Privacy Policy

A. Introduction

This privacy policy, its clauses and its sub-clauses only apply to VPNRanks.com and do not have any influence/relationship with any products/services listed/mentioned on the VPNRanks.com website or any of its web pages.

1. The privacy of our website visitors is very important to us, and we are committed to safeguarding it. This policy explains what we will do with your personal information.
2. Consenting to our 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.

B. Opinions on VPNRanks.com

This is a product/service review website. The content on this website is the express opinion of VPNRanks.com and is not taken from any third party unless specifically mentioned.

The rankings on this website have been developed after extensive research and investigation into the service features and characteristics provided by VPN service providers. These rankings are the opinions of VPNRanks.com, developed after the research and analysis process.

C. Collecting Personal Information

The following types of personal information may be collected, stored, and used:

1. information, such as your name and email address, that you enter
   1. when you register to a newsletter with our website;
   2. in our contact us form;
   3. in our comment form
   4. when you sign-up to our forum
2. When you submit your information on our website your IP address is collected automatically to identify your country
3. information that you post on our website with the intention of publishing it on the internet, which includes your name, and the content of your posts;
4. the information contained in any communications that you send to us by email
5. any other personal information that you send to us with your consent.

D. Using Your Personal Information

Personal information submitted to us through our website will be used for the purposes specified in this policy. We may use your personal information for the following:

1. administering our website and business;
2. personalizing our website for you;
3. enabling your use of the services available on our website;
4. sending you non-marketing commercial communications;
5. sending you email notifications that you have specifically requested with your consent;
6. sending you our email newsletter, if you have requested it (you can inform us at any time if you no longer require the newsletter);
7. sending you marketing communications relating to our business or the businesses of carefully-selected third parties which we think may be of interest to you, where you have agreed to this, (you can inform us at any time if you no longer require marketing communications by emailing us at webmaster@vpnranks.com or by using ‘unsubscribe’ option given at the bottom of every email);
8. dealing with inquiries and complaints relating to our website;
9. Use IP address to identify and resolve location-specific issues, provide location-specific marketing campaigns, to send direct marketing emails to which you agreed

E. Disclosing personal information

We may disclose your personal information to any of our employees, officers, insurers, professional advisers, agents, suppliers, or subcontractors as reasonably necessary for the purposes set out in this policy.

We may disclose your personal information to any member of our group of companies (this means our subsidiaries, our ultimate holding company, and all its subsidiaries) as reasonably necessary for the purposes set out in this policy.

We may disclose your personal information:

1. to the extent that we are required to do so by law;
2. in connection with any ongoing or prospective legal proceedings;
3. in order to establish, exercise, or defend our legal rights (including providing information to others for the purposes of fraud prevention and reducing credit risk);
4. to the purchaser (or prospective purchaser) of any business or asset that we are (or are contemplating) selling;

We rely on some third-party service providers to enable us to provide you our services. Whenever we transfer your information, we take steps to protect it. We have strict data protection agreements in place with third parties to protect the data that we might share with them.

Except as provided in this policy, we will not provide your personal information to any other third parties.

F. International data transfers

1. Information that we collect may be stored, processed in, and transferred between any of the countries in which we operate in order to enable us to use the information in accordance with this policy.
2. Personal information that you publish on our website or submit for publication on our website may be available, via the internet, around the world. We cannot prevent the use or misuse of such information by others.
3. You expressly agree to the transfers of personal information described in this Section F.

G. Retaining personal information

1. This Section G sets out our data retention policies and procedure, which are designed to help ensure that we comply with our legal obligations regarding the retention and deletion of personal information.
2. Personal information that we process for any purpose or purposes shall not be kept for longer than is necessary for that purpose or those purposes.
3. Without prejudice to article G-2, we will usually delete personal data once their purpose is fulfilled;
4. Notwithstanding the other provisions of this Section G, we will retain documents (including electronic documents) containing personal data:
   1. to the extent that we are required to do so by law;
   2. if we believe that the documents may be relevant to any ongoing or prospective legal proceedings; and
   3. in order to establish, exercise, or defend our legal rights (including providing information to others for the purposes of fraud prevention and reducing credit risk).

H. Security of your personal information

1. We will take reasonable technical and organizational precautions to prevent the loss, misuse, or alteration of your personal information.
2. We will store all the personal information you provide on our secure (password- and firewall-protected) servers.
3. You acknowledge that the transmission of information over the internet is inherently insecure, and we cannot guarantee the security of data sent over the internet.
4. You are responsible for keeping the password you use for accessing our website confidential; we will not ask you for your password (except when you log in to our website).

 

I. Lawful Basis for Processing

Our legal basis for collecting and using your personal information depends on:

• The personal information concerned
• The specific context in which we collect it.

The only time we collect personal information from you is

(i) when we need the personal information to enter into a contract with you; (ii) where the processing is in our legitimate interests and does not violate your rights. (iii) where you provide your consent to us.

J. Your rights

You may instruct us to provide you with any personal information we hold about you. We may withhold personal information that you request to the extent permitted by law.

