Privacy and cookie policy
What personal data SIBNI collects through sibni.mt, why, for how long, and your rights under the GDPR and the Maltese Data Protection Act (Chapter 586).
On this page
1. Who is responsible for your data
The data controller is , trading as SIBNI, a business in Malta (service area) (VAT VAT Number: 3325-9318). You can reach us at [email protected], on WhatsApp or by phone on +356 9980 4585.
2. What we collect and why
You send the “Send us a message” form
- Data
- Your name, business name, business type, phone number (optional), email address and message.
- Purpose and legal basis
- To reply to your message. Legal basis: steps taken at your request before entering into a contract (Article 6(1)(b) GDPR) and your consent given by ticking the box.
- Kept for
- 12 months after our last contact, unless you become a client, in which case for the duration of the service plus the period required by Maltese tax law.
You send the form
- Data
- Your IP address (stored as a one-way hash), the date and time, and the page you came from, with its campaign tags (utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign) if the link that brought you carried any. This also applies to the fix plan request of the free profile check.
- Purpose and legal basis
- To limit spam and abuse of the form, and to know which links bring requests. Legal basis: our legitimate interest in keeping the site working (Article 6(1)(f) GDPR).
- Kept for
- The hashed IP is kept for 1 hour. The lead log is kept with the message above.
You contact us on WhatsApp, by phone or by email
- Data
- Whatever you choose to share, plus your number or email address
- Purpose and legal basis
- To answer you. Legal basis: steps taken at your request (Article 6(1)(b) GDPR). WhatsApp is operated by WhatsApp LLC (Meta) under its own privacy policy.
- Kept for
- 12 months after our last contact.
You book a meeting on our booking page
- Data
- What you type into the booking page: your name, email, the time you choose and any note
- Purpose and legal basis
- To hold the meeting you booked. Legal basis: steps taken at your request (Article 6(1)(b) GDPR). The booking page is Google Calendar’s. It opens in a new tab on Google’s own site, under Google’s own privacy policy, and our page loads nothing from Google Calendar.
- Kept for
- 12 months after our last contact.
You accept analytics cookies
- Data
- Pseudonymous usage data (pages viewed, buttons clicked, device type, approximate location derived from a truncated IP)
- Purpose and legal basis
- To understand how the page is used and improve it. Legal basis: your consent (Article 6(1)(a) GDPR and Regulation 5(3) of the Maltese Processing of Personal Data (Electronic Communications Sector) Regulations). Nothing is collected until you click “Accept analytics”. After you click it, the site loads Google Tag Manager (Google Ireland Limited), which then loads Google Analytics 4. Neither loads before you accept.
- Kept for
- Google Analytics 4 keeps event data for 2 months and cookies for up to 2 years. You can withdraw consent at any time (see section 5).
3. Who receives your data
- Our web host, Hetzner Online GmbH (Germany). The site, your form data and the server logs are stored in its Nuremberg data centre, inside the European Union. See Hetzner’s privacy policy.
- BanaHosting.com Inc. (United States), whose mail server in Amsterdam delivers the form emails to us. Its support staff may access that server from the United States for maintenance, with the safeguards it states. See BanaHosting’s privacy policy.
- Google Ireland Limited (Google Tag Manager and Google Analytics 4), only if you accept analytics cookies. Google may transfer data to the United States under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework. See Google’s privacy policy.
- Google Ireland Limited (Google Calendar), only if you book a meeting on our booking page, which opens on Google’s own site. Google may transfer data to the United States under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework. See Google’s privacy policy.
- OpenStreetMap Foundation (a not-for-profit company in the United Kingdom), only on the free profile check. When the report shows the map of the businesses around you, your browser loads the map tiles directly from OpenStreetMap’s tile servers, which receive your IP address and browser details, as any website you visit does. SIBNI sends them nothing else. See the OpenStreetMap Foundation privacy policy. The map software (Leaflet) is served from our own host.
- Google (Google Maps photos), only on the free profile check: your browser loads the photos of the business and its reviewers directly from Google’s image servers, which receive your IP address and browser details. See Google’s privacy policy.
- Server logs. Like every web server, our host records the IP address, date and time, page requested, browser type and referring page of each visit, for security and error diagnosis. These raw logs stay on the same server in Nuremberg and are deleted automatically: the current month’s log is archived and the archive is removed at the end of the following month, so no server log is kept for more than two months.
- Nobody else. We do not sell, rent or share your details with advertisers or data brokers, and we do not send newsletters.
4. Your rights
You can ask us at any time to access, correct, delete or restrict the personal data we hold about you, to receive it in a portable format, to object to processing based on our legitimate interest, and to withdraw any consent you have given. Write to [email protected] and we will answer within one month.
If you are not happy with how we handle your data, you can complain to the Maltese supervisory authority, the Information and Data Protection Commissioner (IDPC), Floor 2, Airways House, High Street, Sliema, at idpc.org.mt.
5. Cookies and similar technologies
The site itself sets no cookies. It stores one value in your browser’s local storage to remember your cookie choice, and short values in its session storage, which your browser deletes when you close the tab: two for the free profile check and, only after you accept analytics, two more. Google Analytics cookies are set only after you accept analytics. Google Tag Manager itself sets no cookies.
sibni_consent_v1
- Set by
- sibni.mt (local storage)
- Purpose
- Remembers whether you accepted or declined analytics
- Duration
- Until you clear your browser data
sibni-check-pick
- Set by
- sibni.mt (session storage)
- Purpose
- Carries the business you chose in the search to its report
- Duration
- Until you close the tab (read for 10 minutes)
sibni-check-seen:…
- Set by
- sibni.mt (session storage)
- Purpose
- Opens a report you already saw with a shorter analysis
- Duration
- Until you close the tab
sibni_gbp_sent
- Set by
- sibni.mt (session storage), only after you accept analytics
- Purpose
- Counts a visit from SIBNI’s Google Business Profile once per visit, not on every page
- Duration
- Until you close the tab
sibni_ev_queue
- Set by
- sibni.mt (session storage), only after you accept analytics
- Purpose
- Holds a click that opens another page of this site, so that page sends it to Google Analytics once it loads
- Duration
- Until the next page of this site loads, you close the tab or you change your cookie choice
_ga
- Set by
- Google Analytics
- Purpose
- Distinguishes one visitor from another
- Duration
- 2 years
_ga_*
- Set by
- Google Analytics
- Purpose
- Keeps the state of a visit
- Duration
- 2 years
This clears your current choice and stops Google Analytics. On the homepage the cookie banner appears again so you can accept or decline; from this page the button takes you there.
6. Third-party content and trademarks
Google, Google Maps and Google Business Profile are trademarks of Google LLC. WhatsApp is a trademark of WhatsApp LLC. SIBNI is an independent service and is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by Google or Meta. Client business names appear on this site with the permission of the businesses concerned. Examples of local search results describe what was seen on a given date from a given location, and results vary by location, device and time.
7. Illustrations
The Maltese tiles (madum), the maps and the example phone screens on this site were drawn for SIBNI. The site uses no stock photographs of people. The fonts are Bricolage Grotesque and Instrument Sans, both under the SIL Open Font License.
8. Changes to this policy
If we change how we handle your data, we will update this page and the date at the top. Icons are from Lucide (ISC licence).