Privacy policy

This privacy policy explains what personal data is processed when you visit smartercasinos.com or contact us, why it is processed and what rights you have. We have designed this website to collect as little personal data as possible.

Short summary

• This website sets no cookies. Your country choice and your casino comparison are remembered only in your browser tab (session storage) and disappear when you close the tab.
• We count page views with a cookie-free reach measurement (Vercel Web Analytics) that stores nothing on your device and builds no user profile. We use no tracking pixels, no advertising networks and no embedded third-party content (for example no social media plugins or embedded videos).
• Fonts are served from our own website; no font service is contacted when you load a page.
• The casino-submission form prepares an e-mail in your own mail program; nothing is sent to or stored by this website through it.
• If you submit a player review, we store the review itself and a salted hash of your connection for abuse control – no e-mail, no account, no IP address in clear text. Details below.
• Our hosting provider processes technical server logs to deliver the website and keep it secure.

If any of this changes, we will update this policy before the change goes live.

Controller

The controller responsible for processing personal data on this website is:

We have not appointed a data protection officer. Given the minimal processing described on this page, we do not consider one to be required; should that change, this page will be updated. If we were established outside the EU or UK and a representative were required, that representative would be named here.

Visiting the website: hosting and server logs

This website is hosted by Vercel Inc. (USA). When you open a page, your browser automatically sends technical information to the host's servers. The host processes this information in server logs, typically including:

• your IP address,
• date and time of the request,
• the page or file requested,
• browser type and version (user agent) and operating system,
• referring URL, if your browser sends it,
• technical status information (for example HTTP status code, amount of data transferred).

Purpose: delivering the website, ensuring its stability and security, and detecting and preventing abuse (for example attacks on the infrastructure).

Legal basis: our legitimate interest in providing a secure and functioning website (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR, where the GDPR applies).

Retention: server logs are kept by the host for a limited period according to its own retention settings; we do not keep separate copies. Details are in Vercel's privacy documentation.

Vercel processes this data on our behalf under its data processing terms, which form part of our hosting agreement.

Contact by e-mail

If you e-mail us, we process the data you send us: your e-mail address, your name if you provide it, the content of your message and any attachments, and the technical metadata of the e-mail.

Purpose: handling and answering your enquiry, and keeping a record of correspondence where this is necessary (for example for corrections to our research or business enquiries).

Legal basis: our legitimate interest in answering enquiries (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR) or, where your enquiry relates to a contract or pre-contractual steps, Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR.

Retention: we delete correspondence once your enquiry is resolved and no longer needed, at the latest 12 months after the last message, unless a statutory retention duty applies or the correspondence documents a correction to our research.

Our e-mail is provided by Google (Google Workspace), which processes e-mails on our behalf.

Please do not send us sensitive personal data (for example health data or details of your gambling account) unless it is necessary for your enquiry.

Country hint and comparison (browser tab storage)

On casino pages we show whether a casino lists your country as restricted in its own terms. To pre-select your country, your browser asks our own server (/api/country) for the country that our hosting platform derives from your IP address. The answer is used in your browser only. We do not store the country or the IP address, do not log it ourselves, and do not link it to any profile. You can always choose another country manually. The result is not legal advice and says nothing about whether gambling is lawful where you live.

Your manual country choice and the casinos you add to the comparison are kept in your browser's session storage for the current tab only. This storage is technically necessary for the function you use, is never sent to us, and is deleted when you close the tab. No cookies are involved.

Legal basis: our legitimate interest in providing the function you have chosen to use (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR, where it applies). The storage is strictly necessary for that function and is therefore used without a consent banner.

Player reviews (user content)

On casino pages you can submit a short review of your own experience. Submitting is optional. We process:

• the content you enter: nickname, star rating, category, review text and – optionally – the month of the experience. The nickname and the review are published once a person has approved them; the rest is shown as part of the review;
• a salted hash of your IP address (a one-way fingerprint we cannot turn back into the address) and the time of submission, used only to limit repeated submissions, votes and reports and to detect abuse. The IP address itself is not stored by us; the host's server logs are described above;
• "helpful" votes and reports you send on other reviews, stored with the same hash to count each only once.

