Privacy and affiliate links
In short
- No accounts and no advertisements. We only mail what you ask for: a price alert or the weekly deals.
- Google Analytics and Microsoft Clarity measure only once you agree. Without consent Google receives only measurements with no cookie or lasting id, and Clarity does not load. That holds in the countries whose law asks for consent first, such as the EU, the UK and Switzerland. Elsewhere, such as the United States, everything is on from the start and no bar appears: Google Analytics measures at once unless your browser sends Global Privacy Control, and "Cookie settings" at the foot of every page turns it off. Microsoft Clarity loads there too only once you agree through that link. Which of the two rules applies we read from the country Cloudflare places your IP address in, and we keep that country nowhere.
- A price alert keeps your email address, and we use it for nothing else.
- The site runs on Cloudflare. Google, Microsoft and Cloudflare are American companies.
- You can see your data and have it erased, and complain to the Dutch Data Protection Authority (Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens).
Who is responsible
Best at Best is made by Martin Kilarski (Dutch Chamber of Commerce number 97472050, Salland 1, 1948 RE Beverwijk, the Netherlands), who is also responsible for your data (the controller under the GDPR). For anything about privacy, mail hello@bestatbest.com.
What we process, why and for how long
| What | What for | Legal basis | How long | Who receives it |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Google Analytics 4 | Which pages are visited, which parts are used and how fast pages load | With cookies: your consent (Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR). Without consent, measurements with no cookie or lasting id: legitimate interest (Art. 6(1)(f)) | Data per visit: as long as set in Google Analytics, at most 14 months. Totals without personal data remain. | Google Ireland Ltd and Google LLC (United States) |
| Microsoft Clarity | Clicks, scrolling and pointer movements, as heatmaps and recordings of a visit | Your consent | Recordings 30 days, unless we keep one, and the rest up to 13 months, Clarity's own terms | Microsoft Corporation (United States) |
| The consent bar's counter | How often the bar appears and which choice is made, with no cookie and nothing that could recognise you or your device | Legitimate interest | Three months | Cloudflare, which runs the site for us |
| Price alerts | Your email address, the product, your colour and shop choice and your target price, to mail you when the price drops | Your consent, which you give with the confirmation mail | See "Price alerts" below | Cloudflare, which sends the mails |
| Deals email | Your email address and the edition and language you signed up in, to mail you the deals every Thursday | Your consent, which you give with the confirmation mail | See "Deals email" below | Cloudflare, which sends the mails |
| Mistake reports | What you report with "Wrong?" or "Spotted a mistake on this page?": the page, what it showed, your reason and your note, to correct mistakes. No name, email address or IP address | Legitimate interest | One year | Cloudflare, which runs the site and the database for us |
| Shop sign-ups | What a shop gives on the sign-up page: the shop’s name and website, the link to its product feed, an email address and a note, to check the feed and answer. The email address is used only for that answer | Legitimate interest | One year | Cloudflare, Inc. (United States) |
| Hosting and security | Technical data such as your IP address and browser type, to deliver and secure the site | Legitimate interest | As long as Cloudflare needs it for that, under its privacy policy | Cloudflare, Inc. (United States) |
| Technical errors | A script error your browser hits on a page: the error message, the script and line, the page, the edition, the language and the kind of browser, to find and fix faults on the site. No name, IP address, cookie or full browser details | Legitimate interest | 90 days after the error was last seen | Cloudflare, which runs the site and the database for us |
| Partner links | A random reference per click to a shop, which says nothing about you | No personal data on our side | Not kept by us | The shop or the affiliate network, under its own privacy statement |
What we collect
As little as possible. There are no accounts and no advertisements. We use Google Analytics 4 to measure which pages are visited and which parts of them are used, such as clicking through to a shop, the advisor, the filters and the search, fully only after you agree through the bar at the bottom of the page. What you type into the search box counts as a search term. We also measure how fast pages load and respond (Core Web Vitals), to find slow pages. Next to it we use Microsoft Clarity, which records where visitors click, scroll and move the pointer on a page, and turns that into heatmaps and recordings of a visit. What you type into a field is masked in those. The email address of a price alert never goes to Google or Microsoft. What Microsoft does with the data is described in the Microsoft privacy statement. Without consent Google sets no cookie and receives only measurements that carry no cookie or other lasting id, and Microsoft Clarity does not load at all. With consent Google sets its analytics cookies, with Google signals and ad personalisation off, and Clarity records the visit. How Google uses the data is described in How Google uses information from sites or apps that use our services. Your choice is stored in your browser and you can withdraw it by clearing this site's storage in your browser. How often that bar appears and which choice is made, we count on our own server, without a cookie and without keeping anything that could recognise you or your device: only the number, with the kind of page, the language, the country and whether it was a phone, tablet or computer. We use no other third-party trackers. The site runs on Cloudflare, which processes technical data such as IP address and browser type to deliver and secure the site. When you open the home page, we read which country Cloudflare places that IP address in, to take you to that country's edition of the site or, if we have none for it, to suggest one, and we keep neither the address nor the country. When you choose a country or language, your browser keeps that choice for a year in a cookie (bb_edition), so the home page takes you there next time. After the home page has taken you to an edition by your country, a second cookie (bb_redirected) lasts one minute, so the page can say why you are there. Both serve only what you asked for and hold nothing else. See the Cloudflare privacy policy.
