Privacy Policy

Privacy on the internet is changing and ever-evolving.  Gun Backer continually works to ensure we are compliant with all consumer protection laws with regards to your personal data.

Please feel free to use the menu below for details about how Gun Backer may use your data as you visit our site.

INTRODUCTION

In its everyday business operations, Gun Backer makes use of a variety of data about identifiable individuals, including data about:

• Current, past and prospective employees
• Customers
• Users of its websites
• Subscribers

In collecting and using this data, the organisation is subject to a variety of legislation controlling how such activities may be carried out and the safeguards that must be put in place to protect it.

The purpose of this policy is to set out the relevant legislation and to describe the steps Gun Backer is taking to ensure we are in compliance with this legislation, both in the US and in other countries.

This control applies to all systems, people and processes that constitute the organisation’s information systems, including board members, directors, employees, suppliers and other third parties who have access to Gun Backer’s systems.

The following policies and procedures are relevant to this document:

• Data Protection Impact Assessment Process
• Information Security Incident Response Procedure
• GDPR Roles, Responsibilities and Authorities
• Records Retention and Protection Policy

THE GENERAL DATA PROTECTION REGULATION

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is one of the most significant pieces of legislation affecting the way that Gun Backer carries out its information processing activities. Significant fines are applicable if a breach is deemed to have occurred under the GDPR, which is designed to protect the personal data of citizens of the European Union. It is Gun Backer’s policy to ensure that our compliance with the GDPR and other relevant legislation is clear and demonstrable at all times.

DEFINITIONS

There are a total of 26 definitions listed within the GDPR and it is not appropriate to reproduce them all here. However, the most fundamental definitions with respect to this policy are as follows:

Personal data is defined as:
any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person (‘data subject’); an identifiable natural person is one who can be identified, directly or indirectly, in particular by reference to an identifier such as a name, an identification number, location data, an online identifier or to one or more factors specific to the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural or social identity of that natural person;

‘processing’ means:
any operation or set of operations which is performed on personal data or on sets of personal data, whether or not by automated means, such as collection, recording, organisation, structuring, storage, adaptation or alteration, retrieval, consultation, use, disclosure by transmission, dissemination or otherwise making available, alignment or combination, restriction, erasure or destruction;

‘controller’ means:
the natural or legal person, public authority, agency or other body which, alone or jointly with others, determines the purposes and means of the processing of personal data; where the purposes and means of such processing are determined by Union or Member State law, the controller or the specific criteria for its nomination may be provided for by Union or Member State law;

PRINCIPLES RELATING TO PROCESSING OF PERSONAL DATA

There are a number of fundamental principles upon which the GDPR is based.
These are as follows:

Personal data shall be:

(a) processed lawfully, fairly and in a transparent manner in relation to the data subject (‘lawfulness, fairness and transparency’);

(b) collected for specified, explicit and legitimate purposes and not further processed in a manner that is incompatible with those purposes; further processing for archiving purposes in the public interest, scientific or historical research purposes or statistical purposes shall, in accordance with Article 89(1), not be considered to be incompatible with the initial purposes (‘purpose limitation’);

(c) adequate, relevant and limited to what is necessary in relation to the purposes for which they are processed (‘data minimisation’);

(d) accurate and, where necessary, kept up to date; every reasonable step must be taken to ensure that personal data that are inaccurate, having regard to the purposes for which they are processed, are erased or rectified without delay (‘accuracy’);

(e) kept in a form which permits identification of data subjects for no longer than is necessary for the purposes for which the personal data are processed; personal data may be stored for longer periods insofar as the personal data will be processed solely for archiving purposes in the public interest, scientific or historical research purposes or statistical purposes in accordance with Article 89(1) subject to implementation of the appropriate technical and organisational measures required by this Regulation in order to safeguard the rights and freedoms of the data subject (‘storage limitation’);

(f) processed in a manner that ensures appropriate security of the personal data, including protection against unauthorised or unlawful processing and against accidental loss, destruction or damage, using appropriate technical or organisational measures (‘integrity and confidentiality’).

RIGHT OF THE INDIVIDUAL

The data subject also has rights under the GDPR. These consist of:

1. The right to be informed
2. The right of access
3. The right to rectification
4. The right to erasure
5. The right to restrict processing
6. The right to data portability
7. The right to object
8. Rights in relation to automated decision making and profiling.

Each of these rights must be supported by appropriate procedures within Gun Backer that allow the required action to be taken within the timescales stated in the GDPR.

