TLDR;
Geeky Explorer is a independently owned travel site that expresses opinions about products, destinations and services related to technology and travel.
In short, we only collect and process data to allow us track usage and insights about how visitors interact with our site OR data that allows us to get back to your inquiries and requests.
Unless explicitly requested, we do NOT use any sort of personally identifiable data of visitors for commercial purposes and we do NOT supply your personal information to any third party for their or any other third party’s direct marketing.
In some articles and pages you’ll find affiliate links/ads which might entail a small commission should you click them or start a transaction with some partner companies. There’s absolutely no additional cost to you on these purchases. The interactions with their products, websites, apps or services are governed by their own privacy policies, which Geeky Explorer is completely independent from.
Index of Contents
- Introduction
- Data we collect
- Using Your Personal Data
- Third-party websites
- Cookies
- Affiliate Marketing
- Terms of Use
- Final Considerations
1. Introduction
Geeky Explorer is a independently owned travel site that expresses opinions about products and services related to technology and travel.
We take the personal privacy of Geeky Explorer visitors very seriously, and we are committed to safeguarding it.
This privacy policy applies to any visitor to the Geeky Explorer website, and any other service we provide, and explains the information we collect, what we do with it and the third-parties we work with.
By using or accessing our website you’re agreeing to be bound by this privacy policy and by our terms of use.
If you do not agree to this privacy policy you may not access or otherwise use this website or any service it provides.
2. Data we collect
In short, we only collect and process data to allow us track usage and insights about how visitors interact with our site OR data that allows us to get back to your inquiries and requests.
We also may ask you for, or you may voluntarily submit, information when you are using Geeky Explorer. You will need to explicitly give consent to both the disclosure and the processing of that personal information in accordance with this policy. If you’re providing information for another person, you must obtain that person’s consent.
Personal information we collect
The personally identifiable information that we may collect or which you may provide to us could include, but is not limited to:
- Your name
- Your email address
- Your IP address
- Any other information you voluntarily share with us
Non-personal or aggregated information we collect
The non-personally identifiable information that we may collect or which you may provide to us could include, but is not limited to:
- Information about your computer including your geographical location, browser type and version, and/or operating system.
- Information about visits and usage of this website including the referral source, length of visit, time and date of visit, page views, click events and website navigation paths.
- Information contained in any communications that you send to us by email or through the forms on our website.
- Any other information you voluntarily share with us.
3. Using your personal information
We will NOT, without your express consent, supply your personal information to any third party for their or any other third party’s direct marketing.
The data collected here is only used for the purposes specified on the relevant pages of the website and that are summarized below.
3.1 Analytics & Insights
We may use analytics services that use cookies, javascript and similar technologies to help us analyze how visitors use Geeky Explorer. The information generated by these services about your usage – including your IP address or a truncated version of your IP address – is transmitted to and stored by analytics service providers on their servers (not ours).
Those service providers will use this information for the purpose of evaluating your, and other users’, use of the Service, compiling reports for us on website activity and providing other services relating to website activity and Internet usage.
As a result, we may collect information about your computer, including your IP address, operating system and browser type, for system administration and in order to create reports. This is statistical data about our users’ browsing actions and patterns, and does NOT identify any individual.
We may also aggregate demographic information collected from our users (such as the number of visitors in a particular geographical location) in a manner which does not identify any one individual.
We may provide third parties with statistical information about our visitors that we then aggregate and use to generate traffic metrics and insights and help improve our website. This can include, but is not limited to, demographic and geographic information.
Example: we use cookies on our site for Google Analytics. This is a web-based analytics tool that helps website owners understand how visitors engage with their website. For instance, it may show us which pages from Geeky Explorer are more “popular” and in which countries they’re accessed the most. This data is aggregated from all the visitors that interact with those pages and does not include any personal information.
3.2 Inquiry & Requests
Geeky Explorer has embedded forms to enable communication and interaction between visitors and the website owners. These include contact forms – managed by “Contact Form 7” WordPress plugin – and comment forms, managed directly by WordPress.
For contact forms: you may need to provide your contact information to us – including, but not limited to, your email address – in order for us to get back in contact with you regarding a personal or business request. By doing this, you expressly consent to receive communications from us that allows us to send information that you have requested or to send information about other products or services developed or provided by us.
We will not give your contact information to another party to promote their products or services directly to you without your consent or as set forth in this Privacy Policy.
Example: if you want to ask the owner of a website more questions for a particular travel destination to help plan your personal trip, you way need to use the data you’ve provided (namely email address and name) to reply to your request.
For comment forms: to submit a comment in an article, you may need to enter valid personal information, such as name and valid email address. This is done exclusively for safety reasons, namely to prevent spam commenting. Your data will pass through our spam filter (Akismet plugin) before submission and won’t be shared with any third-parties.
3.3 Email communications
Email communications in Geeky Explorer are unfrequent: about once every 3 months.
