Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

The Throttle Times is a vehicle ownership publication covering documented problems, repair costs, maintenance schedules and recall coverage. The site is published by KCS Global Group, an independent digital publishing company operating from Durg, Chhattisgarh, India.

For the purposes of data protection law, KCS Global Group is the party responsible for the information described in this policy. Our address and contact details are in section 17, and more about how we work is on our About page.

This policy covers thethrottletimes.com only. It does not cover other websites we link to, including our sister publication Feature and Fit, each of which publishes its own policy.

2. What we collect

Information collected automatically

Like almost every website, our servers and analytics tools record technical information each time a page is requested:

• Your IP address, which indicates your approximate location
• Your browser type and version, operating system and device type
• The pages you view, when you view them, and how long you stay
• The page or search that brought you here, and the links you click
• Approximate screen size and language settings

Information you give us

We do not run a contact form. If you write to one of our published email addresses, we receive whatever you choose to include: your name, your email address, the content of your message and any attachments or documents you send.

Information from advertising and analytics partners

Google and other advertising companies place and read cookies on this site to decide which ads to show you. We do not receive that data in a form that identifies you. We see aggregated reporting only, such as how many impressions a page generated.

3. What we do not collect

Being explicit about this is easier than listing every safeguard around data we never hold in the first place:

• We do not offer accounts, logins or user profiles
• We do not sell products directly and never handle payment card details
• We do not run a newsletter or mailing list at present
• We do not ask for your vehicle identification number, registration or any document that identifies your vehicle to a third party
• We do not knowingly collect information about anyone under 13
• We do not sell, rent or trade your personal information to anyone

4. Why we collect it

5. Cookies

A cookie is a small file a website asks your browser to store. This site uses three kinds.

Necessary cookies

Set by our hosting platform and content system to serve pages correctly and keep the site secure. The site does not work properly without them.

Analytics cookies

Used to count visits and understand which pages are read. These tell us that a page was read, not who read it.

Advertising cookies

Set by Google and other advertising companies to select ads, measure performance and cap how often an ad repeats. These are the cookies that track behaviour across different websites, and section 6 covers them in detail.

Turning cookies off

Every major browser lets you block or delete cookies in its settings. Blocking advertising and analytics cookies does not stop you reading anything here. Blocking all cookies may affect how some pages display.

6. Advertising and Google AdSense

This site is funded by advertising. The disclosures below are required of every publisher using Google’s advertising products, and they describe the most significant data collection that takes place here.

• Third party vendors, including Google, use cookies to serve ads based on your prior visits to this website and other websites.
• Google’s use of advertising cookies enables it and its partners to serve ads to you based on your visit to this site and other sites on the internet.
• You may opt out of personalised advertising by visiting Google My Ad Center.
• Alternatively, you can opt out of a third party vendor’s use of cookies for personalised advertising at aboutads.info.

Google’s own explanation of how it uses information from sites that use its services is published at policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites, and its advertising policies at policies.google.com/technologies/ads.

Advertising networks other than Google may also serve ads here. You can opt out of many of them at once through the Network Advertising Initiative opt-out tool.

7. Affiliate links

Some links to parts, tools and products are affiliate links. If you click one and buy something, the retailer pays us a small commission at no extra cost to you. We participate in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program and may join comparable programmes with other retailers.

When you click an affiliate link, the retailer sets its own cookie to record that the visit came from us. That cookie is governed by the retailer’s privacy policy, not ours. We are told that a sale occurred and what commission it earned. We are not told your name, your address or what else you bought.

Which products we recommend is decided by our editorial team, and no retailer pays for placement or for a particular verdict. That separation is set out in full on How We Make Money and our Affiliate Disclosure.

8. Other services we use

These third parties process some data on our behalf when you visit:

Each operates under its own privacy policy. Where we add or remove a service, we update this list and the date at the top of the page.

9. Your choices and rights

Wherever you live, you can do all of the following:

• Turn off personalised ads through Google My Ad Center or aboutads.info.
• Opt out of Google Analytics using Google’s browser opt-out add-on.
• Block or delete cookies in your browser settings.
• Use a tracking-blocking browser or extension. We do not attempt to detect or work around them.
• Ask what we hold about you, ask us to correct it, or ask us to delete it, by writing to the address in section 17.

We respond to requests within 30 days. We may ask you to confirm the email address the request relates to, since that is usually the only identifier we have.

10. United States residents

Most of our readers are in the United States. Residents of California and of other states with comparable privacy laws have specific rights, including the right to know what personal information is collected, the right to request deletion, the right to correct inaccurate information, and the right to opt out of the sale or sharing of personal information.

We do not sell your personal information

We have never sold personal information for money and do not intend to. However, California law defines “sharing” broadly enough that the use of advertising cookies for cross-context behavioural advertising may fall within it. If you wish to stop that, opt out of personalised advertising using the links in section 9, or write to us and we will confirm what applies to you.

Exercising your rights

Send your request to info@thethrottletimes.com with the subject line “Privacy request”. We will not discriminate against you for making one: you will see the same content, on the same terms, as everyone else.

Global Privacy Control

Where your browser sends a Global Privacy Control signal, we treat it as a request to opt out of the sharing of your information for advertising.

11. Europe and the United Kingdom

We publish for a United States audience, but the site is reachable elsewhere. If you are in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom or Switzerland, you have the right to access your data, correct it, have it erased, restrict or object to its processing, and receive it in a portable form. You may also complain to your national supervisory authority.

Our legal bases for processing are:

• Legitimate interests for server logs, security and aggregate analytics, which are necessary to run and protect the site.
• Consent for advertising and analytics cookies, which you may withdraw at any time through your browser or the opt-out links in section 9.
• Legitimate interests for correspondence, so that we can reply to you and keep a record of corrections.

12. How long we keep things

You can ask us to delete your correspondence earlier. Where a message led to a correction, we may keep the substance of it, with your personal details removed, because our Corrections Policy commits us to a durable record of why an article changed.

13. Where your data is handled

Our editorial team works in India. Our hosting, advertising and analytics providers operate servers in the United States and elsewhere. This means information about your visit may be processed in countries other than the one you live in, including countries whose data protection rules differ from your own.

Where we use third-party services, we rely on the safeguards those providers have in place, including standard contractual clauses where applicable. We state this plainly because a policy that implies all data stays in one country would be untrue.

14. Children

This site is written for adult vehicle owners. It is not directed at children, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 13, or under 16 where local law sets that threshold.

If you believe a child has sent us personal information, write to info@thethrottletimes.com and we will delete it.

15. Security

The site is served over an encrypted HTTPS connection. Access to our publishing system and mailboxes is limited to members of our editorial team who need it, and is protected by individual accounts and multi-factor authentication.

No method of transmission over the internet is completely secure, and we will not claim otherwise. Since we hold very little about you, the practical consequence of a breach here is smaller than on a site that stores accounts or payment details.

16. Changes to this policy

When we add a service, change how we use data, or a law requires it, we update this page and change the date at the top. Material changes are noted in a short line beneath that date for at least 30 days so returning readers can see what moved.

We do not apply changes retroactively to data already collected under an earlier version.