These timescales are:

1. The right to be informed – When data is collected (if supplied by data subject) or within one month (if not supplied by data subject)
2. The right of access – One month
3. The right to rectification – One month
4. The right to erasure – Without undue delay
5. The right to restrict processing – Without undue delay
6. The right to data portability – One month
7. The right to object – On receipt of objection
8. Rights in relation to automated decision making and profiling – Not specified

CONSENT

Unless it is necessary for a reason allowable in the GDPR, explicit consent must be obtained from a data subject to collect and process their data. In case of children below the age of 16 parental consent must be obtained. Transparent information about our usage of their personal data must be provided to data subjects at the time that consent is obtained and their rights with regard to their data explained, such as the right to withdraw consent. This information must be provided in an accessible form, written in clear language and free of charge.

If the personal data is not obtained directly from the data subject then this information must be provided within a reasonable period after the data are obtained and definitely within one month.

PRIVACY BY DESIGN

Gun Backer has adopted the principle of privacy by design and will ensure that the definition and planning of all new or significantly changed systems that collect or process personal data will be subject to due consideration of privacy issues, including the completion of one or more data protection impact assessments.

The data protection impact assessment will include:

• Consideration of how personal data will be processed and for what purposes
• Assessment of whether the proposed processing of personal data is both necessary and proportionate to the purpose(s)
• Assessment of the risks to individuals in processing the personal data
• What controls are necessary to address the identified risks and demonstrate compliance with legislation

Use of techniques such as data minimization and pseudonymisation should be considered where applicable and appropriate.

TRANSFER OF PERSONAL DATA

Transfers of personal data outside the European Union must be carefully reviewed prior to the transfer taking place to ensure that they fall within the limits imposed by the GDPR. This depends partly on the European Commission’s judgement as to the adequacy of the safeguards for personal data applicable in the receiving country and this may change over time.

Intra-group international data transfers must be subject to legally binding agreements referred to as Binding Corporate Rules (BCR) which provide enforceable rights for data subjects.

PERSONAL INFORMATION THAT THIS WEBSITE COLLECTS AND WHY WE COLLECT IT

This website collects and uses personal information for the following reasons:

1. SITE VISITATION TRACKING

Like most websites, this site uses Google Analytics (GA) to track user interaction. We use this data to determine the number of people using our site, to better understand how they find and use our web pages and to see their journey through the website.

Although GA records data such as your geographical location, device, internet browser and operating system, none of this information personally identifies you to us. GA also records your computer’s IP address which could be used to personally identify you but Google do not grant us access to this. We consider Google to be a third party data processor.

GA makes use of cookies, details of which can be found on Google’s developer guides.

Disabling cookies on your internet browser will stop GA from tracking any part of your visit to pages within this website.

2. LOG FILES, COOKIES & ADVERTISING PARTNERS

Some of our advertising partners may use cookies and web beacons on our site.

Log Files: Like many other Web sites, gunbacker.com makes use of log files. The information inside the log files includes internet protocol ( IP ) addresses, type of browser, Internet Service Provider ( ISP ), date/time stamp, referring/exit pages, and number of clicks to analyze trends, administer the site, track user’s movement around the site, and gather demographic information. IP addresses, and other such information are not linked to any information that is personally identifiable.

Cookies and Web Beacons: gunbacker.com does use cookies to store information about visitors preferences, record user-specific information on which pages the user access or visit, customize Web page content based on visitors browser type or other information that the visitor sends via their browser.

DoubleClick DART Cookie:  Google, as a third party vendor, uses cookies to serve ads on gunbacker.com.  Google’s use of the DART cookie enables it to serve ads to users based on their visit to gunbacker.com and other sites on the Internet.

Users may opt out of the use of the DART cookie by visiting the Google ad and content network privacy policy at the following URL – http://www.google.com/privacy_ads.html

Amazon Associates: These third-party ad servers or ad networks use technology to the advertisements and links that appear on gunbacker.com send directly to your browsers.

They automatically receive your IP address when this occurs. Other technologies ( such as cookies, JavaScript, or Web Beacons ) may also be used by the third-party ad networks to measure the effectiveness of their advertisements and / or to personalize the advertising content that you see. gunbacker.com has no access to or control over these cookies that are used by third-party advertisers.

You should consult the respective privacy policies of these third-party ad servers for more detailed information on their practices as well as for instructions about how to opt-out of certain practices. gunbacker.com’s privacy policy does not apply to, and we cannot control the activities of, such other advertisers or web sites.

Gunbacker.com is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.

If you wish to disable cookies, you may do so through your individual browser options. More detailed information about cookie management with specific web browsers can be found at the browsers’ respective websites.

