The whole page, in one paragraph
We store the minimum a swap needs, we show other learners even less, and everything about your listing can be removed on request. We match learners; DVSA makes the swap; the phone call and the decision to swap are always yours.
Last updated 22 August 2026 · Questions and requests: hello@drivingtesthero.co.uk
Privacy
What we store, and why
| Data | Why we need it | Who can see it |
|---|---|---|
| First name (as you typed it) | So a match has a human name on it | Everyone on the board |
| Your test slot (centre, date, time, type) | It is the thing being swapped | Everyone on the board |
| What you want instead | Matching | Everyone on the board |
| Your free-text note | Context for matches | Everyone on the board, after we strip emails, phone numbers, links and handles from it |
| Your DVSA booking reference | The one thing the swap phone call requires | One person: the learner in a swap you have both accepted, capped at 3 different learners per week |
| Your email address | Signing in (we email you a one-time link instead of using passwords), the alerts you switch on, and any test centre you asked us to watch for you | Nobody. It is never on the board, never shown to another learner, and never sold or shared |
| Your sign-in link and session | Prove the account is yours | Nobody. Both are stored only as one-way hashes; links work once and die in 15 minutes |
| A hash of your IP address | Rate limiting, so nobody can spam listings or harvest references | Nobody. It is a truncated hash, kept per-hour and useless outside that hour |
What we never collect
No surname, no phone number, no postal address, no driving licence number, no theory certificate number, no payment details, no date of birth. If you choose to pay what you want, your card details go to Stripe and never to us. The one piece of contact information we hold is the email address you sign in with, and its jobs are signing you in and sending the emails listed below. If you ask us to watch a test centre before you have listed anything, we store nothing at all until you click the link in the confirmation email, so an address nobody controls cannot be signed up by somebody else. The centres you are watching are listed on My swaps where one click stops each of them. Other learners never see it. Anything that looks like contact details in a free-text note is removed automatically before the note is stored.
Every email we could send you, and how to stop it
There are seven, and you have to ask for five of them:
- Your sign-in link. Sent because you typed your address into the sign-in box. Not optional, because it is how signing in works here, and never used for anything else.
- Swap alerts. Only if you switch them on. At most one an hour, and only when a slot actually appears at a centre you would accept.
- Centre watches. Only if you asked us to watch a centre, and only after you clicked the link in the confirmation email. You can choose to have these held back into one Monday summary instead.
- The test countdown. Only if you tick the box for it. Four emails timed off the test date on your listing: what to take and the own-car rules at two weeks, what happens on the day at one week, the two safety questions at two days, and one the day after. Every fact in them is DVSA's and links to the GOV.UK page it came from.
- The daily quiz. Only if you tick the box for it, on the daily quiz page or in My swaps. One email each morning until your test with the question of the day in it, never on the day of the test itself, and it pauses by itself if you have not played for a week. If you play while signed in, your quiz progress (the days you played, the questions you got wrong, and the driving skills lessons you have finished with your best score) is kept with your account so it follows you between devices; signed out, it stays in your browser. Deleting your account deletes it.
- Your swap window closing, and good luck on the morning. Tied to a live listing rather than to marketing: they exist so nobody misses their own deadline. Delete or pause the listing and they stop.
- Rare site news. Only to accounts with swap alerts or the countdown switched on, and only when something about the site itself changes, such as a new look or a new free tool. A few a year at most, and the stop link in each one switches every email off.
Every one of these except the sign-in link carries a stop link in its footer that works in one click, without signing in and without a form. You can also switch any of them off from My swaps. We send nothing else. No offers, no partner emails, no “we miss you”. Your address is never passed to anyone.
Cookies and tracking
There is no advertising here and nothing is sold to anyone. Two things can end up in your browser:
Your signed-in session. Kept in local storage so My swaps works without asking you to sign in every visit. It is sent to us to prove who you are and nowhere else. This is not optional, because the site cannot know you without it, and it is not used to track you around the web.
We count page views without cookies. Every page adds one to a plain counter on our own server: a single number per page per day, and nothing else. No cookie, no local storage, no identifier, not even a hashed IP address, so it cannot tell one visitor from another and there is nothing about you in it. It exists because the analytics below only load if you agree, which would otherwise leave us unable to tell whether a quiet page is genuinely quiet. Counts are deleted after four months.
