Privacy Policy

Who we are

House of Test GmbH, Steinbruchstrasse 3, 5506 Mägenwil, Switzerland, is responsible for the personal data described here. We are subject to the Swiss Federal Act on Data Protection (revFADP / revDSG). Where we process data about people in the EU or EEA, the GDPR applies as well.

For anything to do with your data, write to nikola.ristic@houseoftest.ch. We answer in writing.

What we collect, and why

When you contact us or ask about a course

Your name, company, email address, phone number, what you write to us, and the page you sent it from. The message goes by email to the three of us who answer enquiries, and we keep a record of it in our CRM so we can follow up and keep track of the conversation.

Why we may do this: our legitimate interest in answering people who contact us, and, where a contract follows, performing that contract.

When you use the Release Risk Self-Check

You answer 25 statements about how your team ships software, then give us your first name and email address so we can send you the result.

We store your answers, your score, your per-dimension scores, the language you used, the page you came from, and, if you arrived from an ad, the campaign parameters in the link.

Why we may do this: to provide what you asked for. You asked for your score, and sending it is performing that request. We also keep the result to understand software quality practice in the Swiss market. That second purpose is our legitimate interest in understanding the market we work in, and you can object to it at any time by writing to us.

One of us may also email you personally about your result, one to one. That isn't marketing, and you can tell us at any time that you'd rather not hear from us.

When you sign up for a newsletter or the email course

Your first name, email address, the language you used, and which list you chose: The Spark, Quality Mindset, or the free email course. We send these emails only because you asked for them, and every one of them has an unsubscribe link.

When you tick a marketing box

Separately and optionally, the self-check and the email course let you ask for occasional emails about testing practice. That is a free choice, we record when and where you gave it, and you can withdraw it at any time. Withdrawing is as easy as giving it was.

We do not send you marketing unless you ticked that box. Ticking it does not change what happens to your score.

When you visit the website

Technical data that every website receives, such as your IP address, browser and the pages you request, so the site can be delivered and protected against abuse. Analytics and marketing cookies are only set if you allow them in the cookie banner. What each cookie does is listed on our cookie page, where you can also change your choice.

Our forms are protected by Cloudflare Turnstile, which checks in the background that a person, not a bot, is sending the form. It does not use cookies for advertising.

Who else handles your data

We use these providers. They process data on our instructions, under a data processing agreement, and are not permitted to use it for their own purposes.

• Cloudflare: hosts the website, runs the form processing, keeps a backup copy of each form submission, and provides the Turnstile spam protection. US, with a global network.
• Resend: sends the emails the website generates, such as your self-check result and the notification of your enquiry to us. US.
• monday.com: our CRM, where your contact record and enquiries are kept. US and Israel.
• Intuit Mailchimp: our newsletters and the email course, only if you signed up or ticked a marketing box. US.
• Google Workspace: our email, where your messages to us arrive. US and EU.
• Google Analytics: measuring how the website is used, only if you allow analytics cookies. Google Analytics 4 does not store IP addresses. US.
• LinkedIn, loaded through Google Tag Manager: measuring whether our LinkedIn posts bring people to the site, only if you allow marketing cookies. US and EU.
• YouTube: some course and article pages show embedded videos, in YouTube's privacy-enhanced mode. Your browser connects to YouTube when such a page loads, and YouTube stores information in your browser only once you play a video. US.

Transfers outside Switzerland. Several of these providers are in the United States. Switzerland has recognised the Swiss–US Data Privacy Framework since 15 September 2024, so transfers to providers certified under it are treated as adequately protected. Where a provider is not certified, we rely on the Standard Contractual Clauses with the Swiss addendum. You can ask us which basis applies to a given provider and we will tell you.

How long we keep it

We keep your self-check result, your enquiries and your contact details for as long as we might plausibly still be useful to each other, in practice five years from the last time you were in touch, and then delete them.

If you're on a newsletter list, you stay there until you unsubscribe.

A few things have their own clock. The backup copy of a form submission is deleted automatically after one year. The website's technical logs clear themselves after a few days. Contracts and accounting records have to be kept for ten years under Swiss law.

Ask us to delete your data and we'll do it sooner, apart from anything the law requires us to keep.

Your rights

You can ask us to:

• tell you what data we hold about you, and give you a copy
• correct anything that is wrong
• delete it
• restrict what we do with it
• hand it over in a portable format, or send it to someone else
• stop processing it where we rely on legitimate interest
• withdraw your consent to marketing, with no effect on what we did before you withdrew it

Write to nikola.ristic@houseoftest.ch. We reply within 30 days and there is no charge.

If you are unhappy with how we handled it, you can complain to the Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner (FDPIC / EDÖB) in Bern. If you are in the EU or EEA, you can also complain to your national supervisory authority.

Security

We use providers that encrypt data in transit and at rest, and we limit access to the people who need it. No system is perfectly secure, and we will not pretend otherwise, but if something happens that puts your data at risk, we will tell you and the authorities as the law requires.

Children

The self-check and our services are for people at work. We do not aim any of this at children and we do not knowingly collect data about them.

Changes

If we change how any of this works, we change this page and update the date at the top.