Privacy/GDPR POLICY
Introduction
This version of the Privacy Policy is effective from February 2018.
BuddyBate.com, (“BuddyBate”) needs to gather certain limited information about those who visit the site to make their visit as functional as possible and supply features such as commenting options and the opportunity to submit information for publication. This information can include your supplied name, submitted articles of text (story, experience, fantasy etc), IP address, email address and certain anonymized data about general geographic location and technical information. This policy describes how this personal data must be collected, handled and stored to meet data protection standards and to comply with the law.
Why this Policy Exists
This data protection policy ensures BuddyBate:
- Complies with data protection law and follows good practice
- Protects the rights of visitors
- Is transparent about how it stores and processes individuals personal data
- Protects itself from the risk of a data breach
The General Data Protection Regulation
The EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came into effect on May 24th 2018 and replaces the previous Data Protection Directive 95/46/EC. It was designed to harmonize data privacy laws across Europe but includes protections to EU citizens regardless of whether a website or business operates within the EU. The intention of the new GDPRis to give greater control to citizens in how their information is used, stored and handled.
What is considered “Personal Data”?
As it pertains to this website, “Personal data” is defined in the GDPR as any information which could reasonably be used to identify a visitor to this website, such as name, any issued identification number, location information, online identifier or to one or more factors specific to the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural or social identity of that person. Specifically, this means that IP addresses, email addresses and cookies can now be considered to be “Personal Data” if these aspects can be used to further identify information about a user without undue effort.
1. Information collection and tracking
1.1. When you visit our website.
You can visit our website (www.BuddyBate.com) without giving away your personal information. BuddyBate uses Google Analytics and Cookies in order to improve our service, user experience and analyze how our website is used to enable us to improve your experience and provide the service you expect from casual visitation of a website. Aside from the approximate location (IP address), the information collected by Google Analytics is mostly anonymous traffic data including browser information, device information and language. We do not collect additional information, such as your age, gender, interests, bank details or clickstream.
The information collected by the Google Analytics system is anonymous and cannot be used to identify you. The limited information gathered by this service is used by BuddyBate to monitor site usage and popularity of content over a given period. For further information, please read Google’s Privacy Policy here.
The BuddyBate website does not incorporate services from third-party sites or ad networks which may wish to use a cookie for “tracking” purposes in order to “re-target” a user who may have expressed an interest in a product or service on another website.
2. When you contact us
All visitors to BuddyBate can use our website without giving us any identifiable information about them. When you contact us you may supply your given name, an email address and your (incidentally collected) IP address. Only your email address and given name are relevant to us for the purpose of making contact by reply where necessary. This supplied information is deleted within a maximum of six months from the submission date.
2.1. Submissions
If you use the contact page to submit an experience, a story or a fantasy for publication on this website you are required to supply an email address and a given name along with any text content (body of post) to be published. At no time will your supplied email address be used for any other purpose. When publishing submitted content care is taken to maintain anonymity of those submitting this content. Names are abbreviated or shortened where necessary and any identifying information is removed prior to publishing. Once published, any information stored pertaining to the original submission, such as email address or IP address, is deleted from our system.
2.2. Newsletter
BuddyBate supplies a newsletter function for visitors to join. When a user joins our newsletter only their email address and supplied name (optional) are collected. This system utilizes an “opt-in” mechanism, meaning that the owner of the email account must click on a confirmation link before their membership of the newsletter is confirmed. If a visitor signs up to our newsletter and fails to confirm their email address within two months by using this opt-in feature, their request to join the newsletter is deleted and their email address and provided name (if supplied) are removed from our systems.
Only website administrators responsible for distributing the newsletter have access to the email addresses and supplied names contained within the system.
Email addresses and supplied names can be deleted from this system by the administrator at any time and those who have signed up to receive newsletters from BuddyBate can cancel their subscription at any time by clicking the link in the bottom of any previously delivered email newsletter. When a subscriber to this newsletter system requests cancellation of this service receipt of newsletters stops immediately. We remove their email and supplied name from the system entirely within one month.
Please also note the following:
Subscribers who don’t confirm their email address are removed from the system within a maximum of 60 days from the date of submitting their data.
Subscribers who don’t open our newsletter or click any link contained in the newsletter within a 60 day period of joining are considered inactive or fraudulent and may be removed from the list at our discretion.
Submitted details are never shared, sold or loaned to any individual, company or organization at any time.
3. Cookies
A cookie is a small piece of information picked up by your browser when you visit a website. You might visit our website using a Chrome or Firefox browser and when you connect to our servers a small file of data is collected from us by you. Cookies are designed to make your experience here as useful as possible. They allow us to “remember” certain things, perhaps to display to you pages you’ve previously viewed while here, a comment you writing before you were distracted, or perhaps just to provide a signal to our internal analytics so that we know how many people came back again to read more. This is anonymized information and reveals nothing personal about you.
