BestOfDate

Privacy & Cookie Policy

BestOfDate.com is owned and operated by Double You Media in Wexford, Ireland.

Double You Media respects the privacy of all individuals whose Personal Data it comes into contact with.

This privacy policy explains how we access and use the Personally Identifiable Information (PII) of our visitors. It also explains how our website uses cookies and which steps users can take in order to manage their cookie preferences.

PII, as used in privacy law and information security, is information that can be used on its own or with other information to identify, contact, or locate a single person, or to identify an individual in context.

Please read our privacy policy carefully to get a clear understanding of how we collect, use, protect or otherwise handle your PII.

What personal information do we collect from visitors?

If you are visiting our website, we may collect information about your browser type, device information and your IP address.

When purchasing something or registering on our site, as appropriate, you may be asked to enter your name, email address, company details, location, gender, age or other details.

By using our website, we may also use information gathered from you, and information gathered from third parties, to show you targeted advertisements.

We may also share your data with our advertising partners and the third parties that they use to deliver, measure and target their advertisements.

For more information on this, please read the section that is titled "Personalized advertising and targeting cookies." To learn more about personalized advertising and how to disable it, you can also read the section below that is titled "Personalized advertisements."

Two of the third-party solutions that we use and share data with are Google Adsense and Google Analytics. To read how Google uses that information, please visit the following guide.

Cookies

Our website uses different types of cookies to improve your experience and to provide services and advertising. These cookies can be set by us or by a third party such as Google or Facebook.

Our website uses four different types of cookies.

Performance cookies

These cookies allow us to analyze our traffic so that we can measure and improve the performance of our website. Currently we use Google Analytics and Statcounter to collect and analyze our web traffic. You can find information about their cookies policies below.

Personalized advertising and targeting cookies

To help fund our website, we display advertisements using Google Adsense. These advertisements are often personalized to the visitor.

By using cookies, advertisers and third parties can track which topics a visitor finds interesting and then use that information to display advertisements that are relevant to their interests.

Essentially, they can build an “ad profile” of a visitor’s interests, location and hobbies.

Targeting cookies can be placed by Google and other third-party advertising networks. These cookies can then be shared with other organisations, including other advertisers.

Advertisers and publishers using Google’s advertising systems use third parties to serve ads and measure the efficacy of their ad campaigns on websites.

These ad technology providers support ad delivery, targeting, measurement and other functions.

As a result, these parties may collect, receive or use personal data collected from your use of our website and other websites in order to create an ad profile that informs the ads they show you.

To see a full list of the third party ad technology providers that we use and their privacy policies, please read the following document: https://bestofdate.com/third-party-ad-tech.php

To turn off targeted cookies, you can do so by using our Privacy Center. To find out more information on how to disable personalized advertisements, please read the section titled “Personalized advertisements” below.

Functional cookies

Functional cookies are used to store user preferences. They can also be used for authentication purposes on login and registration forms.

For example, if you were to change your preferred language on a website, then a functional cookie might be used to keep track of that preference.

Strictly necessary cookies

Strictly necessary cookies are essential for the normal operation of a website. Without them, the website might not work as intended.

For example, we use cookies to determine whether or not a user has already enabled or disabled certain cookie types. This helps us to avoid a situation where the user has to press “Accept” on each page.

Another example is if there is a shopping feature on the website. In that case, cookies might be used to keep track of which items are currently in your cart.

These types of cookies cannot be disabled via our Privacy Center. However, you can disable them via your browser settings or you can block them by using a third party plugin.

You can also delete them afterwards.

How do we use your information?

We may use the information we collect from you when you register, make a purchase, sign up for our newsletter, respond to a survey or marketing communication, surf the website, or use certain other site features in the following ways:

  • To personalize your user experience and to allow us to deliver the type of content and product offerings that you are most interested in.
  • To improve our website in order to better serve our visitors.
  • To serve personalized advertisements.
  • To analyze traffic and measure the website’s performance.
  • To send periodic emails regarding your order or other products and services.

Third parties

We utilize a number of third party plugins, services and libraries to enhance our website and display personalized advertisements.

Personalized advertisements

Our website uses Google Adsense to display advertisements.

Google uses cookies to help serve the ads it displays on the websites of its partners, such as websites displaying Google ads or participating in Google certified ad networks. When users visit a Google partner’s website, a cookie may be added to that end user’s browser.

Third party vendors, including Google, use cookies to serve ads based on a user’s prior visits to this website or other websites.

Google’s use of advertising cookies enables it and its partners to serve ads to users based on their visit to this website and other websites on the Internet.

