GDPR compliance & cookie notices policy

1. What data does the Beacon platform capture on our website?

The Beacon platform tracks all activity carried out on your website by your website visitors, including mouse movement, interaction with page elements and navigation throughout the site.

By default, without any further action, the only personal information Beacon capture, as per the current UK General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is the IP address of the visitor. At your specific request, the Beacon platform is also able to capture additional personal data submitted through forms on your website.

2. What’s the precise purpose of why we’re collecting the data?

The Beacon platform collects data for two purposes:

1) to report on journeys on the Beacon platform dashboard for our clients;
2) for tracking patterns of behavior, for training data detection models that may indicate invalid traffic or bot activity.

Beaconsoft Limited is a corporate member of the Data & Marketing Association (DMA) in the UK and bound by DMA best-practice guidelines on the capture, use and storage of personal information. You can review the Beaconsoft Limited DMA corporate registration here.

3. Where is the data stored (i.e. UK or EEA or elsewhere)?

All data is stored solely in the UK on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud. AWS UK datacentres are UK Gov validated; please click here for more information. All data is stored on encrypted drives at rest, and encrypted using TLS during communication, conforming to current security best practices.

4. How long is the data kept?

The Beacon platform keeps identifiable data for a maximum of 6 years. After 6 years, all identifiable data is permanently removed.

The exception to this is if our customer (an agency) or our customers’ customer (the agency’s customer) ask us to remove their account and/or data, we will permanently remove the data at that point.

5. Does the Beacon platform use cookies to track users?

The Beacon platform tracking system does not use cookies at all; it does not set any cookies. Instead, the Beacon platform uses browser LocalStorage. This enables the Beacon platform to uniquely track a visitor on one site, but prevents tracking of a visitor across multiple sites.

You need to note in your Privacy Policy that you capture IP addresses on your website. If you have set-up the Beacon platform to capture other personal information, you need to note this in your Privacy Policy too.

You do not need to make reference to the Beacon platform or Beaconsoft Limited in your Cookie Policy or Cookie Notice, nor in your Privacy Policy.

The Beacon platform does not fall under the scope of analytics in terms of GDPR due to the above and can be treated as a requirement of your site operating normally, in the interest of bot & fraud prevention.