Privacy Policy
Who we are
The Loose Bunch is a free and open Freelancer Directory for the Hong Kong market. We are based in Hong Kong and the website is hosted in Singapore. Our website main address is https://www.theloosebunch.com and our secondary address is https://www.loosebunch.com as redirect. We are an independent service, not affiliated with any third party companies. The owner of the domain names, web hosting and creator of the Loose Bunch is Stan Diers, registered freelancer in Hong Kong.
Where are we hosted
The website is hosted by www.hostinger.com on shared servers located in Singapore for speed of delivery. Hostinger is a reliable web host and has a strong security policy in place. You can read more about Hosting Privacy Policy here. We make a point in using ethical and responsible hosting company, therefore we reserve the right to change web host from time to time should it be necessary. We will update this Privacy Policy accordingly to reflect any changes in the future.
What personal data we collect and why we collect it
Comments
When visitors leave comments on the site we collect the data shown in the comments form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection. An anonymized string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.
Media
If you upload images to the website, you should avoid uploading images with embedded location data (EXIF GPS) included. Visitors to the website can download and extract any location data from images on the website. You are able to delete images you have uploaded on to our website by editing your listing. To do so you must login to your account and edit your listing accordingly.
Contact forms
We use two different contact forms on the website. One is for the listing submission, and the other is for sending messages on the contact page.
The form submission send your listing directly to our website pending for review. An admin email is sent to us as notification.
The contact form send your message by email to our admin email to notify us of your message.
Cookies
If you leave a comment on our site you may opt-in to saving your name, email address and website in cookies. These are for your convenience so that you do not have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment. These cookies will last for one year.
If you visit our login page, we will set a temporary cookie to determine if your browser accepts cookies. This cookie contains no personal data and is discarded when you close your browser. When you log in, we will also set up several cookies to save your login information and your screen display choices. Login cookies last for two days, and screen options cookies last for a year.
If you select “Remember Me”, your login will persist for two weeks. If you log out of your account, the login cookies will be removed. If you edit or publish an article, an additional cookie will be saved in your browser. This cookie includes no personal data and simply indicates the post ID of the article you just edited. It expires after 1 day.
Embedded content from other websites
Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.
These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.
Analytics
Who we share your data with
We use Google Analytics to fine tune our service so it it relevant to our users. The data gathered by Google Analytics is anonymised and we do not share this data with anyone else than the Loose Bunch, nor sell this data to anyone and / or company.
We use Google Search Console to gather data on website performance and fine tune the site. All Data is anonymised and we do not share this data with anyone else than the Loose Bunch, nor sell this data to anyone and / or company.
We may use Google AdSense to serve moderated advertising on the website as our only source of income to cover running costs. Google Analytics, Google Search Console and Google Adsense have their own privacy policy. You can read more about Google’s Privacy Policy here. If you do not accept Google’s Privacy Policy, we recommend you do not use our website.
How long we retain your data
If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognize and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.
For users that register on our website (if any), we also store the personal information they provide in their user profile. All users can see, edit, or delete their personal information at any time (except they cannot change their username). Website administrators can also see and edit that information.
What rights you have over your data
If you have an account on this site, or have left comments, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.
Where we send your data
Listing submissions and account logins are checked through an automated spam detection service. We use reCaptcha by Google to block spam from the website. You can read more about Google Privacy Policy here.
Your contact information
Details on your listing are made public, it is your responsibility to publish only information you agree to make public.
Account information retrieved during account creation are kept private. We do not share any of your information with anyone, nor sell your information to third party companies. We also do not keep record of passwords anywhere on our website and database.
Additional information
Encryption
Our website uses SSL certificate technology to encrypt data transactions between the server and your computer. (that is the lock icon next to the website URL in your browser). This means all data moving between the server to you is encrypted with the latest standard, making any interception of data unreadable. Our SSL certificate is issued by Let’s Encrypt Authority X3 through our web host. For your information, you can read more about SSL Encryption here.
How we protect your data
At the Loose Bunch we do everything in our power to protect your personal data. To do so we use several protection tools such as Anti Brute Force and Anti Cross Scripting tools. We update our website regularly to ensure all elements are free from potential hacks.
Our website is developed and maintained by a small team and we do not outsource any of the development to third party companies. Administration access is limited and highly secured. We do not store our database elsewhere than on our hosting provider server and / or private and encrypted backup services.
What data breach procedures we have in place
Should we discover any security breach on our website, we are professionals engaged to do our best to resolve the matter quickly. We will temporarily disconnect our server for the duration of the fix. We also promise to contact every single users listed on our website to inform them of the situation and guide them in changing their account passwords.
Privacy Policy – July 2020 – v1.2
