Privacy
Effective Date: March 1, 2025
We value your privacy and are committed to protecting your personal data. This privacy policy explains how we collect, use, and store your data when you interact with our website. By using our website, you agree to the collection and use of your data as described in this policy.
1. Data We Collect
When you use our website, we collect the following types of data:
Personal Data:
We collect personal information such as your name, email address, and any other details you provide through our contact form, comments, wishlist, or shoutbox.
For comments, wishlist entries, and shoutbox posts, we also record your IP address, which is immediately pseudonymized by masking the last part of the address (e.g., 192.168.1.123 becomes 192.168.1.0). This pseudonymized data is used to protect against spam and malicious activity.
Pseudonymization means that certain parts of your personal data are replaced or altered in a way that makes it more difficult to identify you. While pseudonymized data still allows for some level of identification, it provides an additional layer of privacy and security.
Technical Data:
Our hosting provider automatically collects data about every access to our website (known as server log files).
This includes information such as the requested webpage, file, date and time of access, data transferred, successful retrieval message, browser type and version, operating system, referrer URL (previously visited page), IP address, and the requesting provider. For data minimization purposes, the IP addresses in these logs are fully anonymized (e.g., an IP address such as 11.22.33.44 is recorded as 0.0.0.0). Additionally, these server log files are automatically deleted after 90 days. We do not analyze or use these log files for any purpose other than maintaining the website, and we do not link this data to other user information.
2. Purpose of Data Collection
We collect your data for the following purposes:
- To respond to comments and messages submitted through our contact form.- To send you optional notifications via email when you choose to receive updates on fulfilled wishes.
- To protect against spam and malicious activities.
3. Legal Basis for Processing Personal Data
We process your personal data based on the following legal grounds:
Consent: When you voluntarily provide your personal information (e.g., email address and name).Legitimate Interests: We process your data to maintain our website's security, stability, and functionality. To protect your privacy, we do not combine this data with other user information and pseudonymize IP addresses in our server logs, comments, wishlist, and shoutbox. You may object to this processing at any time.
4. Data Retention
We retain your personal data only for as long as necessary to fulfill the purposes for which it was collected. The specific retention period depends on the type of data, the purpose of processing, and the associated risks.
Comments, wishlist entries, and shoutbox entries: These entries are generally retained indefinitely to preserve the history and context of discussions. However, we may periodically review and delete older, irrelevant, or outdated content at our discretion to ensure the website remains current and relevant. You can also manually delete your entries at any time using our data request tool.
Server Log Files: To comply with data minimization principles, our server log files are automatically deleted after 90 days.
5. Data Storage and Security
All data is stored on servers located in Germany. Our hosting provider, ALL-INKL.COM, operates data centers exclusively in Germany. You can find more information about their data centers here.
6. Your Rights
You have the following rights regarding your personal data:
- The right to access your personal data.
- The right to request correction of inaccurate data.
- The right to request deletion of your data.
- The right to restrict processing of your data.
- The right to withdraw consent at any time where we process your personal data based on consent.
To help you facilitate these rights, we provide a tool that allows you to request and delete your data.
Access the tool here:
https://designfreaks.net/request_data
How the data request tool works: Simply enter your email address to receive a link with a unique token, valid for one hour. Clicking the link will display all your entries (comments, wishlist, shoutbox) in our database, where you can view the details and choose to delete them. Your email address will only be used for this purpose and will be deleted from our database once the token expires, ensuring your privacy.
If you have submitted data (e.g., comments, wishlist entries, or shoutbox messages) without providing your email address, you will need to contact us for assistance. Please reach out to us at team@designfreaks.net or use our Contact form. We will manually verify your identity and assist with deleting your data.
We understand the importance of your right to erasure and are committed to assisting you in deleting your data. Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any questions or require assistance.
7. Cookies and Local Storage
We use cookies and local storage solely for the functionality of our website. For example, we use local storage in your browser to save your progress in some of our minigames. We do not use tracking cookies or share any cookie data with third parties.
8. Affiliate Links
Our website contains an affiliate link to ALL-INKL.COM web hosting. If you click this link and sign up, we may receive a commission. Please note that we do not collect any personal data through this affiliate link. However, the affiliate service provider may track your visit for commission handling purposes. Please refer to All-Inkl.com's privacy policy for more information on their data processing practices.
9. Rate Limiting and CAPTCHA
To protect our website from automated bot traffic, we use a rate limiting mechanism that tracks the number of requests made by each user. The user's IP address is hashed using the SHA-256 algorithm, which is a one-way hash ensuring that the original IP address cannot be retrieved. Additionally, we regularly delete entries older than 1 month to maintain the privacy and efficiency of our system. If suspicious activity is detected, we may trigger CAPTCHA challenges to verify that the user is human. All data related to rate limiting is stored in accordance with our privacy practices and is used solely to prevent abuse and ensure the proper functioning of the site. If you believe you are seeing a CAPTCHA in error, please contact us.
10. Contact Us
If you have any questions about this privacy policy or our data practices, feel free to contact us:
Email: team@designfreaks.netContact Form: Contact Us
Last updated on March 5, 2025
Changes made: Clarified data storage practices, added a tool to request and delete data, and updated server log handling for GDPR compliance.