Privacy policy

Who we are

Headbangers India (headbangersindia.com) is an independent Indian heavy metal publication. You can reach us through the contact form on the site.

What we collect when you write to us

Contact form

When you use the contact form, we receive your name, email address, subject and message, and a document if you choose to attach one. Your message is emailed to the editorial team rather than stored in a database on the site, and an attachment travels as a private email attachment.

Writing for HBI

If you apply to write for us, we receive your name, email address, message and any document you attach, handled the same way as contact messages.

Band page reports

When you report a problem on a band page, we store your message, the page you are reporting and, if you choose to give it, your email address. Reports are visible only to the editorial team. To limit repeated automated misuse, the form keeps scrambled (hashed) technical identifiers for short periods instead of your raw IP address.

Website statistics

We use Jetpack Stats, a service from Automattic (the company behind WordPress.com), to count visits to the site. When you visit, it receives your IP address, browser and device information, the pages you view and the links you click, the page that referred you, the date and time, your language and approximate country, and your WordPress.com identity if you are logged in to one. Its documentation says identifying logs are kept for up to 28 days. Only site administrators can see the statistics.

Spam protection

The contact and recruitment forms are protected by Google reCAPTCHA, which checks that submissions come from a person. As part of that check, reCAPTCHA may collect hardware and software information, such as device and application data, under Google’s Privacy Policy and Terms of Service, which apply to it.

Comments

Comments are closed across the site, so you cannot post a new one. About a thousand comments published in earlier years remain online under the name, and website if one was given, that the commenter supplied at the time. If one of them is yours and you want it taken down, contact us and we will remove it.

Embedded content

Some articles embed players from third-party services such as YouTube and Bandcamp. These players behave as if you visited those sites directly: they may set their own cookies and collect information under their own privacy policies.

For our contributors

If you contribute to Headbangers India, we hold the details of your staff account: your name, email address, sign-in credentials, role, and your work history on the site, such as drafts, media you upload, assignments and review notes. Band and gig listings submitted through the staff area are stored with the event or band name, source links and their editorial status. Access to this information is limited to the editorial team.

Who we share information with

We do not sell personal information. The services that run the site process it on our behalf: our hosting provider, our email provider, Automattic for site statistics, Google for reCAPTCHA and for backup storage, and the embedded platforms described above. Google also appears here if and when we enable its ads, as the advertising section explains.

Pages also load fonts from Google Fonts and some images through WordPress.com’s content delivery network, so your browser shares standard technical information, such as your IP address, with those services when a page loads.

How long we keep it

Messages you send through the forms stay in the editorial team’s mailbox unless you ask us to delete them. Band reports stay visible to the editorial team while they are useful.

Backups

The site’s files and database are backed up weekly, with a small number of rotating copies kept on Google Drive and with our hosting provider. Content removed from the live site can persist in backups until those copies are replaced.

Your choices

You can ask us through the contact form to see, correct or delete personal information we hold about you, including an old comment published under your name.

Advertising (planned)

We plan to show ads from Google AdSense, and this policy will be updated before ads run. Once ads run, Google and its partners may place and read cookies on your browser, or use web beacons or your IP address, to show and measure ads, including ads based on your visits to this and other sites.

Read how Google uses information from sites that use its services: How Google uses data. You can turn off personalised ads in your Google ad settings, and you can control or delete cookies in your browser settings.

Changes to this policy

If we add features that change what we collect, such as a shop, a newsletter or advertising, we will update this page.