Privacy Policy

Privacy Policy

Last updated: April 15, 2026

This privacy policy describes how HostGalore collects, uses, and protects your information when you visit our website.

Information We Collect

Automatically Collected Information

When you visit our site, we may automatically collect:

• Browser type and version
• Operating system
• Referring URLs
• Pages visited and time spent
• IP address (anonymized when sent to analytics services)

This information is collected only when you have granted analytics consent (see Cookie Consent below).

Information You Provide

Contact form. When you use our contact form, we collect your name, email address, and the subject and content of your message. This information is used solely to respond to your inquiry and is not shared with third parties.

Correction requests. When you submit a correction request on a review, article, or comparison page, we collect your name, email address, and the details of the correction. This information is used solely to investigate and address factual issues.

Member accounts. If you register a member account, we collect your name, email address, and password (stored in hashed form). Your email address must be verified before you can use account features such as commenting. Account data is used to manage your identity and comment history on the site.

Comments. When you submit a comment, we collect:

• Your comment text
• For guest comments: your name, email address, and optionally your website URL
• For authenticated comments: your user account identity
• Anti-abuse metadata: a one-way hash of your IP address and user agent string, and the time of submission

Your display name and comment text are shown publicly on the page once a moderator approves your comment. Guest email addresses and website URLs are never displayed publicly. IP and user agent hashes are stored for abuse prevention and are not reversible to the original values.

Abuse reports. If you report a comment, we collect the reason you provide and a hash of your IP address. If you are logged in, your user ID is also recorded. Reports are used by our moderation team to review potentially harmful content.

How We Use Your Information

• To improve our website and content
• To analyze site traffic and usage patterns (when analytics consent is granted)
• To display relevant advertisements (when advertising consent is granted)
• To respond to inquiries submitted via our contact form
• To display approved comments on public content pages
• To moderate comments, prevent spam, and enforce community standards
• To send comment-related notifications to registered members (approval and reply notifications)

Comment Data and Moderation

All comments — whether submitted by guests or registered members — are held for moderation before appearing publicly. Our editorial team reviews pending comments and may approve, reject, or mark them as spam. Approved comments are displayed publicly with the commenter's display name and comment text only.

We apply layered anti-spam protections to comment submissions, including honeypot fields, rate limiting, form timing checks, content heuristics, and optional reCAPTCHA v3 verification when configured. Comments flagged by these measures may be automatically held or marked as spam.

Comment data is stored in our database. You may request removal of your comments by contacting us.

Cookies

Cookies are small text files stored on your device by your browser. We use cookies for the purposes described below.

Cookie Consent

When you first visit our site, a consent banner asks you to choose which categories of cookies you allow. You can:

• Accept all cookies
• Reject non-essential cookies
• Customise your preferences by category

You can change your cookie preferences at any time by clicking the Cookie Preferences link in the site footer.

Cookie Categories

Essential cookies — always active, cannot be disabled.

Cookie	Purpose	Duration
Session cookie	Maintains your login session and CSRF protection. Set by the Laravel framework.	Browser session or up to 2 hours of inactivity
XSRF-TOKEN	Provides cross-site request forgery protection.	Browser session
cookie_consent	Stores your cookie consent preferences (categories granted, schema version, and timestamp).	365 days

Analytics cookies — enabled only when you grant analytics consent.

Cookie	Provider	Purpose	Duration
_ga, _ga_*	Google Analytics (GA4)	Distinguish unique visitors and track page views, traffic sources, and site usage.	Up to 2 years

Advertising cookies — enabled only when you grant advertising consent.

Cookie	Provider	Purpose	Duration
Various	Google AdSense	Serve relevant advertisements and measure ad performance.	Varies

Consent Modes

Our consent system supports three operating modes configured by the site operator:

• Off — No consent banner is shown. Analytics and advertising scripts load when their configuration is present. Suitable for regions without cookie consent requirements.
• Informational — The consent banner is shown for transparency, but analytics and advertising scripts load regardless of the visitor's choice.
• Opt-in (default) — Analytics and advertising scripts are blocked until you explicitly grant consent for each category. No third-party tracking cookies are set until you opt in.

The current default mode is opt-in.

Third-Party Services

Depending on your consent choices, we may load the following third-party services:

• Google Analytics (GA4) — Website traffic analysis. Google's privacy policy: https://policies.google.com/privacy
• Google AdSense — Display advertising. Google's advertising privacy policy: https://policies.google.com/technologies/ads
• Google reCAPTCHA v3 — Spam protection on forms where applicable, including the registration, contact, correction-request, and comment forms. This service may set cookies and collect usage data as described in Google's privacy policy.

Each third-party service has its own privacy policy governing the use of your information. We encourage you to review those policies.

Your Rights

You have the right to:

• Control which cookie categories are active via the consent banner or footer link
• Request access to any personal data we hold
• Request correction or deletion of your data, including comments you have submitted
• Delete your member account through the account settings page
• Disable all cookies through your browser settings (note: this may affect site functionality)

Changes to This Policy

We may update this privacy policy to reflect changes in our practices or legal requirements. When we do, we will update the "Last updated" date at the top of this page. If we change the consent categories, your stored preference will be reset so you can make a new choice.

Contact

For privacy-related questions, please reach us at hello@hostgalore.com or visit our Contact page.