GDPR Privacy policy

This Privacy and Communications Policy ("Policy") is effective as of March 30, 2021.

This Policy sets forth how Smooth Water Media LLC a Connecticut limited liability company (“We” or “Us”), collects and uses the information our users provide to us, and certain other information that we automatically collect through such access and use of our forum (“Services”) on www.boatlinks.com (“Website”), or through any communications with us generally.

How To Contact Us

If you have any general questions or concerns about this Policy, you can also email us at contact@boatlinks.com.

Modifications To This Policy

If we decide at any time to change this Policy, we will revise the effective revision date posted at the top of this Policy and we will also notify you by posting a notice of the change prominently on our home page and/or upon the next time you log-in to access this Website after the effective date of the change(s). Failure to opt-out after receiving notice and following the opt-out instructions contained in the notice shall be deemed to be your assent to any such changes.

How We Collect Personal Information

User Registration

We collect the name (first and last or screen/user name you provide when you create your account) and email address of our users. We also collect the first and last name and email address of any individual providing such information through any contact form we offer (collectively “PII”).

Website Forms

When users provide any PII through any form contained on this Website in order to contact us, we collect and store this information. We may use your email as expressly set forth in this Policy.

Blog Comments & Posts

Any comments you post on our forum, by their nature, are immediately and publicly visible to all visitors to this website and they are not private. You should be aware that any information you provide on our forum may be read, collected, and used by others who access this information. We shall have no liability to you whatsoever for any action or policies of any third parties who may collect any Identity Information or any other information you provide on your own accord directly through your interaction with our blog. When you share information publicly, it may be indexable by search engines. Never post information you consider to be private in nature.

Personal Information from Children Under 13

Children under the age of 13 are expressly prohibited from submitting or posting any data on this Website. If it does come to our attention that any child under the age of 13 has submitted any personal information to this Website, we will delete all such information that we have collected immediately. If you are a parent or guardian and you discover that your child under the age of 13 has submitted any of his or her PII without your permission or consent, we will remove the information immediately upon your request. All requests should be made by email and sent to contact@boatlinks.com. Please include your child’s name and a description of the type of information you think he or she may have submitted to this Website.

How We Automatically Collect Data

When you access our Website, we may collect and store through our host provider certain data sent automatically by your browser using standard web server logs and automatic data collection tools such as cookies and web beacons. This information may include your IP address, which may tell us your general location information such as your country and sometimes your city, state and/or zip code, the domain name from which you access our Website, your browser type and language, the pages you access, the date and time you access pages on our Website and your operating system version. We also may determine what technology is available through your browser in order to provide you with the most appropriate version of any of our web pages.

Cookies & Similar Tracking Technologies

We use cookies, web beacons and other automatic data collection tools in the operation of this Website. Cookies and similar collection tools are files with a small amount of data, which includes a unique identifier. Cookies are sent to your browser from a website and transferred to your device when you log in. Visiting the login page while not authenticated, or visiting pages that don’t require login, like shared reports, does not set cookies. We reserve the right to monitor your use of this Website and track you as described in this Cookies policy by the use of any automatic data collection tools at all times and you consent to the use of these tools when you use and access our Website.

This Website uses “first-party cookies” only. (Third-party cookies are cookies that are set by a third-party source other than our Website.) We also use both “persistent cookies” that remain on your device for the period of time specified in the cookie (these cookies are activated each time you visit our Website), and “session cookies,” which allows us to track your actions on this Website during a browser session.

The first-party cookies and tracking technologies that may be used on this Website can be broadly divided into the following categories:
  • Necessary cookies help make our Website usable by enabling basic functions like page navigation and access to secure areas of the Website. Our website cannot function properly without these cookies.
  • Statistic cookies helps us understand how visitors interact with websites by collecting and reporting information anonymously.
  • Marketing cookies are used on this Website by third-parties to track visitors on this Website and across different websites. The intention is to display ads that are relevant and engaging for the individual user by such third parties.

