Privacy Policy

About this Privacy Policy

Who We Are

You can read more about us and our goals for this site here.

We do not profit currently in any way, from advertising, data collection or any other means. If and when we change this, we’ll update this privacy policy accordingly.

Our Principles

We will always stick to one key rule:

We fundamentally do not want your data. We don’t want to use it, and wherever possible we don’t want to collect it.

The only exception to this, is that we may invite you to share your email address at some stage in the future for the purposes of allowing us to keep you up-to-date with our work.

We care (as in actually care) about privacy and integrity on the internet. One of the things that drove us to produce this suite of tools was the sometimes dubious nature of other similar “free” tools where it is often not clear if your data is being logged, exported, sold or otherwise.

We wanted to make a trustworthy site where privacy of your submitted data is sacrosanct.

This is especially important for online tools such as ours which are geared towards software developers and business analysts, because the data you enter into our tools could be proprietary and/or confidential.

You can read more about our philosophy and goals for this site here.

What This Policy Covers

This policy covers this website (webutils.io) and the proprietary tools and utilities hosted on it.

Throughout this Privacy Policy we’ll refer to our website and its related tools, collectively as "Services". Below we explain how we collect, use, and share information about you, along with the choices that you have with respect to that information.

Creative Commons Sharealike License

This privacy policy is based on the open privacy policy released by Automattic under a Creative Commons Sharealike license. You can grab a copy of their Privacy Policy and other legal documents on GitHub. We thank Automattic for opening up their legal documents for re-use by anyone.

Information We Collect

We only collect information about you if we have a reason to do so — for example, to provide our Services, to communicate with you, or to make our Services better. We collect this information from two sources: if and when you provide information to us, and automatically through operating our Services. Let’s go over the information that we collect.

Information You Provide to Us

The information that you explicitly provide to us can be split into three categories: (1) information entered into our online tools for local processing only, (2) information entered into our online tools for remote processing on our servers, and (3) information you provide to us outside of our tools (eg. newsletter signup).

1. Information entered into our online tools (local only)
One of the big advantages of webutils.io is that we try wherever possible to perform processing of your data locally inside your browser, meaning that data does not have to be submitted to our servers.

Most of our current utilities do not need to submit your data to any servers, and can perform their tasks locally on your machine. This has the additional benefit of also being very fast.

On our applicable tools which only process your inputted data 100% locally, we'll indicate this clearly, so you can be assured that no data you enter (or the resulting output) is sent to or from our servers at all.

For the technically minded, you can inspect your local Browser Tools to monitor the HTTP requests to and from our servers to verify this.

Please note, although these local-only tools can be considered “zero knowledge” for the purposes of keeping your data private from us, please bear in mind that we cannot guarantee the confidentiality of your data within the bounds of your own computer. You are 100% responsible for the confidentiality of your data within your local browser and computer (eg. data stored in your browser cache, temporary folders, local storage etc.)

2. Information entered into our online tools (server processing)
For tools where some server-side processing is required, we do not under any circumstances record or store this data beyond what is strictly necessary for providing the tool’s functionality.

Most data will be kept only in memory (RAM) for the limited time required to perform the processing, and some data may be persisted temporarily to disk (if required for technical reasons for the purposes of carrying out the processing) but any such files will be immediately deleted once the processing is complete.

3. Information you provide to us outside of our tools
You may also provide us with information when you respond to surveys, communicate with us about a support question, or sign up for a newsletter if we decide to make this available at a future date. When you communicate with us via form, email, phone, or otherwise, we store a copy of our communications.

Information We Collect Automatically

We also collect some information automatically:

Log information:
Like most online service providers, we collect information that web browsers, mobile devices, and servers typically make available, including the browser type, IP address, unique device identifiers, language preference, referring site, the date and time of access, operating system, and mobile network information. We collect log information when you use our Services on our website. Log information never includes any data submitted by you to our online tools.

Usage information:
We collect information about your usage of our Services. For example, we collect information about the actions that users perform on a site using our online tools — in other words, who did what and when. We use this information to, for example, provide our Services to you and get insights on how people use our Services so we can make our Services better.

Location information:
We may determine the approximate location of your device from your IP address. We collect and use this information to, for example, calculate how many people visit our Services from certain geographic regions.

