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Policy

To provide you with a membership on TheBestDesigns.com, we need to collect information about you. The purpose of collecting this information is to create a user account which you can use to login and submit your design entries. In some cases, your web designer or agency information may be listed on the site as well, for others to click on a link to your website if they are interested in knowing who designed the website featured. TheBestDesigns.com (“our”, “us” and “we”) commits to using your information only in accordance with the terms of this Privacy Policy.

For the purposes of this Privacy Policy, the term “information” means any confidential and/or personal data or other information related to users of TheBestDesigns.com – including, but not limited to, corporate and individual customers and their connected parties.

By visiting this website or providing your personal information through your account interface, email, or any other means of contact, you accept and expressly consent to our use and disclosure of your personal information and direct us to do so in the manner described in this Privacy Policy. This also includes, but is not limited to, information you provide when you browse our website, register for an account, enter a competition, promotion or survey, purchase from us, and when you contact us for other reasons.

If you have concerns about any of the terms of this Privacy Policy, please email us at hello@thebestdesigns.com so that we can provide further information.

1. The Information We Collect

We may collect and process the following information about you:

Information You Provide to Us

You may provide us with information by filling in forms on our website, our partners’ websites, communicating with us via email, talking to us on the phone or corresponding with us in any other manner.

This includes information you provide when you browse our website, register for an account, purchase from us, and when you contact us for other reasons.

Information for Your Account

To open a free account at TheBestDesigns.com, you must provide your first name, last name and email address, and you will also need to create a username and password for your account. After creating an account and logging in, you will be asked for more information, depending on how you are using this website.

If you are an agency or web designer submitting a website, and you choose the option to include your Designer / Agency information in our Designer Directory. Then you will be asked for your agency name, agency website, city, state, country, the year of your freelancing or agency’s establishment, a description of your services, range of budgets that you work with, an optional link to your Twitter account, an optional link to your Instagram account, keywords of your services for searches from visitors in our Designers section, and whether you work as a freelancer or an agency. You can also provide a photo of your office space which we will use with your Designer listing.

When We Communicate

When you communicate with us for customer service or other purposes, by email or any other methods, we keep that information and our responses to you.

Information We Collect When You Use Our Website

While you are using our site, we collect information on the pages you view, page response times and length of visits to specific pages, how you interacted with each page (including scrolling, clicks and mouse-overs), and methods used to browse away from the page. When you arrive at or leave TheBestDesigns.com, we receive the web address of the site that you came from or are going to.

We collect information about the device you are using, such as the type of device, operating system and platform, the type and version of browser, browser plug-in types and versions, the times you access our website/app and the time zone setting, mobile network information and unique device identifier.

2. How We Use Your Information

Our primary purpose in collecting your information is to provide you with a user-friendly experience on our website. By submitting your information to TheBestDesigns.com, you agree that we may use your information for the following purposes:

Fulfilling Your Requests

We will use your information to:

Communication and Customer Service

We communicate with our users via email to provide requested services and help you manage your account. These activities may include:

We use your email address to:

We need to be able to send these messages to current users, and users cannot opt out of these communications. If you do not want to receive these communications, then you will need to request that your account be closed.

Services and Account Management

We will use your information to deliver and improve our services and manage your account, including:

Accessing and Changing Your Information

You can review the information you have provided to us and request changes or make changes to your information at any time by logging in to your account and visiting the “My Account” page.

3. Cookies

Our website uses cookies to distinguish you from other users of our website, although the cookies we use do not contain personally identifiable information. This helps us to provide you with a good experience when you browse our website and login to your account.

You may adjust the settings on your browser to refuse cookies, although some areas of our website may not work properly if you do so. To learn more about cookies, and to read instructions on how to disable cookies in your browser, you can visit Cookies and You for more information.

4. Public Information and Sharing with Third Parties

Social Media Platforms and Widgets

Our website includes social media features, such as the Pinterest “Pin It" button. These features may collect information about your IP address and which page you are visiting on our Website, and they may set a cookie to make sure the feature functions properly.

Social media features and widgets are either hosted by a third party or hosted directly on our Website. We also maintain presences on social media platforms such as Twitter. Any information, communications, or materials you submit to us via a social media platform is done at your own risk without any expectation of privacy. We are not in control of the actions of other users of these platforms or the actions of the platforms themselves. Your interactions with those features and platforms are governed by the privacy policies of the companies that provide them.

Links to Third-Party Websites

Our websites include links to other websites, whose privacy policies may be different from ours. If you submit Personal Information to any of those sites, your information is governed by their privacy policies. We encourage you to carefully read the privacy policy of any website you visit.

Google Analytics

We use Google Analytics to help us understand how our website is used, but no personally identifiable data such as your name or email address is shared, and we anonymize your IP address in the Google Analytics code that we use so that your IP is not tracked. You can read more about Google's privacy policy here.

Affiliates

We are partnered with other websites, such as theme marketplaces, and those partnerships may include affiliate links in our website. When you click on one of these affiliate or referral links, a cookie may be used to track your visit to their website from ours, and if you make a purchase on their website, we will receive a small percentage of that sale for referring you. We are also very careful about the websites we partner with, and we will only partner with websites that we like and trust. The income that we receive from these affiliate links helps us to keep the website running and maintained. Although you do have the option to adjust the settings in your browser to refuse cookies if you do not want a purchase on one of our partner websites to be affiliated with our website referral.

We are currently partnered with the following websites as affiliates: ElegantThemes.com, Envato.com, Themeforest.com, Themify.com, Themetrust.com. Each of these websites has their own privacy and cookie policies, and we recommend that you read their policies for more information about how they collect and track data.

