With Gala.photography you can search and browse the internet privately. Not because you have something to hide, but because you have a lot to protect!
Protecting your privacy is all about having control over your data. At Gala.photography, we help you control and protect what’s yours:
It’s Your Data. Not Big Data! !
Why we don’t collect any “personal data” It’s the best way to safeguard your privacy.
If information isn’t collected, it can’t be stolen, demanded, leaked or abused.
How do we define “personal data?”
To maximize your privacy, we use a broad definition.
Our definition of personal data is based on the privacy laws
and regulations of the EU, including the General Data Protection
Regulation (GDPR). These are widely regarded as the strongest privacy
protections in the world. We consider any information about you or your
behavior that can be traced back to you as personal data.
Information we don’t collect
So let’s be perfectly clear:
We don’t record your IP address
The only exception is for automated search requests (robots)
that rapidly submit more queries to our servers than any normal human
would. When our software detects potential abuse, we register and block
the offending IP address in order to keep our service safe and free.
We don’t serve any tracking or identifying cookies
This is about “good” and “bad” cookies . Cookies are small
pieces of data that are sent to your hard drive by websites you
visit.”Bad” cookies have unique elements that can track all kinds of
personal information. We don’t serve any of those. Startpage.com uses
just one “good” cookie called “preferences” in order to remember the
search preferences you choose. It’s completely anonymous and expires
after not visiting Startpage.com for 90 days.
We don’t record your search queries
Saves us headaches and disk space.
When you search, your query is automatically stripped of
unnecessary metadata including your IP address and other identifying
information. We send the anonymized search query to Google and return
the search results to you. We don’t log your searches.
To prevent abuse such as robotic high-volume querying, we
anonymously determine the frequency of popular search keywords as a part
of our anti-abuse measures, while protecting your privacy.
How we have implemented truly anonymous analytics
We only count aggregate numbers.
We do measure overall traffic numbers and some other –
strictly anonymous – statistics. These stats may include the number of
times our service is accessed by a certain operating system, a type of
browser, a language, etc., but we don’t know anything about individual
users.
How we keep Startpage.com free without using “personal data”
Without tracking-ads – as we don’t share personal info with anyone.
Most online advertising today is personalized, meaning that online advertising services track what you do online and profile you in order to serve tailored ads. We don’t do that at Startpage.com. No tracking. No profiling! Our search result pages may include a small number of clearly labeled “sponsored links,” which generate revenue and cover our operational costs. Those links are retrieved from platforms such as Google Adwords. In order to enable the prevention of click fraud, some non-identifying system information is shared, but because we never share personal information or information that could uniquely identify you, the ads we display are not connected to any individual user. It’s a myth that search engines need to profile you in order to earn decent money. Gala.photography serves strictly non-personalized ads. Sure, our ads make only a fraction of what other search engine ads make, but they pay all our bills.
We protect you on our site – and beyond This privacy policy applies only to the Gala.photography website.
Once you click on a search result, you leave our site and our
privacy protection. This is true for sponsored links, search results
and other external links. Unless … you use our ”
Anonymous View
” feature – shown behind the search results. This is a great
privacy tool that allows you to continue to browse in full privacy.
We don’t disclose or sell your contact information
You ask for support, not spam.
When you contact us via email or through our support center,
we’ll use your contact information to respond to you. We won’t sell or
share this info with anyone else. You’ll have the option to subscribe to
our newsletter, from which you can unsubscribe at any time.
How we respond to governmental requests for data
They can’t request what we don’t have.
Any request will have to come from Dutch judicial
authorities. We’ll only comply if we’re legally obliged to do so. But
we’re not likely to receive requests by governments to hand over user
data – simply because we don’t have any.
We will never comply with any voluntary surveillance program
Big Brother would like some help?
Hell no! Fortunately, we are based in the EU, where we have strong laws that protect your right to privacy. European governments can’t legally force service providers like Gala.photography to implement a blanket spying program.
Startpage.com complies with the GDPR
And we can help you comply, too.
We are located in the EU, and we fully comply with applicable
privacy laws and regulations of the EU, including the General Data
Protection Regulation (GDPR). These are widely regarded as the strongest
privacy protections in the world.
Looking for a quick win to improve your own GDPR compliance?
Setting Startpage.com as the default search engine on all your
organization’s IT equipment will help you minimize the amount of
personal data that is processed by or for your organization. This can
also help you implement important privacy principles, such as data
minimization, storage limitation, privacy by design and privacy by
default.
In the EU you have a “right to be forgotten”
When enough is enough.
Citizens in the EU have the right to request the deletion of
search results that disclose their personal data when those results are
inaccurate or no longer relevant. Find our how we have implemented this
right
here
.
Dutch Data Protection Authority
We are always here to help
If you have any feedback or complaint about our services
in general, or more specifically about how your privacy is protected
when you use our services, please let us know via the contact details
below. In accordance with EU privacy laws and regulations, you have the
right to lodge a complaint with the national supervisory authority
responsible for the protection of personal data if you think we have
unlawfully processed your personal data. For the Netherlands, this
supervisory authority is the Dutch Data Protection Authority, which you
can contact
here
.
Our company and contact information
Still have privacy questions?
Gala.photography is owned and operated by Gala.photography & Design Casella Postale 3379, Milano, Italia. Representative for the Privacy Policy is Grace O´Brein You can contact us at contact@gala.photography
