Privacy Policy

Bytes provides a community for software developers, programmers and information technology professionals. We are committed to providing an engaging, online environment for our users. Below is a summary of our information practices.

This Privacy Policy applies to all websites and web applications which link to this policy and are published by Bytes ("Sites").

If you wish to amend any of the personal information that we hold about you, or update your marketing preferences, you can do so at any time through your account.

If you have any queries about how we use your personal information, please contact our Data Protection Officer at privacy@bytes.com .

Information we collect

This section details the information we may collect about you. We explain why, and how, we use it in later sections.

Account information

If you decide to create an account or enquire about one of our products or services, we'll ask you to provide us with some specific information, for example:

• Basic personal details - such as name, title, bio;
• Personal contact details - such as home and or delivery address, mobile phone number, and email address;
• Work details - such as job title, department, company name, company address, work email address, phone number, career history, and education history;
• Log in details - such as username and password;
• Payment details - such as your bank account and payment card information;

Additional information

On occasion, we will ask you to voluntarily provide additional information, for example:

• Your opinion of our products and services;
• Your preferences, including newsletters or topics subscriptions;
• Your career details and CV if you use our recruitment and career services;

Information we obtain from partners and public sources

In some circumstances, we collect information about you from our partners or from publicly available websites to help us better understand our audience and enhance the relevance of our content and services.

Information obtained through Cookies

Bytes uses cookies to keep our sites reliable, secure and personalized. When you accept cookies, this helps make the site better by remembering your preferences, customizing content or ads, and enhancing your experience of our premium services.

What are cookies?

Cookies are small text files which a website may place on your computer or device when you visit a site. The cookie will help the website, or another website, to recognize your device the next time you visit. Web beacons, pixels or other similar files can also do the same thing. We use the term "cookies" in this policy to refer to all files that collect information in this way.

Cookies serve many functions. For example, they can help us to remember your username and preferences, analyze how well our Sites are performing, or allow us to recommend content we believe will be most relevant to you.

The majority of websites use cookies to collect and retain personal information about their visitors. Most cookies collect general information, such as how visitors arrive at and use our Sites, the device they are using, their internet protocol address (IP address), what pages they are viewing and their approximate location (for example, we would be able to recognize that you are visiting our Sites from New York).

What does Bytes Use Cookies for?

We group our cookies into the below categories.

Some cookies are essential for the operation of our Sites. This includes cookies for the following purposes:

• Access - we use these cookies to identify subscribers and ensure access to subscription only services.
• Billing - We use cookies for the purposes of measuring activity and billing.
• Performance - we use these cookies to monitor Site performance. This allows us to provide a high quality experience by quickly identifying and fixing any issues that arise. For example, we might use performance cookies to track error messages, and to determine improvements to our Sites.
• Functionality - we use functionality cookies to allow us to remember your preferences. For example, we use functionality cookies to provide you with enhanced services, such as applying for work opportunities or reply on our community platform.
• Analytics - we use cookies to help us understand our audience and the success of advertising campaigns. For example, we count articles views to present ‘Most Read' content. We also use analytics cookies to keep track of how many advertising impressions have been served for a campaign and to manage the frequency at which you see the same adverts.
• Fraud prevention - we use cookies to monitor and prevent suspicious activity and fraudulent traffic
• Personalization - We use cookies to improve your experience of our products by personalizing our Sites. For example, we help you to find new content and recommend email alerts based on the topics you have read. Where our Sites have such functionality, you can manage elements of personalization in your account settings.
• Advertising - We use cookies to serve you with advertisements that we believe are relevant to you and your interests. You may see these advertisements on our Sites and on other sites that you visit. For example, if you read a number of articles on "databases" on Bytes or on other sites, you would see more "database provider" advertisements as we have inferred that you are interested in this topic. You may also see advertisements for our products and services on other websites if you have previously visited our Sites.

Third Party Cookies on our Site

We also use third party cookies ("third party cookies") on our Sites for the following reasons:

• to help us monitor traffic on our Sites (like many companies, we use Google Analytics to do this);
• to identify fraudulent or non-human traffic;
• to assist with market research;
• to improve Site functionality;
• to monitor compliance with our terms and conditions and copyright policy.

We also use third party cookies for the purpose of programmatic advertising. This is where we sell digital advertising space through the use of automated technology via select partners:

• Google Doubleclick (AdX)
• TrustX (US readers only)
• Smart Ad server

These third party cookies are used within programmatic for measurement and attribution, and management of frequency. They may also be used for personalization of advertisements based on data you have shared with third parties, to the extent that you have consented to this.

