Updated December 29th 2011

You should carefully read our full Privacy Policy before deciding to become a member of Adverts.ie.

What our Privacy Policy Covers

This Privacy Policy covers any personal information the Site obtains from you when you use our service. This policy does not cover the practices of companies that Adverts.ie does not own or control, or the actions of people that Adverts.ie does not employ or manage.

Our Privacy Policy may change in the future. We invite you to check back periodically to see if we have made any changes. By using this site, you agree to the terms of our policy.

Your personal information:

Adverts.ie Limited fully respects your right to privacy, and will not collect any personal information about you on this website without your clear permission.

Any personal information which you volunteer in your public profile or post on a public thread will be available to anyone with access to the website.

Do not post any information you are not happy leave up indefinitely. We recommend you do not post your name, address, telephone number email address or anything else that may lead someone to identify you if this is something you are uncomfortable with.

Adverts.ie does not delete posts on request, except in special circumstances. We advise against the posting of personal details or information that may identify you on thread. However, you are free to do so at your own risk.

Please note that certain information, statements, data and content (such as photographs) which you may choose to provide might " and are likely to " reveal your gender, ethnic origin, nationality, religion and/or sexual orientation.

You accept that you are providing all such information, statements, data and content in full acknowledgment thereof and under your sole responsibility.

It is important to note that we do not remove user accounts and don't change user names. Please choose a username that will not personally identify you.

If someone has posted your personal details on Adverts.ie with, or without your permission and you would like it removed, please contact us.

Adverts.ie does not collect any personal data about you on this website, apart from information which you volunteer (for example by registering with us).

Any information which you provide in this way is not made available to any third parties, and is used by Adverts.ie limited only in line with the purpose for which you provided it. Your data may also be used, anonymously, for statistical purposes.

We cannot ensure that private communication and other identifiable personal data will never be disclosed in ways not described in this section.

By way of example (without limiting the foregoing) we may be forced to disclose the data to a government agency lawfully requesting the same or to any court acting in pursuance of its powers.

We reserve the right to and you hereby agree to allow us to disclose any information about you to law enforcement government officials or to any court or court officials as we in our sole discretion believe necessary or appropriate.

Nothing in this Agreement relating to the confidentiality of information shall prevent or hinder Adverts.ie from complying with its legal obligations as to disclosure or otherwise under the Data Protection Act 1988.

Your password

Certain data such as your password will never be disclosed. You are responsible for keeping your password confidential and for all activities that occur under your password or account. Please let Adverts.ie know of any unauthorised use of your password, or any other breach of security.

Collection and use of technical information

Adverts.ie promises to only use your data in complete accordance with the following conditions:

  • We will not rent or sell any data which may personally identify you to any third party.
  • We may aggregate your data for disclosure to advertisers or business associates for promotion and marketing purposes. By way of example, we may disclose to an advertiser the percentage age groups of our members but in such an event we undertake to ensure that no such data could be used to personally identify you.
  • We may access your account for technical processing and to address technical problems or service complaints.
  • We will clearly state why we are collecting personal information and how it will be used.

Technical details in connection with visits to this website are logged by our internet service provider for our statistical purposes. No information is collected that could be used by us to identify website visitors. The technical details logged are confined to the following items:

  • The IP address of the visitor's web server the top-level domain name used (for example .i.e., .com, .org, .net).
  • "Clickstream" data which shows the traffic of visitors around this web site (for example pages accessed and documents downloaded) the type of web browser used by the website visitor.
  • The previous website address from which the visitor reached us, including any search terms used.
Adverts.ie will make no attempt to identify individual visitors, or to associate the technical details listed above with any individual.

It is the policy of Adverts.ie never to disclose such technical information in respect of individual website visitors to any third party, unless obliged to disclose such information by a rule of law.

The technical information will be used only by Adverts.ie, and only for statistical and other administrative purposes.

