Privacy Policy

Who we are

The aim of Hifi-Advice.com (HFA) is to provide the best high-end audio equipment reviews, free for everyone to read. No less, no more.

We are not interested in collecting any data beyond the bare essentials to make this site function properly. If you leave a comment under an article, your name and comment are displayed publicly. This info is stored along with your email address. The latter is only requested and stored along with the comment to help prevent spam. We do not gather mail addresses separately, do not send unsollicited emails and do not share this data with anyone. HFA uses Google Analytics to monitor traffic. Banner space is sold in order to help compensate for some of the time and effort put in to create this site and the articles on it and the clicking behavior can be tracked by the Advanced Ads plugin. No personal tracking data is shared with any third parties. Finally, personalized Google Ads are shown at the bottom of the articles by Google using browsing history stored in cookies that were left previously on other sites.

The website address is: https://www.hifi-advice.com/blog.

What personal data we collect and why we collect it

Comments

When visitors leave comments on the site we collect the data shown in the comments form (name, email address and the actual comment), 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: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment. The name and comment content are regarded as public information. The email address is not displayed publicly and is only stored to help prevent spam. It will never be shared with anyone.

Contact forms

When filling in a contact form, any information entered therein is not retained except for composing a mail to the HFA admin. The information such as the email address is used only in order to be able to reply. The information is not shared with third parties nor used for marketing purposes.

Cookies

When first visiting HFA, you are asked to consent to using cookies. When agreeing, a cookie is placed to avoid the message popping up again on subsequent visits. This cookie has no purpose other than this. As long as not agreed, no cookies will be placed. If you leave a comment on our site you may opt-in to saving your name, email address and website in cookies. These are for your convenience so that you do not have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment. These cookies will last for one year.

Embedded content from other websites

Articles on this site may include embedded content, so far, this is limited to a couple of videos only. 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.

Analytics

HFA uses Google Analytics to monitor traffic. The data that is used are things such as Country, Browser, Operating System, and Screen Resolution. None of this data is actively stored by HFA and none of it is used except by HFA for getting a general insight into the traffic behavior. Here is Google’s Privacy Policy. The pages on HFA contain commercial banner space band the clicking behavior is tracked using an Advanced Ads plugin. We may use global and anonymized click rate info in reports for selling banners but no IP address or other personal tracking data is used in this, or otherwise shared with any third parties. Here is the Advanced Ads Privacy Policy.

Ads and Banners

Personalized Ads are shown at the bottom of the articles by Google using search history stored in cookies that were left previously on other sites. HFA takes no active part in this. Here is Google’s Privacy Policy. Banners are shown using an Advanced Ads plugin. Here is the Advanced Ads Privacy Policy. The banner space is sold in order to help compensate for some of the time and effort put in to create this site and the articles on it, but the banner clicking behavior is not monitored, tracked, or shared.

Who we share your data with

We do not share any personal info with any other parties.

How long we retain your data

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. Information entered via a contact form is not stored directly but the email that is generated from this is retained indefinitely, in line with any normal mail communications.

What rights you have over your data

You may request that we erase particular comments or all comments, along with which any personal data is also erased (names and email addresses are only stored along with the comments).

How we protect your data

The HFA website is encrypted using SSL (resulting in https, rather than http). This is done using a plugin called Really Simple SSL. Really Simple SSL and Really Simple SSL add-ons do not process any personal identifiable information, so the GDPR does not apply to these plugins or usage of these plugins on your website. You can find the Really Simple SSL privacy policy here.

Where we send your data

No site data is transferred anywhere except as an email following a contact form entry via web hosting and email server provider Topservers which is then also forwarded to a HFA-owned Gmail address.

Contact information

For all queries, please use the Contact Form.