We may use information such as your name and email address in order to opt-in to subscriptions to our emails and/or newsletters. We may contact you through email only if you have successfully opted in to receive communication via this channel.
Our email communication is powered by Mailchimp. We store your email address and name with Mailchimp to be able to email you with the communication you have opted to receive. You can unsubscribe at any time if you no longer want to receive them by clicking the “unsubscribe” link at the bottom of the relevant email.
We urge you to read the privacy practices of Mailchimp.
3.4 Security & Investigation
Geeky Explorer may use your data including your communication and interaction with us to investigate security issues, prevent spam and fraud, avoid any fraudulent or harmful activities that affect our visitors or the general public as well as any other violation of any law, our terms of use and/or our privacy policy.
We also have an automated mechanism to detect publicly published comments for spam and content that violate our terms of use.
3.5 Ad Delivery
We allow third-party companies to serve ads and/or collect certain anonymous information when you visit our web site. These companies may use non-personally identifiable information (e.g., click stream information, browser type, time and date, subject of advertisements clicked or scrolled over) during your visits to this and other websites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services likely to be of greater interest to you. No personal information is shared.
These third-parties typically use a cookie or third party web beacon to collect this information. For more information, please refer to the privacy policies of the companies mentioned on section 4.
Example: Google might collect information about your engagement with several different websites and display ads in Geeky Explorer that are likely to have a greater interest to you, via Google Adsense.
3.6 Geeky Explorer Marketing Materials
Non-identifiable aggregated information about the general use of our website may be shared by us for any purposes permitted by law, provided that such information shall not specifically identify you in any way.
This may include, but is not limited to, sharing overall statistics and metrics about Geeky Explorer as a website on trusted social media, advertising and analytics partners in order to customize content and advertising.
Example: Geeky Explorer may launch a social media campaign to celebrate reaching X million visits per month. This data is aggregated from all the visitors to those pages and does NOT include any personal information for specific people.
4. Third-party websites
Our website includes hyperlinks to, and details of, third party websites. We have no control over, and are not responsible for, the content nor the privacy policies and practices of such third parties.
Some of these third party websites are linked to through affiliate links. These might entail a small commission should you click them or start a transaction with some partner companies. There’s absolutely no additional cost to you, as a visitor.
Third-party services
We also use third party services to help us provide some of our services (eg: web hosting, data storage, communication, maintenance, development and insights etc).
These third parties will only have access to data relevant for the service they provide and they are obligated to not share with others or use your data for any other purposes. Below is a list of the third parties that we use and the data that we share with them:
| Category | Partner | Why do we share data? | What data is shared? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Analytics | Google Tag Manager | To perform web analytics on the Geeky Explorer website. For more information, visit this page. | Statistics about events on the website, such as link clicks. |
| Analytics | Google Analytics | To perform web analytics on the Geeky Explorer website. For more information, visit this page. | Cookies are used to collect anonymous data on site usage. |
| Marketing & Communications | AddThis | To manage the sharing of website content on social media. For more information, visit this page. | Cookies are used to collect anonymous data on site usage. |
| Marketing & Communications | Mailchimp | To manage our email subscriber list and send email communications. For more information, visit this page. | Email address, name. |
| Marketing & Communications | Facebook Pixel & Ads | To personalise ads on Facebook to improve relevance. To measure conversion from FB Ads. | Email address |
| Marketing & Communications | Google Adsense | To personalise ads on Google and improve relevance. To measure conversion from Google Adsense. | Metadata such as IP address information, timestamp, and events (e.g. page views). |
| Marketing & Communications | Typeform | To conduct customer service, and marketing surveys. | Name, email address, user responses and other information obtained from the survey |
| Hosting & Storage | InMotion Hosting | To improve the safety and reliability of the website. To aggregate insights about usage and website engagement. | IP Address, traffic log, location, browser used and other non-identifiable visitor data. |
| Hosting & Storage | Wordpress | To manage the content of the website and improve its safety and reliability. | IP Address, location, browser, comments, contact form entries, analytics and traffic log solutions, any other logging tools and plugins or any other data you voluntarily share. |
We urge you to read the privacy practices of these entities before using Geeky Explorer and/or submitting any personally identifiable information.
5. Cookies
This website uses cookies in order to track usage of visitors and help provide you a better online user experience.
What is a cookie?
A cookie is a small file that the website saves to your device (a computer or a mobile device) for an extended period of time. Cookies help in remembering your preferences and actions over a period of time so you don’t have to keep entering them again when you visit the page again.
How does Geeky Explorer uses cookies?
Geeky Explorer does NOT set or manage cookies on its own. We do use cookies from trusted third-parties (called third party cookies) to monitor and measure site performance, track actions, monitor page visits and ultimately improve the user experience.
Provided it does not contain any personally identifiable data, the information gathered with these cookies may then be used in any way we see fit. Particularly, we are now using it to analyze the aggregated traffic of the website and then be shared with trusted social media, advertising, analytics or business partners in order to customize content and advertising.
