EasyGates Forums Privacy Policy

Marketing Data

EasyGates Ltd uses a number of methods to keep previous and potential customers informed about our latest offerings and services.

Email Marketing

EasyGates Ltd maintains several email marketing lists across its various websites.

At the very least, the Marketing Data in these lists consists of your email address, as well as when and to which marketing list you signed up to.

Depending on the email list you opt-in to, additional information such as your name, company name, customer group and industry may be included in our Marketing Data.

When you sign up for an email marketing list, we will always make it clear what information is being added to our marketing list.

This data will not be used in combination with any other information we hold about you without your express permission.

Analytics Data

EasyGates Ltd uses both Google Analytics and SharpSpring to analyse how visitors use our site. Please see the appropriate subsections below to see details for each service.

If you opt-in to Analytics, a cookie is stored on your computer that contains a unique, anonymised ID. This unique ID is a random collection of letters, numbers and symbols, and does not contain any other personally-identifiable information which you may provide to us in another context. The client ID is used to differentiate you from other visitors, as well as determine whether you are a first time or returning visitor.

Google Analytics Data

EasyGates Ltd uses Google Analytics to analyse how visitors use our site.

When Google Analytics is enabled, various details about your computer, browser and visit behaviour are passed on to Google. This information may include, but is not limited to:

• Your IP Address
• An estimate of what browser and operating system you are using to visit our site
• What pages you visit and how long for

Your IP address is collected by the Google Analytics service purely for the purpose of determining the approximate geographic location of visits. Google does not share your IP address with us, and only provides us with an anonymous, approximated geographic location. EasyGates Ltd employs Google Analytics’ optional IP Anonymization feature. This feature removes the final set of digits from your IP address before transmitting it to Google, in order to provide a more anonymised and less accurate estimation of your location.

The techniques that Google employ do not collect personal information such as your name, email address, postal address, or telephone number.

We will not link, or seek to link, any of the above information with any personally identifiable information we hold about you.

SharpSpring Analytics Data

EasyGates Ltd uses SharpSpring to analyse how visitors use our site.

When analytics are enabled, various details about your computer, browser and visit behaviour are passed on to SharpSpring. This information may include, but is not limited to:

• Your IP Address
• Preferences and settings: time zone, language, and character size.
• Technical information: type of device, operating system name and version, device manufacturer, browser information (type, version), screen resolution.
• Traffic Data: What pages you visit, how long for and when; referrer URL

Your IP address is collected by the SharpSpring service purely for the purpose of determining the approximate geographic location of visits. SharpSpring does not share your IP address with us, and only provides us with an anonymous, approximated geographic location.

We cannot link any of the data collected by SharpSpring’s analytics tools to a specific individual.

SharpSpring Analytics Data is retained where SharpSpring "have justifiable business need to do so, and/or for as long as it is needed to fulfill the purposes outlined in [their] Privacy Notice, unless a longer retention period is required by law, such as for tax, legal, or accounting purposes."

Please see SharpSpring’s Privacy Policy for more information.

Raw Access Logs

EasyGates Ltd uses various technologies to log traffic across our websites. The majority of this data is anonymous, and is not linked to any IP addresses or other personally identifiable information.

However, in addition to this anonymous data, EasyGates Ltd keeps raw access logs. These raw access logs store the following information about visitors each time a page is accessed:

• IP Address
• User Agent String
• What resource was accessed
• What time it was accessed

These raw logs do not contain any other information. The data transferred between your computer and our servers is not logged, only the page accessed.

EasyGates Ltd keeps these raw logs in order to:

• Ensure network and information security.
• Ensure we can resist malicious actions that compromise the security of our systems and data, such as brute force entry, DDOS and DOS attacks.

Any data that contains personally identifiable information will be kept for no longer than one month.

However, if we believe an IP Address or range of IP addresses to be behind malicious actions that threaten the security and upkeep of our systems, they will be kept on file as long as we believe they may cause us harm, in order to prevent repeat behaviour.

Registration Information

When signing up to our forums, the following information is collected.

• Username
• Email
• Referrer (optional)
• Your IP Address and browser’s User Agent

The following optional information may subsequently be filled out in the “Edit Profile” section of the website:

• Date of birth
• Website URL
• Sex
• Location
• Bio
• Instant messaging IDs
• Away status
• Signature

Your Registration Information is used primarily to:

• create your EasyGates Forums account
• to identify you to other users.

Your IP address and browser’s user agent are collected when registering as part of our anti-spam and anti-abuse measures.

Your Registration Information is stored on our website database indefinitely (in order to allow customers to order again with as little delay and hassle as possible) or until such a time that you ask us to remove your account. If you request removal of your Registration Information, it will be retained for up to seven additional days (after it is removed from our live / primary data source) in our regular backups. See the Backed up Data section for more information.

If at any time we choose to systematically delete Registration Information, forum members will be contacted beforehand in good time if they meet our criteria for removal. We will provide forum members with facilities to keep their account in our system if they so wish.

Notices will be posted on our website informing members of the time of removal, as well as the criteria we used to determine which accounts will be removed (last post date, last login, etc.).

• Consent: By creating an EasyGates Forum account, you have given clear consent for us to process your personal data for a specific purpose.
• Legitimate interests: the processing of your IP address is necessary for our legitimate interests or the legitimate interests of a third party unless there is a good reason to protect your personal data which overrides those legitimate interests.

These details will never be passed onto a third party unless:

• we have your express permission beforehand; or
• are required to do so by law (see Introduction section).

Registration information will be encrypted and transferred to another server operated by our backup provider on a regular basis, as outlined in the Backed up Data section.

Forum Threads and Posts

After signing up for a Gate Guide forum account and confirming your email address, you will be given the ability to post new threads and reply to existing ones.

Forum threads and posts are displayed publicly on our forum indefinitely, or until such a time as:

• you choose to remove a post or thread created by yourself
• we choose to remove a post or thread. Posts will be removed for violating our Registration Agreement, other forum rules or any applicable laws. Threads and posts may be removed at any time at EasyGates’ discretion.

If forum threads and posts are removed, they will be retained for up to seven additional days (after they are removed from our live / primary data source) in our regular backups. See the Backed up Data section for more information.

Forum threads and posts are displayed publicly, so are viewable by all visitors to our site, whether they are guests or members.

Forum threads and posts will be encrypted and transferred to another server operated by our backup provider on a regular basis, as outlined in the Backed up Data section.

Backed up Data

The following personally identifiable data is backed up to a remote server (separate from our webserver) once per day:

• Registration Information
• Forum Threads and Posts

This data is encrypted using military-grade AES encryption standards before transport to the remote server, during transport, and when the data is at rest on the remote server.

A "snapshot" of the data we store is taken once per day. These snapshots are stored on the remote server for up to seven days, depending on their size.

However, this snapshot of data will contain data older than seven days, in accordance with the retention policies outlined above for each type of data.

Legitimate interests: the processing is necessary for our legitimate interests or the legitimate interests of a third party unless there is a good reason to protect your personal data which overrides those legitimate interests.