3. CONTACT FORMS

Should you choose to contact us using the contact form on our Contact us page, the data that you supply will be stored by this website and collated into an email and sent to us over the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP). Our SMTP servers are protected by TLS (sometimes known as SSL) meaning that the email is sent over an encrypted connection using SHA-2, 256-bit cryptography and received by Google’s secure servers.

4. EMAIL NEWSLETTER

If you choose to join our email newsletter, the email address that you submit to us will be forwarded to Convertkit who provide us with email marketing services. We consider Convertkit to be a third party data processor. The email address that you submit will not be stored within this website’s own database or in any of our internal computer systems.

Your email address will remain within MailChimp’s database for as long as we continue to use Convertkit’s services for email marketing or until you specifically request removal from the list. You can do this by unsubscribing using the unsubscribe links contained in any email newsletters that we send you or by requesting removal via email. When requesting removal via email, please send your email to us using the email account that is subscribed to the mailing list.

If you are under 16 years of age you MUST obtain parental consent before joining our email newsletter.

While your email address remains within the Convertkit database, you will receive periodic (approximately once a month) newsletter-style emails from us.

HOW WE STORE YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION

As detailed above, if you submit a contact form on this website some personal information will be stored within this website’s database. This is currently the only occasion where personal data will be stored on this website. This data is currently stored in an identifiable fashion; a limitation of the content management system that this website is built on (WordPress). In the near future we aim to change the storage of this data to a pseudonymous fashion meaning that the data would require additional processing using a separately stored ‘key’ before it could be used to identify an individual.

Pseudonymisation is a recent requirement of the GDPR which many web application developers are currently working to fully implement. We are committed to keeping it as a high priority and will implement it on this website as soon as we are able to.

ABOUT THIS WEBSITE’S SERVER

This website is hosted by Kinsta within a US data center.

Some of the data centre’s more notable security features are as follows:

24/7/365 DDoS Security & Intrusion protection, along with:

• Malware scanning
• Several layers of password brute force mitigation
• A web application firewall
• Multiple layers of DDoS mitigation
• Secured password and configuration methodology

All traffic (transferral of files) between this website and your browser is encrypted and delivered over HTTPS.

OUR THIRD PARTY DATA PROCESSORS

We use a number of third parties to process personal data on our behalf. These third parties have been carefully chosen and all of them comply with the legislation. All two of these third parties are based in the USA and are EU-U.S Privacy Shield compliant.

Google (Privacy policy)
Convertkit (Privacy policy)

DATA PROTECTION OFFICER

A defined role of Data Protection Officer (DPO) is required under the GDPR if an organisation is a public authority if it performs large scale monitoring or if it processes particularly sensitive types of data on a large scale. The DPO is required to have an appropriate level of knowledge and can either be an in-house resource or outsourced to an appropriate service provider.

Based on these criteria, Gun Backer does not require a Data Protection Officer to be appointed.

BREACH NOTIFICATION

It is Gun Backer’s policy to be fair and proportionate when considering the actions to be taken to inform affected parties regarding breaches of personal data. In line with the GDPR, where a breach is known to have occurred which is likely to result in a risk to the rights and freedoms of individuals, the relevant Data Protection Authority (DPA) will be informed within 72 hours.

This will be managed in accordance with our Information Security Incident Response Procedure which sets out the overall process of handling information security incidents.

Under the GDPR the relevant DPA has the authority to impose a range of fines of up to four percent of annual worldwide turnover or twenty million Euros, whichever is the higher, for infringements of the regulations.

The following actions are undertaken to ensure that Gun Backer complies at all times with the accountability principle of the GDPR:

• The legal basis for processing personal data is clear and unambiguous
• All staff involved in handling personal data understand their responsibilities for following good data protection practice
• Training in data protection has been provided to all staff
• Rules regarding consent are followed
• Routes are available to data subjects wishing to exercise their rights regarding personal data and such enquiries are handled effectively
• Regular reviews of procedures involving personal data are carried out
• Privacy by design is adopted for all new or changed systems and processes
• The following documentation of processing activities is recorded:
  – Organisation name and relevant details
  – Purposes of the personal data processing
  – Categories of individuals and personal data processed
  – Categories of personal data recipients
  – Agreements and mechanisms for transfers of personal data to non-EU countries including details of controls in place
  – Personal data retention schedules
  – Relevant technical and organisational controls in place

CHANGES TO OUR PRIVACY POLICY

This privacy policy may change from time to time inline with legislation or industry developments. We will not explicitly inform our clients or website users of these changes. Instead, we recommend that you check this page occasionally for any policy changes. Specific policy changes and updates will be mentioned in a change log below.

