Gate — Privacy Notice

How Dhammatek handles information in the Gate app.

Last updated: 9 September 2026

Gate is a workplace app. It is used by people who work at Dhammatek to do their job — see the work assigned to them, record their hours, message colleagues and handle approvals. It is not available to the general public, and accounts are created by Dhammatek rather than by signing up.

Who is responsible

Dhammatek is the data controller for the information described here. Questions, requests and complaints: [email protected].

Registered address and company number: to be confirmed by Dhammatek.

The two parts of Gate are separate

This matters, so it is said before anything else. Gate has a phone app and, separately, a Windows program used on company computers in the office. They collect very different things, and the phone app does not do what the Windows program does.

1 · The phone app

What it holds

Information	Why
Your name and work email address	To identify you to colleagues and sign you in
Your password, stored only as an irreversible hash	To sign you in. The password itself is never stored and cannot be read back by anyone, including us.
Your profile photo, if one is set	So colleagues can recognise you
Your department, role and who you report to	To decide what work and which approvals reach you
Your time zone	So times display correctly
Clock-in and clock-out times, breaks and shifts	To record working hours
Tasks assigned to you, and what you did with them	The core of the app
Messages, replies and reactions you send in Gate chat	To deliver them to the people you send them to
Files, photos, videos and voice notes you choose to attach	To share them with the people you send them to
Sign-in sessions	To keep you signed in and to let you sign out

What the phone app does not do

It does not take screenshots.
It does not record your keyboard or your screen.
It does not listen to your microphone in the background. The microphone is used only while you hold the mic button in a chat to record a voice message, and it stops the moment you let go.
It does not collect your location. The app requests no location permission.
It does not read your contacts, photo library, call history or messages from other apps.
It does not contain advertising, and nothing is sold or shared with advertisers.
It does not track you across other apps or websites.

The Android app asks for two things: INTERNET, and the microphone (RECORD_AUDIO) so that the mic button in a chat can record a voice message. Android asks you for the microphone the first time you press that button, and the app works perfectly well if you refuse — you simply cannot send voice messages. It does not ask for the camera: taking a photo hands you to the phone's own camera app, which needs no permission of ours. Photos and files reach Gate only when you deliberately attach them to a message.

2 · The Windows program on company computers

Separately from the phone app, Dhammatek runs a program called Gate Tracker on company Windows computers in the office. It is not installed on personal machines, not on phones, and not for people working from home. Everyone it applies to has been told in writing.

What it records

Counts of activity in three-minute blocks — how many key presses, clicks and scrolls happened, how far the mouse moved, and how often windows were switched.
The name of the program in front and its window title.
Whether audio or a meeting program was active.
Periodic screenshots of the work screen.
Basic details of the computer — its name, Windows version, and the version of the program.

What it does not record

It never records what you type. Key presses are counted, and the count is all that is kept — no words, no passwords, no message content, ever. This is built into the database itself, not left to a setting.

It also does not record your screen as video, and does not record your microphone. Both were deliberately excluded when it was built.

Who can see it, and being told

Activity figures and screenshots can be seen by your manager and by Gate administrators. Every time somebody opens one of your screenshots, that is recorded and you are told. You can always see your own figures on your own dashboard, including the reason a block of time was scored the way it was.

How long it is kept

Screenshots and activity figures are kept for 12 months, then deleted. This was promised to staff in writing and is enforced automatically.

Why we are allowed to hold this

Under UK GDPR we rely on:

Contract — running the app you use to do your job, and recording the hours you work so you can be paid correctly.
Legitimate interests — managing work fairly, and keeping business records. Where we rely on this we have weighed it against your privacy, and it is why the Windows program is limited to company computers in the office, records counts rather than content, and deletes after 12 months.
Legal obligation — employment and tax records we are required to keep.

Who else sees your information

Gate is not sold, rented or shared for advertising. Information is handled by:

Colleagues, according to your role — your manager sees your work and hours; the people in a chat see that chat.
DigitalOcean, which hosts Gate and its database.
Backblaze, which stores screenshots and large attachments.
Google, for delivering notifications to Android phones, if you turn notifications on.
Authorities, only where the law requires it.

Your rights

You can ask us to:

show you what we hold about you;
correct anything that is wrong;
delete your account and personal details — see below;
restrict or object to how we use it;
give you a copy in a portable form.

Write to [email protected]. We reply within one month. If you are not satisfied you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk.

Deleting your account

To ask for your Gate account to be deleted, email [email protected] from your work email address with the subject Delete my Gate account.

What is deleted: your sign-in, your name, your email address, your profile photo, and the screenshots and activity figures held about you.

What is kept, and why: a record that work was done, and business records such as approvals and payments, are kept in an anonymised form with your name removed. We are required to keep some employment records by law, and removing completed work entirely would destroy the history of jobs other people also worked on.

We confirm in writing when it is done.

Keeping it safe

Everything travels encrypted (HTTPS).
Passwords are stored only as irreversible hashes.
Screenshots are never public — each view is opened through a link that expires, and every view is logged.
Access follows your role, and the database enforces it as well as the app.

Children

Gate is for Dhammatek staff. It is not intended for, or directed at, children.

Changes

If this notice changes in a way that matters, we will tell staff directly rather than relying on you noticing a new date at the top of this page.