Privacy

BGA Business is a student club of the British-Georgian Academy in Tbilisi. Its site lives at bganews.press/business, alongside the school paper Keeping Up With BGA, and is run by the same students. Most people who use it are at school, so it was built to work without knowing who they are.

The short version

• There are no accounts. You never have to give a name, email or phone number to use the site.
• There is no advertising and no advertising tracker. Nothing about you is sold or passed on.
• Visits are counted, not followed.
• A question you send is read only by the team, and your name goes with it only if you write it in.

Questions for a guest

When you send a question, the site keeps what you wrote and, if you filled it in, your name and class. Both are passed to the chief editor on Telegram so the team can read them. The best questions may be asked aloud at the talk; your name is said only if you gave it. A short code made from your network address and browser for that day only (the address itself is not kept) is stored with the question, so that one browser cannot send hundreds. To have a question deleted, write to us.

Saying you are coming, and voting

The “I'm coming” button and the votes on questions need no name. They are tied to a random code kept in a cookie in your browser, the same one the reactions under a story use, so that one person counts once and can change their mind. Only the totals are shown to anyone.

Counting visits

When a page is opened, the site records which page it was, the time, whether it was a phone, a tablet or a computer, and the site you came from, if there was one. Some buttons are counted the same way. One reader is told from another within a single day by the same kind of one-day code described above, which changes every day and cannot be turned back into an address.

What is kept in your own browser

If you press a reaction under a story, a cookie with a random number is set so the same browser cannot press the same button twice. It lasts about a year. Nothing else is stored, and none of it is used to follow you between sites.

The 3D scene

The floating questions at the top of the page are drawn inside your own browser. Where your pointer is and what you click there is never sent anywhere.

Other companies

• Hosting. The site runs on Vercel and its database is kept by Neon. Like any web host, they handle your network address in order to send you the page.
• Telegram. Questions reach the team through Telegram, and photographs in stories are stored there.
• Instagram and YouTube. A story that shows a post or a film loads it from them, and they see your visit under their own policies.

People at the talks

Talks are school events, and stories and photographs from them may name or show students and guests. If you (or, for a younger student, your parent or guardian) want a photograph or a mention removed, write to us. No reason is needed.

Asking about your data

Write to luka.makhatadze@bga.ge or use the report form to see, correct or delete anything the site holds about you. The full policy for the whole of bganews.press is in the paper’s privacy page. See also the terms of use.