A. First-Party Cookies/Tracking Technologies

  • Website Session Management: To enable users to log-in and used for other authentication purposes or in order to store specific user preferences and settings.
  • Google Analytics Services: We may use web analytics services, such as Google Analytics, in order to collect information. This information is collected in the aggregate and may include the number of page visits, duration, sources of traffic, visited pages, preferred sections, keywords used to find our Website, technical details of visitors’ devices, our visitors’ age, gender, interests, and location. Google Analytics only shows us a unique user ID and does not share your personal information, Google user name or IP address, which means you can’t really see and analyze how specific users behave on our Website. We pass a “first party cookie” onto your browser directly from our Website when we use Google Analytics. You may opt-out of Google Analytics by using Google’s Browser Add-on at https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.
  • Retargeted Advertising/Ad Networks: We may place ads on third party websites belonging to any of our cross-marketing partners, affiliates or advertising partners, etc., targeted to you and we collect and store information regarding which of these websites you visit by using cookies and similar detection tools that identify you uniquely. When we use cookies, these cookies contain a unique identification number that allows our advertising partners/network to recognize your computer and correlate the computer to your online activity within the network. When you visit a website within our advertising network, the advertising network may set a new cookie in your browser or automatically receive a previously set cookie from your computer’s browser. The advertising network then may add information about your web browsing activities within the network to information already collected via the cookie, and may use such information to serve online advertisements that are targeted to your interests, based on your browsing history.

B. Third-Party Cookies/Tracking

  • Advertising Partners & Interest-Based Ads
    We allow our advertising partners and ad services to collect certain Information related to the banner ads displayed on this Website, including the pages you visit, which links you click, which ads you see and click on, the categories of search terms you enter, etc. This is done through the use of third-party cookies, web beacons, and other technologies in order to understand your interests and deliver targeted advertisements to you from third-parties that are relevant to your interests. In addition, we may work with third parties to help us track the ads that are delivered to you and to analyze the effectiveness of advertising on our Website. These third party advertisers may use cookies that contain a unique identification number that allows them to recognize your computer and correlate the computer to track your online activity. When you visit a website within their advertising network, the advertising network may set a new cookie in your browser or automatically receive a previously set cookie from your computer’s browser. The information practices of our advertising partners are not covered under this Policy and we have no access or control over their use of cookies and other tracking and data collection practices. You agree that we shall not, under any circumstances, have any liability to you for any damages of any kind whatsoever for the manner in which any such third parties use or disclose any information you provide voluntarily, or that is collected by those websites, through your access or use of this Website.

    Any companies that are members of the National Advertising Initiative (NAI) offer a single location to opt out of receiving targeted ads from members on http://www.networkadvertising.org/choices/. In addition, the Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA) member advertising associations have developed an industry self-regulatory program to give you control over ads that are customized based on their online behavior across different websites. Please visit http://www.aboutads.info/consumers to opt-out and learn more.

C. Other Specific Third-Party Cookies & Providers List

Currently, we do not use any other third-party cookies other than has identified above.

D. How To Manage Cookies

You can block our cookies or third-party cookies by activating the setting on your browser that allows you to refuse the setting of all or some cookies. However, if you use your browser settings to block all cookies (including essential cookies), you will not be able to use our Website in any meaningful manner as intended. Your Internet browser allows you to change your cookie settings in the ‘options’ or ‘preferences’ menu of your browser.

How We Use/share Your Data

Promotional & Informational Use of PII

We use the e-mail address provided by our registered users to send periodic promotional e-mails about any of our related products or our services or about any new or upcoming products or services.

You can opt-out of receiving any promotional emails at any time by either clicking “unsubscribe” in the body of the email communication and following the opt-out procedure contained in the email or by sending an email to contact@boatlinks.com and requesting to opt-out of receiving such communications.

Administrative/Customer Service Support

We may share our files and some PII we collect through this Website directly with third party independent contractors that provide customer support and other administrative services on our behalf. We will only contract such third parties for the limited purpose of assisting us to operate this Website and/or provide support. This limited access would be incidental to the services being provided by such third party contractors and no permission or consent shall be granted by us to use or disclose this information in any manner whatsoever, other than as necessary to provide the applicable services to us. We will require that our independent contractors commit to uphold the privacy of any PII or other information regarding our Website visitors that we may share with them. We will require that each of our contractors agree not to use or disclose any PII, which may be disclosed to or shared with these parties during the course of their duties to us, except as absolutely necessary to perform their duties to us.

Social Media and Plugins

We may also provide access to services or features on our Website that enables you to share information with certain social networks and interact with us on our social media fan pages or other social media platforms that we may utilize. Thi includes allowing you to use your Google or Facebook account credentials to log-in as a registered user of the Service, and may include the Facebook “Like” or share buttons or the Facebook “Comments” feature, social media “follow-us” buttons, etc., all of which are administered via third party applications or scripts that run on our Website. Your use of these features may result in the collection or sharing of information about you by these third party social media websites. Your interactions with these social media features are governed by the privacy policy of the party that provides the specific feature or application. You should carefully review the privacy policies and settings on those specific social media sites. We shall, under no circumstances, have any liability to you whatsoever for the information collection and use/disclosure practices of any such third-party that has provided or made available any log-on and/or social media feature or application that you use on our Website.

