Privacy notice

1. Who handles your information

Paperwork First, a translation and information consultancy registered in the People’s Republic of China. Our full registration details are on Work with us. For anything on this page, write to hello@paperworkfirst.com.

2. What the enquiry form collects

Nothing else is collected by the form. The site sets no advertising or tracking cookies and runs no third-party analytics.

3. Health information, and why we keep it out of the form

Information about health is sensitive personal information and is treated as such in Chinese law and in most others. Our position is to collect as little of it as possible, as late as possible:

• The form asks for a brief description only. Please keep it brief.
• Do not attach records, reports, imaging or scans to a first message. We do not need them to answer your first question.
• If a formal assessment makes sense, we will tell you exactly what is needed, arrange a secure way to send it, and ask for your separate, specific consent before handling any of it, a consent distinct from your acceptance of any other terms.
• We never collect genetic test results or biological samples. Where an institution requires them, you provide them to that institution directly. This does not change on request.

4. Who sees it

The people at Paperwork First working on your enquiry, and nobody else, with one exception you control: if you ask us to put your case to a named institution, we send that institution what is needed for its review, and we tell you what is being sent before it goes. Nothing is passed to any institution, agency or supplier on our own initiative, and we do not sell, rent or share contact details with anybody for any purpose.

Where a document has to cross a border to reach an institution, we will tell you that at the time and obtain your consent for it specifically.

5. How long we keep it

• Enquiries that go no further, deleted within 12 months.
• Where we did work for you, kept while it is needed for the engagement and for the period any legal or accounting obligation requires, then deleted.
• Medical documents, kept only as long as the work needs them and deleted once the engagement ends, sooner if you ask, unless a legal obligation requires otherwise.

6. Your rights

You can ask us to show you what we hold, correct it, delete it, or stop using it, and you can withdraw consent at any time. Write to hello@paperworkfirst.com and a person will action it, not a form, and not a queue. Withdrawing consent does not undo what was lawfully done before you withdrew it, and it may mean we can no longer do the work.

7. Security, stated honestly

Access is limited to the people doing the work, documents are not kept on shared or public services, and we delete rather than archive by default. What we will not do is claim a level of security we cannot demonstrate. This is a small company; the strongest protection we can offer you is not collecting things we do not need, which is why this page keeps telling you not to send records yet.

8. Changes

If this notice changes materially we will change the date at the top and, where it affects work in progress, tell you directly.