Data Collection, Purpose, and Use

While using our Site, we may ask you to provide us with certain personally identifiable information that can be used to contact or identify you. Personally identifiable information may include, but is not limited to name, email address, cookies, usage data, and password.

We may use your personal information to:

• send you our newsletters from time to time;
• manage contacts and send messages;
• ensure that content from our site is presented in the most effective manner for you and for your device;
• provide you with information, products or services that you request from us which may be of interest to you;
• carry out our obligations arising from any contracts entered into between you and us;
• interact with external social networks and platforms (e.g. social media widgets and share bars);
• allow registration and authentication (e.g. affiliate portals and membership areas);
• allow access to third party services’ accounts;
• monitor infrastructure;
• manage hosting and backend infrastructure;
• carry out and behavioural targeting (including display ads);
• display content from external platforms;
• carry out commercial affiliation (e.g. display ads);
• interact with support and feedback platforms;
• manage user database.

Personal information does not include:

• Publicly available information from government records.
• De-identified or aggregated consumer information.
• Information excluded from the CCPA’s and GDPR’s scope.

Data Collection – Cookies

What Cookies Are

Cookies are text files with a small amount of data, which may include an anonymous unique identifier. 

Cookies are sent to your browser from a web site and stored on your computer’s or tablet device’s or mobile device’s part of the hard drive specifically designated for cookies.

It is standard practice to use cookies to make your experience better when using a website.

Like many sites, we use “cookies” to recognize, collect, and/or track information about, and relevant to, your usage of the Site.

These cookies are known as “first-party cookies”. We may also recognize, collect, and/or track information through cookies set by third parties. These cookies are known as “third-party cookies”. Third-party cookies are used to perform tasks related to advertising, and analytics, and to enable interactive features such as sharing or commenting. Some third parties collect statistics in an anonymized and aggregated form and may not require the consent of the user.

The information that our first-party cookies or third-party cookies recognize, collect, and/or track may include information about your devices, browsing actions, and patterns, such as among others, the type of computer you use, your internet service provider, your browser type, your location, your IP address, the date and time of your visit, the pages viewed, your traffic pattern through the Site. 

Upon your first visit to the Site (and periodically after that), we will request your consent to our use of cookies except for those strictly necessary.

What Cookies We Use

We use the following categories of cookies on the Site: 

Strictly Necessary Cookies

These cookies are essential to enable you to browse the Site and use its features. We use cookies to save your sessions, your login details, and other information necessary to perform your requests, and to carry out other activities that are strictly necessary for the operation of this Site, for example in relation to the distribution of traffic. We use cookies to save browsing preferences and to optimize your browsing experience.

Analytics Cookies

We use Google analytics to record information about the pages a user has seen, for example the URL of the page, time of day, device used, etc. The information that we collect anonymized and sent to Google Analytics for analysis. Google Analytics mainly uses first-party cookies to report on visitor interactions on this website. Users may disable cookies or delete any individual cookie.

In addition, Google Analytics supports an optional browser add-on that – once installed and enabled – disables measurement by Google Analytics for any site a user visits. Note that this add-on only disables Google Analytics measurement. Google Analytics also collects Internet Protocol (IP) addresses to provide and protect the security of the service, and to give website owners a sense of which country, state, or city in the world their users come from (also known as “IP geolocation”). See this page for Google Analytics security and usage of data: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/6004245.

Security Cookies

These cookies are essential to our security features. These cookies allow us to detect malicious activities or activities in breach of our terms of use.

Social Media Cookies

These cookies allow you to share your activity on the Site on social media such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, or other external platforms directly from the Site.

Cookies may still be recognized, collected, and/or tracked on the pages where buttons, widgets, or other applications are installed, even when you do not actively use it.

The interaction and information recognized, collected, and/or tracked through the Site are always subject to your privacy settings for each social network and external platform.

You are encouraged to refer to the privacy policy of the relevant social network or external platform and to log out from the respective network or platform in order to make sure that the information collected on the Site is not tracked back to your profile.

Advertising Cookies

These cookies record your browsing actions and patterns on the Site, such as among others, the pages you have visited and the links you have followed. The information recognized, collected, and/or tracked by these cookies is used to make our Site and the advertising displayed by way of links or banners on the Site more relevant to your interests.

Embedded Content From Other Website Cookies

Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.

These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.

How To Control Cookies

You have the right to accept or reject cookies. 

Strictly necessary cookies may not be rejected since they are essential to enable you to browse the Site and use its features.

Should you reject cookies, you will still be able to use the Site although certain features and functionalities may not be available to you and/or certain areas may be restricted. 

You can manage preferences for cookies directly from within your own browser and prevent – for example – third parties from installing cookies.

Through browser preferences, it is also possible to delete cookies installed in the past, including the cookies that may have saved the initial consent for the installation of cookies by this Site. You can find information about how to manage cookies in the most commonly used browsers (e.g. Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, and Microsoft Internet Explorer) on the website of the browser of choice.

With regard to cookies installed by third parties, users can manage their preferences and withdrawal of their consent by clicking the related opt-out link (if provided), by using the means provided in the third party’s privacy policy, or by contacting the third party.

