Privacy
The privacy of our visitors to TextMeFree.com is important to us.
Privacy statement last updated: Dec 27th, 2018
Privacy Statement
Essentially, and as per EU privacy regulations that came into force on May 25th (2018) also known as GDPR, you will find the following details here on this privacy page:
- Who we are
- What tools we use to collect data and what data they collect.
- Confirmation of the data that does / does not personally or directly identify you
- What data we collect when you subscribe to our newsletter services
- Who gets to see this data
NOTE: as our understanding of the requirements of GDPR becomes clearer so this privacy policy will become clearer, too.
Who We Are
Our website address is: https://www.TextMeFree.com
At TextMeFree.com we are dedicated to protecting your data and privacy.
We recognize that your privacy is important. This document outlines the types of personal information we receive and collect when you use TextMeFree.com, as well as some of the steps we take to safeguard information. This will help you make an informed decision about sharing personal information with us.
TextMeFree.com strives to maintain the highest standards of decency, fairness and integrity in all our operations. Likewise, we are dedicated to protecting our customers' and online visitors' privacy on our website.
About Our Cookies
A cookie is a string of information that TextMeFree.com stores on your computer, which your browser provides to TextMeFree.com each time you return to the site. We use cookies to help us identify and track visitors, their use of our website, and their website access preferences.
Cookies are used by nearly all websites and do not harm your system.
If you want to check or change what types of cookies you accept, this can usually be altered within your browser settings. You can block cookies at any time by activating the setting on your browser that allows you to refuse the setting of all or some cookies. However, if you use your browser settings to block all cookies (including essential cookies) you may not be able to access all or parts of our site.
How do we use cookies?
We use cookies to track your use of our website. This enables us to understand how you use the site and track any patterns with regards how you are using our website. This helps us to develop and improve our website as well as products and / or services in response to what you might need or want.
Cookies are either:
* Session cookies
* Persistent cookies
But, more important to you, cookies can also be categorised as follows:
– Strictly necessary cookies
– Performance cookies
– Functionality cookies
Find out more about cookies here - https://ico.org.uk/your-data-matters/online/cookies/
Your agreement (or otherwise) of our cookie use is handled by ??? - to be added in 2023 sometime!
As regards TextMeFree.com, and its cookie use...
Statcounter Cookies
Statcounter is an online service which helps us to understand our visitors; for example, how visitors find our website, how long they spend on our site, which web pages they are most interested in etc. We use Statcounter because better understanding how visitors are interacting with our website helps us to improve the content, design and functionality of our site. This allows us to offer a better online experience to our visitors.
Statcounter uses cookies and other technologies to collect data on visitors and visitor activity on our website. This data includes:
- Time and date of visit (this can help us to identify and plan for busy periods on our website)
- IP address (this is a numerical label assigned to a device by an Internet Service Provider to enable the device to access the internet)
- Browser and Operating System (this can help us to make sure that our website functions correctly in the browsers/operating systems used to access our site)
- Device Information e.g. device type and screen size (this can help us to make sure that our website functions correctly in the devices used to access our site)
- Referring Data e.g. a search engine link (this can help us to understand which search engines are helping visitors to find our website)
Furthermore, when you visit our website a Statcounter cookie (called "is_unique") may be placed in your browser. This cookie is used only to determine whether you are a first-time or returning visitor and to estimate unique visits to the site.
You can learn more about cookies from StatCounter and set your browser to refuse same by clicking here.
For further details, please see the Statcounter privacy policy.
Advertising Cookies
We use third-party advertising companies to serve ads on our website. These companies use cookies and web beacons in their ads to ascertain how many times you've seen an advertisement. We share this information with these companies, but do not provide them with any personally identifiable information for cookie or web beacon use, so they cannot personally identify you with that information from our website.
You may opt out of personalized ads for over 125 different ad networks. Click here to do that.
Some third-party advertisements are served by Google. Google's cookie enables it to serve ads to our visitors based on their visits to other sites on the Web. You may opt out of personalized ads by visiting the Google ad opt-out page
This link from Google provides more information about how Google manages data in its ad products.
Affiliate Products and Services
We receive an affiliate commission for some of the products/services sold on TextMeFree.com.
The affiliate services platforms we use are Amazon, SiteSell
By clicking on a product or service link, you consent to that platform's use of cookies, as outlined in the link below.
