Overview
We take your privacy seriously and want you to feel confident that any information you have with us is safe and treated with care at all times. That’s why this policy is as short and free of legal speak as we could practically make it.
We do need to be clear that ‘we’, ‘our’, or ‘us’ refers to SiteTech Solutions Limited trading as SiteHost. When we say ‘you’, ‘your’, or ‘customers’, we are referring to anyone with an account or service with us.
You will note some changes in this policy have been informed by GDPR, which is targeted at EU citizens and companies offering services in the EU. We believe this new law is largely a positive change so whenever possible we’re extending the same processes and systems to all of our customers.
Your Personal Information
A few years ago we made a conscious decision to collect less information about our customers because we simply realised that in many cases we don’t need it. For many of you that means we only require your name, email address and credit card.
There are some exceptions to this rule where we require you to provide more information:
- For an account that triggers our anti fraud protection we also require an address, phone number and a verifiable photographic identification document. This information helps us to verify the new account is legitimate and reduce fraud.
- To register or transfer a domain you need to provide a valid email address, physical address and phone number as required by the domain registries ICANN and InternetNZ.
- For our ‘Server Management’ service or any similar services we may ask for your phone number so we can reach you in the case we need to urgently discuss an issue.
We also may occasionally ask for further information in the case of a promotion, like sending you a t-shirt but this is completely optional.
What We Collect
Like most websites and applications we automatically track information through cookies and logs about how our services are being used. This is useful in many situations such as improving our products or fixing bugs. This information can include your IP address, operating system, web browser, date/time stamps, what pages you visit and referral information.
There are some third party services that we utilise that also collect information such as Google Analytics and Campaign Monitor. We suggest reading their privacy policies in full as well.
How We Use It
We use the small amount of information we collect in just a few ways as noted below and we will never rent, loan or sell your information to anyone.
- To effectively provide the products and services we offer.
- Notifying you about important updates such as scheduled maintenance.
- Making informed business decisions about our products and services.
- To protect your account, your information and reduce fraud.
- Compliance with legal, taxation and accounting requirements.
- In the creation of targeted marketing material or campaigns.
Your Rights
When it comes to your data you should be in control, so we have a few processes in place that you can make use of or follow:
- You can access, correct or update most information yourself through the Control Panel and can request our assistance if you can’t by emailing support.
- You can opt-out of any marketing material we send you at any time by clicking the ‘Unsubscribe’ link present in any marketing related emails.
- You can ask us to delete information we store about you by emailing support.
- You can ask us to give you your data in a transferrable way by emailing support.
We will respond to all requests we receive within 30 days, but usually much faster. We will also clearly explain what we can or can’t do for you and why. For EU citizens we also suggest becoming familiar with your rights under GDPR.
Billing Information
We need you to pay for the services that you use. For most of you that means we require a credit card to be associated with your account. This information is not stored on our servers in any identifiable or useful way. Our billing partner is Payment Express.
Security
We protect our websites, applications and infrastructure to the best of our abilities. We store your information securely and whenever appropriate make use of encryption, SSL and other technologies. We keep internal access to these tools limited to certain members of the team, and all team members are briefed on security and privacy. We also encourage you to read our Security Statement.
Data Retention
As an infrastructure provider we tend to be meticulous about our backup processes which means we may store your data for long periods of time to help with disaster recovery or other incidents. We also keep data for legal, tax, and accounting requirements as needed.
In situations where we can’t delete your data such as backup archives, or accounting records we will store these in a secure manner and they will not be used for further processing, such as communication or marketing.
Our Promises
We hope everything above made sense, we tried to keep it simple but it can still be a lot to take in. Here’s some simple one line promises to make things even clearer.
- We will respect your information and privacy at all times.
- We will never rent, loan, or sell your information.
- We will do our absolute best to protect your information and privacy at all times.
- We will be honest and open should a privacy breach occur.
- We will notify you if we make any substantial updates or changes to this page.
- We will only share your information when we are legally required to do so.
- We will answer any questions or concerns you have around privacy by email.
Updates:
- 23 May 2018 – Changes for GDPR compliance and general improvements.
- 28 June 2016 – New simplified policy with much clearer language.