Giveaway Privacy Notice

The controller for the Giveaway and review pages is Rating Matters GmbH, 8045 Zürich, Switzerland, UID CHE-413.986.632. For all privacy questions and requests, write to info@rating-matters.com.

The local businesses where the Giveaway is offered ("Partner Businesses") do not receive entrants' personal data and are not responsible for its processing. They see only anonymous totals such as the number of page visits and entries.

• When you open a page: date and time, the page and Partner Business, your device language and your browser type. To count unique visitors without cookies, our server turns your IP address, browser details, language and the current month, together with a secret key, into a one-way code (a hash). We do not store your IP address itself. The code changes every month and we cannot trace it back to you.
• When you join the Giveaway: first name, last name, e-mail address, phone number (optional), language, your confirmation that you are 18 or older, your acceptance of the Official Rules and this notice, the time of entry and the page and location where you entered.
• What you tap: whether you tapped the button in the confirmation window or the link to go straight to the review platform, and which review platform you chose. If a page asks you for a star rating before opening a review platform, we store the stars you selected and any feedback you choose to write to us.
• Winners: the information needed to verify identity, age and eligibility, deliver the prize and meet legal or tax obligations, and the post the winner publishes.
• We do not collect your reviews, your accounts on Google, Yelp or other platforms, your precise location or any payment data.

• To run the Giveaway: record your entry, send you a confirmation e-mail, carry out the monthly draw, contact the winner and deliver the prize. Legal basis: performance of the Giveaway under the Official Rules (Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR).
• To keep the Giveaway fair: detect bots, duplicate entries, fake or throwaway e-mail addresses and other abuse. Legal basis: our legitimate interest in a fair Giveaway (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR).
• To produce anonymous statistics for us and the Partner Businesses (page visits, unique visitors, entries, taps). Partner Businesses never see names or contact details. Legal basis: legitimate interest (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR).
• To meet legal obligations, for example tax and bookkeeping rules and keeping proof of a fair draw. Legal basis: legal obligation (Art. 6(1)(c) GDPR).
• We do not use your data for advertising, do not send newsletters from your entry and do not sell or share your personal data for cross-context behavioral advertising. We will only send you marketing if you separately and explicitly agree to it.

• The Giveaway pages use no tracking cookies, no Google Analytics, no Google Tag Manager and no advertising or social media pixels. Fonts are loaded from our own server.
• The page saves a few small technical notes in your browser's local storage, such as your chosen language and that you have already opened the page or joined this month, so that it can show you the right screen. These notes contain no name or contact details and stay on your device. You can delete them at any time in your browser settings.
• To catch typing mistakes and fake addresses, our server checks whether the domain of your e-mail address (for example "gmail.com", never the full address) exists, using Google Public DNS.

We use carefully selected service providers who process data only on our instructions and under data-processing agreements:

• Base44 (Wix.com group): app platform, database and server functions for the Giveaway pages.
• Render Services, Inc. (USA): hosting of the Giveaway pages.
• Cloudflare, Inc. (USA): domain name (DNS) service for rating-matters.promo.
• Pabbly Connect (Magnet Brains Software Technology Pvt. Ltd., India): automation that triggers our confirmation and winner e-mails.
• Microsoft (Microsoft 365 / Outlook): sending e-mails from info@rating-matters.com.
• Google LLC (USA): Google Public DNS for the e-mail domain check described above.
• Giftly (USA): the winner's name and e-mail address, only to deliver the prize voucher.
• Authorities, courts or professional advisers, where we are legally required to or need to protect our rights.
• When you open a review platform (for example Google or Yelp) or Instagram, you leave our pages. These companies process your data as independent controllers under their own privacy policies.

Your data may be processed in Switzerland, the European Union, the United States, Israel and India. Where a country does not offer an adequate level of data protection as recognised by Switzerland or the EU, we use appropriate safeguards, in particular the EU Standard Contractual Clauses (as recognised by the Swiss Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner) or the Swiss-US and EU-US Data Privacy Framework where the provider is certified.

If you live outside Switzerland, your data is transferred to Switzerland, where Rating Matters is based.

• Entries that do not win are deleted or anonymised at the latest 12 months after the draw of the month concerned.
• Winner data is kept as long as needed to deliver the prize and to prove a fair draw; data relevant for bookkeeping or tax is kept for up to 10 years, as required by Swiss law.
• The monthly visitor codes (hashes) cannot be linked across months. Anonymous statistics may be kept longer.
• If you ask us to delete your entry before the draw, it is withdrawn from the Giveaway.

• You can ask for access to your data, correction, deletion, restriction of processing and a copy of your data in a common format, and you can object to processing based on legitimate interest. Where processing is based on consent, you can withdraw it at any time.
• California and other US states: you have the right to know, access, correct and delete your personal information, and not to be discriminated against for using these rights. We do not sell or share personal information for cross-context behavioral advertising, so there is nothing to opt out of. You may use an authorised agent.
• To use your rights, write to info@rating-matters.com. We may ask you to confirm your identity and will reply within 30 days.
• You can complain to the Swiss Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner (FDPIC, edoeb.admin.ch) or, if you live in the EU, to the data protection authority in your country.

The only automated step is the monthly draw, which picks a winner purely at random. It does not evaluate any personal aspects. We do not use profiling.

All pages are transmitted encrypted (HTTPS). Access to entry data is limited to authorised Rating Matters staff with a personal login. Partner Businesses can only see anonymous statistics.

The Giveaway is only for persons aged 18 or older. If we learn that someone under 18 has entered, we delete the entry and the related data.

We may update this notice when our Giveaway or the law changes. The current version, with its date, is always published on this page.