Privacy Policy

Who we are

Our website address is: https://www.simbiotico.eco.

Data Use

 

Due to the nature of our website (online directory), most of the information we receive is of a public nature and is used to promote sustainable brands, projects and services.
However, we also receive personal information from both visitors and registered users.

Simbiótico takes your privacy seriously. The information collected on this website is necessary for the proper functioning of this site and to facilitate navigation and use. We do not sell, rent or trade customers personal information with third parties.

We will not use your personal information in any other ways than those outlined in this privacy policy.

What personal data we collect and why we collect it

Cookies

By accessing our website you accept the use of cookies to optimize user experience.
We use cookies and other similar technologies to help provide services and to analyse how you use our website. We also allow third parties to use tracking technologies for similar purposes.

When you visit our site for the first time, you will see a message about the use of cookies and our privacy policy.
This notice will be shown on all your visits to this site until you click the “I Agree” button, whenever you clear your cookies, whenever our Privacy Policy changes, and after the expiration date of the cookie that registers your acceptance ( 13 months).

Cookies save information about the pages you have visited. After your first visit, the website will remember you! Cookies are also used to monitor statistics and traffic on our website. This information cannot be used to identify singular users and the collected data is handled in confidence and not passed on to any third parties.

You can use our website without accepting cookies. If you do not wish to accept cookies while visiting our site, your browser allows you to choose advanced cookie settings under Settings and add our domain to the blocked cookie websites list.
If you deactivate cookies, it may cause some parts or functions of the website to become unusable or have a lower function.

We use tracking technologies for the following purposes:

• Strictly necessary purposes: To ensure site security. Without this type of technology we can’t secure our site from unwanted login attempts as well as validate your contact forms.
• Performance purposes: To analyse how visitors use a website, for instance which pages visitors visit most often, in order to provide a better user experience.
• Personalisation purposes: To remember choices you have made — such as language or region.

Our site uses the following cookies:

• Google Analytics cookies – These are set for monitoring and tracking visitors behavior on the site. No personal data is recorded.
• WordPress logged-in cookies – These are used by WordPress to authenticate logged-in visitors, password authentication and user verification.
• WPML cookies – These are used by the WPML plugin to identify the user’s preferred language, as our site is multilingual.
• WooCommerce cookies – These are used by the WooCommerce plugin to track visitors and their purchased items in the cart.
• StatCounter Analytics cookies – These are set for monitoring and tracking visitors behavior on the site. They only record your IP and pages visited.
• WP Fastest Cache cookies – These are used by WP Fastest Cache plugin to monitor referrer and user identification for caching purposes.
• Shield Security cookies – This is used by the Shield Security plugin to provide brute force security in logins by monitoring user cookies.
• Boxzilla pop-up cookies –  These are used to prevent you from seeing the same pop-up message after you have discarded it. Pop-ups will be visible again if you delete cookies from your browser.
• Google reCAPTCHA cookies – These are used as a security measure, as they verify if the visitor is a person or a robot.
• Akismet cookies – Helps keep spam under control by filtering out spam comments.

How to manage & remove cookies

If you are using our services via a browser you can restrict, block or remove cookies through your web browser settings. The Help menu on the menu bar of most browsers also tells you how to prevent your browser from accepting new cookies, how to delete old cookies, how to have the browser notify you when you receive a new cookie and how to disable cookies altogether. You can also visit http://www.aboutcookies.org for more information on how to manage and remove cookies across a number of different internet browsers.

Contact forms

The only personal information gathered by our contact form is name, email address and IP address (for anti spam purposes). Any data logging will be done through a secure connection (SSL / HTTPS). While we keep these submissions for customer service purposes, they are never used for marketing purposes or shared with third parties.

Information submitted through the contact forms on our site are sent to our company email, hosted by SiteGround. SiteGround adheres to the EU “Privacy Shield” policy and you can find more information about this here.

Logged in users

If you have an account and you log in to this site, we will set a temporary cookie to determine if your browser accepts cookies. This cookie contains no personal data and is discarded when you close your browser.

When you log in, we will also set up several cookies to save your login information and your screen display choices. Login cookies last for two days, and screen options cookies last for a year. If you select “Remember Me”, your login will persist for two weeks. If you log out of your account, the login cookies will be removed.

If you edit or publish a listing, an additional cookie will be saved in your browser. This cookie includes no personal data and simply indicates the post ID of the article you just edited. It expires after 1 day.

Simbiotico may send you email notifications regarding services or those you have specifically requested, such as newsletters or notifications when a listing is published. You have the ability to opt out of any of this communication at any time.