You should note that technical details, which we cannot associate with any identifiable individual, do not constitute "personal data" for the purposes of the Data Protection Acts, 1988 & 2003.

Disclosure Of Information To Third Parties

We may provide Non-Personal Data to third parties, where such information is combined with similar information of other users of our website.

For example, we might inform third parties regarding the number of unique users who visit the Adverts.ie website, or the activities that visitors to the Adverts website engage in while using the website.

The third parties to whom we may provide this information may include potential or actual advertisers, providers of advertising services (including website tracking services), commercial partners, sponsors, licensees, researchers and other similar parties.

We may also share your personal information with:

  • Law enforcement agencies, other governmental agencies or third parties in response to a request for information (such as a Section 29 (3) Data Protection Act 1998 form) relating to a criminal investigation, alleged illegal activity or any other activity that may expose us, you or any other Adverts.ie user to legal liability. The personal information we disclose may include your Username and ID, Your account history, name, city, county, telephone number, email address, content of Private messages and comments or anything else that we deem relevant.

Your rights regarding data supplied via this website

You have a right to be given a copy of your personal data which you may have supplied via this website. To exercise this right e-mail us at hello@adverts.ie.

You should include any personal identifiers which you supplied earlier via the website (e.g. username & e-mail address) if you do not supply this verification information, no information will be provided.

This request only covers the private information contained in your private profile. Any information that is publically available in posts and threads on the forum will not be provided. Your request will be dealt with as soon as possible and will take not more than 40 days to process.

Nuisance posters

Our first line of defense against nuisance posts is to delete them and to ban the user. Nuisance posts include potentially defamatory material, surreptitious advertising, spam, any other posts which breach the posting guidelines and any form of messages, posts or emails deemed offensive by the administrators or moderators.

Where a nuisance poster persists, we reserve the right to use email addresses and IP addresses to identify the user and halt the nuisance. For example, on a very few occasions, we have reported to organisations that it appeared that one of their employees or other users of their computer equipment was repeatedly making nuisance posts on Adverts.ie and asked them to take steps to stop it.

Where a poster recommends the products or services of their employer, they should state their conflict of interest. Where they do not do so, we reserve the right to point out that the poster appears to have a conflict of interest.

In common with many sites we use Google Analytics for web-site statistics. Some people have raised concerns about the privacy aspects of this service, as Google have access to your IP address (but not your Adverts.ie username or email address).

In addition to Google analytics Adverts.ie also stores full web logs for analysis purposes.

Security, storage and transfer of information

We follow strict security procedures to ensure that your personal information is not damaged, destroyed, or disclosed to a third party without your permission (unless they are providing services as outlined in the 'who has access to your information' section above) and to prevent unauthorised access to it. The computers that store the information are kept in a secure facility with restricted physical access and we use secure firewalls and other measures to restrict electronic access. If we are working with third parties we will require them to have in place similar measures to protect your information.

We will explicitly ask you when we need information to identify you. We may require you to co-operate with our security checks before we disclose information to you. You can update the personal information that you give us at any time by viewing your details page.

We will retain your information for a reasonable period or for as long as is required by law.

Cookies and tracking

Like many websites, we use "cookies" to enable us to personalise your visits to this website, simplify the signing-in procedure, keep track of your preferences and to track the usage of this website. Cookies are small pieces of information that are stored in the hard drive of your computer by your browser. Your browser will have the option to prevent websites using cookies (your browser's help screen or manual will tell you how to do this), but please note that this may reduce the functionality of this Site and other websites.

Like all websites, our servers automatically record 'log files' containing information about the volume and characteristics of our website traffic e.g. IP address, numbers of pages viewed, length of time spent on site. We use log files to build pictures of how our site is used that help us to monitor and improve the service. We cannot identify you from your log files.

