Privacy policy

Last updated: 7 August 2026

In short

Broadband Genie is a free broadband comparison service. To run it we collect some information about you — usually just a postcode, sometimes an email address. This policy explains exactly what we collect, why, who we share it with, how long we keep it, and what you can ask us to do about it.

We make our money from commission when someone takes out a deal through us, not from selling your data. We do not sell your personal information.

You can ask us anything about your personal information at any time by emailing [email protected].

About us

Broadband Genie is a trading name of Broadband Genie Ltd, which is the data controller for the information described in this policy. The company was previously named Genie Ventures Ltd and changed its name on 15 December 2025; it is the same company, with the same registration.

Company registration number: 05085554
ICO registration number: ZA258581

9 Nine Hills Road
Cambridge
CB2 1GE

The information we collect and how we collect it

When you use broadband.co.uk we may collect the following:

• Your postcode and unique property reference number (UPRN) — if you check what broadband is available at your address, or use our speed test.
• Your address — if you select it from the list returned by an availability check.
• Your email address — if you ask us to email your comparison results, claim a reward, voucher or welcome bonus, sign up for deal alerts, or enter a competition or survey. We may ask for this at the point you enter your postcode, before your results are shown; giving it is optional and you can decline and still see your results.
• Your name — if you claim a reward or voucher on the way through to a provider, or if you leave a broadband review.
• Your social media username — if you enter a competition that runs on a social platform.
• Demographic details such as age, gender and location — only if relevant to a particular survey, and only if you choose to give them.
• The date your current broadband contract ends — if you ask us to remind you when it is due for renewal.
• What you type into our AI assistant, together with your IP address and a session identifier — if you use it. See the AI assistant section below.
• Information about your visit, collected through cookies and similar technologies. Our cookie policy lists every one of these and what it does.

Why we collect it, and our lawful basis

Data protection law requires us to have a valid lawful basis for everything we do with your personal information. Ours are as follows.

Where we rely on legitimate interests, we weigh our interest against the effect on you. If the effect on you outweighs our interest, we do not do it. You can object to any processing based on legitimate interests — see ‘Your rights’ below.

Where we rely on consent, you can withdraw it at any time, and withdrawing it is as easy as giving it. Withdrawing consent does not make anything we did beforehand unlawful.

How we use your information

To show you what is available where you live

When you run an availability or speed check we use your postcode, and where relevant your UPRN, to find out which providers can serve your address. We work with Experian Ltd to turn a postcode into a list of addresses you can choose from, and with thinkbroadband (a trading name of NetConnex Ltd) to find out which services are available at the address you select.

To send you a reward, voucher or welcome bonus

If you claim a reward, voucher or welcome bonus, we collect your email address so we can send it once your order has completed and your broadband has been installed. We may also email you if an offer you showed interest in is about to expire, or to remind you about a reward you have not yet claimed.

To email you comparison results or seasonal deals

If you ask us to email your comparison results, we use your email address to send them. We do not keep it afterwards unless you have also opted in to marketing.

To remind you when your contract is ending

If you bought broadband through us, or told us when your contract ends, we may email you around that time to show you what else is available.

To earn the commission that funds the site

Broadband Genie is free to use because providers pay us commission when someone takes out a deal through us. When you click a deal, we and our affiliate network Awin use cookies to follow that click through to the provider so the sale is credited correctly. This is how the service is paid for, and we would rather tell you plainly than bury it.

Commission does not decide the order of our comparison tables. By default deals are sorted by popularity, which combines clicks and sales, and sponsored deals are not counted towards popularity. You can read more about how Broadband Genie is funded.

To pass your address on so you do not have to type it twice

For some providers we pass your UPRN across when you click through, so you are not asked for your postcode and address all over again. We currently do this with Virgin Media Limited, BT Group plc, 4th Utility Holdings Ltd and Power Alt Net Limited.

To improve the site

We use analytics, on-site surveys and session recording to understand how people use the site and where they run into trouble, and we run A/B tests to check whether changes are actually improvements. This only happens if you have accepted analytics cookies. Our cookie policy has the detail.