Stored information:
We may access information stored on your computer via our web-based tools, if you choose to provide this to us. This may include file uploads for the purposes of processing those files on your behalf (and only on your instruction). We will also access temporary and cached data stored by us, inside your browser, for the purposes of providing our Services to you, and in many cases to allow us to provide you with a local-only tool that does not need to send any of your data to our servers at all.

Information from cookies & other technologies:
A cookie is a string of information that a website stores on a visitor’s computer, and that the visitor’s browser provides to the website each time the visitor returns. Pixel tags (also called web beacons) are small blocks of code placed on websites and emails. Webutils.io uses cookies and other technologies like pixel tags to help us track visitors, usage, and access preferences for our Services. For more information about our use of cookies and other technologies for tracking, including how you can control the use of cookies, please see our [Cookie Policy].

How and Why We Use Information

Purposes for Using Information

We use information about you for the purposes listed below:

To provide our Services.
For example, to convert some input data for you into an alternative format, or to compress a file.

To ensure quality, maintain safety, and improve our Services.
For example, by monitoring and analysing how users interact with our Services so we can create new features that we think our users will enjoy and that will help them create and manage websites more efficiently or make our Services easier to use.

To protect our Services, our users, and the public.
For example, by detecting security incidents; detecting and protecting against malicious, deceptive, fraudulent, or illegal activity; fighting spam; complying with our legal obligations; and protecting the rights and property of Webutils.io and others, which may result in us, for example, declining a transaction or terminating Services.

To fix problems with our Services.
For example, by monitoring, debugging, repairing, and preventing issues.

To communicate with you.
For example, by emailing you to ask for your feedback, share tips for getting the most out of our products, or keep you up to date on webutils.io. If you don’t want to hear from us, you can opt out of marketing communications at any time.


Legal Bases for Collecting and Using Information

A note here for those in the European Union about our legal grounds for processing information about you under EU data protection laws, which is that our use of your information is based on the grounds that: (1) The use is necessary in order to fulfill our commitments to you under the applicable terms of service or other agreements with you or is necessary to administer your account — for example, in order to enable access to our website on your device or charge you for a paid plan; or (2) The use is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation; or (3) The use is necessary in order to protect your vital interests or those of another person; or (4) We have a legitimate interest in using your information — for example, to provide and update our Services; to improve our Services so that we can offer you an even better user experience; to safeguard our Services; to communicate with you; to measure, gauge, and improve the effectiveness of our advertising; and to understand our user retention and attrition; to monitor and prevent any problems with our Services; and to personalise your experience; or (5) You have given us your consent — for example before we place certain cookies on your device and access and analyse them later on.

Sharing Information

How We Share Information

We share information about you in limited circumstances, and with appropriate safeguards on your privacy. These are spelled out below:

Third-party vendors:
We may share information about you with third-party vendors who need the information in order to provide their services to us, or to provide their services to you or your site. This includes vendors that help us provide our Services to you (like cloud storage services, email delivery services that help us stay in touch with you, email support services that help us communicate with you).

Legal and regulatory requirements:
We may disclose information about you in response to a subpoena, court order, or other governmental request.

To protect rights, property, and others:
We may disclose information about you when we believe in good faith that disclosure is reasonably necessary to protect the property or rights of Webutils.io, third parties, or the public at large.

Business transfers:
In connection with any merger, sale of company assets, or acquisition of all or a portion of our business by another company, or in the unlikely event that Webutils.io goes out of business or enters bankruptcy, user information would likely be one of the assets that is transferred or acquired by a third party. If any of these events were to happen, this Privacy Policy would continue to apply to your information and the party receiving your information may continue to use your information, but only consistent with this Privacy Policy.

With your consent:
We may share and disclose information with your consent or at your direction. For example, we may share your information with third parties when you authorise us to do so.

Aggregated or de-identified information:
We may share information that has been aggregated or de-identified, so that it can no longer reasonably be used to identify you. For instance, we may publish aggregate statistics about the use of our Services.

We do not sell our users' data. We aren't a data broker, we don't sell your personal information to data brokers, and we don't sell your information to other companies that want to spam you with marketing emails.


How Long We Keep Information

We generally discard your data and information about you when it’s no longer needed for the purposes for which we collect and use it — described in the section above on How and Why We Use Information — and we’re not legally required to keep it. For example, we keep the web server logs that record information about a visitor to Webutils.io, like the visitor’s IP address, browser type, and operating system, for approximately 30 days. We retain the logs for this period of time in order to, among other things, analyse traffic to webutils.io and investigate issues if something goes wrong.

