This Privacy Policy page serves the purpose of informing visitors what information VPN Critic and any related third-party may collect from visitors, how it is collected, if it is shared or sold, as well as any other questions you may have about your data.
Data Collected by VPN Critic
Personal Identification Data
Personal identifiable information may be requested from you when registering for available services. This is usually limited to your name and email address, but may also include age, address, and other contact information. Many products and services offered require registration with third-parties, and some of that information may be shared with VPN Critic. This information may be requested when:
You sign-up to a mailing list or newsletter with us
You communicate with us by email or contact form
You participate in a sweepstake or giveaway contest with us
You purchase a service or software subscription through VPN Critic
Otherwise, VPN Critic will never request to collect any personal identifiable information from you. However, VPN Critic reserves the right to any responsibility of information posted publicly at your own will. Such as your public comments on blogs and forums, on your profile, or any other public platform available on VPN Critic.
Non-Personal Identification Data
When visiting our site, non-personal information is collected, such as browser, computer, internet provider IP, and software used to access the site. This anonymous information is used for statistics, site improvement, and trend tracking as some examples.
Cookies
Most information is collected with web browser cookies. Your browser saves small text file ‘cookies’ on your hard drive when you visit websites. These cookies provide and record and tracking of the pages you visit. Cookies are not viruses and do not allow for any unwanted software to run. Instead, they are used to track and control advertisements that you see when visiting a website. They will use your previously visited topics to select what ads to display to you, as a form of targeted advertising attempting to cater to your interests. This can be often seen with Google ads. More importantly, cookies serve the purpose of providing website visitor data that allows us to improve on user experience, content, and quality.
Cookies are not required to be enabled to browse VPN Critic, but they may be required for certain functions of a website, such as leaving comments or logging into your personal account.
Third-Party Collected Data
Some third-party advertisers used on our website may also use cookies, and similar methods to track visitor data. This data is used to calculate the performance of an ad, or response to the content. Visitor stats are also part of non-identifiable information that is collected as part of third-party data. This usually pertains to visitor IP, country, time of visit, duration of visit, and pages visited while browsing the website. An example of this third-party visitor data is Google Analytics, which is used to track and group website traffic statistics and visitor experience.
How is Your Data Utilized and Protected?
As mentioned, the majority of data collected is used for statistical purposes. Very often, this data is utilized by third-party advertisement publishers that will use it for targeting your interests when displaying ads. Additionally, any form of registration that requires identifiable information is kept to a strict minimum on our website. Usually kept to an email address, we use your contact information to send out offers, sweepstakes and giveaways, or to answer a question you may have for us.
The data is protected using industry standard server security in order to assure that it cannot be accessed by unauthorized users, tampered with, or destroyed. We also minimize any risk by collecting very little personal information for registration, therefore keeping nothing of value for cyber criminals.
Is Your Information Shared or Sold to Third-Parties
We are committed to the safeguard and protection of your data. VPN Critic will never sell, lease, or re-distribute your contact, email, or any details pertaining to any of your accounts with us. The only information that may be shared with third-parties would pertain to statistical visitor data for advertisement improvements. You can rest assured that you will never have your private information given to anyone, resulting is any spam, solicitation, or unwanted communications.
Opting Out of Data Collection and Cookies
By default, popular web browsers accept cookies, but provide the option to opt-out of cookie downloads. You can usually disable cookies completely, or selectively configure the level of restriction on cookie usage. As mentioned, using cookies is not a requirement to visit our website, but for accounts, registration, or possible advertisements may not display or work correctly. We cannot guarantee the usability of other websites when disabling cookies, but it is to be expected that some features will not work.
Changes to our Privacy Policy
We reserve the right to regularly update or change this Privacy Policy. Any new changes or modifications to the policy will come into effect at the time of updating. Any time this policy is updated, a ‘last update’ date will be added to the bottom of the page.
Accepting Our Terms
By visiting our website, you are thereby accepting the terms of our policy. If you do not agree with this policy, you have the right to refuse to visit or use our website.
Questions
If you have any questions regarding the Privacy Policy, or any data collection practices used on our website, please do not hesitate to communicate with us using our contact form.
Updated: 05/02/2016