Which third party cookies are there in Geeky Explorer?
The main third-party cookie we use is Google Analytics, to monitor how visitors interact with our website.
Further information concerning the terms and conditions of use and data privacy can be found at the Google Analytics Terms of Service or at the Google Analytics Privacy Overview.
Please note that on this website, Google Analytics is supplemented by “gat._anonymizeIp();” to ensure anonymized collection of IP addresses (IP masking).
We also use social media buttons and/or plugins on our site to allow you to share content or connect with us via social accounts. One example is AddThis and their privacy policy can be found here.
These plugins set their own cookies as outlined in their privacy policies. Consenting to use of cookies in accordance with the terms of this policy when you first visit our website permits us to use cookies every time you visit our website.
How can I disable these cookies?
You can disable or delete cookies by changing the settings on your web browser (Chrome and Firefox). Disabling cookies will not result in disabling any key functionalities in Geeky Explorer, but may have a negative impact on the usability of other websites you navigate.
Also if you delete your cookies, change browsers or use a different cookie, our cookie (or an opt-out cookie) may no longer work and you will have to re-input (or opt-out) again via the notification bar.
For further info, we suggest consulting the Help section of your browser or taking a look at the About Cookies website which offers guidance for all modern browsers.
For more details, please refer to section 4 of this privacy policy, about the third parties that we work with.
6. Affiliate Marketing
What is affiliate marketing?
Affiliate marketing is the process of earning a commission by promoting external products or services. There’s absolutely no additional cost to the reader/visitor when purchasing these third-party services or products.
How are you using affiliate marketing in Geeky Explorer?
In some Geeky Explorer articles and pages you’ll find affiliate links/ads. An affiliate link is a specific URL that contains the affiliate’s ID or username. In affiliate programs, advertisers use affiliate links to record the traffic that is sent to the advertiser’s website. This action is all part of an affiliate program.
As part of this affiliate program, some third-parties may enable a dashboard or separate tool or app to allow the owners of Geeky Explorer to have more information about the transactions that occurred with origin in our website.
The data shown there is anonymised and in compliance with the third-parties’ privacy policies. Because affiliate links link to external websites and as such, we in Geeky Explorer have no control over, and are not responsible for, the privacy policies and practices of third parties.
From our side, we only aggregate and track these events (affiliate link clicks) to have more relevant insights and improve our website. This data is generated by the cookie placed on our website and processed by Google Analytics/Google Tag Manager via event tracking.
Example: we may check how many clicks were generated to Booking.com in Germany or how many visitors clicked Uber affiliate links using a Chrome browser.
Which affiliate partners work with Geeky Explorer?
This is a non-exhaustive list of the current affiliate programs that Geeky Explorer is signed up for:
- Amazon
- Booking.com
- Commission Junction
- Gumroad
- My Private Network
Please note that the above is not an exhaustive list and is updated by us from time to time. The types of cookies used by these third parties and how they use the information generated by them will be governed by those companies’ privacy policies.
7. Terms of Use
Accessing the Site, in any manner, whether automated or otherwise, constitutes use of the Site and your agreement to be bound by our Terms of Use.
In short and except where we have given you express written permission, all content in Geeky Explorer is proprietary and you may not copy, modify, publish, transmit, distribute, perform, display, or sell any such proprietary information. We retain all proprietary rights in the website or any service we provide.
As stated in the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) International License. you may, however, download, print, and/or share one copy of individual pages of the Site for non-commercial use, provided that you keep intact all copyright and other proprietary notices and you give appropriate credit to the original content.
8. Final Considerations
Servers
Our servers are maintained in the United States. By using Geeky Explorer, you freely and specifically give us your consent to export your personally identifiable information to the United States and to store and use it in the United States as specified in this Privacy Policy. You understand that data stored in the United States may be subject to lawful requests by the courts or law enforcement authorities in the United States.
Blocking IP addresses
In order to protect the safety and integrity of Geeky Explorer, we reserve the right at any time in its sole discretion to block users from certain IP addresses from accessing our website or services we provide.
Term
This Agreement will remain in full force and effect while you use the Geeky Explorer website or any service we provide.
Changes to this Privacy Policy
We reserve the right, at our discretion, to change, modify, add, or remove portions from this Privacy Policy at any time. However, if at any time in the future we plan to use personally identifiable information in a way that materially differs from this Privacy Policy, including sharing such information with more third parties, we will post such changes here and provide you the opportunity to opt-out of such differing uses.
Your continued use of this website and our services following the posting of any changes to this Privacy Policy means you accept such changes.
Effective date
This Privacy Policy was last updated on May 20th, 2018.
Contacting Us
If you have any questions, complaints, or need clarification on this privacy policy, you can reach out to us online.
If your complaints are not addressed through these channels, you have other options if you are from the EU region, such as EU Data Protection Authorities.
