Privacy Policy
The short version
- Song requests need no account: the site sets a random device cookie so your phone can see your own requests.
- Payments for bumps, tips and merch go through Stripe; merch is printed and shipped by Printify.
- We count visits with our own first-party analytics and never recognise you from one day to the next. In Europe it is off unless you accept; elsewhere you can opt out any time.
- Videos from YouTube and Facebook load only when you click play.
1. Who we are
The Side Hicks are a country band from Atlanta, Michigan, USA. We are the controller for the personal data described here. The site is built and hosted for us by The Great Lakes Gleaner, which handles this data only on our behalf.
For anything about your personal data, contact us at our booking and contact form. In this policy “we”, “us” and “our” mean The Side Hicks.
2. What we collect, why, and on what legal basis
| What | Why we use it | Legal basis | How long we keep it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Song requests and setlist picks: the song, an optional name and message (shown on the screen at the show if you add one), your random device ID, payment status, and your IP address | To run requests, enforce per-person limits and stop abuse | Contract: needed to provide what you asked for (GDPR Art. 6(1)(b)); Legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f)) (abuse prevention) | Request records are kept for our records; IP addresses are erased after 90 days |
| Payments: bumps, tips and merch are paid through Stripe; card details go to Stripe, never to us | To take payment and give refunds | Contract: needed to provide what you asked for (GDPR Art. 6(1)(b)); Legal obligation, e.g. tax and accounting law (Art. 6(1)(c)) | As long as tax law requires (usually 7 years) |
| Merch orders: name, email, shipping address and items; Printify receives what it needs to print and ship | To fulfil your order | Contract: needed to provide what you asked for (GDPR Art. 6(1)(b)); Legal obligation, e.g. tax and accounting law (Art. 6(1)(c)) | As long as tax law requires |
| Show alerts: email, and optionally name and ZIP code | To tell you about upcoming shows nearby | Your consent (Art. 6(1)(a)); you can withdraw it any time | Until you unsubscribe or ask us to remove it |
| Booking and contact messages: name, email, phone, event date, venue, message and your IP address | To answer you and book shows | Legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f)); Contract: needed to provide what you asked for (GDPR Art. 6(1)(b)) (bookings) | As long as needed to handle it; IP addresses are erased after 90 days |
| Poll votes: your choice and random device ID | One vote per device | Legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f)) | Until the poll is cleared |
3. Analytics, cookies and similar storage
How we measure visits
Our pages load a small script from our own domain (/_hub/e.js) that reports to our own server. It is not Google Analytics or any other third-party analytics service, and nothing it collects is shared with advertisers. When it is allowed to run (see your choices below) it records:
- the page address (never the part after “?”), the website you came from (its domain only), how long the page was actively in view, how far you scrolled, and the order of pages within one visit;
- clicks and taps on links and buttons (the button or link text and where the link goes), taps on our phone, text or email links, file downloads, and video plays and how much was watched;
- when a form is started or sent and which fields your browser flagged as incomplete, but never anything you type;
- page-speed measurements (Core Web Vitals), JavaScript and loading errors, rapid repeated clicks, and whether text was copied or the page printed;
- device type, browser and operating system (from your browser’s User-Agent), screen width, touchscreen or not, language, time zone, dark-mode setting and connection type (such as 4G);
- campaign tags in the link you followed (
utm_source,utm_medium,utm_campaign) and whether an ad click ID was present (never the ID itself); - a random ID for the current browser tab, which ends when you close it.
These IDs are random numbers, not your name or email address, and our server scrambles them with a secret key (hashing) before saving them. This site does not use a persistent visitor ID, so we cannot recognise you from one visit to the next. Your IP address is used for a moment to block floods of fake requests and is not saved by this measurement. We use the results to learn which pages help people, to find errors and slow pages, and to decide what to improve. Detailed records are deleted after 400 days (about 13 months).
Legal basis: if you are in the EU/EEA, the UK or Switzerland, your consent (GDPR Art. 6(1)(a) and the ePrivacy rules on storing information on your device). Elsewhere, our legitimate interest in understanding and improving the site (Art. 6(1)(f)), which you can switch off at any time.
Our own visit counts
Our server also counts visits so the band knows which pages people use: the page, the day and hour, the kind of phone or browser, and the site you came from, plus QR-code scans at shows. No cookies, no names and no IP addresses are saved. It can tell two visits on the same day apart (using a scrambled code made from your IP address, browser and a value that changes every day), but it cannot follow anyone from one day to the next. Browsers that opted out of analytics or send Global Privacy Control are not counted. Legal basis: legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f)).
Your choices
The first time you visit, a small “Privacy choices” box explains this. If your device is set to a European time zone (EU/EEA, UK, Switzerland and neighbouring countries), nothing is stored and nothing is measured unless you click Accept. Elsewhere, measurement runs unless you click Opt out. If your browser sends a Global Privacy Control or Do Not Track signal, we treat it as an opt-out. You can change your mind at any time:
Opting out stops the script on this site, removes its storage from your browser, and deletes the visitor record linked to your random ID from our server. Your choice is saved in the hub_consent cookie for 12 months; if you clear your cookies we will ask again. You can also block or delete cookies and site storage in your browser settings and the site will still work.