SUMMARY:

Google Analytics: We use GA to track our website visitors flow through our website to ensure we are providing a great user experience.  Google Analytics does not pass us personal information from our customers.

Cookies: We work with advertisers and may earn revenue through display ads and/or affiliate links.

Convertkit: We use Convertkit as an email marketing provider.  We may email our visitors that sign up through a double optin process to ensure compliance with GDPR policies.  These emails may include affiliate offers and/or content that our readers enjoy.

Mediavine Programmatic Advertising

The Website uses Mediavine to manage all third-party advertising on the Website. Mediavine serves content and advertisements when you visit the Website, which may use first and third-party cookies. A cookie is a small text file which is sent to your computer or mobile device (referred to in this policy as a “device”) by the web server so that a website can remember some information about your browsing activity on the Website. The cookie may collect information relating to your use of the Website, information about your device such as the device’s IP address and browser type, demographic data and, if you arrived at the Website via a link from a third-party site, the URL of the linking page.

First party cookies are created by the website that you are visiting. A third-party cookie is frequently used in behavioral advertising and analytics and is created by a domain other than the website you are visiting. Third-party cookies, tags, pixels, beacons and other similar technologies (collectively, “Tags”) may be placed on the Website to monitor interaction with advertising content and to target and optimize advertising. Each internet browser has functionality so that you can block both first and third-party cookies and clear your browser’s cache. The “help” feature of the menu bar on most browsers will tell you how to stop accepting new cookies, how to receive notification of new cookies, how to disable existing cookies and how to clear your browser’s cache. For more information about cookies and how to disable them, you can consult the information at www.allaboutcookies.org/manage-cookies/.

Without cookies you may not be able to take full advantage of the Website content and features. Please note that rejecting cookies does not mean that you will no longer see ads when you visit our Site.

The Website may collect IP addresses and location information to serve personalized ads and pass it to Mediavine. If you would like more information about this practice and to know your choices to opt-in or opt-out of this data collection, please visit https://www.networkadvertising.org/managing/opt_out.asp. You may also visit https://optout.aboutads.info/#/ and https://optout.networkadvertising.org/# to learn more information about interest-based advertising. You may download the AppChoices app at https://www.aboutads.info/appchoices to opt out in connection with mobile apps, or use the platform controls on your mobile device to opt out.

Mediavine partners with the following data processors:

