Privacy.

Who we are

borales is a small maker studio in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, that designs and makes smart devices. For the data on this page we’re the controller: we decide what’s collected and why, and we’re responsible for it.

For anything about your data, write to hello@borales.com. A person reads every email.

What this page covers

This page covers borales.com, in every language it’s in.

When you give us your email

Two forms on the site ask for an email address, and that’s all they ask for. We also note the language you were reading in, so we can write to you in it.

• Notify me puts your address on the launch list for an upcoming product. You’ll get one email, when it’s released, and nothing else.
• The newsletter sends news from the studio now and then. You’re only on the list once you’ve clicked the link in the confirmation email we send you.

When we send one of these emails, we can see whether it was opened and which of its links were clicked. That helps us write better emails, and we use it for nothing else.

Every email has an unsubscribe link, and one click takes you off the list. The addresses are kept on a newsletter server we run ourselves.

Keeping bots out

Both forms are protected by Cloudflare Turnstile, so nobody can sign up other people’s addresses by the thousand. It loads only once you start filling in a form, not when a page opens. To tell people from bots it looks at your IP address and technical details of your browser, and most of the time you won’t notice it at all.

Analytics

We count visits with analytics software that runs on our own server. It sets no cookies and doesn’t know who you are. It notes the page you opened, the page you came from, your browser, operating system, device type, country and language, and a few actions, such as joining a list or switching to the light theme.

Your IP address is used to work out your country and to tell one visit from another. It isn’t stored.

On some visits it also records how a page was used (scrolling, clicks and mouse movement), so we can see where a page gets in people’s way. What you type into a form isn’t part of those recordings.

None of it is shared with anyone else or used for advertising.

Cookies

borales.com uses no advertising or tracking cookies, which is why there’s no cookie banner. The two it does set are there to remember a choice you made.

Who else sees it

We run the newsletter server and the analytics ourselves. A few companies help with the rest, and each gets only what its job needs:

• Cloudflare runs the bot check on the forms, and sees your IP address and browser details while it does. Cloudflare is based in the United States, and data sent there is covered by the EU-US Data Privacy Framework.
• Amazon Web Services delivers every email our newsletter server sends, the sign-up confirmation included (Amazon SES). It handles your address and the email while delivering it, in its data centres in the EU. Because Amazon is a US company, the data is also covered by the EU-US Data Privacy Framework.
• DigitalOcean runs the servers the site, the newsletter and the analytics live on, in its data centres in the EU. It stores the data for us and may not use it for anything else. Because DigitalOcean is a US company, the data is also covered by the EU-US Data Privacy Framework.

We don’t sell your data or share it for advertising. We’d hand it over only if the law required us to.

Why we’re allowed to

Data protection law (the GDPR) asks for a reason behind each use of your data. Ours are:

• You asked us to, for the launch list and the newsletter. You can withdraw that at any time by unsubscribing.
• Our legitimate interest in a site that works, isn’t abused and gets better, for the bot check, the analytics and remembering your theme and language. We keep these light, so they don’t outweigh your privacy.

How long we keep it

• The newsletter: until you unsubscribe.
• Launch lists: until you unsubscribe.
• Analytics: for as long as it’s useful to us, since it can’t be traced back to you.
• Your choices on your device: as long as the table above says.

Your rights

Whatever we hold about you, you can ask us to:

• show it to you, and give you a copy
• correct it
• delete it
• use it less, or pause using it
• stop a use that rests on our legitimate interest
• hand it over in a common format, so you can take it elsewhere

Write to hello@borales.com, ideally from the address it’s about. It’s free, and we answer within a month, usually much sooner.

If you think we’ve got something wrong, please tell us first, because we’d like to fix it. You can also complain to the Dutch Data Protection Authority (Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens), or to the authority where you live.

Children

The site isn’t aimed at children, and we don’t knowingly collect data from anyone under 16. If you think a child has signed up, write to us and we’ll delete the address.

Changes to this page

When what we collect changes, this page changes first, and so does the date at the top. If a change affects data you’ve already given us, we’ll email you before it applies.