Everything we store in your browser
| Name | Type | Purpose | How long | Category |
|---|---|---|---|---|
hub_consent | Cookie | Remembers your privacy choice (analytics on or off) | 12 months | Strictly necessary |
_hub_nb | Session storage | Notes that the privacy box has already been shown in this tab (outside Europe only) | Until you close the tab | Strictly necessary |
_hub_s, _hub_n, _hub_lp | Session storage | Random tab-session ID, page count and previous page, to link the pages of one visit | Until you close the tab | Analytics |
sh_dev | Cookie | Random device ID so your phone can see your own requests, and for per-person limits and poll votes. Set only when you request, pick or vote | 12 months | Strictly necessary for requests |
sh_evt | Cookie | Remembers tonight’s show code after you scan the QR code | 16 hours | Strictly necessary for requests |
sh_admin | Cookie | Signs in band members | Session | Strictly necessary (band only) |
We do not use advertising cookies, tracking pixels or cross-site trackers.
4. Server logs and security
Like almost every website, our web server writes a line for each request it handles: your IP address, the date and time, the page or file requested, the result, the referring page and your browser’s User-Agent. We use these logs to keep the site running and secure: fixing errors, spotting attacks and abusive bots, and counting traffic. The log files roll over by size and are overwritten automatically, usually within a few days. Our traffic dashboard keeps only counts made from them. For daily unique-visitor counts it combines the IP address and browser with a random value that changes every day and is thrown away after three days, so the count cannot be traced back to you.
Legal basis: legitimate interests in security and in running the service (Art. 6(1)(f)).
5. Who we share it with
We do not sell personal information, and we do not share it for advertising. We share it only with:
| Who | What for | What they receive | Where |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hetzner Online GmbH | Server hosting (data centre in Helsinki, Finland) | Everything stored on our servers | Finland (EU) |
| Stripe, Inc. / Stripe Payments Europe | Card payments and billing | Name, email, payment details, amount, billing or shipping address you give at checkout | US / Ireland |
| Printify, Inc. | Printing and shipping merch | Name, shipping address and items ordered | US |
| Our email provider | Sending show alerts and order emails | Your email address and the message | US |
| Google LLC (Google Fonts) | Web fonts loaded by your browser when a page opens | Your IP address, browser details and the page that requested the font | US |
| YouTube (Google) and Facebook (Meta) | Video players, only after you click to play | Your IP address and browser details, and their own cookies, under their policies | US |
Tip links to Venmo, Cash App and PayPal, and links to our Printify store and Facebook page, take you to those services under their own privacy policies.
We may also disclose information if the law requires it, to protect someone’s safety, or to defend legal claims. If the business is ever sold or reorganised, the buyer would take over this information under the same promises.
6. Where your data is stored
Our servers are rented from Hetzner Online GmbH and located in Helsinki, Finland, in the EU. We are based in Michigan, in the United States. Some of the providers above are based in the United States. Where the GDPR applies, transfers to the US rely on the EU–US Data Privacy Framework for providers certified under it, and otherwise on the European Commission’s Standard Contractual Clauses in the provider’s data-processing terms.
7. Your rights
Wherever you live, you can ask us to show you the personal data we hold about you, give you a copy (including in a machine-readable format), correct it, delete it, or stop using it for a particular purpose.
EU/EEA, UK and Switzerland: under the GDPR (and the UK GDPR and Swiss law) you have the rights of access, rectification, erasure, restriction, data portability and objection, including the right to object at any time to processing based on our legitimate interests and to any direct marketing. Where we rely on your consent you can withdraw it at any time; that does not affect what we did before. You can also complain to your data protection authority (list of EU authorities; in the UK, the ICO; in Switzerland, the FDPIC), though we would appreciate the chance to put things right first.
United States: residents of states with privacy laws (such as California, Colorado, Connecticut, Virginia and others) have similar rights to know, delete and correct their information and to opt out of its sale or use for targeted advertising. We do not sell or share personal information in that sense, and we honour Global Privacy Control signals.
We do not make decisions about you based solely on automated processing that have legal or similarly significant effects.
To use any of these rights, contact us at our booking and contact form. We reply within one month. For complex requests we may take up to two more months and will tell you if so. We may need to confirm that a request really comes from you. Using your rights will never count against you.
8. Children
The site is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect their personal data. If you think we have, contact us and we will delete it.
9. Security
Every page is served over HTTPS. Admin tools are password-protected, passwords are stored only as salted hashes, and card numbers never reach our servers (Stripe handles them). No system is perfectly secure; if a breach affects your data we will tell you and the authorities where the law requires.
10. Changes to this policy
We will post any changes here with a new effective date. If a change is significant we will also say so on the site.