To advertise

If you accept advertising cookies, we and the advertising platforms we use can measure how well our advertising works and, in some cases, show you relevant advertising elsewhere. The platforms involved are listed below.

Our AI assistant

We offer an AI assistant that answers questions about broadband and helps you find a deal. This section explains what happens to what you type into it.

What we collect

The messages you send to the assistant and the replies it gives, along with your IP address and a session identifier.

Please do not enter payment details, account passwords or other sensitive personal information into the assistant. You do not need to, and it is not designed to hold them.

How we protect it

Before conversation records are stored, we strip out personal details from them. The two things we keep are your IP address and a session identifier, which we need in order to link a conversation together, keep the service secure and investigate faults. Both of those still count as personal information, so everything else in this policy applies to them — including your rights and our retention periods.

Who processes it

• Google provides the Gemini AI model that writes the replies. Your message is sent to Google’s API to generate a response. Google does not use these conversations to develop or improve its own products, and logs them only briefly to detect misuse.
• PostHog monitors the assistant so we can check it is working properly, catch errors and improve its answers. This is the same analytics platform we use for the rest of the site. PostHog stores this data in the EU, in Frankfurt.
• Railway hosts the assistant and keeps its application logs. Railway stores this data in the EU, in Amsterdam.

How long we keep it

The content of your conversation — what you typed and what the assistant replied — is deleted after 30 days.

A record that the conversation happened is kept for longer, under the same retention as the rest of our analytics. That record holds technical details such as which model answered, how long it took, and your IP address and session identifier. It does not contain the conversation itself.

Application logs held by Railway are kept for 30 days.

What it does not do

The assistant does not make automated decisions that have a legal or similarly significant effect on you. It provides information and suggestions; the choice of whether to take out a deal is always yours.

Accuracy

AI assistants can be wrong. Always check important details — price, speed, contract length — against the provider’s own website before ordering.

Who we share your information with

Companies that help us run the comparison service

Power Alt Net Limited (‘PAN’)

We work with Power Alt Net Limited to offer a smoother experience when buying deals from YouFibre Limited and Be Fibre Ltd. If you order through their pages they may collect your name, address, phone number, email address and date of birth; your bank account number and sort code; your preferred installation date; the service you have chosen; and transaction details. They use this to process your order with your chosen provider, to communicate with you about it, to improve their services and to meet legal obligations. You can read about their commitment to GDPR in Power Alt Net Limited’s privacy policy.

Companies that help us contact you

SurveyGizmo

SurveyGizmo is a data collection platform. We use SurveyGizmo to gather research for editorial content and visitor feedback to improve our site. The data collected is encrypted and stored in SurveyGizmo’s EU data centre. SurveyGizmo does not sell or share data collected by surveys and does not have access to survey data, except when specifically requested by us to provide technical or customer support. This data is kept for a maximum of 12 months.

Freshworks

We use third-party service providers such as Freshworks Inc to enable interaction with you on our website. As a data processor acting on our behalf, Freshworks automatically receives and records certain information, including device model, IP address, web browser and usage patterns, through cookies and browser settings. Freshworks performs analytics on that data on our behalf, which helps us improve our service.

ESB Connect

We work with our marketing service provider Opt-me-in.com, owned and operated by ESB Connect Ltd, to deliver targeted advertising to you. The targeted advertising may be based on data about the devices you use, how you use our website, and profile data held by the provider. The provider may collect your device data and usage data via cookies or tags on our website, with your consent. The device data — such as your IP address, device type, operating system and software versions, settings and identifiers — may be used to identify you if it matches device data in profile information about you already held by the provider. Your device data and usage data may also be used to create or enhance the profile held by the provider. If the provider identifies you from your data, your profile may be used to deliver targeted advertising to you. This processing is based on your consent. You can withdraw your consent at any time, or exercise your rights, by unsubscribing from any emails sent by the provider or by contacting the provider directly using the details in their privacy policy at privacy.opt-me-in.com. Further information about the marketing services and how the provider may use your personal data for its own purposes is available at www.opt-me-in.com.

