Privacy and affiliate links
In short
- No accounts, no newsletter and no advertisements.
- Google Analytics measures visits unless you opt out, and never for ads. Microsoft Clarity runs only if you allow analytics. That holds in the countries whose law does not ask for consent first, the United States among them. Visitors from a country whose law does, such as the EU, the UK and Switzerland, are asked first and measured only once they agree. Which of the two rules applies we read from the country Cloudflare places your IP address in, and we keep that country nowhere.
- We do not sell or share personal information.
- The site runs on Cloudflare, and is run from the Netherlands, so the European GDPR applies to what we do with your data.
- 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, email 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 | Legitimate interest (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR), with your right to opt out. Visitors from the EU, the EEA, the UK and Switzerland: your consent (Art. 6(1)(a)) | 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 (the Statistics switch in "Your privacy choices") | Recordings 30 days, unless we keep one, and the rest up to 13 months, Clarity's own terms | Microsoft Corporation (United States) |
| The privacy choices counter | How often the panel is opened and which choice is made, with no cookie and nothing that could recognize you or your device | Legitimate interest | Three months | Cloudflare, which runs the site for us |
| Shop sign-ups | What a store gives on the sign-up page: the store’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 |
| Affiliate links | A random reference per click to a store, which says nothing about you | No personal data on our side | Not kept by us | The store or the affiliate network, under its own privacy policy |
What we collect
As little as possible. There are no accounts, no newsletter 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 store, the advisor, the filters and the search. 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. On these pages that measuring is on unless you opt out: through "Your privacy choices" at the bottom of every page, or automatically when your browser sends Global Privacy Control. Google Analytics sets no advertising cookies here, and Google signals and ad personalization are off, so nothing it measures is used for ads. When you opt out, Google Analytics sets no cookie and removes the ones it set before. Visitors from the European Union, the rest of the EEA, the United Kingdom, Switzerland and the other countries whose law asks for consent first see a consent bar, and get no Google Analytics cookie and no Microsoft Clarity until they agree. Without a cookie, Google receives only measurements that carry no cookie or other lasting id. How Google uses the data is described in How Google uses information from sites or apps that use our services. 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. Clarity does not load at all until you allow analytics, nor while the Statistics switch under "Your privacy choices" is off, and never while your browser sends Global Privacy Control. What Microsoft does with the data is described in the Microsoft privacy statement. Your choice is stored in your browser, and you can change it through the same link. How often that panel is opened and which choice is made, we count on our own server, without a cookie and without keeping anything that could recognize 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, and we do not sell or share personal information. 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.
Your choices, Global Privacy Control and Do Not Track
"Your privacy choices" at the bottom of every page turns measuring on or off, and your browser remembers the choice. A browser that sends Global Privacy Control is opted out, even if you allowed analytics here before, and Microsoft Clarity never loads for it. We do not act on the older Do Not Track setting, which Global Privacy Control has replaced. Besides the stores and affiliate networks you click through to, two other parties collect information about your visits: Google, through Google Analytics as described above, and, only if you allow analytics, Microsoft, whose Clarity cookies can recognize your browser on other sites that use Clarity.
Affiliate links
Links to stores can be affiliate links. If you click through to a store, that store or its affiliate network may set a cookie to attribute a purchase to Best at Best. We may then earn 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 policies. On our own site we set no cookies for this.
Today we earn only from links to MOVA (brand store): 1 of the 6 stores we follow. Buy through such an affiliate link and we receive a commission from the store or from its affiliate network. The other stores pay us nothing, and the ranking, the lowest price and the advice come from the same data for every store.
A brand’s own web store can have an affiliate link too (MOVA (brand store)). That maker then pays a commission on a sale, as any other store does, and never for a place in the ranking or for a review.
Where the data goes
We run the site from the Netherlands, and Google, Microsoft and Cloudflare are American companies, so what they process for us can go from the European Union to the United States. All three take part in the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework, for which the European Commission decided on July 10, 2023 that it offers an adequate level of protection, and their processing terms also include the European Commission's standard contractual clauses.
Your rights
Wherever you live, 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 or opt out whenever you like, through "Your privacy choices" at the bottom of every page. 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, which supervises us.
Changes and contact
When we change what the site collects, we update this page and the date at the top. Best at Best is an independent site run from the Netherlands. Privacy questions: hello@bestatbest.com.