Security

While no online service is 100% secure, we work very hard to protect information about you against unauthorised access, use, alteration, or destruction, and take reasonable measures to do so. We monitor our Services for potential vulnerabilities and attacks.

Your Rights

If you are located in certain parts of the world, including California and countries that fall under the scope of the European General Data Protection Regulation (aka the “GDPR”), you may have certain rights regarding your personal information, like the right to request access to or deletion of your data.

European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)

If you are located in a country that falls under the scope of the GDPR, data protection laws give you certain rights with respect to your personal data, subject to any exemptions provided by the law, including the rights to:

• Request access to your personal data;
• Request correction or deletion of your personal data;
• Object to our use and processing of your personal data;
• Request that we limit our use and processing of your personal data; and
• Request portability of your personal data.

You also have the right to make a complaint to a government supervisory authority.

California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA)

The California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”) requires us to provide California residents with some additional information about the categories of personal information we collect and share, where we get that personal information, and how and why we use it. The CCPA also requires us to provide a list of the “categories” of personal information we collect, as that term is defined in the law, so, here it is. In the last 12 months, we collected the following categories of personal information from California residents, depending on the Services used:

• Identifiers (like your name, contact information, and device and online identifiers);
• Internet or other electronic network activity information (such as your usage of our Services, like the actions you take on Webutils.io);
• Geolocation data (such as your location based on your IP address);
• Audio, electronic, visual or similar information (such as any files you may upload for us to process on your behalf); and
• Inferences we make (such as likelihood of retention or attrition).

You can find more information about what we collect and sources of that information in the Information We Collect section above. We collect personal information for the business and commercial purposes described in the How and Why We Use Information section. And we share this information with the categories of third parties described in the Sharing Information section. If you are a California resident, you have additional rights under the CCPA, subject to any exemptions provided by the law, including the right to:

• Request to know the categories of personal information we collect, the categories of business or commercial purpose for collecting and using it, the categories of sources from which the information came, the categories of third parties we share it with, and the specific pieces of information we collect about you;
• Request deletion of personal information we collect or maintain;
• Opt out of any sale of personal information; and
• Not receive discriminatory treatment for exercising your rights under the CCPA.

Contacting Us About These Rights

If you’d like to contact us about any aspect of this document or your related rights, scroll down to "How to Reach Us". When you contact us about one of your rights under this section, we may need to verify that you are the right person before we disclose or delete anything. You can also designate an authorized agent to make a request on your behalf by giving us written authorization. We may still require you to verify your identity with us.

Controllers and Responsible Companies

Webutils.io’s Services are worldwide. Webutils.io, our UK-based company, is the controller for all of the processing activities across all of our Services worldwide.

How to Reach Us

If you have a question about this Privacy Policy, or you would like to contact us about any of the rights mentioned in the "Your Rights" section above, please contact us via email: privacy at webutils.io.

Other Things You Should Know

Transferring Information

Because Webutils.io’s Services are offered worldwide, the information about you that we process when you use the Services in the EU may be used, stored, and/or accessed by individuals operating outside the European Economic Area (EEA) who work for us, other members of our group of companies, or third-party data processors. This is required for the purposes listed in the "How and Why We Use Information" section above. When providing information about you to entities outside the EEA, we will take appropriate measures to ensure that the recipient protects your personal information adequately in accordance with this Privacy Policy as required by applicable law. These measures include:

• In the case of US based entities, entering into European Commission approved standard contractual arrangements with them, or ensuring they have signed up to the EU-US Privacy Shield; or
• In the case of entities based in other countries outside the EEA, entering into European Commission approved standard contractual arrangements with them.

You can ask us for more information about the steps we take to protect your personal information when transferring it from the EU.

Privacy Policy Changes

Although most changes are likely to be minor, Webutils.io may change its Privacy Policy from time to time. Webutils.io encourages visitors to frequently check this page for any changes to its Privacy Policy. If we make changes, we will notify you by revising the change log below, and, in some cases, we may provide additional notice like adding a statement to our homepage or sending you a notification through email. Your further use of the Services after a change to our Privacy Policy will be subject to the updated policy.

Last Updated:
7th November 2020