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Privacy Policy

Last updated: 12 October 2026

Best Snooker Cue (bestsnookercue.com) is an independent review and buying-guide website for snooker and billiard equipment. It is operated by Shabloool, a business based in Israel, which is responsible for the data described here. You can reach us at service@shabloool.co.il. This policy explains what the site collects, why, how long we keep it, and the choices you have. It is written to meet the UK GDPR and EU GDPR standards that most of our readers are covered by.

What we collect

1. Our own visit and click counts (no cookies)

We count page views and clicks on shop buttons ourselves, on our own server, without cookies or any other storage in your browser. When a page loads, your browser sends a small request to our server with the page address and the address of the page that referred you. When you click a "View on AliExpress" or "View on Amazon" button, the click goes through our server first (a /go/ link) and is then forwarded to the shop. For each page view or click we record:

  • the page you viewed, or the product you clicked, which shop it led to, and the page and position of the button;
  • the referring page, which tells us whether you came from a search engine, another website or a link inside our site;
  • the date and time;
  • your browser's user-agent string (browser and operating system), which we also use to filter out bots;
  • a visitor code: your IP address and user-agent are combined with a secret value and passed through a one-way hash (SHA-256), and only a short part of the result is kept.

Your IP address is not stored. The visitor code lets us count unique visitors and tell real clicks from automated ones. The same browser on the same connection produces the same code across visits, so it is pseudonymous rather than fully anonymous, but we do not combine it with anything that identifies you and we never try to identify individual visitors. Our web server does not keep separate access logs of visitors' IP addresses.

2. Analytics cookies (only with your consent)

When you first visit, a banner asks whether you accept analytics cookies. Only if you click Accept do we load Microsoft Clarity, which sets cookies and records session replays and heatmaps so we can see how pages are used. Clarity's privacy statement is at privacy.microsoft.com. If you click Decline, Clarity is never loaded and no analytics cookies are set. Your choice is remembered in your browser's local storage (bsc_cookie_consent), and you can change it at any time with "Cookie settings" in the footer. Every cookie is listed in our Cookie Notice.

3. Newsletter

If you sign up for our newsletter, we collect only your email address. Along with it we store the page you signed up on, the wording and time of your consent, whether you have confirmed or unsubscribed and when, when we sent your confirmation and welcome emails, and the same visitor code described above (used only to stop abuse of the sign-up form).

  • Double opt-in: nothing is sent to you until you click the confirmation link we email you. Sign-ups that are never confirmed are deleted after 90 days.
  • Sent via Brevo: confirmation emails and newsletters are delivered by our email provider Brevo (Sendinblue SAS, France), which processes your address on our behalf and keeps its own delivery records.
  • One-click unsubscribe: every email has an unsubscribe link that works with one click, and supporting email apps also show their own unsubscribe button. After you unsubscribe we keep your address marked as unsubscribed so that we do not email you again; if you would rather we delete it entirely, just ask.
  • Newsletters link to pages on this site rather than directly to shops. We never sell or share your address.

4. Emails you send us

If you email us, we keep the correspondence for as long as needed to reply and for our records.

Affiliate links and shop cookies

Best Snooker Cue is reader-supported. Product links marked "View on AliExpress", "View on Amazon" or "#ad" are affiliate links: when you click one and buy, the retailer pays us a commission at no extra cost to you. We take part in the AliExpress Affiliate Programme and the Amazon Associates Programme. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. See our affiliate disclosure.

When you click an affiliate link you leave our site. The retailer sets its own cookies on its own domain to credit the sale to us; those cookies are governed by the retailer's privacy policy, not ours. We never see who bought what, only order counts and commission totals from the affiliate programmes.

Legal basis

  • Our own visit and click counts: our legitimate interest in understanding and improving the site, using the least data that does the job (no cookies, no stored IP addresses).
  • Analytics cookies (Microsoft Clarity): your consent, given in the banner and withdrawable at any time.
  • Newsletter: your consent, given by signing up and confirming your address.
  • Email correspondence: our legitimate interest in answering you.

How long we keep data

  • Visit and click counts: kept for up to five years from the visit, so we can compare traffic across years, and then deleted; they contain no IP addresses or names.
  • Newsletter: confirmed subscribers are kept until you unsubscribe or ask us to delete you; unconfirmed sign-ups are deleted after 90 days.
  • Microsoft Clarity: according to Microsoft's own schedule (currently up to 13 months).
  • Emails you send us: up to 2 years.
  • Backups: our database is backed up daily and each backup is deleted after 14 days, so data you ask us to erase disappears from backups within two weeks.

Who else sees data

Our hosting provider (Vultr) runs the server that stores this data on our behalf. Brevo sends our emails. Microsoft (Clarity) receives analytics data only after you consent. Affiliate programmes (AliExpress, Amazon Associates) see the visit when you arrive on their site, not your identity from us. We do not sell, rent or trade any visitor information.

Your rights

You can ask us what data we hold about you and for a copy of it (access), ask us to correct it, ask us to delete it, object to our processing, and withdraw any consent you have given. Email service@shabloool.co.il and we will reply within one month. For newsletter data, tell us the address you subscribed with. Because our visit counts store no IP addresses or names, we usually cannot link them to you, but we will do what we can if you give us details. You can also complain to a data-protection authority: in Israel the Privacy Protection Authority, in the UK the ICO, or the authority in your EU country. You can withdraw cookie consent at any time via "Cookie settings" in the footer or by clearing your browser's site data for bestsnookercue.com.

Children

The site is not directed at children under 16 and we do not knowingly collect information from them.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as the site changes; the date at the top always shows the latest revision. Material changes will be highlighted on this page.

Contact

Questions or requests: service@shabloool.co.il, or use the contact page.