California Consumer Privacy Notice

– Effective Date: April 1st, 2021

– Last Reviewed on: April 1st, 2021

California residents that we may collect PII from have certain rights. The following Privacy Notice is intended for California Residents to inform them specifically about the data we collect and share as contained in our general Privacy Policy above and applies solely to all visitors, users, and others who reside in the state of California (”consumers” or “you”). We adopt this notice to comply with the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018, as amended, (“CCPA”). Any terms defined in the CCPA have the same meaning when used in this notice. The defined term PII as used throughout our general privacy policy may also be used in this California Privacy Notice.

Further, California Civil Code Section 1798.83 permits California residents to request certain information regarding our disclosure of their personal information to third parties for their direct marketing purposes. California law also allows California residents to opt-out of having this information disclosed.

Under California Law SB 27, California residents have the right to receive, up to twice a year, information about third parties with whom we have shared information about you or your family for their marketing purposes during the previous calendar year, and a description of the categories of personal information shared.If You are a California resident and desire to make such a request, please contact contact@boatlinks.com. Please include the words “California Privacy Disclosure Request” in the subject line.

To learn more about your California privacy rights, visit https://oag.ca.gov/privacy/ccpa

Information We Collect From California Residents

Our Website has collected the following categories of personal information from visitors including California residents within the last twelve (12) months:

A. Identifiers. First and last name, Internet Protocol address, email address, or other similar identifiers.

B. Website Use activity. Your use of our Website and your interaction with any banner advertisement on our Website by third-party advertisers who place cookies on your browser and assign a unique identifier to You and track when you click on any ad and may track your history across the Internet through your browser on any websites You may visit part of their advertising network. Although we do not directly bundle this information with any other PII including your name, email or any type of unique identifier.

We obtain the categories of PII listed above from the following sources:

  • Directly from you when you submit a request to contact us through our Website, or when you register as a user on our forum.
  • Indirectly from You through our use of cookies to uniquely identify you and automatically track your interaction with any ads on third-party websites part of our ad network.

PII does not include:

  • Publicly available information obtained from government records.
  • Anonymous or aggregated consumer information.
  • Information excluded from the CCPA’s scope including health or medical information covered by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) and the California Confidentiality of Medical Information Act (CMIA) or clinical trial data, or personal information covered by certain sector-specific privacy laws, including the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FRCA), the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA) or California Financial Information Privacy Act (FIPA), and the Driver’s Privacy Protection Act of 1994.

How We Use Your PII

We may use, or disclose the personal information we collect for one or more of the following business purposes:

  • To fulfill or meet the reason you provided the information.
  • To provide you with support and to respond to your inquiries, including to investigate and address your concerns and monitor and improve our responses.
  • To respond to law enforcement requests and as required by applicable law, court order, or governmental regulations.
  • As described to you when collecting your personal information or as otherwise set forth in the CCPA.
  • To provide you with information or services that you request from us.
  • To notify you about changes to our Website or about our forum service.

How We Share Personal Information

We do not directly share your personal information with third parties.

Business Purpose Disclosure

In the preceding twelve (12) months, we have not disclosed personal information for any business purposes.

Sales of Personal Information

In the preceding twelve (12) months, we have not directly sold any personal information.

California Consumer Rights

The CCPA provides consumers (California residents) with specific rights regarding their personal information. This section describes your CCPA rights and explains how to exercise those rights as set forth below.

A. Information Disclosure and Data Portability Rights

You have the right to request that we disclose certain information to you about our collection and use of your personal information over the past 12 months. Once we receive and confirm your verifiable consumer request, we will disclose to you:

  • The categories of personal information we collected about you.
  • The categories of sources for the personal information we collected about you.
  • Our business or commercial purpose for collecting or selling that personal information.
  • The categories of third parties with whom we share that personal information.
  • The specific pieces of personal information we collected about you (also called a data portability request).

B. Deletion Request Rights

You have the right to request that we delete any of your personal information that we collected from you and retained, subject to certain exceptions. Once we receive and confirm your verifiable consumer request, we will delete (and direct our service providers to delete) your personal information from our records, unless an exception applies.

