Privacy Policy

Effective 15 August 2018

Our website offers free online tools, educational articles, news and technical help computer programmers and web developers.

We started this website because we felt its services are worth sharing with all of you, and we continue to believe in that. This free service has a financial cost for us – as any website – and it is occasionally being the object of abuse. In order to continue offering our free services we have incorporated advertisments and protection systems. This affects your privacy.

Read how your privacy is affected and how you can control it.

1. Why we collect your data

We collect some personally identifiable information from our website visitors and use them in order to observe statistics, safeguard our website, improve our services and keep a communication log.

We use third party services to further improve our statistics, offer you the ability to join discussions on blog posts and raise income from advertisements.

2. Breakdown of data we collect

2.1. Website visitors

2.1.1. Essential data

From our website visitors we may collect:
• Online identifiers including cookie identifiers
• Internet protocol addresses and device identifiers
• Registered user identifiers

We collect this data to observe statistics and detect abuse. We keep this data for the minimum amount of time they are useful to our purposes which has a maximum limit of 5 years from the year we collect them. After that period we may keep aggregated statistics in ways personal identifiable data are anonymized.

When users contact us directly via email or through our online contact form, we keep their message for the minimum duration that is meaningful to serve their initial query and subsequent messages. The maximum amount of time we keep their messages is 5 years from the year of their last message. When such messages are deemed as spam we may delete them sooner than regular messages.

This data is used internally. We do not share this data with anyone unless the law requires us to act otherwise.

2.1.2. Google Analytics

Our website may use the third party service Google Analytics for statistical analysis that helps us improve our services and our advertising efforts. This service uses cookies and keeps internet protocol addresses in an anonymized form for a maximum of 5 years. This service is optional and is collected upon consent from our visitors.

2.1.3. Disqus

Our website may use the third party service Disqus for allowing our website visitors to participate in discussions. This service uses cookies and is optional.

2.1.4. Google AdSense

Our website may use the third party service Google AdSense to serve advertisments. This service uses cookies and is optional. When users visit our website for the first time and have not yet given their consent we may show them non-personalized ads that do not involve identity tracking. When users permit us we may show them personalized ads following the Google AdSense operational policies.

2.2. Base64 app

We do not collect any data from users of the Base64 application for MS Windows.

2.3. Data access requests

As the law permits, you can request a report on the data we collect from you. You may also order us to delete your data. When you make such a request we create a unique numeric identifier that represents your request. We keep the data that describes your request for 5 years from the year you initiate your request.

3. Cookies

Website "cookies" is a technical term that refers to small pieces of information stored by our website in your browser. When we set a cookie and you revisit our website these cookies remind our web server and third party services of various information about you.

Please read our Cookie Policy for a full list of cookies used by our website.

In addition to the cookie information in this page you are also given controls to enable or disable cookies. This is the tool you can use to change your consent choices.

4. How you can control your personally identifiable data

According to the European Union privacy protection laws you may request a report on the information we collected from you. You also have the right to order us to delete that information under the conditions provisioned by the law.

In order for us to allow you to control the information we collect from you, we need to make sure you are the real owner of that information. That can happen as long as we can identify you in our website. When you are inactive for about 30 minutes or more, the session cookie is expired and we can no longer identify you.

Our website features a special service that allows you to control your cookies and manage your personally identifiable data:
Personal Data Overview

Alternatively you can:
- Give or withdraw consent from third party cookies by accessing our Cookie Policy,
- Request a report of the data we collect from you or ask us to delete them by using the Personal Data Access service,
- Send us a direct message using our contact form.

5. Emergency events

As required by European Union privacy protection law we have the obligation to inform you about emergency events that might put your privacy at risk within 72 hours from the time we become aware of them.

In such an emergency we will issue a news bulletin to provide information about the event, the impact it had and steps you can take to safeguard yourself.

6. Changes

Our Privacy Policy may change from time to time. When it does we will make timely announcements so that you are properly informed.

You can access the Privacy Policy Archive to access prior versions of this Privacy Policy and an upcoming version when there is one.