Advertisers sometimes use their own cookies to measure performance and to identify fraudulent or non-human traffic. To the extent that you have given them your consent to do so, advertisers may also provide you with targeted advertising based on their data. For example, advertisers may use a profile they have built either on their own site or on sites that you have previously visited to present you with more relevant advertisements during your visit to Bytes.

Our standard advertising terms and conditions do not permit our advertisers to drop their own cookies for profiling or retargeting without your consent.

How to manage cookies

If you wish to manage your cookies, please follow the instructions on our Manage Cookies page. Please remember that if you choose to disable cookies, certain sections of our Sites may not work properly.

For more information about cookies and how to manage them, please visit:

www.allaboutcookies.org

Lawful basis for processing

We only process personal information where we have a lawful basis for doing so, such as the following:

• User consent - This is where you have given us explicit permission to process personal information for a given purpose. You have the right to withdraw this consent at any time. You can manage your preferences within your account or by contacting us at privacy@bytes.com.
• Legitimate business purposes - This is where we have a legitimate interest, as a business, to process personal information. Bytes, as a platform for communication and transacting career services has many services that would require information personal and non-personal to conduct its business as a service provider.
• Contractual necessity - This is where we have to process personal information to meet our contractual obligations. For example, if you are a subscriber of our recruitment service, we would need to process your career details to help you connect with the many opportunities on Bytes.
• Legal obligation - This is where we have to process personal information in order to comply with the law. For example, we process and retain customer invoice information to comply with regulations.

How we use your personal information

We collect personal information for eight main reasons:

1. To provide our service - We require some of your basic personal information so our services work as you would expect, for example, to use Bytes you would need a user account with an e-mail address or phone number which we would use to notify you of changes to our services and dealing with customer services queries. We record customer calls for monitoring and training purposes.
2. To improve and maintain performance - In order to provide you with the best possible user experience and value, we need to make sure that our products and services work as they should. Using personal information helps us understand how our readers experience Bytes and services, so we can make improvements. This includes contacting customers with market research surveys or for telephone interviews, hosting subscriber focus groups and analyzing onsite data to test new and existing events, products and developments for Bytes.
3. To bill our customers - We, along with our authorized payments processors, securely process your payment information to take payments, give refunds and to detect and prevent fraudulent activity. We will also update your payment information in the event that a payment is unsuccessful. You can manage your payment information at any time by contacting customer services or using your account page.
4. To monitor compliance with our policies and terms - We monitor for breaches of our terms and conditions. For example, we reserve the right to inform the users of our communication platforms if they are adding or using content in breach of the terms and conditions or copyright policies of our Sites. We also monitor activity on our Sites to detect and prevent invalid or fraudulent traffic.
5. To personalize our products and services - We improve your experience of our products and services by personalizing parts of our Sites and apps with the information you give us and what we learn about you. This includes showing you content or service recommendations you may be interested in and recommending emails you may wish to sign up to. Where our Sites have such functionality, you can manage elements of personalization in your account.
6. To communicate product changes and offers - We want you to get the most out of our products and services, including showcasing our latest content and newsletters. We will contact you with carefully-curated Bytes offers and promotions, exclusive event invitations and feature announcements. For example, if there are no updates on topics you follow on Bytes, we will send you articles on other topics that we think you might be interested in. You are able to change your preferences at any time through your account or by contacting support@bytes.com. We also personalize our communications for strategic purposes. For example, we might offer notifications about career and work opportunities.
7. For the purpose of advertising - We rely on advertising revenue in part to support our growing platform. We need to process your information to understand the effectiveness of the advertising we serve to you and others, and to deliver relevant personalized advertising. We use the information you give us and the information we collect about you to serve you with the most appropriate advertisements. You can manage your advertising settings for the Sites that carry out this activity in your account. If you do decide to turn off personalized advertisements or advertisements tailored to you, you will still see the same number of advertisements but they may be less relevant to you. You may continue to see advertisements that are targeted to you based on other non-personal information, for example, the article that you are reading.
8. Recruitment - If you apply for any career opportunities via one of our Sites, we will process your information in order to facilitate the application process.
9. To build directories - Some Bytes services process personal information to create databases and directories. These directories provide key business insights and profiles to those that have licensed access. Where we make an individual's contact details accessible on our Sites, we inform the individual and provide instructions on how to have their contact details removed.
10. To administer prize draws and competitions - If you enter a prize draw or competition, we will process your information in order to run the competition or administer the prize draw. For example, we will process your address information if you are a winner and we need to send your prize by post. We may be required to publish or otherwise make available your name and/or region if you are selected as a winner in a competition or prize draw.

