How I look after your information

Websites That Ring, ABN 50 488 121 807, is a one-person business (“I”, “me”). This policy explains how I handle personal information in line with the Australian Privacy Principles.

It covers:

• this website, websitesthatring.com, including the dashboard;
• the websites I build and host for businesses, including free previews; and
• the emails I send.

If you are a customer: your name, email address, phone number, business details and domain name, and a record of your subscription. Card details are collected and stored by Stripe, not by me.

If you ask me for a free design: what you enter in the form, such as your business name, email, phone number, trade, suburb, links to your website or online profiles, and anything you tell me about your business.

If I build a free preview of your business: information your business has already made public, such as its name, phone number, email address, address, website, photos and reviews.

If you send an enquiry through a website I host: the details you enter, such as your name, phone number, email address, suburb, the service you need and your message, plus the page you sent it from.

If you visit a website I host: anonymous visit statistics, such as the pages you view, the website that sent you, whether you tap the phone number, and your browser, operating system, device type, screen size, language and approximate location (down to the city). See Visitor statistics below.

If you arrive from one of my Facebook or Instagram ads: the click identifier Meta adds to the link, kept in a cookie for up to 90 days. See Advertising below.

When you submit any form: your IP address and browser type, which I use to prevent spam and abuse.

I use personal information to:

• build, host and update websites;
• pass enquiries on to the business they were meant for;
• let you sign in and manage your website and billing;
• send you emails about your account, your website, your trial and your payments;
• contact businesses about a free preview I have built for them;
• reply when you get in touch with me; and
• prevent spam, fraud and misuse, and meet my legal obligations.

I do not sell personal information, and I do not use it for advertising.

When you send an enquiry through a website I host for a business, I send it to that business by email and keep it in their dashboard so they can reply to you. I do not contact you about it myself.

Once the business has your details, they are responsible for how they use them. If you want an enquiry deleted, contact the business or me.

If the website is a free preview the business has not claimed yet, your enquiry is still sent to that business, so your request reaches them.

This website and the websites I host for businesses count their visitors with Umami, an open-source analytics tool that I run on my own servers. It does not use cookies, does not store your IP address and does not follow you across other websites. It records the pages viewed, the website that sent you there, taps on the phone number, and your browser, operating system, device type, screen size, language and approximate location down to the city.

On this website it only counts the public pages. It does not count the login pages, the dashboard or the admin pages.

Each business sees totals for its own website in its dashboard, such as how many people visited and where they came from. Neither the business nor I can use these statistics to tell who you are. This information is not shared with anyone else.

You can stop a website counting your visits by blocking scripts from its /stats address, for example with a content blocker.

I advertise on Facebook and Instagram. If you click one of those ads and then ask me for a free design, I tell Meta that the ad led to a request, so I can see which ads work. This only happens when you arrived from an ad.

What I send Meta is the time of the request, the click identifier from the ad link, your IP address and browser type, and your email address and phone number in a scrambled (hashed) form that Meta can only match to an account it already holds. I do not send your business details or anything you wrote in the form.

This website does not load any Meta code, so Meta does not see the pages you visit here. The websites I host for businesses are not part of this at all.

I only share personal information with:

• the business you sent an enquiry to;
• Stripe, which processes subscription payments;
• Resend, which delivers the emails I send;
• Meta, when you ask for a free design after clicking one of my ads, as described under Advertising;
• Hetzner, which runs the servers this website and the websites I host run on;
• professional advisers, such as an accountant, where needed; and
• government or law enforcement bodies, where the law requires it.

Some of the services above store information outside Australia. My servers are in [Germany], and Stripe, Resend and Meta may process information in the United States and other countries. I choose providers that protect information to a standard similar to the Australian Privacy Principles.

This website uses a cookie to keep you signed in to your dashboard. If you arrive from one of my Facebook or Instagram ads, it also keeps the ad’s click identifier in a cookie for up to 90 days, as described under Advertising. There are no other advertising or tracking cookies, and the websites I host for businesses do not use cookies for their visitor statistics. Stripe may set its own cookies on its checkout and billing pages to process payments securely.

If you are a customer, I send you emails about your account, website and billing. These are part of the service.

If I have built a free preview for your business, I may email the business address you have published to tell you about it and pass on enquiries. Every one of these emails has an unsubscribe link, and I stop straight away if you use it or ask me to.

I take reasonable steps to protect personal information, including encrypted connections, sign-in links instead of passwords, and access to each dashboard limited to the people allowed to see it. No system is perfectly secure, so if a breach is likely to cause you serious harm, I will tell you and take steps to fix it.

I keep personal information for as long as I need it for the purposes above. Billing records are kept for the time Australian tax law requires. When information is no longer needed, I delete it or remove anything that identifies you. You can ask me to delete information sooner, for example a free preview of your business or an enquiry you sent.

You can ask to see the personal information I hold about you, have it corrected or have it deleted. Contact me and I will respond within 30 days. I may need to confirm who you are first, and I may keep some information where the law requires it, such as billing records.

If you are unhappy with how I have handled your information, please contact me first and I will try to put it right within 30 days. If you are not satisfied with my response, you can complain to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner.

I may update this policy from time to time. The date at the top shows when it last changed. If a change affects customers in a meaningful way, I will email them about it.

Questions about your privacy? Contact me by replying to any email from me. See also the terms of service.