In other words, these cookies help Google and third party advertisers to build an “ad profile” of each visitor. This in turn gives advertisers the ability to target ads that are based on things such as the end user’s interests and location.

Third party ad technology providers

For a full list of the third party ad technology providers that we use, please read this document. The list in question also contains a link to each of their privacy policies.

How to opt out of personalized advertising

Users can opt out of personalized advertising by visiting Google's Ads Settings section.

To opt out of some third-party vendors’ uses of cookies for personalized advertising, you can visit aboutads.info or youradchoices.com

We along with third-party vendors, such as Google use first-party cookies (such as the Google Analytics cookies) and third-party cookies (such as the DoubleClick cookie) or other third-party identifiers together to compile data regarding user interactions with ad impressions and other ad service functions as they relate to our website.

For more information, see Google’s article on How Google uses data when you use our partners’ sites or apps.

Google Analytics

We use Google Analytics to help us understand how visitors engage with our site.

Google Analytics uses cookies to store non-personally identifiable information.

You can find out more information by reading Google’s article on Google Analytics Cookie Usage on Websites.

Statcounter

We may use Statcounter to track and analyze our traffic.

Statcounter is an online service which helps us to understand our visitors. For example, how visitors find our website, how long they spend on our site, which web pages they are most interested in, etc.

We use Statcounter because better understanding how visitors are interacting with our website helps us to improve the content, design and functionality of our site. This allows us to offer a better online experience to our visitors.

Statcounter uses cookies and other technologies to collect data on visitors and visitor activity on our website.

This data includes:

  • The time and date of a visit. This can help us to identify busy periods on our website.
  • IP address. This is a numerical label assigned to a device by an Internet Service Provider to enable the device to access the internet.
  • Browser and Operating System. This can help us to make sure that our website functions correctly in the browsers and operating systems that are used to access our site.
  • Device Information. For example, device type and screen size. This can help us to make sure that our website functions correctly in the devices used to access our site.
  • Referring Data. For example, did the user come from a search engine or a link on another website? This can help us to understand where our traffic is coming from.

Furthermore, when you visit our website a Statcounter, cookie (called “is_unique”) may be placed in your browser. This cookie is used only to determine whether you are a first-time or returning visitor and to estimate unique visits to the site.

You can learn more about cookies from Statcounter and refuse them here.

For further details, please see the Statcounter privacy policy.

How to manually control individual cookies

You can control and delete cookies via your browser’s settings menu.

Using these settings, you can delete all cookies that are currently on your computer and you can set most browsers to prevent them from being placed.

Helpful for individual browsers can be found below.

Please note that if you do this, you may have to manually adjust some preferences every time that you visit a site and that some services and features may not work.

You can learn in greater detail about cookies and how to manage them here:

https://www.allaboutcookies.org/manage-cookies

How do we protect visitor information?

We operate a real-time security monitoring tool that warns us about potential security risks. We also use an SSL certificate to encrypt data between your browser and our server

We do not sell your information

We do not sell or trade your personally identifiable information to third parties.

Third-party links

Occasionally, at our discretion, we may include or offer third-party products or services on our website. We may also link to external websites.

These third-party sites have separate and independent privacy policies. Therefore, we have no responsibility or liability for the content and activities of these linked sites. Nonetheless, we seek to protect the integrity of our site and welcome any feedback about these sites.

COPPA (Children Online Privacy Protection Act)

We do not specifically market to children under 13.

Fair Information Practices

The Fair Information Practices Principles form the backbone of privacy law in the United States and the concepts they include have played a significant role in the development of data protection laws around the globe. Understanding the Fair Information Practice Principles and how they should be implemented is critical to comply with the various privacy laws that protect personal information.

In order to be in line with Fair Information Practices we will take the following responsive action, should a data breach occur:

We will notify the users via email within 3 business days.
We will notify the users via in-site notification within 3 business days.

We also agree to the Individual Redress Principle, which requires that individuals have a right to pursue legally enforceable rights against data collectors and processors who fail to adhere to the law. This principle requires not only that individuals have enforceable rights against data users, but also that individuals have recourse to courts or government agencies to investigate and/or prosecute non-compliance by data processors.

CAN SPAM Act

The CAN-SPAM Act is a law that sets the rules for commercial email, establishes requirements for commercial messages, gives recipients the right to have emails stopped from being sent to them, and spells out tough penalties for violations.

We collect email addresses in order to:

  • Send user notifications / updates.
  • To notify users about new features.
  • Decrease the possibility of “dummy” / fake user accounts.
  • Send newsletters.

Last edited on Aug 23, 2021.