Purpose and legal basis: publishing genuine player experiences and keeping the review area free of spam and abuse – our legitimate interest (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR) and, for the publication of a review you choose to submit, Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR. Age confirmation is required because the subject is gambling.

Moderation: every review is read by a person before publication and can be approved, held, rejected or removed later. We do not edit review text. We remove abuse, personal data about other people, advertising and spam – not criticism.

Retention: published reviews stay online while the casino profile exists. Rejected submissions and the abuse-control hashes are deleted at the latest 12 months after submission. You can ask us at any time to remove a review you wrote; tell us the nickname, casino and approximate date.

Where it is stored: in a database hosted for us by our hosting provider's database partner, under the same data-processing terms as the hosting. Do not include in a review any information that identifies other people, or sensitive details such as account numbers or documents.

Cookies, analytics and tracking

This website does not set cookies and does not use tracking pixels, fingerprinting or advertising networks. We do not create user profiles.

Reach measurement (Vercel Web Analytics). We count visits to our pages with Vercel Web Analytics, a service of our hosting provider Vercel Inc. (USA). It sets no cookies and stores nothing on your device. Visitors are distinguished by a short-lived hash created from the incoming request, which the provider discards after 24 hours; we only see aggregated statistics (page views, referrer, country or region, browser and device type). Query strings are removed in your browser before a page view is sent, and the private moderation pages are excluded. Purpose: understanding which pages are used so that we can improve them. Legal basis: our legitimate interest (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR, where it applies); because nothing is stored on or read from your device, no consent banner is shown. Vercel processes this data on our behalf under its data-processing terms (see "International data transfers" below). Provider details: vercel.com/docs/analytics/privacy-policy.

Some pages link to external websites (for example regulators, registers, help organisations or our Telegram channel). We do not share data with them. When you follow such a link, the privacy policy of the website you visit applies.

Recipients of personal data

We do not sell personal data. Personal data is only disclosed to service providers who process it on our behalf (hosting, e-mail), or where we are legally required to do so.

International data transfers

Our hosting and e-mail providers may process data outside the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom, including in the United States. Where this happens, the transfer is based on the safeguards the respective provider offers – an adequacy decision such as the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework where the provider is certified, or standard contractual clauses – as described in the provider's own privacy documentation.

Your rights

Depending on the law that applies to you, you have the following rights regarding your personal data. Where the EU or UK General Data Protection Regulation applies, these include:

• Access – to obtain confirmation whether we process your data and a copy of it (Art. 15 GDPR).
• Rectification – to have inaccurate data corrected (Art. 16 GDPR).
• Erasure – to have your data deleted where the legal requirements are met (Art. 17 GDPR).
• Restriction – to have processing restricted in certain cases (Art. 18 GDPR).
• Data portability – to receive data you provided in a structured, machine-readable format (Art. 20 GDPR).
• Objection – to object at any time, on grounds relating to your particular situation, to processing based on legitimate interests (Art. 21 GDPR).
• Complaint – to lodge a complaint with a data protection supervisory authority, in particular in the country where you live or work or where an alleged infringement took place (Art. 77 GDPR).

To exercise your rights, e-mail partners@smartercasinos.com. We may need to verify your identity before responding.

You also have the right to lodge a complaint with a data protection supervisory authority, in particular in the EU member state of your habitual residence, your place of work or the place of the alleged infringement, or the authority of the country in which we are established.

Automated decision-making

We do not make decisions about you based solely on automated processing, including profiling.

Age

This website is intended for adults aged 18 or over. We do not knowingly process personal data of minors.

Changes to this policy

We will update this privacy policy if our website or our processing changes – in particular before introducing cookies, further analytics, forms or commercial links. The date of the latest version is shown on this page.