What data this site collects, and what happens to it

Who is responsible for this data

The operator of this website is the controller of the personal data described below. Questions and requests about this policy go to [email protected], which is monitored on working days.

The site is an informational resource that compares self-serve advertising platforms. We do not operate an ad exchange, sell inventory, hold funds or process payments. We never receive your payment card details, your login credentials for any platform, or the contents of any advertiser account you hold elsewhere. Where you follow an outbound link and create an account with a network, that network becomes an independent controller of whatever you give it, under its own privacy policy, and we have no access to it.

We process personal data in line with the UK General Data Protection Regulation and the Data Protection Act 2018, which are the primary framework for this site. Visitors in the European Economic Area are covered by Regulation (EU) 2016/679 on equivalent terms, and California residents by the California Consumer Privacy Act as amended by the CPRA. Where those regimes differ, we apply whichever gives you the stronger right.

What we collect

Data you give us directly

The contact form asks for your name, your email address, a subject category and the text of your message. That is the whole of it. We do not ask for a postal address, a phone number, a company name or a payment method, and if you include additional personal data in the body of a message it will be kept and deleted on the same schedule as the rest of the message.

Data your browser sends automatically

• IP address — used to derive an approximate country for aggregate traffic reporting and to identify abusive request patterns. It is not used to build a profile of you.
• User-agent string — browser name and version, so we can confirm that pages and tables render correctly on the browsers our readers actually use.
• Operating system and device type — to check that the comparison tables remain readable on mobile, where the majority of our traffic arrives.
• Pages requested and time on each — to see which sections readers actually use, which is how we decide what to expand and what to cut.
• Referring URL — the page or search that sent you here, used in aggregate to understand where readers come from.
• Screen resolution and browser language — used for layout checks and to confirm that an English-language site matches the audience reaching it.

Cookies

Cookies are small text files stored by your browser. They cannot carry executable code and cannot read other files on your device. The table below lists every cookie this site can set, including those set by third parties on our pages.

Referral cookies are set when you click an outbound button, not when you read a page. They carry no name, email or account information, and they are not used to show you advertising anywhere else. We do not run retargeting pixels or advertising-network tags on this site.

Why we process it

• Answering you. Contact form data is processed solely to reply to the message you sent and, where it is a correction, to verify and fix the page. Replies come from the editor named on the author page.
• Improving the comparison. Aggregate analytics tell us which tables and sections readers use, which directly shapes what gets expanded at each 90-day review under our editorial policy.
• Referral attribution. When you create an account on a platform through one of our buttons, the referral cookie lets that platform attribute the signup. This is how the site is funded, as explained on the about page.
• Security and availability. Server logs and bot-management cookies protect the site against automated abuse and denial-of-service traffic.
• Legal obligations. Retaining records where a law applicable to the operator requires it.

Legal basis under the UK and EU GDPR

• Consent, Article 6(1)(a) — for analytics and referral cookies that are not strictly necessary, read together with regulation 6 of the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003. Consent is given through the cookie banner on your first visit and can be withdrawn at any time by clearing cookies for this site or writing to [email protected].
• Legitimate interests, Article 6(1)(f) — for server logs, security and bot management. Our interest is keeping the site available and free of automated abuse; the processing is limited to technical data and does not extend to profiling.
• Performance of a request, Article 6(1)(b) — for handling a message you send us, which cannot be answered without processing your email address.
• Legal obligation, Article 6(1)(c) — where retention is required by applicable law.

Who receives it

• Google Analytics 4 (Google LLC, United States) — aggregate traffic measurement. Receives a truncated IP address, pages viewed, referrer, device and browser data. IP anonymization is enabled, and Google Signals and advertising features are not.
• Cloudflare, Inc. (United States) — content delivery, denial-of-service protection and bot management. Receives IP address, request headers and timing as part of serving the page.
• Affiliate platforms of the compared ad networks — receive a click event and a technical identifier when you use an outbound button, so a signup can be attributed. They do not receive your name, email or anything you typed into our contact form.
• Hosting and email providers — process server logs and, in the case of email, the contents of messages you send us, strictly as processors acting on our instructions.

We do not sell or share personal information for cross-context behavioral advertising, as those terms are defined by the CCPA, and we have not done so in the preceding twelve months. We do not pass anything you send us to the advertising networks compared on this site.

Transfers outside the EEA

Google and Cloudflare process data in the United States. Those transfers rely on the UK International Data Transfer Addendum to the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses, together with the UK Extension to the EU-US Data Privacy Framework where the recipient is certified under it. You may request a copy of the transfer safeguards we rely on by writing to [email protected].

How long it is kept

• Contact form messages: 12 months from your last message, then deleted.
• Server logs: 90 days, then rotated out.
• Analytics data: retained on the GA4 property for 14 months in event-level form, aggregate reporting after that.
• Cookies: the individual retention periods listed in the table above, from 1 minute to 2 years.
• Records kept for a legal reason: for the period the applicable law requires, then deleted.

Your rights

The UK GDPR, and the EU GDPR for EEA visitors, give you the right to access your data (Article 15), to have inaccurate data corrected (Article 16), to have it erased (Article 17), to restrict processing (Article 18), to receive it in a portable machine-readable format (Article 20), to object to processing based on legitimate interests (Article 21), and to withdraw consent at any time without affecting processing carried out before the withdrawal.

If you are a California resident, the CCPA gives you the right to know what categories of personal information have been collected and for what purpose, the right to request deletion, the right to correct inaccurate information, the right to opt out of sale or sharing, and the right not to be discriminated against for exercising any of them. Because we do not sell or share personal information, an opt-out request will be confirmed rather than acted on.

To exercise any of these, write to [email protected] and state which right you are exercising. We acknowledge within 72 hours and complete the request within 30 days, extending only where the law permits and telling you if we do. If you are unsatisfied with the outcome you may complain to the Information Commissioner's Office, the UK supervisory authority, at ico.org.uk, or to the data protection authority for your own country of residence if you are in the EEA.

Security

All traffic to this site is served over HTTPS with TLS, so the connection between your browser and our server is encrypted. Administrative access requires two-factor authentication and is limited to the people who edit the site. Site software and dependencies are patched on a regular schedule, and backups are encrypted at rest. No system is completely secure, and we do not claim otherwise; what we can say is that the amount of personal data held here is deliberately small, because a site that never collects payment details cannot leak them.

Age

This site is intended for advertising professionals and is not directed at anyone under 18. We do not knowingly collect personal data from children. If you believe a minor has sent us data through the contact form, write to [email protected] and we will delete it.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy when the tools or processors we use change. The date at the top of the page always reflects the current version, and a material change will be flagged on the site rather than made quietly. Continuing to use the site after an update means the updated policy applies. Related documents: our terms of use, our editorial policy, and the contact page. The comparison itself is Buy Popunder Traffic.