Google Adsense

We use Google Adsense on our website to serve ads, although we keep these ad spots at a minimum to keep the website as user-friendly as possible. Google Adsense may use tracking to display relevant ads to you, although you can disable this in Google’s “Ad Personalization" settings to prevent tracking here, and you can read more about Google’s privacy policy here here.

Where Required by Law

We may disclose necessary information to the police, law enforcement agencies, security agencies and other third parties where we are legally obligated and/or permitted to do so.

Mergers and Acquisitions

As with any website, it is possible that in the future TheBestDesigns.com could buy, merge with, or be acquired by another company. We may disclose your information to the prospective seller or buyer of our website, along with any other advisers related to this sale or purchase. If TheBestDesigns.com or a substantial proportion of its assets are acquired by a third party, information held by us about our users will be one of the transferred assets, and the company or individual taking over these assets would continue to be bound by this Privacy Policy unless and until it is amended.

6. Data Retention Policy

We retain data for the purposes of reporting, backup, and financial compliance for a period of up to five years. If you make a request to delete your account and your data, we will take steps to delete your data from our system (with the exception of the required data retention for tax or financial reporting). We will make every effort to complete your request within 30 days after the account and data deletion is requested.

If you ask us not to contact you, we will retain that information on a ’Do Not Contact’ list to minimize the risk of contacting you in the future.

7. Security Policy

Security is very important to us. In addition to using SSL, we also use the Sucuri Firewall service to help protect our website and the data within. We cannot guarantee with certainty that this website will not be compromised, but we take reasonable precautions to protect your personal information, and to follow industry best practices to make sure it is not inappropriately lost, misused, accessed, disclosed, altered or destroyed. You can read more about the Sucuri Security privacy policy here.

We currently do not accept credit card payments for any of our services, but we do use Paypal invoicing for theme submissions. Your payment and Paypal account information is not stored on our website, and any payments you send to us via Paypal are covered by their policies. You can read more about Paypal's privacy policy here.

8. Age of Consent

By using this site, you represent that you are at least the age of majority in your state or province of residence, or that you are the age of majority in your state or province of residence and you have given us your consent to allow any of your minor dependents to use this site.

9. Children

Our website and services are not directed to children, and we do not knowingly collect personally identifiable information from children under 13. If you believe that a child under the age of 13 has given us personally identifiable information, please contact us at hello@thebestdesigns.com.

10. Your Rights as an Account Owner

You have the following rights:

To ask us to correct any information we hold about you if it is incorrect.

While we attempt to keep your information accurate, there may be times when you need to change or correct your information. You can edit your profile at any time by logging onto your account on our website. For technical and security reasons, you will not be able to change your username or email address from within your account, although you can send an email to request these changes.

To ask us to erase your information if we no longer have any reason to hold it, also known as the ‘right to be forgotten’.

Our Data Retention Policy (see number 6 above) explains the circumstances when we can or are obliged to retain information, however outside of those periods we will delete your information in line with our data retention policy and on request. We will maintain a record that you made an erasure request to reduce the likelihood of us contacting you in the future, but we will use that information for no other purpose.

To ask us to return to your information that you provided to us, also known as ‘data portability’.

You can ask us to send you the information you provided to us in electronic format.

To ask us not to process your information where you previously gave consent or where we are exercising our legitimate interest.

If you make a request for us to stop processing your information, we will review this request to see if there is an important reason for processing to continue, and then we will discuss this decision with you.

You cannot object to processing which is a legal obligation or where we must process your information to satisfy a contract that you entered via our website. If you previously gave consent and we processed your data on the basis of that consent, you cannot object to that past processing, although you can request that we stop processing it in the future.

To ask for a copy of the information we hold about you.

We will make every effort to respond to your request within 30 days of the request.

To ask us not to process your information for marketing purposes.

We currently do not send newsletters or marketing emails, although if we ever do, we will announce this in an email to account owners, and you will have the option to opt-in to those newsletter or marketing emails at that time. If you do not opt-in at the time of the announcement, then you will not be contacted with newsletter or marketing emails. If you do opt-in to a newsletter or marketing emails, and you change your mind or want to stop receiving the newsletter later on, you will be able to unsubscribe by clicking an “Unsubscribe” link in that email or by replying to let us know that you want to unsubscribe.

To ask us to delete your account.

You can request to delete your account at any time by sending an email to hello@thebestdesigns.com. Your account and any personally identifiable information collected for your account will be deleted, and we will make every effort to respond to this request within 30 days of the request.

11. Contacting Us

The Data Controller

The owner of this website and Data Controller is Angela Rohner at 1031 Mark Twain Drive, Allen, TX 75002, United States of America.

Contacting Us With Questions or Requests

If you want to exercise your right to access your information or if you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, TheBestDesigns.com's information practices, or your dealings with us, you can contact us at hello@thebestdesigns.com.

12. Changes to This Privacy Policy

We may amend this policy at any time, if new features are added to TheBestDesigns.com or as we implement improvements to this website. The current version of this policy was last updated on May 23, 2018.

Your continued use of our website after a posting of a new version of this Policy will constitute your acceptance of, and agreement to, any changes. If you disagree with the terms of this Privacy Policy, you may email us to request to close your account at any time.

Reach Out

If you need to reach out about anything, you can send a note to 'hello at thebestdesigns.com' or you can also connect with me via LinkedIn. :)

What about Instagram?

I was slow to get on the Instagram bandwagon, mainly because I was starting to burn out, and I didn't want yet another platform to update. Although I'll be keeping my Instagram account as it is with the sites that have already been featured there.