Google Analytics, but only if you say yes. The first time you visit, a bar at the bottom asks whether we may count visits. Press no and nothing loads: no Google script, no analytics cookies, no request to Google at all. Press yes and we use Google Analytics to see which pages help people find a swap, with Google's advertising and personalisation signals switched off, and with the IP anonymisation that Google Analytics 4 applies to every hit and cannot be told to skip. We look at pages and totals, never at individuals. Your answer is remembered in local storage.
Changed your mind either way? and choose afresh.
A copy of every email we send you
When we send you an email we keep a copy of it: the address it went to, the subject, which of our emails it was, the words in it, and whether it actually left. Failures are kept too, because "we tried and it was rejected" is usually the answer when somebody says they never received something. We keep the plain-text version and not the formatted one, since it is the same words and there is no reason to hold your data twice.
It is there so that a question about what we sent you can be answered with what we actually sent you rather than with what we think we send. Several of these emails work something out for you and nobody else, so the wording differs from person to person and a template would not tell you what you were told. Copies are deleted automatically after 100 days. Only we can read the log; it is never shown to another learner, and it is not visible from your account.
How long we keep it
Your listing stays until you remove it, your test date passes, or a completed swap takes it off the board. Requests between learners are kept while either listing exists. Your account (your email address) stays until you delete it from My swaps or ask us to. Copies of emails we sent you are deleted after 100 days. Sign-in links die within 15 minutes, sessions within 90 days, and rate-limit counters within the hour, all automatically.
Your rights
You can delete your account yourself at any time from My swaps: your email address, your settings and your listing go straight away. Under UK GDPR you can also ask for a copy of what we hold about your listing, ask for it to be corrected, or ask for it to be deleted entirely. Email hello@drivingtesthero.co.uk from the address you sign in with, and say whether you want the listing, the account, or both gone. Deletion requests are actioned within 30 days, normally much faster. If you are unhappy with how we handle your data you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office.
Where it lives
The site and its data are hosted by Netlify. Data may be processed outside the UK under Netlify's standard contractual safeguards.
Terms, in plain English
- What this service is. Driving Test Hero matches learner drivers who want to swap DVSA driving test slots. That is all it does. The swap itself is carried out by DVSA, by phone, with both learners' consent. We never touch, hold, book, or manage any test booking, and we have no connection to the DVSA booking system.
- What we are not. We are not DVSA, not affiliated with GOV.UK, and not a booking agent. Nothing here is an official service. Slots are never bought or sold here, by us or by anyone else. A listing offering payment for a slot, or asking for it, gets removed.
- Your listing is your responsibility. List only a test you actually hold, with accurate details. Listing a slot you do not hold wastes real people's time and gets your listing removed.
- Check the rules yourself before you call. We check every match against DVSA's published swap rules as we understand them, and we keep that logic current. But the rules change, and DVSA's decision on the phone is the one that counts. Always confirm against the official guidance before you ring.
- Sponsorship, and what it cannot buy. A test centre page may carry one paid placement from a local business (none do at the time of writing), always labelled “Sponsored” and always linked with
rel="sponsored". Sponsorship buys that box and nothing else. It does not affect which matches you are shown or the order they appear in. Matching reads the DVSA rules and your own preferences, and never reads sponsor data. It does not buy your details: we do not sell, rent or pass on any learner's email, name or booking reference. And it does not change the pass rates, rules or guidance on any page. We refuse sponsors offering to book or manage DVSA tests, and rival swap services. How sponsorship works. - Paying what you want. Everything here is free, and you never have to pay for anything. If you choose to, you can pay whatever you like from Support the site. Stripe takes the payment and handles your card details; we see the amount, the name and email you give Stripe, and the date. Paying changes nothing: not which matches you see, not their order, and nothing about your listing. Paid by mistake? Email us within 14 days and we refund it in full.
- No guarantees. We cannot promise you a match, promise a match will answer, or promise DVSA will complete a swap. The service is provided as-is and free of charge; to the fullest extent the law allows, we are not liable for a missed test, a lost fee, or a swap that falls through.
- Your email is your key. Signing in means proving you can read your email, so anyone with access to your inbox could reach your listing. Keep the inbox secure, and tell us if you think someone else has been in your account.
- Fair use. Automated scraping of the board, bulk listing creation, harvesting booking references, or attempting to contact learners off-platform for any purpose other than the swap in hand will get access withdrawn, and where it breaks the law, reported.
- Governing law. These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales.
One more time, because it matters: never share your driving licence number, theory certificate number, address, phone number, email or card details with another learner. A swap does not need any of them. The only thing that changes hands is a booking reference, through this site, after you have both said yes.