Privacy policy
We are not in the data business.
wellknown.id exists so that people can prove things about themselves without handing their personal information to anyone who doesn’t need it, and that includes us.
Our position
Personal data is a liability, not an asset.
wellknown.id ltd does not collect personal information to build profiles, and never sells, rents or shares it for advertising or any other purpose. Our services are designed so that we can’t hold what we don’t need: wherever it is technically possible, claims about you travel over a secured channel straight from your own device to the person or service that needs them, and not through us.
That principle shapes everything below. Where we process anything at all, it is the minimum needed, for the shortest time.
Who is responsible
The controller of any personal data described here is wellknown.id ltd (company number 17105257), 3rd Floor, 86-90 Paul Street, London, EC2A 4NE, United Kingdom. For anything about your data, email privacy@wellknown.id.
This website
- No cookies, no analytics, no tracking. Nothing on this site measures or follows you.
- No third parties. Fonts and everything else are served from our own site, so your browser doesn’t contact anyone else.
- One preference, kept in your browser. If you switch the UV lamp on or off, that choice is saved in your browser’s local storage. It is never sent to us. See the cookie policy.
- No request logs. Like any website, our server necessarily receives your IP address and basic browser details with each request, to send the page back. We don’t record them: our server keeps no access or request logs.
Signing in with wellknown.id
When the sign-in service is live, this is what it will involve.
- Your key stays with you. Your private key is created in your browser and can’t be exported. We never receive it.
- Your identifier. To sign you in, we receive the public half of your key, your
did:key, and a signature proving you hold it. A did:key isn’t your name, but it is a stable identifier, so we treat it as personal data.
- What we pass on, and to whom. Only to the site you chose to sign in to, and only because you asked us to: a signed token containing your
did:key, which site it’s for, and when it was issued and expires. Never your name, email address, date of birth or anything else, because we don’t have them.
- What we keep. There is no user database. The records needed to complete a sign-in are short-lived and expire on their own: the one-time challenge within five minutes, the authorization code within a minute. A cookie in your browser remembers your
did:key for up to twelve hours so your browser’s sign-in dialog can offer it. Details are in the cookie policy.
- Sites you sign in to are separate organisations with their own privacy policies. We only confirm that you hold your key.
Today your did:key is the same at every site you use, so sites could compare notes about you. Giving you a different identifier for every site is on our roadmap.
Who helps us
- Hosting: this site and the sign-in service run on a virtual server we rent from Fasthosts, in a UK data centre. Like any network provider, their network protection may briefly process connection details to block attacks.
- Email: our mailboxes, including
hello@ and privacy@wellknown.id, are also hosted by Fasthosts in the UK. We use what you send only to reply to you.
Nobody else receives data from us: no analytics, advertising or data brokers.
Why we’re allowed to process it
Under UK data protection law (the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018), we process your did:key to provide the sign-in you ask for (performance of a contract). We handle request information on this website to keep it secure and working (legitimate interests).
Your rights
You have the right to access, correct, erase or restrict the processing of personal data about you, to object to processing, and to data portability. Email privacy@wellknown.id. We’ll respond within one month, and very often the answer will be that we hold nothing about you.
Your key lives in your browser. To delete it, clear the site data for wellknown.id in your browser’s settings.
If you’re unhappy with how we’ve handled your data, you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk or on 0303 123 1113. We’d appreciate the chance to put it right first.
Changes
If this policy changes, we’ll update this page and the date below. We will never change it to allow selling or profiling.
Last updated 25 September 2026.