Privacy policy
NinerNet is committed to your privacy. For most of the going on three decades we have been in business, we have had the following two-sentence privacy policy:You can be assured that we only collect information required to provide you with the services that you buy from us, and we do not share any of your information with third parties beyond that necessary to provide those same services. We do not sell, rent, lend or otherwise share mailing lists with anyone.Nothing else was needed, and it remains as true today as it ever did.
The problem that has developed in the online world since the advent of the commercial Internet in the late 1980s is that huge companies have ridden roughshod over their customers and their customers' rights to privacy and control over their personal data. All but gone are the days when you simply handed over a few dollars (euros, pounds, kwachas or units of whatever currency you use) to a service provider, and the service provider just provided you with those services. Now big companies want to monitor your every move online; like a malevolent Father Christmas / Santa Claus they want to know when you are sleeping, they want to know when you're awake. And then they want to know more, more than you could ever have imagined your online meanderings would broadcast about you. Google and Facebook are horrific examples that have been exposed in recent years.
But to be somewhat fair to those big companies, they're often only doing what their customers demand. Many customers in this era demand that their service providers think of and solve every possible want and every possible challenge for them before the customer even thinks of them. On the face of it that sounds like excellent customer service, but in order to provide that eerily predictive kind of service, your service provider has to monitor your every move, your every click.
We have never done and never plan to do that. We do not correlate your activity on our web and email servers with what time you're awake and what kind of toothpaste, mattress, underwear or anything else we might be able to advertise to you in some way. We just don't, end of story. It's not the business we're in.
Our purpose
What this boils down to, for NinerNet Communications Company, is that our purpose is our true purpose, not one we craft for public consumption while hiding our true purpose in some internal corporate manual:NinerNet Communications Company exists to provide reliable online hosting services to clients. These services are mostly in the areas of providing servers for website and email hosting, and may be extended to associated online services that help our clients use online technologies to extend their business and business processes online.That's it. We do not have a secret purpose known only to us that is less palatable for public consumption that states that we want to sell your eyeballs and personal data to the highest bidder. We don't ask you to connect your NinerNet account to your Google or Facebook accounts -- or any other accounts -- so that we can somehow monitor or track you and mine your private data. We don't "monetise" you or your actions in any way. We provide a service; you pay us for that service. You are not the product. That's not how we do business, and we do not do business with companies whose actual purpose we believe differs from their publicly stated purpose. (That's why we don't have a Facebook page, for example, or use WhatsApp, which is owned by Facebook.) We are not beholden to shareholders whose needs are at odds with the needs of our clients.
Data storage and transmission
Of legitimate concern to clients these days, in the era of bigger and a growing number of data breaches, is how we actually keep your personal data private:- On office computers data is saved on data storage devices -- i.e., hard drives, solid-state drives, flash memory, etc. -- with full disk encryption.
- On top of that encryption we then also encrypt all passwords we need to access our servers using open-source password management software.
- Data transfer between office computers and our servers is done over encrypted Internet connections.
- Where available, we use software on our servers that irreversibly encrypts client passwords, such that not even we can figure out what your password is, and only a process that doesn't involve a human can be used to reset that password to a new one.
- We have standard operating procedures in place to identify clients or clients' employees that have the right to access or change their accounts, so that we don't inadvertently allow a rogue employee or ex-employee -- or anyone else -- to negatively affect a client's account. This can sometimes result in onerous procedures whereby someone who feels they should have access is required to jump through seemingly pointless hoops to confirm access, but this is necessary to ensure integrity of the client's account and is generally understood and appreciated.
- Only employees and contractors who have a "need to know" have access to sensitive data, and only the data they need and only for the length of time that they need it.
- When they reach end of life, data storage devices and the data on them are rendered useless by being physically destroyed.
- We continually monitor regulatory requirements and industry practices to ensure that we do our best to stay on top of both and ensure that we meet our clients' expectations in this regard.
- In the event of a data breach we will inform our clients of the details.
- We delete your personal data from our systems when you cease to be a NinerNet client. However, data already present in security or audit logs, support records, or business transaction records (e.g., invoices), may be retained for those purposes in line with governing laws for data retention.
- We may use cookies to keep you logged into private systems to which only you have access -- e.g., control panels, webmail, etc. -- and to monitor our systems to ensure they are working and responding correctly. You may use your web browser's controls to determine how cookies are used, saved and if or when they are deleted.
