Privacy

Who is responsible for your data

M4B1 For Computer Systems & Communication Equipment Software Design, trading as M4B1, based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. For data-protection purposes this is the data controller. Contact: hello@m4b1.com.

What is collected

Two things, and nothing else.

1. What you type into the contact form: your name, your business name, your email address, the country the business is in, the industry you select, and your message. Nothing is pre-filled and nothing is inferred.
2. Analytics, through two tools that run on this site. Google Analytics records which pages were viewed, roughly where in the world the visit came from at country level, the type of device, and which site referred you. Microsoft Clarity records the same and also replays the visit: pointer movement, clicks, and how far down a page you scrolled. Clarity is set to mask the text on the page, so what you type into the form is not readable in a recording.

Neither of those is anonymous in the strict sense. Both set a cookie that recognises your browser when you come back to this site, so a return visit can be told apart from a new one. Neither is given your name or your email address, neither is linked to an advertising account, and neither can follow you to other websites. The cookies section below says how to switch them off.

The server also records the IP address of contact-form submissions temporarily, for the sole purpose of rate-limiting abuse. It is held in memory, is not written to a database, and is discarded within an hour.

Why it is collected

• Your form submission is used to reply to your enquiry and, if we go on to work together, to organise that work. The lawful basis is that you asked me to respond — steps taken at your request before entering a contract.
• The analytics are used to understand which pages are worth keeping, which guides are worth writing next, and where a page is confusing enough that people give up on it. The lawful basis is legitimate interest in knowing whether the site works, balanced against the fact that it tells me nothing about you personally and is not used to contact you.
• The temporary IP record exists to stop automated abuse of the form. The lawful basis is legitimate interest in keeping the service working.

Your details are never sold, never rented, and never added to a marketing list. There is no newsletter to be added to.

Where it is stored, and who else sees it

A form submission becomes an email. It travels through the email delivery provider that sends it and then sits in my inbox with my email provider. Both are established providers with their own security and privacy terms, and both may process data outside your country, including in the European Union and the United States.

Analytics data is held by Google and by Microsoft on their own infrastructure, which includes servers in the United States. Each processes it under its own terms — Google under the Google Analytics data processing terms, Microsoft under the Clarity terms — and each is a processor acting for this site rather than a recipient of anything you sent me.

Nobody else has access. There is no team, no CRM, and no advertising platform receiving your details. I do not run advertising, and neither analytics account is connected to an ad account.

International transfers

I am based in the United Arab Emirates, so if you are in the European Union or the United Kingdom your enquiry will be transferred outside those areas when I read it. Transfers are made on the basis of your explicit request that I reply to you, and are limited to what you chose to send. Standard contractual clauses are in place with the email and hosting providers where those providers offer them. The two analytics tools also process data in the United States, under the transfer terms Google and Microsoft publish for those products.

How long it is kept

Enquiry that goes nowhere

12 months, then deleted

Enquiry that becomes work

Duration of the work, plus 6 years

Rate-limiting IP record

Under 1 hour

Google Analytics

Up to 14 months

Clarity session recordings

30 days

The six-year figure on client records exists because accounting and tax records have to be retained. It applies to invoices and project correspondence, not to marketing.

Your rights

If you are in the European Union or the United Kingdom, the GDPR and the UK GDPR give you the following rights. I extend them to everybody who contacts me, wherever they are, because operating two standards is more work than operating one.

• Ask for a copy of everything I hold about you.
• Ask for anything inaccurate to be corrected.
• Ask for it to be deleted. Unless I am legally required to keep an accounting record, it will be.
• Ask me to restrict how it is used, or object to that use.
• Ask for it in a portable format.
• Complain to your national data protection authority if you are not satisfied with how I have handled it.

To use any of these, email hello@m4b1.com. I will action it within 30 days and I will not ask you why.

Cookies and session recording

This site sets cookies. An earlier version of this page said it set none, which was true then and is not true now, so here is the full list.

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Google Analytics. Up to 2 years

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Microsoft Clarity. 1 year

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Microsoft Clarity. 1 day

That is the whole list. There are no preference cookies, because the site has no settings to remember, and no advertising cookies, because nothing here advertises to you or sells space to anybody who would.

Clarity also records the visit itself, which is worth stating plainly rather than burying under the word analytics: it saves your pointer movement, your clicks and your scrolling as a replay I can watch later, so I can see where a page loses people. It is set to mask the text on the page, so a recording shows where you clicked and typed but not what you wrote.

None of this is needed for the site to work. A content blocker, or a browser that blocks third-party scripts, stops both tools loading and nothing on the site breaks. Google also publishes an add-on at tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout that opts your browser out of Google Analytics on every site, not just this one.

If you would rather I did not hold what these tools recorded from your visits, email hello@m4b1.com and I will delete it.

Booking a call

The contact page carries a link to a scheduling page hosted by cal.com. It is a plain link: nothing from cal.com loads on this site, and cal.com is not contacted at all unless you click it. If you do book a time, you are on their site and their privacy policy applies to what you enter there. Booking a call is never required — the form gets you a price just as quickly.

The demo sites

The demo sites on this domain are for businesses that do not exist. Their contact forms are not connected to anything and submit nowhere. The names, addresses, phone numbers, staff and reviews in them are invented.

Changes to this page

If this changes materially, the date at the top changes and the previous version is available on request. There is no mailing list to notify, by design.