passes the traffic on and keeps none of it for us.
• Amazon Web Services EMEA SARL, Luxembourg (Amazon Simple Email Service, servers in Stockholm, Sweden): the emails Stumpdesk sends.
• Google: the calendar and Google Meet of our sales team, for the calls booked with us; Google Maps Platform (Google Cloud EMEA Limited, Dublin, Ireland) for the addresses and positions of a firm’s sites, while the firm has “Maps from Google” on; and Firebase Cloud Messaging for alerts on Android phones.
• Apple: its push service, for alerts on iPhones.
• Stripe Payments Europe, Limited, Dublin, Ireland: the payments firms make for Stumpdesk.
• Twilio Ireland Limited, Dublin, Ireland (servers in the United States and the European Union): a firm’s Stumpdesk phone number, its calls, voicemail and texts.
• OpenAI Ireland Ltd., Dublin, Ireland, with OpenAI OpCo, LLC, San Francisco, United States (servers in the United States and other countries): Stumpdesk’s assistant. What a person asks it, its answers, the records it reads to answer and the photos sent to it; the drafts it writes. The transfer is covered by the standard contractual clauses in OpenAI’s data processing addendum, with the UK addendum for data from the United Kingdom. OpenAI does not use what it is sent to train its models, and data sharing with OpenAI is turned off in our account. Each request is sent with storage turned off; OpenAI keeps it only in its logs for spotting misuse, for up to 30 days, unless the law requires longer. It gets only what the task needs, and a firm can switch the AI off.
• Scaleway SAS, Paris, France (servers in Paris, in the European Union): Stumpdesk’s other AI jobs. The first words of a conversation with the assistant, to give it a title; the text of a firm’s records, turned into numbers for search by meaning (we keep the numbers); the emails a firm receives at its Stumpdesk address, to sort them; callers’ texts, where the firm uses the automatic replies; an inspector’s words about a tree and some columns of a tree list being imported, to fill in the tree register; voice notes, voicemails and spoken words, to write them out. It gets only what the task needs.

When a firm connects its own accounts elsewhere (its Gmail or Outlook mailbox; a person’s Google, Outlook or iCloud calendar; its accounting software, such as Xero, QuickBooks, Sage, DATEV, Lexware Office or sevdesk; its own Stripe account for card payments), Stumpdesk passes them what the connection is for, under the firm’s own contract with them.

Google user data (Gmail and Google Calendar)

A firm can connect its Gmail so that its emails to customers go from its own address, and each person can connect their own Google Calendar. Our sales team connect their Google Calendar in the same way, to offer times for calls. Stumpdesk then asks Google for these permissions, and no others:

• gmail.send (send email on your behalf): to send the emails the firm sends its customers in Stumpdesk, such as quotes, invoices and reminders, from the firm’s own Gmail address. Stumpdesk can only send. It cannot read, search, change or delete anything in the mailbox.
• calendar.events (see and edit events): to put the person’s site visits and job days into their own Google Calendar, keep them up to date, and move them in Stumpdesk when the person moves them in Google Calendar. Stumpdesk reads and changes only the events it put there itself. For our sales team: to put a booked call in the salesperson’s calendar, with its Google Meet link and invitation.
• calendar.freebusy (see when you are free or busy): to show when the person is busy, as “Not available” on the Schedule, with the times only, never the title, place or guests of an appointment. For our sales team: to leave their busy times out of the times offered for calls.
• openid and userinfo.email: to know which Google account was connected, and to show its email address.

What we keep: the connected account’s email address and the access Google gives Stumpdesk (its tokens), stored encrypted (AES-256-GCM) in our database. For a calendar, also which events Stumpdesk put there, and the busy times from 7 days back to 90 days ahead. Of Gmail we keep nothing else: the emails sent are the firm’s own records in Stumpdesk, like every email it sends.

How we use it, and what we never do: Google user data is used only to provide these features to the person who connected it. We do not sell it; we do not share it with anyone, except to run these features or where the law requires it; we do not use it for advertising; and we do not use it to develop, improve or train AI or machine-learning models. Nobody at Stumpdesk reads it, unless you ask us to (for example to sort out a problem), it is needed for security (such as looking into misuse), or the law requires it.

Stumpdesk’s use and transfer of information received from Google APIs to any other app will adhere to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements.

Disconnecting: in Stumpdesk, the owner or an admin presses Disconnect under Settings › Communication › Email, Sending (for Gmail); each person presses Disconnect under Settings › My account › Calendar. You can also remove Stumpdesk’s access in your Google Account, at myaccount.google.com/connections.

What is deleted then: disconnecting Gmail deletes the stored tokens and gives back Stumpdesk’s access at Google. Disconnecting a calendar takes every event Stumpdesk put there out of it (your own appointments stay), deletes the stored tokens, the list of its events and the busy times, and gives back Stumpdesk’s access at Google, unless the same Google account is still connected in the firm for something else. The same happens when a person leaves the firm, becomes read-only, or the firm is deleted.

Microsoft user data (Outlook)

A firm can connect its Outlook or Microsoft 365 mailbox, and each person their own Outlook calendar. Stumpdesk then asks Microsoft for:

• Mail.Send: to send the firm’s emails to its customers from its own address. Stumpdesk can only send.
• Mail.Read, only when the owner or an admin switches on “Show customers’ emails on their timeline”: to put the emails to and from addresses saved on the firm’s customers on their timeline, and to notice emails that did not arrive. The rest of the mailbox is never read beyond its addresses. Switching it off stops the reading at once.
• Calendars.ReadWrite: the person’s site visits and job days in their Outlook calendar, both ways, and their busy times only, as for Google.
• openid, email, User.Read and offline_access: to know which account was connected, and to stay connected.

The tokens are stored encrypted, and the same rules apply as for Google: the data is used only for these features, and never sold, shared, used for advertising or used to train AI models. Disconnect in the same places in Stumpdesk. Microsoft gives apps no way to end their own access, so also remove Stumpdesk in your Microsoft account: at account.live.com/consent/Manage for a personal account, under My Apps for a work account.

Your rights

Under the GDPR and the UK GDPR you can ask us for a copy of your data, to correct it, to delete it, to restrict how we use it, and to receive it in a form a computer reads. Where we rely on our legitimate interest, you can object. Where you gave your consent, you can take it back at any time. Email [email protected]; we answer within a month.

You can also complain to a data protection authority. Ours is Der Hessische Beauftragte für Datenschutz und Informationsfreiheit, Gustav-Stresemann-Ring 1, 65189 Wiesbaden, Germany (datenschutz.hessen.de). In the United Kingdom it is the Information Commissioner’s Office (ico.org.uk). You may also turn to the authority where you live or work.

Keeping data safe

Data travels encrypted between your device and our server. Each firm’s data is kept apart from every other firm’s, each person sees what their role allows, and the access to connected accounts is stored encrypted. Uploaded files are checked for viruses, and the data is backed up every night.

No decisions by machine

Stumpdesk makes no decisions about people by automated means that have legal or similarly significant effects on them.

Changes to this policy

We update this policy when what Stumpdesk does changes, and say so here with the date of the version. This is the version of 31 October 2026.