Companies that help us understand and advertise the site

These only receive information if you have accepted the relevant cookies.

When the law requires it

We will share information where we are legally required to — for example in response to a valid request from a regulator, or to establish or defend a legal claim.

How long we keep your information

Sending information outside the UK

Some of the companies above are based outside the UK, mainly in the United States and the EU. The tools behind our AI assistant — PostHog and Railway — store their data in the EU. When we send personal information outside the UK we make sure it is protected to the same standard, by relying on one of the following:

• UK adequacy regulations — for transfers to the EU and other countries the UK government has decided offer adequate protection.
• The UK Extension to the EU–US Data Privacy Framework — where the receiving company is certified under it.
• The International Data Transfer Agreement, or the UK Addendum to the EU Standard Contractual Clauses — for everything else, together with an assessment of the risks in the destination country.

You can ask us which safeguard applies to a particular transfer using the contact details below.

Your rights

You have the following rights over your personal information. All of them are free to use, and we will respond within one month.

• Access — ask for a copy of the information we hold about you.
• Rectification — ask us to correct anything inaccurate or incomplete.
• Erasure — ask us to delete your information, where there is no good reason for us to keep it.
• Restriction — ask us to pause what we are doing with your information while a question about it is resolved.
• Portability — ask for the information you gave us in a machine-readable format, or ask us to send it to someone else.
• Objection — object to processing we base on legitimate interests. You can object to direct marketing at any time and we will always stop.
• Withdrawing consent — where we rely on your consent, withdraw it at any time. For cookies, see the instructions in our cookie policy. For marketing emails, use the unsubscribe link in any email.
• Complain — to us, or to the Information Commissioner’s Office.

To use any of these, email [email protected] or write to us at the address at the end of this policy. Other ways to get in touch are on our contact page. If we do not already know who you are, we may need to confirm your identity first.

Automated decision-making

We do not make decisions about you by automated means that produce legal effects or similarly significantly affect you. The order in which deals appear is based on the criteria we set out in how Broadband Genie is funded, not on a profile of you as an individual.

Children

Broadband Genie is intended for adults arranging broadband for a household. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you believe a child has given us information, email us at [email protected] and we will delete it.

How we keep your information safe

We take a number of measures to protect your information, including:

• Encryption in transit — the whole site runs over HTTPS.
• Access control — access to personal data inside the company is limited to a small number of people who need it.
• Authentication — our reporting, email, file storage, content management and advertising accounts are secured through Google authentication with two-step verification.
• Password management — company credentials are held in an encrypted password manager.
• Deletion — we delete non-essential data once the periods above have passed.
• Endpoint security — staff devices run current security software.
• Perimeter security — the site sits behind a web application firewall and protection against automated attacks.

No system is perfectly secure, but if a breach occurs that is likely to put your rights at risk we will tell the ICO within 72 hours and tell you without undue delay.

Changes to this policy

We review this policy regularly and will post any changes here. The date at the top shows when it was last revised. If a change is significant we will tell you, by email where appropriate.

Contact us or make a complaint

For anything to do with your personal information:

Broadband Genie Ltd
9 Nine Hills Road
Cambridge
CB2 1GE
Email: [email protected]

Company number 05085554. ICO registration ZA258581.

Making a complaint to us

If you are unhappy with how we have handled your personal information, you can complain to us. You can do that however suits you — by email or by post, using the details above. You do not need to fill in a particular form or use particular wording.

We will acknowledge your complaint within 30 days of receiving it. We will look into it, keep you updated while we do, and tell you the outcome as soon as we can.

Complaining to the Information Commissioner’s Office

You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office, the UK’s data protection regulator. You do not have to come to us first, although raising it with us often resolves things more quickly.

Information Commissioner’s Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF
Helpline: 0303 123 1113, or +44 1625 545 745
ico.org.uk