Privacy policy.

Last updated 25 October 2026. This replaces all earlier versions.

Reg Lookup is a small site with no accounts, no adverts and no tracking. This policy explains what information passes through it, why, how long it stays, who else sees it and what you can do about it. It includes a full section on the AI buyer summary, because that is the one place where data goes to an outside company that is not a government body.

1. Who runs the site

Reg Lookup is provided by SYNK Team, referred to in this policy as "SYNK Team", "we" or "us". We decide what is done with any personal information the site handles, which makes us the "controller" under UK data protection law. The site is not part of the DVSA, the DVLA, NVIDIA or any other organisation mentioned here. Contact details are at the end of this page.

2. The short version

You do not need an account, and the site never asks for your name, email address or any other detail about you.
The registrations you search for are passed to government services to fetch the answer, and, for buses and minibuses, to whensmybus.co.uk for fleet details. None of it is stored by this site beyond short-lived caches.
If you press "Write a buyer summary", a digest of that vehicle's MOT record is sent to an AI model hosted by NVIDIA. The digest has no registration number, and nothing about you goes with it.
You cannot type anything to the AI. It only ever sees the vehicle record, so there is nowhere to put personal information in by mistake.
Your IP address is used in memory only, to limit how many lookups one visitor can make.
There are no cookies, no analytics, no adverts and no third-party scripts or fonts.
Two small items, your theme choice and your recent searches, are kept in your own browser and never sent to the site.

3. What is handled

Registrations you search for. When you search, or paste a list on the bulk page, the registrations are sent to this site's server. The server passes each one to the DVSA MOT history service and, for single lookups, to the DVLA's vehicle enquiry service. If the DVLA says the vehicle is a bus or minibus, or its make looks like a bus builder's, the registration also goes to whensmybus.co.uk to look up its fleet details. The server then returns the results to you. The site does not link a search to you and keeps no search history on the server.

Your IP address. The server sees the IP address of every request. It keeps a count against that address, in memory, to enforce the limits in the terms of use. The site's own code does not write IP addresses to disk or to a log file.

Hosting records. The company that hosts the site, and any service placed in front of it such as a reverse proxy or content delivery network, may keep ordinary access logs that include IP addresses, times and the pages requested. Those records are made by the host and are outside this site's control. If you want to know exactly what the host keeps, ask SYNK Team and we will tell you who it is.

Details worked out in your browser. Some details, such as a vehicle's age, the area its plate was issued in, its type, an estimated Euro standard, the emission-zone estimate, the road tax rate, average yearly mileage, test counts and estimated fuel economy and cost, are calculated by your own browser from the vehicle data it has already received. Nothing extra is sent to anyone to do this, and nothing about you is used. To cost fuel, your browser asks this site for the latest GOV.UK weekly pump price, and that request does not say which vehicle you looked up.

Error messages. If a request to an outside service fails, the server may log a short technical message such as "request timed out". These messages do not contain your IP address or the registration you searched for.

Things you choose to send. If you email SYNK Team, we will have your email address and whatever you write. That is used only to reply and is deleted when it is no longer needed.

What is not collected. The site does not ask for or receive your name, location, device identifiers, browsing history or payment details, and it has no sign-in.

4. The AI buyer summary

The buyer summary is optional. Nothing is sent to the AI unless you press the button on a vehicle's page.

What happens. When you press the button, the server first works out a set of facts from the vehicle's own record: the number of tests and failures, the mileage readings, the advisories that keep coming back, the current MOT expiry and, if it has already been looked up, the tax status. It then sends those facts, as a short block of text, to a language model hosted by NVIDIA with an instruction to turn them into a few plain-English sentences. The model's reply is checked, shaped into a short paragraph and bullet points, and shown to you.

What the AI receives. Only information about the vehicle. From the MOT record that is its make, model, fuel, colour, engine size, registration date and age, the dates and results of its MOT tests, the odometer readings, and the wording of the advisories and failures recorded by testers. Where the site has already looked them up, it also receives the vehicle's tax status and due date, CO₂ figure, Euro status, weight, wheelplan and last V5C date from the DVLA, the area the plate was issued in, the site's own estimates (emission zones, road tax, fuel economy and cost, average yearly mileage) and, for a bus, its operator, fleet number, type, any branding, and whether it is listed as active or withdrawn.

What the AI never receives. The registration number, including any previous registration of a bus, the names or places of the test centres, your IP address, anything typed by you, or anything else about you. There is no box for you to type into the AI, so you cannot send it personal information by accident.

What NVIDIA sees. NVIDIA receives the request from this server, so it sees this server's address and not yours. Its own terms and privacy notice govern what it does with a request that reaches it. This site cannot control or promise how NVIDIA handles those requests, but because nothing in them identifies a person, the risk to you is very small.

What is kept. The summary text is held in the server's memory for one hour, so a repeat press for the same vehicle is instant and does not make a second call. It is not written to disk and is not linked to you.

No decisions about you. The summary is about a vehicle. It does not profile you, and no decision that affects you legally or in a similar way is made by it or by any other automated process on this site.

Accuracy. AI models make mistakes, and the summary says so every time. The terms of use explain what it can and cannot be relied on for.

Unusual text in records. The advisories and failures in MOT records are typed by testers. The AI is told to treat that text as plain data and to ignore any instructions that appear inside it, but no instruction to an AI model can be guaranteed to work every time, which is another reason to check the summary against the record.

5. Why, and the legal basis

Under UK GDPR, the site relies on "legitimate interests" (Article 6(1)(f)) for the little personal information it handles, which is mainly your IP address. Those interests are running the service you asked for, keeping it available by preventing any one visitor from overloading it, and protecting it and the services behind it from abuse. The impact on you is small because the information is used in memory for a few minutes and is not used to identify or profile you. The vehicle record sent to the AI is not information about you. You can object at any time, as described in your rights.

