Privacy policy

Who we are

This policy covers using propscouting.com and submitting a review of a firm on it. PropScouting runs the site and the review service behind it. You can reach us at contact@propscouting.com.

Information you give us in a review

Reviews need no account. The review form asks for:

• ·the firm you are reviewing and your star rating
• ·the name you want shown with the review
• ·a headline and the review itself
• ·if you choose, the programme you traded, your trading style and whether you received a payout
• ·a tick confirming that you have traded with the firm, which is required

The review service also records when the review was submitted and its status: waiting for approval, published or removed. The form does not ask for an email address, an account or any upload, such as a screenshot or proof of a payout.

What becomes public. When a review is published, the firm's page shows the name you gave, your rating, headline and review, any programme and trading style you added, a "Reports a payout" label if you said you received a payout, and the date the review was published. The review data our pages load holds the same details, plus the time of publication and your trader confirmation.

Trader confirmation. The tick is required and is stored with your review. It is your own statement: we do not check it, it is not independent verification, and it is not shown as a badge or as proof that you traded with the firm.

How reviews are moderated

New reviews may be held for approval before they appear, and we may decline a review or remove one that has been published. Publishing a review does not mean we have checked what it says. We do not verify a reviewer's identity, purchases, trading accounts or payouts, and apart from the reviewer's own confirmation, we do not check whether they traded with the firm.

Preventing repeat and spam reviews

To limit duplicate and spam reviews, the review service uses a secret key to turn the IP address a review is sent from into a coded identifier, and stores that identifier with the review. It does not store the IP address itself. The identifier is used only to limit how many reviews can be sent from the same connection, and it is never published.

The identifier is not anonymous, because the same IP address always produces the same identifier. It is deleted automatically after 30 days, together with the time it was recorded. When you send a review, simple automatic checks also look for automated submissions, and they store nothing. Server logs are separate and are described next.

Server logs

Like most web servers, the servers behind propscouting.com and the review service record standard details of each request they receive, including the request that sends a review: your IP address, the time, the page or file requested, the referring page and your browser's user agent, which identifies the browser and operating system. These servers are hosted by Vamas.mk.

Standard server logs may be kept according to the hosting and server configuration. PropScouting does not currently publish a fixed retention period for those logs.

Cookies, analytics and browser storage

At present, our pages set no cookies, store nothing in your browser's local or session storage, and use no analytics or advertising trackers, tracking pixels or CAPTCHA.

Some choices are kept in the page instead. Filters in the directory and the challenge finder, and the firms chosen in the comparison tool, are added to the page address so a view can be bookmarked or shared. Answers to the Find my firm quiz stay in your browser while the page is open and are not sent to us.

Ratings and reviews on our pages

Pages that show star ratings or reviews load them from cms.propscouting.com, PropScouting's own review service, which is also hosted by Vamas.mk. Your browser contacts it directly, so it receives the standard request details described under server logs. Reviews you submit go to the same service. It is part of PropScouting, not an unrelated third party.

Affiliate links

Some links to firms are affiliate links, as explained in our affiliate disclosure. Where a link carries a referral identifier, the identifier is already part of the link address and is the same for every visitor, as are our partner discount codes. We add nothing that identifies you, and we keep no record of which links you click.

As with any link, your browser may tell the firm's site that you came from propscouting.com. Once you are on a firm's site, its own privacy and cookie practices apply.

Search

Search runs in your browser. What you type is not sent to us, and we keep no search history. When a search takes you to the firm directory, your search words are added to its page address. Like any web address, it can stay in your browser history, and it is recorded in our server logs if the page is requested with it, for example when it is reloaded or opened from a shared link.

Hosting and email

Vamas.mk provides the hosting for propscouting.com and cms.propscouting.com and the mailbox for contact@propscouting.com, so the reviews, server logs and emails described here are stored on infrastructure that Vamas.mk provides. If you email us, we receive your email address and your message and use them to reply.

How long information is kept

• ·Published reviews stay on the site until they are removed.
• ·Reviews waiting for approval are not public. They are kept until they are approved or removed.
• ·A review we remove stops being public at once, though it may remain in the review system, out of view, until it is permanently deleted.
• ·The connection identifier and the time it was recorded are deleted automatically after 30 days, whatever has happened to the review.
• ·Standard server logs may be kept according to the hosting and server configuration. PropScouting does not currently publish a fixed retention period for them.
• ·Server or hosting backups may temporarily retain copies after information is removed from the active site. The exact backup retention period depends on the hosting configuration and is not currently published by PropScouting.
• ·Emails sent to contact@propscouting.com are kept in our mailbox. No fixed retention period is currently published for them.

Correcting or removing a review

To ask for a review to be corrected or removed, email contact@propscouting.com. Reviews are not linked to an account or an email address, so tell us enough to find yours: the firm, the name shown on the review, its headline, roughly when you submitted it and anything else that sets it apart. We cannot always confirm who wrote a review, and we may ask for more detail.

When a review is removed, it drops out of the live review and rating data straight away. Our pages are pre-built, so a copy can remain in some pages until the site is next rebuilt and published. Copies in backups, in other sites' caches or in search engine results can take longer to disappear.

Other parties

Vamas.mk provides our hosting and email, as described above. Firms you reach through our links are separate websites with their own privacy policies. Our pages do not load Google services, analytics or advertising scripts.

Security

Both propscouting.com and the review service are served over HTTPS, administrative access to the review service is restricted, and abuse prevention uses a keyed identifier instead of stored IP addresses. No website or server is completely secure, so we cannot promise that information will never be accessed without permission.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as the site or the way we handle information changes. The date at the top of this page shows when it was last updated.

Contact

For questions about this policy or a review you submitted, email contact@propscouting.com.