Commonly, we will disclose information to:

1. Service providers - We engage service providers who help to support our business and improve our products. These service providers include, for example, fulfillment providers for delivery of our digital content and marketing; customer service agencies; hosts, organizers and sponsors of our events; organizations that host our Sites or databases; and providers of online surveys. We have contracts in place with these data processors and they can only use your personal information under our instruction.
2. Advertisers - We, and our advertising partners, use cookies to collect personal information and serve you with advertisements that we believe are relevant to you and your interests.
3. Employers - As a member of Bytes, you can subscribe to services that allow you to connect with employers for work opportunities. To help establish these relationships and communication we will collect and share information you provide to us. You can manage information shared for work and career opportunities in your account settings.
4. Recruiters - When you apply for jobs through Bytes or it's services, your job application is forwarded directly to the advertiser of the job that you are applying for. Recruiters include agencies who may pass your information to companies that are recruiting in employment field(s) relevant to your interests. Applications that are made through Recruiters' sites, or other external websites, will be subject to their privacy policies.
5. Social media providers - Information will be shared with social media platforms where you log in to our Sites via a social media account, or use components on our Sites provided by social media platforms (e.g. the "Facebook Recommend" function). We also share the information of our subscribers with social media partners for the following reasons:
   • To prevent existing subscribers from being targeted with subscription offerings on social media platforms;
   • To create lookalike audiences for the purposes of targeted advertising on social media platforms
   • To encourage users to get the most out of their subscription.
6. Other users -Our Sites are publicly accessible and anyone around the world who accesses our Sites will be able to see anything you post, such as comments about an article. We encourage you to use a pseudonym when commenting on our Sites if you do not wish to be identifiable to other readers.
7. Legal processes and successors in title - We may also disclose your information to comply with applicable laws, court orders or other valid legal processes, and to enforce or apply our terms of use, any subscription or payment agreement, or any of our other rights. We may transfer or disclose your personal information to any entity which takes over or acquires the relevant Bytes business. We also share aggregated, non-identifiable information with third parties. Before sharing this information, we ensure that it cannot identify you as an individual. For example, we regularly release information about the size and growth of our audiences.

How long we retain your personal information

We retain the majority of your personal information for as long as your account is active and therefore open; this allows you to continue accessing our content, products and services.

If you become inactive and are not a subscriber, we may delete elements of the information associated with your account. We will normally warn you if your access is going to be withdrawn and give you the opportunity to retain your account.

Where we don't need to keep all of your information in full, we will obfuscate or aggregate it, for example, web activity logs and survey responses. This is to ensure that we do not retain your information for any longer than is necessary.

It is sometimes necessary for us to keep your personal information for longer periods of time, for example:

• If there is a statutory requirement to retain it;
• If we require the information for legal reasons or there is a legitimate business need for us to retain it;
• To ensure we do not contact you if you have asked us not to.

How we keep your personal information secure

We have appropriate technical and administrative security measures in place to help ensure that our users' information is protected against unauthorized or accidental access, use, alteration, or loss. We use encryption technology, such as Transport Layer Security (TLS), to protect your personal information when you order products or services from us.

Your rights

Under data protection laws, you have rights as an individual in relation to the personal data we hold about you. These rights include:

• The right to object to direct marketing - your preferences, including in relation to direct marketing, can be found in your account;
• The right to access the personal data that we process about you;
• The right to request the deletion of your personal data;
• The right to request the rectification of your personal data - you can manage some of this information in your account.

You can exercise these rights through your account or by contacting customer services.

You also have the right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority.

Where this Privacy Policy applies

Personal information is collected by Bytes, Inc.

Our Sites are not intended for children under 16 years of age. We do not intentionally collect or use any information from children.

Our Sites contain links to third party websites which are not subject to this privacy policy. We are not responsible for their content, use of personal information, or security practices.

If you have a query in regards to the processing of your personal information, please contact our Data Protection Officer directly at privacy@bytes.com

Changes to this Privacy Policy

This policy is effective from 12/10/2019.

Any changes we may make to this privacy policy will be posted on this page. If changes are significant, we may choose to notify you by email or to clearly indicate on our home page that the policy has been updated.