In short: we count page visits anonymously, without cookies, for every visitor. We also use Google Analytics, which sets cookies: in the European Union, the United Kingdom, Switzerland and Quebec only if you click Accept; elsewhere by default, and you can switch it off at any time. We keep what you send us through our forms so we can answer you. We do not sell personal information and we do not use advertising trackers.
1. Who we are
Affinité Instruments Inc. (“Affinité”, “we”), 222 Islington Ave., unit 217, Toronto, ON M8V 3W7, Canada. This policy covers affiniteinstruments.com.
Person in charge of the protection of personal information
Privacy Officer, Affinité Instruments Inc. — info@affiniteinstruments.com. Write to this address for any question, request or complaint about your personal information.
2. What we collect and why
a) When you contact us or ask for a quote
The details you type into our forms: name, email, organization, country, topic, instrument or sensor interest and your message. Along with the form we record how you reached us on that visit — the page you sent it from, the referring page or website and any campaign tags in the link — and the type of network you sent it from (for example “university”), with the organization’s name when the network belongs to a university, research institution or large organization. When Google Analytics is on for you, we also attach your Google Analytics identifier so we can see which pages were useful before you wrote to us.
Why: to answer you, prepare quotes, follow up on your request and understand which of our content brings researchers to us. Basis: your consent when you submit the form.
When you ask for one of our free guides, we use your name, email and institution to email you the guide from our own mailbox and keep the request with our other contact requests. We send you occasional news only if you ticked the box for it, and you can stop it at any time. To stop the same address being flooded, we keep a scrambled (hashed) form of the address with a daily count, never the address itself.
b) Anonymous visit statistics
We measure how the site is used without cookies and without identifying anyone:
- Page counts. Each time a page loads, our server adds one to a daily total for that page, broken down by country, by the type of network the visit came from (university or research network, company, corporate security service, internet provider) and, for university, research-institution and large-organization networks only, by the name of that organization. Your IP address is used only for the instant it takes to look up the public owner of the network; it is not stored. Visits from cloud-hosting networks and automated tools are not counted.
- Cloudflare Web Analytics. Page views, referring websites, country and browser/device type, reported to us as totals. It uses no cookies and does not follow you across pages or websites.
Why: to know which content is useful to which research sectors, to notice interest from institutions we work with, and to keep automated traffic out of our numbers. These statistics describe pages and organizations, not people.
c) Google Analytics
Google Analytics records the pages you view, the approximate location and device type Google derives from your connection, the referring website, and the network type described above. Advertising features, ad personalization and cross-site advertising signals are turned off.
- European Union, EEA, United Kingdom, Switzerland and Quebec (and if we cannot tell where you are): Google Analytics runs only after you click Accept.
- Everywhere else: Google Analytics runs by default. You can switch it off with Cookie settings at the bottom of every page.
- If your browser sends the Global Privacy Control signal, Google Analytics stays off unless you turn it on.
Cookies and similar storage
| Name | Purpose | When | Duration |
|---|---|---|---|
| affi_consent (browser storage) | Remembers your cookie choice | Once you make a choice | 12 months |
| _ga, _ga_* | Google Analytics — distinguishes visits | When Google Analytics is on (see above) | Up to 2 years |
Choosing Decline removes the Google Analytics cookies. The anonymous page counts and Cloudflare Web Analytics use no cookies.
3. Who processes it and where
We use service providers that act on our behalf; some store data outside Quebec and Canada, mainly in the United States:
- Netlify — hosts this website.
- Cloudflare — runs our form service, page counts and web analytics.
- Google — Google Analytics (see section 2c).
- Notion and Nutshell — where we keep contact requests and customer follow-up.
- Microsoft — our email.
Before sending personal information outside Quebec we assess whether it will be adequately protected, and our agreements with these providers limit their use of it to the service they provide to us. We do not sell or rent personal information.
4. How long we keep it
- Contact and quote requests: as long as needed for our business relationship, then up to 3 years after our last exchange.
- Anonymous daily page totals: 13 months.
- Google Analytics data: 14 months.
5. Your rights
You can ask to access the personal information we hold about you, to correct it, to receive it in a structured format, to have it deleted, or to withdraw your consent. Write to info@affiniteinstruments.com; we answer within 30 days. If you are not satisfied, you can contact the Commission d’accès à l’information du Québec, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, or, in the European Union, your local data protection authority.
6. Security
Access to contact requests is limited to the staff who need it, and our providers protect data in transit and at rest. If a confidentiality incident presents a risk of serious injury, we will notify the people affected and the authorities as the law requires.
7. Changes
If we change this policy in a way that affects your choices, we will update the date above and ask for your cookie choice again.