1. Pubmatic. You may find Pubmatic’s privacy policy through this link. The data collected on the Website may be transferred to Pubmatic and its demand partners for interest-based advertising. Statistical information and other non-cookie technologies (such as eTags and web or browser cache) may be used by third parties on this Website. Browser settings that block cookies may have no effect on these technologies, but you may clear your cache to delete such trackers. Data collected from a particular browser or device may be used with another computer or device that is linked to the browser or device on which such data was collected.
2. Criteo. You may find Criteo’s privacy policy through this link. The data collected on the Website may be transferred to Criteo and its demand partners for interest-based advertising. Criteo may collect, access, and use non-identifying data to improve the Criteo Technology and other Criteo products, programs, and/or services. This non-identifying data may include on-site user behavior and user/page content data, URLs, statistics, or internal search queries. The non-identifying data are collected through the ad call and stored with a Criteo cookie for a maximum period of 13 months.
3. Pulsepoint. You may find Pulsepoint’s privacy policy through this link.
4. LiveRamp. You may find LiveRamp’s privacy policy through this link. When you use the Website, we share information that we may collect from you, such as your email (in hashed, de-identified form), IP address or information about your browser or operating system, with LiveRamp Inc, and its group companies (‘LiveRamp’). LiveRamp may use a cookie on your browser and match your shared information to their on- and offline marketing databases and those of its advertising partners to create a link between your browser and information in those other databases. This link may be shared by our partners globally for the purpose of enabling interest-based content or advertising throughout your online experience (e.g. cross device, web, email, in-app, etc.) by third parties unaffiliated with our website. These third parties may in turn link further demographic or interest-based information to your browser. To opt out of LiveRamp’s targeted advertising, please go here: https://liveramp.com/opt_out/
5. RhythmOne. You may view RhythmOne’s privacy policy through this link. RhythmOne uses cookies and similar tracking technologies (such as mobile device identifiers and digital fingerprinting) to provide its services. RhythmOne may use aggregated information (not including your name, address, email address or telephone number) about your visits to this and other Websites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services of interest to you. If you would like more information about this practice and to know your choices about not having this information used by these companies, please visit the following webpage: https://www.networkadvertising.org/managing/opt_out.asp.
6. District M. You may find District M’s privacy policy through this link.
7. YieldMo. You may find YieldMo’s privacy policy through this link. If you want to opt out of receiving interest based ads from Yieldmo or exercise your right under the California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”) to opt-out of the sale of your personal information, you may do so through this link.
8. The Rubicon Project. You may find Rubicon’s privacy policy through this link. If you want to opt out of receiving interest based ads from Rubicon or exercise your right under the California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”) to opt-out of the sale of your personal information, you may do so through this link. You may also utilize the Network Advertising Initiative’s opt-out page, the Digital Advertising Alliance’s opt-out page, or the European Interactive Digital Advertising Alliance’s opt-out page.
9. Amazon Publisher Services. You may find Amazon Publisher Services’ privacy policy through this link.
10. AppNexus. You may find the AppNexus privacy policy through this link.
11. OpenX. You may find OpenX’s privacy policy through this link.
12. Verizon Media formerly known as Oath. You may find Verizon Media’s privacy policy through this link. You may also utilize the Network Advertising Initiative’s opt-out page, the Digital Advertising Alliance’s opt-out page, or the European Interactive Digital Advertising Alliance’s opt-out page to opt-out of the use of cookies for interest-based advertising.
13. TripleLift. You may find TripleLift’s privacy policy through this link. To opt out of receiving interest-based advertising (including retargeting) from TripleLift’s services through the use of cookies in your current browser and for more information on what it means to opt-out, please go to www.triplelift.com/consumer-opt-out.
14. Index Exchange. You may find Index Exchange’s privacy policy through this link. You may also utilize the Network Advertising Initiative’s opt-out page, the Digital Advertising Alliance’s opt-out page, or the European Interactive Digital Advertising Alliance’s opt-out page to opt-out of the use of cookies for interest-based advertising.
15. Sovrn. You may find Sovrn’s privacy policy through this link.
16. GumGum. You may find GumGum’s privacy policy through this link. GumGum may (i) use place and use cookies on end users’ browsers or use web beacons to collect information about end users who visit such Publisher Websites and (ii) link such collected end user information to other end user information provided by third parties in order to deliver targeted Advertisements to such end users.
17. Digital Remedy. You may find Digital Remedy’s privacy policy through this link.
18. MediaGrid. You may find MediaGrid’s privacy policy through this link. MediaGrid may collect and store information about end-user interactions with this website through cookies, advertising IDS, pixels and server-to-server connections. MediaGrid was receive the following information: the page an End-User has requested and the referring/exit pages; Timestamp information (i.e., the date and time the End-User has visited the page); IP address; mobile device identifier; device model; device operating system; browser type; carrier; gender; age; geolocation (including GPS coordinates); clickstream data; cookie information; first-party identifiers’; and hashed email addresses; demographic and inferred interest information; and post-conversion data (from both online and offline behaviour). Some of this data is gathered from this website and others is gathered from advertisers. MediaGrid uses this data to provide its services. You may also utilize the Network Advertising Initiative’s opt-out page, the Digital Advertising Alliance’s opt-out page, or the European Interactive Digital Advertising Alliance’s opt-out page to opt-out of the use of cookies for interest-based advertising or review their privacy policy for more information.
19. RevContent – You may find RevContent’s privacy policy through this link. RevContent may collect information about your browser or device, including browser type, IP Address, device type, user agent string, and operating system. RevContent also collects information about the websites you visit through their services, such as date and time of access and specific pages accessed and the content and ads you click on. You may opt-out of any personalization track by opting-out of RevContent’s data collection.
20. Centro, Inc. – You may find Centro’s privacy policy through this link. You may find opt-out information for Centro’s services through the privacy policy link.
21. 33Across, Inc. – You may find 33Across’s privacy policy through this link. To opt-out of personalized advertising, please visit https://optout.networkadvertising.org/?c=1.
22. Conversant. LLC – You may find Conversant’s privacy policy through this link. Conversant uses information that does not directly identify you, such as information about your browser type, time and date of visit, your browsing or transaction activity, the subject of advertisements clicked or scrolled over, and a unique identifier (such as a cookie string, or a unique advertising identifier provided by your mobile device) during your visits to this and other websites and apps in order to provide advertisements about goods and services likely to be of greater interest to you. Conversant may use technologies such as cookies and other tracking technologies to collect this information. To learn more about interest-based advertising, or to opt-out, you can visit www.youronlinechoices.eu or https://www.networkadvertising.org/.