Here is a list of all the cookies that we set and how we use them:

Cookie Name Typical Value Purpose Expires
advertsid Randomly generated hexadecimal string Used to identify user session On browser exit
adverts_uid Randomly generated number Set only if "Remember me" is checked. Auto-login on subsequent visits. On user logout or 1 year
adverts_uid_hash Randomly generated hexadecimal string Set only if "Remember me" is checked. Auto-login on subsequent visits. On user logout or 1 year
touch_off "1" Disables the touch site and forces the use of the full site On browser exit
strap_*_* "1" Ensure a strapline won't be seen after being dismissed 3 years
iePinning_www.adverts.ie "hidden" Remembers when the user has dismissed the prompt to use the "site pinning" feature in Internet Explorer 9. 30 days
fb_login "1" Indicates that the user logged in via Facebook On user logout or browser exit
fbsr_116958691666039 Alphanumeric string The user's Facebook session information, if the user is logged in via Facebook On user logout or browser exit

In addition to the above cookies set by Adverts.ie, cookies may also be set by a number of our site partners:

Adtech.de (Ad serving)
CfP "1" This is a unique ID for the browser, so we know if an ad has already been seen On browser exit
JEB2 Alphanumeric string This is a unique ID for the browser, so we know if an ad has already been placed 2 years
Delivery.FlashpointMedia.com (Ad serving)
OAID Alphanumeric string Online advertising user tracking 1 year
DoubleClick.net (Ad serving)
id Hexadecimal||t=numerical|et=numerical|cs=hexadecimal User id 2 years
_drt_ "NO DATA" DART data. 1 day
Google Analytics (Audience Measurement)
__utma Randomly generated number Usage stats 2 years
__utmb Randomly generated number Usage stats 30 minutes
__utmc Randomly generated number Usage stats On browser exit
__utmz Randomly generated number Usage stats 6 months
ie-stat.bmmetrix.com (Audience Measurement)
Bm_map string Identify location of user 01/01/2030
Cid Alphanumeric string:numerical string Client id 01/01/2030
Sid Alphanumeric string:numerical string Session id On browser exit

We also use third party advertisements to support our site. Some of these advertisers may use technology such as cookies and web beacons when they advertise on our site, which will also send these advertisers (such as Google through the Google AdSense program) information including your IP address, your ISP, the browser you used to visit our site, and in some cases, whether you have Flash installed. This is generally used for geotargeting purposes (showing location-based advertisements) or showing certain ads based on specific sites visited (such as showing cooking ads to someone who frequents cooking sites).

We also may use DART cookies for ad serving through Google's DoubleClick, which places a cookie on your computer when you are browsing the web and visit a site using DoubleClick advertising (including some Google AdSense advertisements). This cookie is used to serve ads specific to you and your interests ("interest based targeting"). The ads served will be targeted based on your previous browsing history (For example, if you have been viewing sites about visiting Las Vegas, you may see Las Vegas hotel advertisements when viewing a non-related site, such as on a site about hockey). DART uses "non personally identifiable information". It does NOT track personal information about you, such as your name, email address, physical address, telephone number, social security numbers, bank account numbers or credit card numbers. You can opt-out of this ad serving on all sites using this advertising by visiting http://www.doubleclick.com/privacy/dart_adserving.aspx

Terms of Use

Your use of Adverts.ie is subject to this Privacy Policy as well as our Terms of Use and all of its dispute resolution provisions including arbitration, limitation on damages and choice of law.

Unless stated otherwise, our current privacy policy applies to all information that we have about you and your account.

Contacting Adverts.ie

You can contact Adverts.ie in the following ways:

We welcome your feedback on this document and thank you for using Adverts.ie!.

Glossary of technical terms used

  • Web browser - The piece of software you use to read web pages. Examples are Microsoft Internet Explorer, Netscape Navigator and Opera.
  • IP address - The identifying details for your computer (or your internet company's computer), expressed in "internet protocol" code (for example 192.168.72.34). Every computer connected to the web has a unique IP address, although the address may not be the same every time a connection is made.