Data Sharing

This site does not sell, rent, or disclose to outside parties the information collected here, except as follows:

• Service providers and others who help with our business operations and assist in the delivery of our products and services including, but not limited to, application development, site hosting, maintenance, data analysis, infrastructure provision, IT services, customer service, email delivery services, payment processing, marketing, analytics, and enforcement of our Terms of Service Agreement and other agreements;
• Affiliate service providers (Read Section: Affiliate Disclosure for more information);
• Other users of the site to identify you to anyone to whom you send messages or make comments through the Services;
• Persons or entities with whom you consent to have your Personal Data shared;
• Third parties in order to prevent damage to our property (tangible and intangible), for safety reasons, or to collect amounts owed to us;
• Merchants and payment processors;
• and third parties as we believe necessary or appropriate, in any manner permitted under applicable law, including laws outside your country of residence.

We do this to:

• comply with legal process;
• respond to requests from public and government authorities, including public and government authorities outside your country of residence;
• enforce our Terms of Service Agreement and other agreements;
• protect our operations;
• protect our rights, privacy, safety or property, and/or that of our affiliates, you, or others;
• and allow us to pursue available remedies or limit the damages that we may sustain.

We will never sell, rent, or lease your Personal Data to a third party.

Data Retention

If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognize and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.

For users that register on our website (if any), we also store the personal information they provide in their user profile. All users can see, edit, or delete their personal information at any time (except they cannot change their username). Website administrators can also see and edit that information.

Analytics data is retained indefinitely.

What rights you have over your data

If you have an account on this site, or have left comments, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you.

This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.

Your Rights Under GDPR

Users based in the European Union have the right to do the following:

• Withdraw their consent at any time. Users have the right to withdraw consent where they have previously given their consent to the processing of their personal data.
• Object to processing of their data. Users have the right to object to the processing of their data if the processing is carried out on a legal basis other than consent.
• Access their data. Users have the right to learn if data is being processed by us, obtain disclosure regarding certain aspects of the processing and obtain a copy of the data undergoing processing.
• Verify and seek rectification. Users have the right to verify the accuracy of their data and ask for it to be updated or corrected.
• Restrict the processing of their data. Users have the right, under certain circumstances, to restrict the processing of their data. In this case, we will not process their data for any purpose other than storing it.
• Have their personal data deleted or otherwise removed. Users have the right, under certain circumstances, to obtain the erasure of their data from us.
• Receive their data and have it transferred to another controller. Users have the right to receive their data in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format and, if technically feasible, to have it transmitted to another controller without any undue delay.
• Lodge a complaint. Users have the right to bring a claim before their competent data protection supervisory authority.

You can exercise your right to prevent such processing by contacting us via our contact form.

These requests can be exercised free of charge and will be addressed by us as soon as possible and always within thirty (30) days.

Your Rights Under CCPA

Users who reside in California have the right to request any of the following:

• disclosure of the categories and specific pieces of personal information we have collected.
• deletion of personal information we have collected from you.
• disclosure of the categories of personal information we have collected, the categories of sources from which we collected it, the business or commercial purpose for collecting or selling it, the categories of third parties with whom we share it, and the specific pieces of personal information we have collected.
• disclosure of the categories of personal information we collected or sold and the categories of third parties to whom it was sold.

You have the right not to receive discriminatory treatment for the exercise of these privacy rights.

Requests can be submitted by you or someone legally authorised to act on your behalf by email to [email protected] and via our contact us form. 

These requests can be exercised free of charge and will be addressed by us as soon as possible and always within forty-five (45) days.

Your Right To Opt Out of the Sale of Personal Information

Under the CCPA, “sell,” “selling,” “sale,” or “sold,” means selling, renting, releasing, disclosing, disseminating, making available, transferring, or otherwise communicating orally, in writing, or by electronic or other means, a consumer’s personal information by the business to another business or a third party for monetary or other valuable consideration.

As per the CCPA definition, selling personal information includes disclosing information to a third party by using analytics tools, running ads or having social media pixels and plugins installed.  

Users who reside in California have the right to opt out of the sale of personal information.

Requests to exercise your right to opt out can be submitted by you or someone legally authorised to act on your behalf via our contact form.

Non-Discrimination and Notice of Financial Incentives

We will not discriminate against you for exercising any of your CCPA rights. Unless permitted by the CCPA, we will not:

• Deny you goods or services.
• Charge you different prices or rates for goods or services, including through granting discounts or other benefits, or imposing penalties.
• Provide you a different level or quality of goods or services.
• Suggest that you may receive a different price or rate for goods or services or a different level or quality of goods or services.

However, we may offer you certain financial incentives permitted by the CCPA that can result in different prices, rates, or quality levels. 

Any financial incentive we offer will reasonably relate to the value of your personal information and will describe the material terms of the financial incentive program. Participation in any financial incentive program we offer requires your prior consent to opt in, which you may revoke at any time.

We do not use financial incentive practices that are unjust, unreasonable, coercive, or usurious in nature.

Data Storage

Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service.

Comments

When visitors leave comments on the site we collect the data shown in the comments form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection.

An anonymized string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.