WebCull - Privacy Policy
This privacy policy explains how WebCull collects, uses, stores, and protects your personal information. Personal information means information that identifies you, or could reasonably identify you when combined with other information. Privacy laws in Canada, the European Union, and the United States use related terms such as “personal information,” “personal data,” and “personally identifiable information.”
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What personal information do we collect from the people that visit our website or app?
When registering on our site, as appropriate, you may be asked to enter your name, email address, or other details to provide you with our services. We use your name to personalize your account and allow you to differentiate between accounts when you have multiple accounts set up, without openly displaying your email on the screen at all times. It is also used to personalize an email that we send to you if we need to correspond with you. When entering your name you don't have to use your real name, it's just like a nickname for your account.
Your email address is needed to sign in to your account if you are logged out. One of the main reasons we use an email address is as a recovery point for your account through the `forgot your password` feature. We do not use your name or email address for marketing, advertising or usage analytics, and we do not sell them. We may use your PII to provide the core functionality of the service such as opt-in account alerts and account recovery, as well for communication of important details about the service such as privacy policy changes, or any other essential information about your account.
When do we collect information?
We collect information from you when you register on our site or enter information on our site. We never collect information about you off the site and never wish to.
We do not use third-party tools to collect your information on purpose. In rare events we don't have a choice because they are automatically included in the services, such as Cloudflare or cloud-based hosting solutions, that automatically collect and aggregate information about website traffic, such as daily unique visitors. This data is anonymized and we are not able to directly associate these statistics to our records in our database.
We also collect information as part of the general use of our service, such as website links, folders, tags, notes, etc... which is stored on our server. This storage is not leveraged for third-party marketing purposes, and never will be. Our only goal behind collecting this information is to provide a cheap, safe, and secure storage solution for bookmarks and bookmark related apps hosted by our service.
We also keep basic account usage records, such as counts of app loads, syncs and bookmark actions, which WebCull platforms an account has used, and signup and subscription events. These records are linked to an internal account ID, so they are not anonymous. We use them to understand feature use and service growth, and to support and improve onboarding. We do not analyze your name, email address or bookmark contents for these usage metrics, and we do not use these records for advertising.
Where is your information stored?
WebCull is based in Canada. Your account and bookmark data are stored on our server in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. This server also runs the API that handles account access and bookmark synchronization.
We use Cloudflare for public website hosting, content delivery, and security. Cloudflare operates a global network and may process website and API traffic, including IP addresses and technical request information, outside Canada.
How do we use your information?
We may use the information we collect from you when you register, surf the website, or use certain other site features in the following ways:
- To personalize your experience and to allow us to deliver the content you previously saved using our service.
- To understand feature use and service growth through account-linked usage records, and to support and improve onboarding.
- To allow us to better service you in responding to your customer service requests.
- To send periodic emails regarding important information about your account.
- To follow up with you after correspondence (live chat or email)
- To reset your account password using the forgot your password feature
How do we protect your information?
- The data saved to our site is encrypted in multiple ways and our website is scanned on a regular basis for security holes and known vulnerabilities in order to make your visit to our site as safe as possible.
- We use regular Malware Scanning.
- We keep up with the latest technology to prevent attacks.
- We frequently run upgrades and apply necessary security fixes and patches on the software use to provide our services.
- Your personal information is contained behind secured networks and is only accessible by a limited number of persons who have special access rights to such systems, and are required to keep the information confidential. In addition, all sensitive information you supply is encrypted via Secure Socket Layer (SSL) technology and stored with other encryption technologies.
- We implement a variety of security measures when a user submits or accesses their information to maintain the safety of their personal information.
- We hire security experts and researchers to try to exploit our code and help us find potential security issues.
Do we use 'cookies'?
Yes. Cookies are small files that a site or its service provider transfers to your computer's hard drive through your Web browser (if you allow) that enables the site's or service provider's systems to recognize your browser and capture and remember certain information. For instance, we use cookies to help us remember you with a session so you can log into your account.
How do we use cookies:
- Associate stored user information if a previous authentication was successful.