Price alerts
If you set a price alert, we store your email address, the product, the colour and shop scope you chose and your target price. We first send a confirmation mail; without your click we send nothing else. Afterwards you get a mail when the product's price is at or below your target, at most once per price drop, and if you ticked the box also at each new low since you set the alert. Every mail carries an unsubscribe link, with which you end that one alert or all alerts on that address at once. An alert you do not confirm within 48 hours is deleted, address and all. A confirmed alert that is still on and has not sent you a price mail in 12 months is deleted, address and all. A month before, we mail you with a button that keeps it for another 12 months. An alert you stop is deleted 30 days later, address and all. Until then the same unsubscribe link turns it back on. We use the address for nothing else and do not share it. Your browser also remembers the address itself, so the form is already filled in for your next alert. That copy stays on your device and you remove it by clearing this site's storage in your browser. Mails are sent through Cloudflare's email service from hello@bestatbest.com.
Deals email
If you sign up for the weekly mail on the deals page, we store your email address, the edition and the language. We first send a confirmation mail. Without your click we send nothing else. Afterwards you get, every Thursday, the robot vacuums that cost clearly less than the same shop asked in the 30 days before, and nothing in a week without such deals. Every mail carries an unsubscribe link. After you unsubscribe we keep your address with the switched-off sign-up, so the same link can turn the mail back on and we can show you had agreed. If you want it gone, mail us. A sign-up you do not confirm within 48 hours we delete, address and all. We use the address for nothing else and share it with no one.
Affiliate links
Links to shops can be partner links. If you click through to a shop, that shop or the affiliate network the link runs through may set a cookie to attribute a purchase to Best at Best. We then receive a commission. You do not pay more. When you click such a link, we add a random reference to it, so we can see which place on the page leads to a purchase. The reference is new for every click and says nothing about who you are. What those parties process is described in their own privacy statements. On our own site we set no cookies for this.
Today we earn only from links to Amazon.de, Amazon.es, Amazon.fr, Amazon.nl, bol.com, Coolblue, Dyson (brand store), eufy (brand store) and Xiaomi (brand store): 9 of the 23 shops we follow. Buy through such a partner link and we receive a commission from the shop or from its affiliate network. The other shops pay us nothing, and the ranking, the lowest price and the advice come from the same data for every shop.
A brand’s own web shop can have a partner link too (Dyson (brand store), eufy (brand store) and Xiaomi (brand store)). That maker then pays a commission on a sale, as any other shop does, and never for a place in the ranking or for a review.
Data at American companies
Google, Microsoft and Cloudflare are American companies, so what they process for us can end up in the United States. All three take part in the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework, for which the European Commission decided on 10 July 2023 that it offers an adequate level of protection, and their processing terms also include the European Commission's standard contractual clauses.
Your rights
You may see the data we hold about you, have it corrected or erased, have its processing restricted, object to it and take your data with you (Articles 15 to 21 of the GDPR). You can withdraw consent whenever you like: for the measuring by clearing this site's storage in your browser, for a price alert or the deals email with the unsubscribe link in every mail. Send a request to hello@bestatbest.com, and we answer within a month. If you disagree with how we handle your data, you can complain to the Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens, the Dutch Data Protection Authority.
Contact
Privacy questions: hello@bestatbest.com.