For users that register on our website, we also store the personal information they provide in their user profile. Each user can see, edit, or delete their personal information at any time (except they cannot change their username).

Comments

When users leave comments 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.

An anonymized string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.

Media

If you upload images to the website, you should avoid uploading images with embedded location data (EXIF GPS) included. Visitors to the website can download and extract any location data from images on the website.

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.

Analytics and statistics

We measure the number of visitors to our website using Google Analytics and StatCounter. They records what pages you view within our site, how you arrived at our site and some basic information about your computer. All of that information is anonymous – so we don’t know who you are; just that somebody visited our site.
The information we collect from analytics helps us understand what parts of our sites are doing well, how people arrive at this website and so on. Like most websites, we use this information to make our website better.
In addition to Google Analytics, we are also using WP Statistics, a listing performance statistics plugin, which is GDPR compliant, and allows for registered users to monitor their listing’s performance.

Newsletters

By signing up for free services such as email newsletters, or news bulletins you agree to receive updates and special announcements from Simbiotico.
When you subscribe to our newsletter, we ask you to share the following information: name, email, preferred language, preferred listing categories.
We will only send you our newsletter if you have subscribed to it or have given us express consent to do it for you.
We use double opt-in for subscriptions to the newsletters and you can update your preferences and opt-out of them at any time.

Online Donations

To process credit cards and collect donations we use Paypal as a third party online payment provider.
We share information with PayPal only to the extent necessary for the purposes of processing donations made via this website.
When paying by credit card or Paypal credit, Simbiotico will never have access to your credit card details. Only Paypal will have access to your personal and payment information.

Competitions and promotional features

When you enter a contest or other promotional feature, we will ask for your name, e-mail address and other necessary information so we can administer the contest and notify winners. This consent can be cancelled any time in written form.

Social Networks

Some third parties, like Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, Google+ and other social network services outside www.simbiotico.eco may know you visited our website if you use their services. As our website is remarkably inoffensive we imagine this is not a concern for most users.

These services provide social buttons and similar features which we use on this website – such as the “Like” and “Tweet” buttons.
To do so we embed code that they provide and we do not control ourselves. To function their buttons generally know if you’re logged in; for example Facebook uses this to say “x of your friends like this”. They may also collect some personal data.
We do not have any access to that information, nor can we control how those networks use it.

By accessing and interacting on our social network services you are subject to the privacy policy of these services. For more information please read their privacy statements.

Who we share your data with

 

We don’t share your data with third-parties in a way as to reveal any of your personal information like email, name, etc. However, some data is transferred and/or stored with third-party services we use, like payment processors.
Here are the services we use to make our own service better for you:

• PayPal – We use Paypal as one of our donation/payment gateways. During checkout, the user will provide login information and credit card info. This information is processed directly within this gateway payment, according to their own Privacy Policy, we do not save it nor have access to it on our sites.
• Mailchimp – We use MailChimp as out newsletter and marketing automation platform. When you subscribe to our newsletter, the information you provide will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing in accordance with their Privacy Policy and Terms.

Who can see my personal information

If you have an account in our website, the personal information provide in your user profile can be seen and edited by the system administrators.
If you are not a registered user in our site, there is no personal information we have or can see about you, unless you leave a comment or send us an email through a contact form, in which case it can be seen by our system administrators.

How long we retain your data

• Comments: If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained until (if) you tell us to remove it. This is so we can recognize and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.
• Emails: When you send us an email, we will retain your email address and all of the email’s content until (if) you tell us to remove it.
• Listings: The information included in a listing is retained until (if) the user who submitted it tells us to remove it. When asked to delete a listing and corresponding information, it will no longer be available to the public.

What rights you have over your data

If you have an account on this site, have left comments or sent us an email, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.

Data protection

Simbiotico takes many precautions to prevent the loss, misuse or alteration of your personal information. Whilst we take great care to ensure any confidential information remains protected we cannot guarantee the security of data sent over the Internet.
We follow strict security procedures in the storage and disclosure of information that you have given us. This is to prevent unauthorized access or unlawful processing of your personal information.
Here are the measures we use for data protection:

• We are entirely using SSL/HTTPS throughout our site. This encrypts our user communications with the servers so personal identifiable information is never captured by third parties without authorization.
• All our internal computers are equipped with updated security software.
• All our internal network communications are encrypted.
• Databases are sanitized (actual user personal details are removed) before deploying to development or testing environment.
• In case of a data breach, System administrators will immediately go through our records and inform affected users and the relevant authorities (CNPD)

Updates to this policy

Simbiótico may update this privacy policy from time-to-time, particularly as technology changes. You can always check this page for the latest version. We may also notify you of changes to our privacy policy by email.

Any questions?