- Multiple user accounts can be associated to a single cookie if logged in with the same browser.
- We stop tracking a user after they log out.
- We do not keep a history of accounts that have been associated to a cookie once they have been unassociated using the logout feature.
You can choose to have your computer warn you each time a cookie is being sent, or you can choose to turn off all cookies. You do this through your browser settings. Since each browser is a little different, look at your browser's Help Menu to learn the correct way to modify your cookies.
Because we use this technology for core site functionality. If you turn cookies off, the website and features will not function correctly and you will not be able to login or create an account.
Third-party disclosure
- We do not sell, trade, or otherwise transfer to outside parties your Personally Identifiable Information or any other information you store on our site such as bookmark links, notes, bookmark titles or any related data.
- Occasionally, at our discretion, we may include or offer third-party services on our website. These services will never be with the intent to track our users, rather to improve the user experience of the site or app (such as Unsplash background).
- Third-party services have their own privacy policies. When you browse or choose an Unsplash background, your device requests images from Unsplash. When Media Embeds is enabled and you open a supported bookmark's details, WebCull may request a preview or media from its provider. Those requests reveal your IP address and browser information, and identify the image or media requested. The provider may also receive its own cookies, subject to your browser or device restrictions. WebCull does not send your account name, email address or other saved bookmarks with these requests. You can turn off Media Embeds in Settings. On platforms that offer subscriptions, Stripe and PayPal separately process payment information under their own privacy policies.
- We do not use Google AdSense or any other third-party tracking tool and never will. This is something that is not considered standard practice in the industry but our hard privacy stance means we've excluded it from our practices. Our core focus is not tracking, our focus is making great services you want to use, and apps or premium services you may want to pay for.
Anonymous browsing
In line with CalOPPA (California Online Privacy Protection Act), the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and Canada's Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA), where applicable, we agree to the following:
- Users can visit our site anonymously.
- This privacy policy is always available as a link on our home page or as a minimum, on the first significant page after entering our website. Our Privacy Policy link includes the word 'Privacy' and can easily be found on the page specified above.
- You will be notified of any Privacy Policy changes:
- On our Privacy Policy Page
- By email
- You can change your personal information:
- By logging in to your account, clicking the settings gear at the top right and clicking Account.
Data breaches
In order to be in line with Fair Information Practices we will take the following responsive action, should a data breach occur:
- We will notify you via email within 1 business day
- We will notify the users via in-site notification within 1 business day
- We have no evidence of any data breaches in WebCull's history.
Collections
Browser extensions
Managing your information
You can manage your information directly in WebCull. Settings lets you download your bookmarks in HTML or CSV format, update your account information, and delete your account. These actions do not require contacting us.
For information about how account deletion affects retained backups, see Backups.
Account ownership verification
For privacy requests made outside the app, we verify account ownership by sending questions to the original email address used to register the account. You must have access to that email account and be able to receive and answer those questions from that address. Knowing the email address alone is not proof of account ownership.
Backups
Production error reporting
When a serious server-side or application error occurs in a production WebCull service or app, we automatically create a limited error report so authorized WebCull personnel can investigate and repair the failure. These reports are generated for events such as fatal server errors, uncaught exceptions, failed database operations, unhandled JavaScript errors and promise rejections, and other failures explicitly classified as errors. Routine warnings, normal user activity, and analytics do not generate these reports.
A production error report may include the error type and sanitized message, time, source location, request method and path without query parameters, application and runtime versions, internal event or account-linked identifiers, and a limited technical trace without function arguments. Error text is automatically stripped of common sensitive values, including email addresses, full URLs, credentials, cookies, authorization information, query strings, and long identifiers. The reporting system does not read or transmit the current page URL, request or response bodies, page content, local storage, account tokens, or bookmark data for this purpose. Reports are size-limited, restricted to authorized personnel, and used only to investigate and repair production failures.
Correspondence
For privacy questions, requests, or concerns, including complaints about how we handle your information, email [email protected] so we can investigate and respond.
Where the GDPR applies, you have the right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority.