6. How long things are kept

MOT results are held in the server's memory for ten minutes so a repeat search is quick, then dropped.
DVLA tax and vehicle details are held in memory for one hour, and "no record" answers for thirty minutes.
Bus details from whensmybus.co.uk are held in memory for one hour, and "no record" answers for thirty minutes.
Buyer summaries are held in memory for one hour.
Weekly pump prices from GOV.UK are held in memory for twelve hours.
Rate-limit counts against an IP address cover the last minute for single, tax and summary lookups and the last ten minutes for bulk lookups. They are cleared on a timer and whenever the server restarts.
Your theme and recent searches stay in your browser until you clear them.
Hosting logs are kept for as long as the host decides.
NVIDIA decides how long it keeps any request it receives, under its own terms.

None of the server's caches are written to disk, so restarting the server empties all of them.

The site does not sell, rent or share your information for marketing. It is passed to others only as needed to run the service:

The DVSA receives the registration to look up its MOT history, together with this server's address. It does not receive yours.
The DVLA receives the registration to look up tax and vehicle details. The request is made by this server, so the DVLA sees this server's address, not yours. Its own privacy notice applies to what it does with that request.
GOV.UK publishes the weekly road fuel prices. The server downloads that public file about twice a day at most, and the request has nothing to do with any visitor or vehicle.
whensmybus.co.uk, which SYNK Team also runs, receives the registration of a bus or minibus so that it can return the bus's fleet details. The request is made by this server, so that site sees this server's address and not yours. It is a separate service from this one, with its own purpose and its own rules.
NVIDIA receives the vehicle digest described in section 4 when you ask for a buyer summary. It does not receive the registration number or anything about you.
The hosting provider handles your requests as part of delivering the site.
Authorities. If the law or a court order requires it, information that exists may have to be handed over. Because so little is kept, there would normally be very little to give.

The fonts are served from this site, so your browser makes no requests to Google or any other font host. There is no embedded content from other sites, and your browser itself never contacts NVIDIA, the DVSA or the DVLA, because all of those calls are made by the server. The vehicle page also links to the Transport for London ULEZ checker and the Clean Air Zone checker. Those links open in a new tab and do not carry the registration or anything else about you, and once you are on those sites their own privacy notices apply.

8. Transfers outside the UK

The site sends information to the DVSA and the DVLA, which are in the UK, and, if you ask for a buyer summary, to NVIDIA, whose servers may be outside the UK. For a bus, the registration also goes to whensmybus.co.uk, which SYNK Team also runs. What is sent to NVIDIA is vehicle record data and not information about you. Where the hosting provider stores or processes its logs depends on that provider. If it is outside the UK, it should protect the information in line with UK law, for example through a recognised transfer mechanism.

9. Cookies and local storage

The site sets no cookies, so there is no cookie banner. It does use your browser's local storage for two things, both purely for your convenience:

theme records whether you chose light, dark or your device's setting.
recent records your last six searched registrations, shown as shortcuts under the search box.

Neither is sent to the server. You can delete them by clearing this site's data in your browser. Because they are needed to give you the features you asked for and stay on your device, they do not need separate consent under the rules on cookies and similar technologies. If you share a computer, remember that the recent searches are visible to the next person, so clear them if that matters.

10. Registration numbers and personal data

A registration number is not about a person by itself, but it can become personal data when someone links it to an owner or keeper. This site holds no keeper or owner information. It shows only the vehicle's own details and test history, as published by the DVSA and the DVLA, and the AI summary is made only from that same information.

If you believe the vehicle information shown is wrong, or you want it changed or removed, the DVSA and the DVLA are the source and are the right place to ask. The site will clear any cached copy, including a cached AI summary, if you ask, though everything clears itself within the hour anyway.

Please do not use the site to find out about, follow or harass a person. The terms of use prohibit it.

11. Security

Reasonable steps are taken to protect the site. The keys used to reach the government services and the AI service are held on the server and never sent to your browser. Lookups are rate limited, the site sends strict content security headers so that only its own files can run, and it is meant to be served over an encrypted connection. The text the AI returns is shown as plain text and cannot run code on the page. No system is perfectly secure, and because the site holds so little about visitors, the risk to you is low.

12. Your rights

Under UK data protection law you have the right to:

ask whether personal information about you is held and get a copy of it;
ask for inaccurate information to be corrected;
ask for information to be erased;
ask for its use to be restricted;
object to its use where the legal basis is legitimate interests;
ask for the information you provided to be given to you in a portable form, where that applies; and
not be subject to a decision made only by automated means that has a legal or similarly significant effect on you. The AI summary is not used for that, and it makes no decisions about people.

To use any of these rights, contact SYNK Team using the details below. You will normally get an answer within one month. There is no charge unless a request is clearly unfounded or excessive. You may be asked to prove who you are, and you may need to tell us your IP address and the time of your visit so that it can be found, if anything still exists.

13. Children

The site is not aimed at children and does not knowingly collect personal information from them.

14. Changes to this policy

If the site starts handling information in a new way, for example by using a different AI provider or adding a feature that sends more data anywhere, this policy will be updated before the change goes live and the date at the top will change. Earlier versions are not kept online, so check the date if you want to see whether anything has changed since you last read it.

15. Contact and complaints

To use your rights or ask any question about this policy, email blake@hostedbysynk.com.

If you are not happy with how your information has been handled, you have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office, the UK data protection regulator, at ico.org.uk or on 0303 123 1113. You are welcome to raise it with SYNK Team first so that it can be put right.