Privacy Policy

Geeks Around Globe collects only what it needs to run the site, answer readers, measure readership, deliver the Academy, and fund the writing through advertising. This page explains what that means in practice, what your rights are, and how to use them.

Last updated: 31 August 2026

Who is responsible

Geeks Around Globe (geeksaroundglobe.com) is published by BrandFactory LLC, a company registered in Colorado, United States at 1942 Broadway, Suite 314C, Boulder, CO 80302, United States. BrandFactory LLC is the data controller for the personal information described here — it decides why your data is collected and how it is used.

We also operate an affiliated company, BrandFactory Private Limited, registered in Sri Lanka at No. 16, Maitipe 3rd Lane, Galle, Sri Lanka. Editorial and technical work on the publication is carried out from there, so staff at that company may access reader data on the controller's instructions. It is not a separate controller: it does not decide the purposes of processing on its own account.

For anything in this policy, including requests to exercise your rights, contact privacy@geeksaroundglobe.com or write to us at either address above.

What we collect

• Information you give us. Your email address if you subscribe to the newsletter or write to us; your name, email and profile image if you create an Academy account through Google sign-in; anything you type into a form or send us directly.
• Learning records. If you enrol in a course: your progress, quiz attempts, scores, and any certificate issued to you.
• Technical information. Server logs containing IP address, user agent and the page requested, kept briefly for security and debugging.
• Measurement and advertising information, but only where you have allowed it — see the cookie policy for the exact list.

We do not ask for and do not want special category data — health, beliefs, politics, biometrics. Please do not send it to us.

Why we are allowed to use it (legal bases)

• Contract. Running your Academy account, recording your progress and issuing your certificate.
• Consent. Analytics, advertising, preference cookies, and the newsletter. You may withdraw consent at any time, and doing so is as easy as giving it.
• Legitimate interests. Keeping the site secure and available, preventing abuse, and defending legal claims — balanced against your rights, and never overriding them where consent is required instead.
• Legal obligation. Keeping consent records, and tax records where a payment has been made.

Cookies and tracking

In the EEA, the UK and Switzerland nothing optional loads until you allow it. In the United States you may opt out at any time, and we honour Global Privacy Control signals automatically as a binding opt-out of the sale or sharing of personal information. Every cookie we can set is listed, named and explained in the cookie policy.

Your Privacy Choices

Advertising, and what “sale” means

We do not sell personal information for money. However, US state privacy laws define “sale” and “sharing” broadly enough to cover disclosing identifiers to advertising partners for cross-context behavioural advertising. When you allow advertising, that is what happens, so we treat it as a sale or share and give you a standing, one-click opt-out rather than claiming an exemption. Turning off the Advertising category is that opt-out.

Who we share it with

Analytics and advertising partners are listed, with the cookies they set, in the cookie policy, and they only receive anything if you have allowed that category. The companies below never set a cookie but do handle personal data in order to run the site, so they are disclosed here:

• Contabo GmbH (hosting) — Runs the website, the application server and the database. Processing takes place in Germany (EU). Privacy notice
• Cloudflare, Inc. (storage) — Stores and delivers images and other media (R2 object storage and CDN). Processing takes place in United States and its global edge network. Privacy notice
• Resend (email) — Delivers newsletter and transactional email you have asked for. Processing takes place in United States. Privacy notice
• Stripe, Inc. (payments) — Would process card payments for paid courses. No card details ever reach our servers. Processing takes place in United States and Ireland. Not currently in use. Privacy notice

We do not sell or rent reader lists. We may disclose information where the law compels it, and will tell you unless we are prohibited from doing so.

Where your data is, and international transfers

The website, its database and your account records run on a dedicated server in Germany, operated for us by Contabo GmbH. Images and other media are stored on Cloudflare's object storage and delivered through its global network.

BrandFactory LLC is established in the United States, and our affiliate operates from Sri Lanka. The European Commission has issued no adequacy decision for Sri Lanka, and its decision covering the United States applies only to organisations self-certified under the EU–US Data Privacy Framework, which we are not. Where we are subject to the GDPR we therefore apply the same standard of protection to the data our own staff access from either country as we would inside the EEA: access is restricted to the people who need it, authenticated, encrypted in transit, and limited to the purposes set out above.

Where we pass data to a processor outside the EEA — chiefly in the United States — we rely on the EU–US Data Privacy Framework if the recipient is certified under it, and on the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses with supplementary measures otherwise. You can ask us which mechanism applies to a particular recipient.

How long we keep it

• Newsletter subscriptions — until you unsubscribe.
• Academy accounts, progress and certificates — while your account exists, then deleted on request. Certificate verification records persist so issued credentials stay checkable.
• Server logs — rotated automatically and kept only as long as needed to investigate security and reliability problems. They are never used for analytics.
• Consent records — kept as evidence for as long as the law requires us to be able to demonstrate consent, and no longer.
• Correspondence — up to 24 months.

Your rights in the EEA, UK and Switzerland

Under the GDPR and UK GDPR you have the right to:

• be told what we hold about you, and get a copy (access);
• have inaccurate information corrected (rectification);
• have information deleted (erasure);
• restrict how we use it while a dispute is resolved;
• receive your data in a portable, machine-readable form;
• object to processing based on legitimate interests;
• withdraw consent at any time, without affecting what was lawful beforehand;
• not be subject to solely automated decisions with legal or similarly significant effects — we do not make any.

Write to privacy@geeksaroundglobe.com and we will respond within one month.

