Privacy policy

The controller is Tihomir Hrvacevic, trading as Balkaris, Chaletweg 8, 8305 Dietlikon, Switzerland. For anything on this page, including requests about your own data, write to tihomir@balkaris.ch or call +41 77 928 05 10.

Swiss data protection law applies to us. Where we handle data of people in the European Economic Area, the GDPR applies as well, and we meet the stricter of the two.

When you visit this site. The server records the technical details of the request: time, browser type, the page asked for, and a shortened IP address. Our hosting providers keep that log for a limited period so the site keeps running and faults can be found. Nothing that measures you loads unless you agree: the site asks once, and until you say yes it sets no cookies and contacts no analytics provider. It serves its typefaces from its own domain. The illustrative images on some service pages are fetched from Unsplash by our server, not by your browser, so no third party learns your address because you opened a page.

When you agree to measurement. If you accept on the cookie card, we load Google Analytics 4 and Microsoft Clarity. Each of them is a switch of its own under “Customise” on that card, and only what you switch on is loaded. Google Analytics (Google Ireland Limited) counts visits and shows which pages are read. Microsoft Clarity (Microsoft Ireland Operations Limited) shows how pages are used — scrolling, clicks and replays of visits, in which what you type into a field is masked before it leaves your browser. These providers set cookies and receive your IP address, your device and browser details and the pages you open; they may process that in the United States, under the standard contractual clauses. We do not send them your name, your email address or anything you write in a form or say to the guide. Google Analytics keeps visit data for no longer than 14 months; Microsoft keeps replays for 30 days and the statistics drawn from them for up to 13 months. You can change or take back any part of it at any time under Cookie settings at the foot of every page: what you switch off stops running, its cookies are removed and nothing further is sent. The cookies themselves are listed on the cookies page.

When you use the site search and the AI guide. What you type into the search field or say to the guide is sent to our server and on to Anthropic, the AI provider that produces the answer or the recommendation, together with short extracts of this site’s own pages. It is used for nothing else and is not used to train any model. The conversation is kept in your browser’s own storage on your device — not on our server — so you can return to it; it is gone when you start over or clear the site’s data. We use this to answer your question and to suggest which of our services fits what you describe.

When you send an enquiry. The contact form and the guide’s enquiry form collect your name, email address and message, and, if you give them, your company, telephone number and links, together with the services you chose and the summary the guide prepared. They go to our own enquiry system, which records the enquiry, tells us, and sends you a confirmation. If you book a call, the time you choose goes to our calendar. A reference for your enquiry is kept in your browser’s storage so you can see its status and book on it. We use all of this to answer you and, if we end up working together, to run the project — the steps before a contract, and our legitimate interest in answering the people who write to us.

When you become a client. We hold the contact details, correspondence, documents and project records needed to deliver the work and to meet our accounting obligations.

When we contact you first. See If we contacted you first below.

We do not sell personal data and we do not share it for anyone else’s advertising. To run this website we use hosting and delivery providers, the AI provider behind the search and the guide, and our own enquiry system on hosted infrastructure. To run the business we also use providers for email and mailboxes, telephony, customer relationship management, social platform integrations, error monitoring, and AI services for text, speech and images.

Data is processed in Switzerland, the European Union and the United States. Where a provider is outside Switzerland and the EEA, the transfer is covered by the European Commission’s standard contractual clauses together with the Swiss addendum.

The named list, with the purpose and country of each provider, is on the subprocessors page and carries the date it was last checked.

On this website, AI answers the site search and runs the guide, as described above. In our work, we use AI services to draft and classify written correspondence, to transcribe recordings, and to generate speech and images. Client and prospect data does reach those services as part of that work.

None of it is used to train any model. We do not train or fine-tune models on client data, and the providers we use exclude data sent through their business interfaces from their training.

No decision with a legal or similarly significant effect is made about anyone by a machine. A person approves every message, price and commitment that reaches a client before it is sent.

Calls on our business line may be recorded and transcribed so that we have an accurate record of what was agreed. When a call is being recorded you are told so at the start, before anything else happens, and you can decline.

Meetings are transcribed only where the participants know it is happening. Recordings and transcripts are kept with the project records and are not published.

If you received an email or a message from us without having asked for one, this section is the part that concerns you, and you are entitled to it.

Where we got your details. From publicly available business sources: company websites, public business listings and public professional profiles. We collect business contact details — name, role, company and a work email address — not private ones, and we did not buy them as a list.

Why we did it. To offer services we believe are relevant to your company. Our legitimate interest in direct business outreach is the basis for this, balanced against your interest in being left alone, which is why one refusal is enough and permanent.

How to stop it. Reply with a single word, or write to tihomir@balkaris.ch. We will delete your details or, where you prefer, keep only the minimum needed to make sure we never contact you again. You do not have to give a reason and we will not ask for one.

Our outreach is sent from separate sending domains rather than from this one. It is still us, and this policy still applies to it.

Server logs are kept by our hosting providers for a limited period and then discarded. What you say to the guide stays on your own device and is never stored on our server. Enquiries that do not become projects are deleted within twelve months. Project records are kept for the length of the engagement and then for the ten years Swiss accounting law requires. Prospect records are deleted when they are no longer relevant, and immediately on request.

You can ask what we hold about you, ask for a copy, have it corrected, have it deleted, restrict what we do with it, and object to processing based on legitimate interest — including outreach. Where the GDPR applies you can also ask for your data in a portable form.

Write to tihomir@balkaris.ch. We answer within thirty days and there is no charge. If you are not satisfied you can complain to the Swiss Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner, or to your local supervisory authority in the EEA.

When this policy changes we update it here and change the date on the subprocessors page if the providers changed with it. We do not notify changes individually.