Skip to content
Become an FDE

Become an FDE · Updated

Privacy Policy

The information Become an FDE records about visits, why, who processes it, and how Global Privacy Control and your privacy rights apply.

Here is how Become an FDE (“we”, “us”) handles information about visitors to becomeafde.com (the “Site”).

Information collected when you visit

  • Request data. To deliver and protect the Site, our hosting provider processes the standard details of each request: IP address, browser type, the page asked for and the referring address.
  • Browser and device type. From the user agent your browser sends, our server takes the browser name and version, the operating system and the device type (desktop, mobile or tablet). The user agent itself is not recorded.
  • Approximate location. Our server learns from our hosting provider the country, region and city your connection appears to come from, and records only that approximate location, never your IP address.
  • First-party analytics. A small script of our own on each page reports to our own server the pages you view, the page address (including campaign tags such as utm_source) and the page you came from, your screen and window size, how far down a page you scroll, how long a page is in view, whether a recommendation on a page comes into view, and the links and buttons you click: their text, their address and where on the page you clicked. The script loads nothing from other companies, sets no cookies itself and stores nothing in your browser.

Device key

Our server also attaches a device key to each event. It is made by hashing your IP address and user agent with a secret key (HMAC-SHA256) and keeping the first 32 characters. One browser on one connection always yields the same device key, so visits that probably come from the same device can be linked, on this Site and on other websites that share our analytics. Nobody can work back from the key to your IP address or user agent, and we neither keep those nor pass them to our analytics provider. Many people can share a connection, such as an office or a mobile network, so the device key is an approximate signal and not an identity.

If you write to us

A message sent through the contact page reaches us with your email address, your message, an optional name and an approximate country that our hosting provider works out from your connection. We keep no IP address and no user agent with it. Your message is used for one thing: replying to you. It is stored with a database service provider in the United States and deleted after 12 months at the latest. It is never used for marketing, and the only others who handle it are the service providers that host and store it for us.

You can ask for a message to be deleted sooner through the same contact page; tell us the email address you used.

There is one cookie, and it is first-party: our server sets it on becomeafde.com. Inside are a random visitor ID, a count of your visits, the time of your last visit and a check code that proves our server issued it. We use it to count visits and to tell returning visitors from new ones. Scripts on the page cannot read it, it travels only to this Site and only over secure connections, and it lapses 400 days after your last visit. Your browser settings let you delete it at any time.

Who processes analytics

The events described here go from our server to PostHog, Inc., our analytics processor, together with the visitor ID, the device key and the approximate location. PostHog stores and processes them for us in the United States. Your IP address, user agent, name and email address are never sent to it.

The company we recommend as our top pick runs its own website on the same analytics account, so our analytics account is shared with that company and it can see the events described here.

When you follow a link to a company we recommend (some articles name it as our top pick), the link first reaches an address on this Site. Our server records the click, meaning the page, the link’s place on it and which of the company’s pages it leads to, then forwards you to that company’s website. The forwarding address includes a one-time click ID, your visitor ID, this Site’s name, the page you came from and a signature showing the link came from this Site, which lets that company connect your visit there with your visits here. When the rules under Your choices apply to you, no visitor ID is included. How this site is funded names the company and explains the connection.

Children

The Site is meant for adults, and we do not knowingly collect information from children under 13.

Your choices

  • Global Privacy Control. If your browser sends a Global Privacy Control signal, we honor it: we set no cookie and remove one set earlier, compute no device key, pass no visitor ID in links to a company we recommend, and record your page views only under an anonymous ID that changes every day and differs from site to site, so we do not follow you across visits.
  • Visitors in Europe, the UK and Switzerland. The same rules apply automatically when your connection appears to come from the European Union, the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom or Switzerland, or when we cannot tell where it comes from.
  • Your rights. Where you live may give you rights under laws such as the GDPR or the California Consumer Privacy Act, including access, correction and deletion.

Who we share information with

We do not sell personal information. Our hosting provider processes request data and our analytics provider processes analytics events, both on our behalf as described above. We disclose information when the law requires it. Our database provider likewise stores messages sent through the contact form on our behalf.

Contact

Privacy requests, including deletion of a message you wrote to us, go through our contact page.