You may also complain to a supervisory authority. Because BrandFactory LLC has no establishment in the European Union, the “one-stop-shop” does not apply and there is no single lead authority for us — you should complain to the data protection authority of the country you live in. The European Data Protection Board publishes contact details for every national authority. In the United Kingdom it is the Information Commissioner's Office, and in Switzerland the Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner. We would rather you came to us first.

Your rights in the United States

If you live in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Virginia, Utah, Texas, Oregon or another state with a comprehensive privacy law, you have the right to know what we collect, to get a copy, to correct it, to delete it, to opt out of targeted advertising and of the sale or sharing of personal information, and to limit the use of sensitive personal information. We will not discriminate against you for exercising any of them — no worse content, no fewer features, no different price.

• Opt out using Your Privacy Choices , or by sending a Global Privacy Control signal, which we honour automatically. Global Privacy Control is the universal opt-out mechanism recognised by the Colorado Attorney General; we honour it for every US reader, not only where a threshold obliges us to.
• By post — BrandFactory LLC, 1942 Broadway, Suite 314C, Boulder, CO 80302, United States.
• Access, correction and deletion — email privacy@geeksaroundglobe.com. We respond within 45 days and may extend once where the law allows.
• Authorised agents may act for you with written permission we can verify.
• Appeals. If we refuse a request you may appeal by replying to our decision; we will answer within 45 days and tell you how to contact your state Attorney General if you remain unhappy.

Categories of personal information collected in the last 12 months: identifiers (email, account ID, IP address), internet activity (pages viewed, referral source), commercial information (course enrolments), and inferences drawn by advertising partners where you allowed advertising. Categories disclosed for a business purpose or shared for advertising: identifiers and internet activity, to the partners named in the cookie policy.

Your rights in Sri Lanka

Editorial and technical work on this publication is carried out from Sri Lanka by BrandFactory Private Limited, which means personal data is processed there. Sri Lanka's Personal Data Protection Act, No. 9 of 2022 reaches processing carried out in Sri Lanka as well as controllers established there, so we treat it as applying to us. Its substantive provisions — the obligations on controllers and the rights of data subjects — came into operation on 18 March 2025.

Under the Act you may ask us to:

• confirm what personal data we hold about you and give you access to it;
• correct data that is inaccurate, incomplete or out of date;
• erase your data where the Act allows;
• withdraw consent you previously gave, at any time;
• object to processing, including for direct marketing;
• have a human review any decision made solely by automated means — we make none.

Send requests to privacy@geeksaroundglobe.com. If you are not satisfied with our response you may appeal to us, and after that complain to the Data Protection Authority of Sri Lanka.

Children

This site is not directed at children. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 16, and we do not knowingly sell or share the personal information of anyone under 16. If you believe a child has given us information, contact us and we will delete it.

Security

Traffic is encrypted in transit. Passwords, where they exist, are hashed. Administrative access is restricted and audited. No system is perfect; if a breach affects your rights we will notify you and the relevant regulator as the law requires.

Changes

If we change how we use personal information in a way that matters, we will update the date at the top of this page and ask for your cookie choices again.

Mediavine Programmatic Advertising (Ver 1.1)

The Website works with Mediavine to manage third-party interest-based advertising appearing on the Website. Mediavine serves content and advertisements when you visit the Website, which may use first and third-party cookies. A cookie is a small text file which is sent to your computer or mobile device (referred to in this policy as a “device”) by the web server so that a website can remember some information about your browsing activity on the Website.

First party cookies are created by the website that you are visiting. A third-party cookie is frequently used in behavioral advertising and analytics and is created by a domain other than the website you are visiting. Third-party cookies, tags, pixels, beacons and other similar technologies (collectively, “Tags”) may be placed on the Website to monitor interaction with advertising content and to target and optimize advertising. Each internet browser has functionality so that you can block both first and third-party cookies and clear your browser's cache. The “help” feature of the menu bar on most browsers will tell you how to stop accepting new cookies, how to receive notification of new cookies, how to disable existing cookies and how to clear your browser's cache. For more information about cookies and how to disable them, you can consult the information at All About Cookies.

Without cookies you may not be able to take full advantage of the Website content and features. Please note that rejecting cookies does not mean that you will no longer see ads when you visit our Site. In the event you opt-out, you will still see non-personalized advertisements on the Website.

The Website collects the following data using a cookie when serving personalized ads:

• IP Address
• Operating System type
• Operating System version
• Device Type
• Language of the website
• Web browser type
• Email (in hashed form)

Mediavine Partners (companies listed below with whom Mediavine shares data) may also use this data to link to other end user information the partner has independently collected to deliver targeted advertisements. Mediavine Partners may also separately collect data about end users from other sources, such as advertising IDs or pixels, and link that data to data collected from Mediavine publishers in order to provide interest-based advertising across your online experience, including devices, browsers and apps. This data includes usage data, cookie information, device information, information about interactions between users and advertisements and websites, geolocation data, traffic data, and information about a visitor's referral source to a particular website. Mediavine Partners may also create unique IDs to create audience segments, which are used to provide targeted advertising.

If you would like more information about this practice and to know your choices to opt-in or opt-out of this data collection, please visit National Advertising Initiative opt out page. You may also visit Digital Advertising Alliance website and Network Advertising Initiative website to learn more information about interest-based advertising. You may download the AppChoices app at Digital Advertising Alliance's AppChoices app to opt out in connection with mobile apps, or use the platform controls on your mobile device to opt out.

For specific information about Mediavine Partners, the data each collects and their data collection and privacy policies, please visit Mediavine Partners.