I know what you’re thinking – “Oh great, another article on GDPR.” Yes, it’s everywhere at the moment and yes, you’re probably tired of reading about it – but sadly it’s just something that has to happen.
The first question is: what is it?
It’s the General Data Protection Regulation and basically it affects how personal data is handled. It’s something that the EU has been writing and rewriting for over two years now and its affects every company or organisation that handles data on people with the European Union or European Free Trade Association. GDPR became law from Friday 25th May 2018.
Because of this you’re probably drowning under a flood of daily e-mails, each one showing the same tagline. You’ve probably even raised your eyebrows a couple of times and wondered when you signed up to that website, or how that company got hold of your information. You are not alone…
As a result we thought we’d make it slightly easier for you - and we’d try to inject, well, a little warmth into the subject. We’ve explained below why we collect your data, what we collect, how we store it and what we use it for. Along with a few other necessary pieces of information.
So to kick things off, a bit about us.
We are onlinefxbrokers.com and we do exactly what it says on the tin. You need to find the best Forex brokers, and we help you do that. We choose the most reliable and efficient Forex trading companies using a detailed filtering process – and guarantee that you’ll no longer miss out on the chance to invest with the very best Forex brokers.
A key requirement of GDPR is that every company or organisation that handles your data has to appoint a Data Protection Officer. That explains why everyone else’s privacy and data policy is full of acronyms, chief among which is DPO.
But let’s give the poor guy a name. So for the rest of this article, forget DPO and meet Sam, the Data Protection Man.
Sam is the person ultimately responsible for protecting your data. It’s also his job to report any breaches or errors that might affect the security of your data, and he must do this within 72 hours of any data breach occurring.
A key requirement of GDPR is that you can get in touch with Sam. If you have a question about your personal data you can contact him here: dpo@onlinefxbrokers.com
If you have a more general question about the site or you want to know more about what we do you can contact the team here: info@onlinefxbrokers.com
Lastly, if you have a Forex site you’d like us to take a look at, contact the commercial team. They’re just down the corridor from Sam: or on this e-mail: commercial@onlinefxbrokers.com
In order to run our site and give you the best online experience, we need to hold onto some personal data: that’s inevitable. But we give you the power to be in charge of what information you reveal to us. We do that by using two separate categories of data.
This is the data we need to ensure everything is running smoothly on the site. We need to know how you arrived at our site, what your journey around the site was like and which pages you prefer.
For example, we need to know whether you saw an ad for our site elsewhere which led you to click through. Whether you read an article and then searched for the site yourself. Or if you were led to our site through another similar platform. Gathering this data allows us to provide the best possible service, find the best offers and make your user experience as enjoyable as possible.
Now at this point you may be thinking “Wow, that sounds like a lot. Isn’t that an invasion of my privacy?” No: what is important to us is the weight of all this data and therefore your individual journey to our site is anonymous. We simply see that x amount of people have arrived through journey 1, x amount of people have arrived through journey 2 and so on.
So now you’re probably thinking “How?” The straightforward answer: cookies. Everyone will probably remember several years back when cookies became a thing. At first you were wary of them, hovering over the ‘accept’ button with caution. Now they’re everywhere and you probably accept them in the blink of an eye. But a vast majority of you still won’t know what they actually are.
Cookies are small pieces of information placed on your browser that store information. When someone visits a certain page, for example, a random number is assigned to the visit and stored within the cookie. The more pages you visit the more numbers are stored and at the end of your journey through the site the cookie will have a virtual “map” of where you have been. Pretty cool, huh?
Through these “maps” we can monitor the performance of our site and make all those all-important optimisations that increase your enjoyment of the site and its value to you. However, if this sounds like something you don’t want to be involved in, data protection Sam can help once again. Opt out of cookies by following his instructions:
This is the second category of data that we need. And – some good news – it is only collected when you actively opt-in to our newsletter.
Through that we collect your email address. Sam stores it away in a little drawer and sends you a verification email. If you don’t respond to this your address is taken out of the drawer and shredded. Not literally, but the point is we won’t have your information anymore.
If you do respond then great! We can start the process of sending you regular newsletters, special offers and information about our site.
There may be some cases where initially you respond and start receiving emails, then later down the line change your mind. That’s fine. If you ever want to opt-out then you can do that in one of two ways:
Following this you’ll be removed. Sam may shed a tear or two but the point is we won’t have your information anymore. If you want any further details on this, then just get in touch on the email above.
Like a lot of other companies, we use an external organisation to send our emails and monitor the data. You might have noticed some of these organisations like MailChimp and Constant Contact. The company we use is called Active Campaign: you can find out more about them by clicking on this link: https://www.activecampaign.com/
How does this work? Once Sam places your email in the little drawer, Active Campaign get one of their guys to check it out. Someone from our side will send an email and then Active Campaign simply monitor the stats once it’s in your inbox.
