Privacy Policy

Who is responsible for your data

Appalachian Sites is operated by Joost Besijn, a sole trader established in the Netherlands.

Chamber of Commerce (KVK) number: [KVK_NUMBER]
Postal address: [POSTAL_ADDRESS]
Email: [EMAIL]

Because the business is established in the EU, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) applies to everything described below, including to recipients located in the United States.

What we collect, and why

When you fill in the form on this site

We collect the name, business name, email address, phone number and any message you choose to give us. We use it for one purpose only: to answer you and, if you want it, to prepare a quote or a website. The legal basis is your consent, and the steps taken at your request before entering into a contract.

When we contact a business first

We send a small number of introduction emails to businesses in western North Carolina whose contact details we obtained from public sources, such as state and county licence registries and publicly listed business information. Where that email address belongs to a sole trader it counts as personal data, and we process it on the basis of legitimate interest (Article 6(1)(f) GDPR) — specifically, the interest in offering a relevant business service to a business that is publicly advertising for custom. We have weighed that interest against the recipient's privacy: the contact details are already public and business-facing, the volume is deliberately low, the content is relevant to the recipient's trade, and one reply stops all further contact permanently.

Every such email says who we are, gives a real postal address, and contains a working opt-out. If you ask us to stop, we stop, and we keep only the minimum record needed to make sure we do not contact you again by mistake.

When you simply visit this site

This site does not use advertising cookies and does not track you across other websites. Our hosting provider processes standard technical request data, such as your IP address and browser type, to serve the pages and keep the site secure.

Who else sees it

We do not sell personal data and we do not share it for anyone else's marketing. We use a small number of service providers who process data on our behalf and only on our instructions: a website host, an email delivery provider, and an email mailbox provider. Some of these are based in the United States; those transfers rely on the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses or the EU–US Data Privacy Framework.

How long we keep it

Enquiries that do not lead to work are deleted within 12 months. Records relating to actual client work are kept for as long as the law requires us to keep our business administration — seven years under Dutch tax law. Opt-out records are kept indefinitely, because deleting them would defeat their purpose.

Your rights

You can ask us for a copy of the personal data we hold about you, ask us to correct it or delete it, ask us to restrict how we use it, ask for it in a portable format, and object to processing based on legitimate interest — including our introduction emails. Email [EMAIL] and we will answer within one month.

If you are not satisfied with our answer, you may complain to the Dutch data protection authority, the Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens (autoriteitpersoonsgegevens.nl), or to the supervisory authority in your own country.

Changes

If we change how we handle personal data we will update this page and change the date at the top.