We may deny your deletion request if retaining the information is necessary for us or our service provider(s) to:

  • Complete the transaction for which we collected the personal information, provide a good or service that you requested, take actions reasonably anticipated within the context of our ongoing business relationship with you, or otherwise perform our contract with you.
  • Detect security incidents, protect against malicious, deceptive, fraudulent, or illegal activity, or prosecute those responsible for such activities.
  • Debug products to identify and repair errors that impair existing intended functionality.
  • Exercise free speech, ensure the right of another consumer to exercise their free speech rights, or exercise another right provided for by law.
  • Comply with the California Electronic Communications Privacy Act (Cal. Penal Code §1546 et. seq.).
  • Engage in public or peer-reviewed scientific, historical, or statistical research in the public interest that adheres to all other applicable ethics and privacy laws, when the information’s deletion may likely render impossible or seriously impair the research’s achievement, if you previously provided informed consent.
  • Enable solely internal uses that are reasonably aligned with consumer expectations based on your relationship with us.
  • Comply with a legal obligation.
  • Make other internal and lawful uses of that information that are compatible with the context in which you provided it.

C. Exercising Your California Consumer Rights

To exercise the access, data portability, and deletion rights described above, please submit a verifiable consumer request to us by sending a message to contact@boatlinks.com Only you, or a person registered with the California Secretary of State that you authorize to act on your behalf, may make a verifiable consumer request related to your personal information. You may also make a verifiable consumer request on behalf of your minor child.

You may only make a verifiable consumer request for access or data portability twice within a 12-month period. The verifiable consumer request must:

  • Provide sufficient information that allows us to reasonably verify you are the person about whom we collected personal information or an authorized representative.
  • Describe your request with sufficient detail that allows us to properly understand, evaluate, and respond to it.
  • Please note that we cannot respond to any request or provide you with personal information if we cannot verify your identity or authority to make the request and confirm the personal information relates to you. We will only use personal information provided in a verifiable consumer request to verify the requestor’s identity or authority to make the request.

Third-party Privacy Practices

You are given the opportunity to click on any third-party links contained on our Website or as occurs in any other way. We may also rely on third-party service providers to operate the Services that may have limited access to PII. WE HAVE NO CONTROL AND WE SHALL NOT BE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE DATA COLLECTION AND USE PRACTICES OF SUCH THIRD PARTIES. You should carefully read any third-party privacy policy made available to you to understand how any provider-user PII may be used.

Do We Share User PII?

We sometimes share any PII with any advertising agencies, direct marketers, lead generation companies or ad networks, by itself or bundled with any Website use information, to any third parties for any purpose.

Required Disclosures

We may disclose certain PII if i) requested via a subpoena, court order, or local, state, federal or international law enforcement request to release any such information; or ii) in order to investigate and help prevent security threats, fraud or other malicious activity; or iii) to protect our rights or protect our property, or any of the rights of our customers or other third parties.

Communications

When you visit this Website, submit posts on our forums or send e-mails to us, you are communicating with us electronically. You consent to receive communications from us electronically. You agree that all agreements, notices and other communications that we provide to you electronically satisfy any legal requirement that such communications be in writing. All posts submitted by you on the forums of this Website shall not be treated as confidential and shall be deemed to be accessible to the general public. You should not transmit any information in your posts that you intend only the intended recipient(s) to read. Notice is hereby given that all messages or electronic data transmitted onto this Website can and may be read by us, regardless of whether we are the intended recipient of any such message(s).

How We Protect Data

We take the security of your data very seriously. All traffic between your browser and our servers is encrypted during transmission using Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption. However, we make no guarantee, warranty or representation that any information provided through this Website will remain secure at all times from any illegal or unauthorized access of any data including any PII by third parties. We will report any unauthorized access to your information promptly upon discovery, and we will use our best efforts to remedy any security vulnerability that contributed to unauthorized access.

General Information

Any PII and all other information that we collect on this Website will be stored and processed in our servers located in the United States. If you reside outside the United States, you consent to the collection, transfer, storage, and processing of any information from your country to the United States.

How to Update or View Your PII

Provider-users can change their basic account profile information including business information comprising any PII on our Website at any time subscription access rights to use the Services are active.

Successors

Upon any acquisition, merger, sale or other change of control of our business/organization, we reserve the right to transfer any PII you have submitted to this Website as part of the property owned by us to our successor resulting from such merger, acquisition, sale, etc. In the event of our bankruptcy, insolvency, reorganization, receivership, or assignment for the benefit of creditors, or the application of laws or equitable principles affecting creditors’ rights generally, We reserve the right to transfer your PII to protect any of our rights or as required by law.