Refusing Cookies
You can set your browser to accept or refuse all cookies automatically, or notify you when a cookie is being requested. Taking this action should not cause a problem with the continued use of our site. Consult the Help section of your browser for guidance on how to refuse all cookies or to notify you when a cookie is requested.
If you choose to refuse TextMeFree.com's cookies, you may not be able to fully experience the interactive features of the site.
** Personally Identifiable Information **
TextMeFree.com may collect and use your personal information for the following purposes:
- To run and operate our site.
- To display content on the site correctly.
- To improve customer service.
- To help us respond to your customer service requests and support needs more efficiently.
- To personalize your user experience.
- To understand how our users as a group use the services and resources provided on our site.
- To improve our site.
- To improve our products and services.
- To run a promotion, contest, survey or other site feature.
- To send information to you that you agreed to receive about topics we think will be of interest to you.
- To send periodic emails, which may include electronic newsletters and/or autoresponder series of emails.
- To respond to your enquiries, questions, and/or other requests.
TextMeFree.com lets you share content with your friends and followers on various social media platforms. Below are links to the privacy policies of:
TextMeFree.com may collect personally identifiable information from you in a variety of ways, including, but not limited to, when you visit our site, register on the site, or fill out a form, and in connection with other activities, services, features or resources we make available on our site.
Specifically, if you subscribe to our newsletter, we will ask for your first name and will require your email address.
If you complete a form, we will require your name and your email address, and will ask for information relevant to the purpose of the form.
If you leave a comment 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.
If you submit content to us, we will ask for your name and email address. Photos you include with your submission, or details in your submission, may personally identify you.
If you request to be notified about comments on any content you submit to us, or request to be notified when others submit content, we will require your first name and your email address.
You can always refuse to supply personally identifiable information and visit our site anonymously. However, it may prevent you from engaging in certain site-related activities.
If we make material changes in the collection of personally identifiable information, we will inform you by placing a notice on our site. We will use personal information received from you for internal purposes only and will not sell it or provide it to third parties.
We also collect each visitor's IP address, which helps us combat spam and fraud. We do not use IP addresses for any other purpose.
Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service.
Links
The TextMeFree.com website
contains links to other websites that may be of interest to you. However, once you have used them to leave our site, we do not have any control over that other website. Therefore, we cannot be responsible for the protection and privacy of any information you provide while visiting such sites. These sites are not governed by this privacy statement. Always exercise caution by reviewing the privacy statement of the website in question before continuing to use it.
** Non-personally Identifiable Information **
We may collect non-personally identifiable information about you whenever you interact with our site. Non-personally identifiable information may include the browser name, the type of computer and technical information about your method of connecting to our site, such as the operating system and the Internet service provider you used, and other similar information.
** 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.
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 tracing your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.
Children's Privacy Protection
This website is directed to adults. It is not directed to children under the age of 16. We operate our site in compliance with current regulations. Anyone under the age of 16 must provide parental consent to use this site. We do not knowingly collect or use personally identifiable information from anyone under 16 years of age.
Release of Information
If we sell TextMeFree.com, the information we have obtained from you through your voluntary participation in our site may transfer to the new owner as a part of the sale so that the service provided to you may continue. In that event, you will receive notice through our website of that change in control and practices, and we will make reasonable efforts to ensure that the purchaser honours any opt-out requests you might make.
Data Storage
Personally identifiable information and non-personally identifiable information collected by this site is stored on our host's servers. That host is Siteground
Some information is collected by third-party services. These include... BulkSMS.com
How You Can Correct or Remove Information
We provide this privacy policy as a statement to you of our commitment to protect your personally identifiable information. If you have submitted personally identifiable information through our website and would like to update that information or have it deleted from our records, then please contact us.
Updates and Effective Date
TextMeFree.com reserves the right to make changes in this policy. If there is a material change in our cookie and privacy practices, we will indicate on our site that those practices have changed and provide a link to the updated privacy policy. We encourage you to periodically review this policy so that you will know what information we collect and how we use it.
Agreeing to Terms
If you do not agree to TextMeFree.com's privacy policy as posted here on this website, please do not consent to the setting of cookies and the collection and storage of your personally identifiable information.
Your explicit consent indicates acceptance of this privacy policy in its entirety.
Last updated: Dec 27th, 2018