Please let us know if the personal information that we hold about you needs to be corrected or updated by emailing us at webmaster@vpnranks.com.

You may instruct us at any time not to process your personal information for marketing purposes.

In practice, you will usually either expressly agree in advance to our use of your personal information for marketing purposes, or we will provide you with an opportunity to opt out of the use of your personal information for marketing purposes.

K. 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 privacy policies and practices of third parties.

L. Cookies

Our website uses cookies. A cookie is a file containing an identifier (a string of letters and numbers) that is sent by a web server to a web browser and is stored by the browser. The identifier is then sent back to the server each time the browser requests a page from the server. Cookies may be either “persistent” cookies or “session” cookies: a persistent cookie will be stored by a web browser and will remain valid until its set expiry date, unless deleted by the user before the expiry date; a session cookie, on the other hand, will expire at the end of the user session, when the web browser is closed. Cookies do not typically contain any information that personally identifies a user, but personal information that we store about you may be linked to the information stored in and obtained from cookies. {We use both session and persistent cookies on our website.}

1. The names of the cookies that we use on our website, and the purposes for which they are used, are set out below:
   1. Essential Cookies: These cookies cannot be turned off and are essential for the functioning of the website. They help navigate the website, load the web pages you requested, and bring you the features provided by the website.   Essential cookies include language-based cookies and Google Analytics.
   2. Functional Cookies: These cookies help us provide a more customized experience to you. These cookies help to improve the overall experience and help us enhance our service. Functional cookies include: Hotjar, OneSignal, and Sleeknote
   3. Performance Cookies: These cookies are used to provide us information about how you use our website, provide you a smooth error-free experience, and help us offer customized offering. Performance cookies include: Adwords and BingAds
2. Most browsers allow you to refuse to accept cookies—for example:
   1. in Internet Explorer (version 10) you can block cookies using the cookie handling override settings available by clicking “Tools,” “Internet Options,” “Privacy,” and then “Advanced”;
   2. in Firefox (version 24) you can block all cookies by clicking “Tools,” “Options,” “Privacy,” selecting “Use custom settings for history” from the drop-down menu, and unticking “Accept cookies from sites”; and
   3. in Chrome (version 29), you can block all cookies by accessing the “Customize and control” menu and clicking “Settings,” “Show advanced settings,” and “Content settings,” and then selecting “Block sites from setting any data” under the “Cookies” heading.

Blocking all cookies will have a negative impact upon the usability of many websites. If you block cookies, you will not be able to use all the features on our website.

1. You can delete cookies already stored on your computer—for example:
   1. in Internet Explorer (version 10), you must manually delete cookie files (you can find instructions for doing so at https://support.microsoft.com/kb/278835 );
   2. in Firefox (version 24), you can delete cookies by clicking “Tools,” “Options,” and “Privacy”, then selecting “Use custom settings for history”, clicking “Show Cookies,” and then clicking “Remove All Cookies”; and
   3. in Chrome (version 29), you can delete all cookies by accessing the “Customize and control” menu, and clicking “Settings,” “Show advanced settings,” and “Clear browsing data,” and then selecting “Delete cookies and other site and plug-in data” before clicking “Clear browsing data.”
2. Deleting cookies will have a negative impact on the usability of many websites.

M. Third Party Analytical Tools

At VPNRanks.com, we use various third-party analytical tools to better our performance and provide superior service to our readers. Here are the tools we use:

Google Analytics

We use a tool called “Google Analytics”, which is a web analytics service offered by Google. It helps us track and analyze web traffic that lands on our website as per Google’s terms and conditions. We use the data collected by Google Analytics to segment users based on demographics, analyze the performance of different blog posts and landing pages, identify the source of web traffic, and gain other customer insights.

Do note that Google Analytics collects only your IP address assigned to you on the date you visit our website. It also plants a permanent cookie on your web browser to identify you as a unique user.

However, we do not collect any information that is outside the parameters of Google Analytics or merges it with other personally identifiable information. You can disable Google Analytics from recording your movements by disabling cookies in your web browser.

Hotjar

At VPNRanks.com, we use Hotjar to understand our visitors and improve our website. Hotjar is a tool that provides heatmaps about users, shows where they click on the web page, and displays their scroll behavior. We only use the data collected by Hotjar that is restricted by its Privacy Policy and Terms of Use. We do not combine it with any other form of information or share it with other third parties.

OneSignal

OneSignal is a tool that allows us at VPNRanks.com to send a push notification to our subscribers. We use this tool to notify our visitors about a new offer, blog post, news, and other relevant information. Any data collected and used is under the protection of OneSingal’s privacy policy.

Sleeknote

To show pop-up messages on VPNRanks.com, we use a tool called Sleeknote. It uses cookies to identify new users and show them the intended message. Do note that we are not responsible for the data collected and used by Sleeknote. We would recommend our users to go through their privacy policy for more information.

N. Policy Amendments

We may update this policy from time to time by publishing a new version on our website. You should check this page occasionally to ensure you understand any changes to this policy. We may notify you of changes to this policy by email or through the private messaging system on our website.