Hey! Who doesn’t like a data table? All of this is summarised in the table below.
| Script Info |
|---|
| Google Analytics Google Inc. Privacy Matters Twitter Inc. 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA, 94043 USA https://support.google.com/cloud/contact/dpo Google Analytics is a set of tools that collects and uses information for statistical research and for online advertising tracking and optimization purposes. |
| Legal Basis |
| Our legal basis for using this script within our website is a legitimate business interest. Without using Google Analytics, we would not be able to constantly update the website to ensure that we are providing you with the best services that we can provide you with relative to the competition. All the data that is provided to us by this script is either anonymous or pseudonymous and therefore serves a function strictly in relation to research that we conduct to be able to continuously improve our services. You may still opt-out of type of tracking by using the DNT feature on your browser or by installing; Google Analytics Opt-out browser plugin |
| Data Collected & Retention |
| Anonymous Ad Views, Analytics, Browser Information, Cookie Data, Date/Time, Demographic Data, Hardware/Software Type, Internet Service Provider, Page Views, Serving Domains Pseudonymous Search History, Location Based Data Personally Identifiable Information IP Address, Unique Device ID Data Sharing Aggregate data, Anonymous data and PII data might be shared by Google with third parties, but not with us. Personally Identifiable Information may also be shared with third parties. Data Retention Your data is stored indefinitely |
| Script Info |
| Twitter Button & Twitter Syndication Twitter Inc. Twitter, Inc. 1355 Market Street, Suite 900, San Francisco CA 94103 California USA privacy@twitter.com Twitter Button and Twitter Syndication are two social media trackers belonging to Twitter. When You use the Twitter button (including tweet and share) or widget, Twitter will receive information about You and a Twitter cookie will be stored on Your device. |
| Legal Basis |
| Our legal basis for using these scripts within Our website is Our legitimate interest. Part of our marketing strategy entails using Pay-Per-Click marketing and the billable cost for this cannot be estimated to any reasonable degree of accuracy without any form of tracking. We do not receive any Personally Identifiable Data through this script, although Twitter might be able to identify You personally. https://twitter.com/privacy?lang=en The data that Twitter may receive includes: IP address, browser type, operating system, hardware type, internet service provider, search history, the referring web page, pages visited, location, your mobile carrier, device information (including device and application IDs), search terms, or cookie information. Twitter also receives log data when You click on, view or interact with links on Twitter’s website or through its services, including links to third-party applications. |
| Data Collected & Retention |
| Anonymous Analytics, Browser Information, Cookie Data, Date/Time, Demographic Data, Hardware/Software Type, Internet Service Provider, Interaction Data, Page Views Pseudonymous Search History, Location Based Data Personally Identifiable Information IP Address, Device ID, Name, Address, Phone Number, Email Address, Login, Financial Information Data Sharing Aggregate, Anonymous and Personally Identifiable data is shared with third parties. Special categories of data are also shared with third parties. Data Retention Your data retention period is based on your profile setting with Twitter. Please contact Twitter for more information. |
| Script Info |
| Facebook Impressions Facebook Inc. 1601 Willow Road, Menlo Park, California CA 94025 USA Data Portal Contact DPO Facebook Impressions is a piece of code that counts the total number of views, previews and actions that a Facebook page receives in a given period and also tracks traffic sent to Our website from Facebook. This information is provided to us in a totally anonymous way and is made accessible to us through the Facebook Insights dashboard. |
| Legal Basis |
| Our legal basis for using this script within Our website is Our legitimate interest. Part of our marketing strategy entails using Pay-Per-Click marketing and the billable cost for this cannot be estimated to any reasonable degree of accuracy without any form of tracking. We do not receive any Personally Identifiable Data through this script, although Facebook might be able to identify You personally. https://www.facebook.com/full_data_use_policy https://www.facebook.com/about/privacy/update |
| Data Collected & Retention |
| Anonymous Browser Information, Date/Time, Demographic Data, Hardware/Software Type, Internet Service Provider, Interaction Data, Page Views Pseudonymous Location Based Data Personally Identifiable Information IP Address, Name, Address, Phone Number, Email Address, Login Data Sharing Aggregate, Anonymous and Personally Identifiable data is shared with third parties. Special categories of data are also shared with third parties. Data Retention Your data is stored for 6 months |
Hopefully this has clearly summarised the rights that you hold under GDPR and what we do with your information. There’s a lot to take in but the main point is that you can request us to do several things with your data. If you do this we must act on your request within 28 days. No ifs, buts or maybes: we have to do it within 28 days and we will.
In addition to this we must also pass your request on to any relevant third parties within the same time frame. This applies to all the rights listed below.
Yep, you can ask Sam to forget he ever knew you – and all your data will be deleted.
In this case we will stop using your data and anonymize all the data we hold on you.
You can request access to all the data we hold. We will send this to you in an e-mail file – but please note that we may need to verify your identity before we send such data. In this case Sam would contact you to obtain the necessary information.
If you think some of the data we hold about you is wrong, or incorrect, you can ask that we correct that data.
This goes back to the information we gave on population metrics. Should you wish us to stop using your data in population metrics then we will do so.
As we mentioned in the introduction we sometimes deliver special offers or marketing initiatives on our site. Should you prefer not to see these messages then we will amend our records accordingly and stop such messages appearing.
Lastly, GDPR gives you the right to request that we move your data to a third-party location.
Even though we do our utmost to ensure everything runs according to plan, there’s no such thing as a perfect world.
If you ever want to complain about the way in which we’ve handled your data, just get in touch with Sam, our data protection man, here: dpo@onlinefxbrokers.com
GDPR is hard work: trust us, we know. So thank you for taking the time to read about how we’re managing everything. We’ve done our best to make everything easier for you and make the regulations as readable as possible. But if there’s still something on your mind, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.
At onlinefxbrokers.com we take our commitment to you – and the security of your data – very seriously. Irrespective of the regulations we will always do everything in our power to keep your data secure – just as we’ll always do everything in our power to find you the most reliable and efficient Forex brokers.