There are two kinds of cookies we use:
Persistent cookies are as they sound, but only in comparison to Session cookies. Persistent cookies generally remain in your browser until they either expire themselves (cookies come with termination in-built, after a specific period of time, which can vary depending on the intention of the cookie) or are deleted by you. They can be deleted manually using a setting in your browser, or automatically on browser closing, depending on the settings of the browser you use and the options you have chosen.
Session cookies are those used for a very short period of time, for example when progressing through a website and reading more content, leaving a comment or submitting a piece of information. These are deleted when you close your browser, or can be deleted manually at any time before closing.
3.1. Affiliate cookies
Our business model relies on being able to collect a small percentage of a sale made via one of the websites we promote. We use links to third-party websites such as English Lads or Falcon Studios which allows the service provider to track the sale and apportion a share of that sale to us.
When you click a link on one of our pages which takes you to a site (for example English Lads) a small cookie is collected by your browser. This allows the payment system you might then use to join the site to acknowledge that we were the ones who recommended their site to you. This allows them to pay us a small amount for the sale we have sent to them.
3.2. Turning off cookies
Every major browser now allows you to control and manage which cookies exist within it and provide you with options to refuse cookies, please refer to the documentation for your specific browser if you would like more information.
Please be aware that choosing to refuse cookies from this website may result in limited access to our posts and pages.
4. Social media
The BuddyBate website allows visitors to share information (posts and pages) appearing on this site across various social media platforms. We currently have no relationship, technical or otherwise, with any social media website and we do not incorporate information sharing mechanisms with any third-party website. No account information from any other site is incorporated into our systems at any time through any use of the supplied social media features on the BuddyBate website.
In addition, due to the activities and policies of the Facebook corporation in the UK and around the world, and the security/privacy risks the company presents for our readers and community, we are unable to publish any links to a Facebook page, user account or group created there. For your own security and that of those you wish to socialize with we recommend avoiding Facebook and instead use one of the many other social networks available, such as newTumbl, Twitter, Reddit or a site specifically for communities such as ours (BateWorld.com)
5. Information Security
While the BuddyBate website only collects very limited information about visitors, email subscribers and those who participate by submitting information in comment form or by submitting content for publishing, we take your privacy and security extremely seriously and strive to ensure that any information that is supplied by you is protected from unauthorized access, loss, manipulation, falsification, destruction or unauthorized disclosure. This is done through appropriate technical measures using industry standard procedures for a website like ours.
6. Access to Information
You have the right to request any information we have about you. You can do this by contacting us at admin{at}buddybate.com. We will make sure to provide you with a copy of the data we process about you within thirty days of the request being made. In order to comply with your request, we may ask you to verify your identity. We will fulfill your request by sending your copy electronically (such as in a txt. file or pdf.), unless the request expressly specifies a different method. For any subsequent access request, we may charge an administrative fee.
7. Information Deletion
Due to the information held about you being limited to email addresses, IP addresses and (rarely) a provided name, deletion of information can be performed simply by searching for all instances where such information exists. Therefore, if you require that any information we may have within our systems which relates to you be deleted and removed we can accomplish this by a simple search and delete method using the information provided. Please be aware that we will request confirmation of identity using the email address supplied.
8. When policy applies
This policy is applicable to the services offered to visitors and newsletter subscribers of the BuddyBate website. Our website may contain links to external websites which are beyond our influence or control. Visitors to the BuddyBate website should refer to the policies of individual websites for further information and should not consider this policy to be relevant once they have exited this website.
9. Changes
We reserve the right to change this policy at any time and for any reason, specifically as it pertains to law. We regularly review our policies to provide our visitors with as much information as possible to enable them to make informed decisions and allow them greater control of their information. BuddyBate will not substantially change this policy in the future without notifying visitors to this website.
10. In conclusion
BuddyBate only collects information about you to make your visit here as functional and simple as possible, and to supply those who request it though and opt-in process to receive email newsletters. We do not incorporate any third-party ad networks or tracking systems beyond the anonymized information gathered by Google Analytics. We do not sell, loan, or otherwise share, any personal information supplied by our visitors and website users with any other party for any purpose and will never do so unless required by law. Cookies used on this website are limited in nature and are solely for the benefit of user experience, tracking website usage and page/post popularity, and identifying browsers in partnership with adult websites for which we get a commission when a membership or service is provided.
11. You can contact us at any time to:
Request a copy of all information we have about you (pertaining to your supplied name or email address)
Delete any information we have about you on our servers.
You can contact us at admin{at}buddybate.com.
Glossary of terms
Cookies
Cookies are small pieces of data which are downloaded or stored on your computer or other device that can be tied to information about your use of our website and allow the websites we promote to identify that we sent you to them for the purposes of commission sales.
Device
A device is what you use to reach our website, such as a smartphone, tablet or computer.
IP address
Internet Protocol (IP) address is a number that is connected to your device. An IP address can be used to determine the location of your device typically within a 40km radius, thus not being an exact determination of your location. IP addresses are basically how the Internet functions.
Personal information
Personal information is information that can identify you. This can be your name, email, contact information or other type of information that can be traced back to you.
v.1; February, 2018
