Privacy Policy

Last Updated: September 7, 2025

Your privacy is critically important to us. At Guttormsen IT, we have a few fundamental principles:

We are thoughtful about the personal information we ask you to provide and the personal information that we collect about you through the operation of our services.
We store personal information for only as long as we have a reason to keep it.
We aim to make it as simple as possible for you to control what information is shared publicly, indexed by search engines, and permanently deleted.
We aim for full transparency on how we gather, use, and share your personal information.

Below is our Privacy Policy, which incorporates and clarifies these principles.

Who We Are and What This Policy Covers

We are Guttormsen IT, the folks behind TasteParty. Our mission is to make beer and wine tasting experiences better through technology, allowing anyone to organize and participate in structured tasting events.

This Privacy Policy applies to information that we collect about you when you use:

Our website (taste.party)
Our web application and services that are available on or through our website
Other Guttormsen IT products, services, and features

Throughout this Privacy Policy we'll refer to our website, applications, and other products and services collectively as "Services."

Information We Collect

Information You Provide to Us

We collect information that you provide to us directly. Here are some examples:

Basic account information: We ask for basic information from you in order to set up your account. For example, we require individuals who sign up for a TasteParty account to provide an email address and password, along with a username or name.
Profile information: If you have an account with us, we collect the information that you provide for your profile, such as your name, bio, and profile picture.
Payment and contact information: If you buy something from us, you'll provide payment information and contact information, such as your name, credit card information, and contact information.
Business Profile: Some of our products collect additional information from you as part of creating a user/customer profile. For example, we may collect information including your name, your employer, your job title or role, your contact information, and your communications with us.
Content information: You might provide us with information in the content you create (tasting notes, reviews, or any media you upload).
Credentials: Depending on the Services you use, you may provide us with credentials for integrations or third-party services to allow us to troubleshoot problems more quickly.
Communications with us: You may also provide us with information when you respond to surveys, communicate with our support team, or sign up for a newsletter. When you communicate with us via form, email, phone, or otherwise, we store a copy of our communications.

Information We Collect Automatically

We also collect some information automatically:

Log information: Like most online service providers, we collect information that web browsers and mobile devices typically make available, including the browser type, IP address, unique device identifiers, language preference, referring site, the date and time of access, and operating system.
Transactional information: When you make a purchase through our Services, we collect information about the transaction, such as product details, purchase price, and the date and location of the transaction.
Usage information: We collect information about your usage of our Services, such as the pages you visit, features you use, and actions you take. We also collect information about what happens when you use our Services (e.g., page views, features enabled, interactions with our Services) along with information about your device (e.g., screen size, name of cellular network, and mobile device manufacturer).
Location information: We may determine the approximate location of your device from your IP address for analytics and security purposes. We may also collect information about your precise location via our mobile apps if you allow us to do so through your mobile device operating system's permissions.
Stored information: We may access information stored on your mobile device via our mobile apps. We access this stored information through your device operating system's permissions.
Interactions with other users' sites: We collect some information about your interactions with other users' content while you are logged in to your account with us, such as your ratings and the fact that you participated in a particular tasting event, so that we can, for example, recommend tasting events we think may interest you.
Information from cookies & other technologies: A cookie is a string of information that a website stores on a visitor's computer, and that the visitor's browser provides to the website each time the visitor returns. Pixel tags (also called web beacons) are small blocks of code placed on websites and emails. We use cookies and other technologies like pixel tags to help us identify and track visitors, usage, and access preferences for our Services, as well as track and understand email campaign effectiveness.

Information We Collect from Other Sources

We may also get information about you from other sources. For example:

Third Party Login: If you create or log in to your TasteParty account through another service (like Google) we'll receive associated login information (e.g. a connection token, your username, your email address).
Social Sharing Services: If you connect your account to a social media service through our sharing features, we'll receive information from that service (e.g., your username, basic profile information) via the authorization procedures for that service.

The information we receive depends on which services you use or authorize and what options are available.

Third-party services may also give us information, like mailing addresses for individuals who are not yet our users (but we hope will be!). We use this information for marketing purposes like postcards and other mailers advertising our Services.

How and Why We Use Information

Purposes for Using Information

We use information about you for the purposes listed below:

To provide our Services: For example, to set up and maintain your account, host your tasting events, provide customer service, process payments and orders, and verify user information.
To ensure quality, maintain safety, and improve our Services: For example, by monitoring and analyzing how users interact with our Services so we can create new features and improve existing ones.
To market our Services: For example, by targeting our marketing messages to groups of our users and analyzing the results of our marketing campaigns.
To protect our Services, our users, and the public: For example, by detecting security incidents; detecting and protecting against malicious, deceptive, fraudulent, or illegal activity; fighting spam; and complying with our legal obligations.
To fix problems with our Services: For example, by monitoring, debugging, repairing, and preventing issues.
To customize the user experience: For example, to personalize your experience by serving you relevant notifications and recommendations for tasting events and beverages.
To communicate with you: For example, by emailing you to ask for your feedback, share tips for getting the most out of our products, or keep you up to date on Guttormsen IT.

Legal Bases for Collecting and Using Information

A note here for those in the European Union about our legal grounds for processing information about you under EU data protection laws, which is that our use of your information is based on the grounds that:

The use is necessary in order to fulfill our commitments to you under the applicable terms of service or other agreements with you or is necessary to administer your account.
The use is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation.
The use is necessary in order to protect your vital interests or those of another person.
We have a legitimate interest in using your information — for example, to provide and update our Services; to improve our Services so that we can offer you an even better user experience; to safeguard our Services; to communicate with you; to measure, gauge, and improve the effectiveness of our marketing; and to understand our user retention; to monitor and prevent any problems with our Services; and to personalize your experience.
You have given us your consent — for example before we place certain cookies on your device and access and analyze them later on.

Sharing Information

How We Share Information

We share information about you in limited circumstances, and with appropriate safeguards on your privacy:

Subsidiaries and independent contractors: We may disclose information about you to our subsidiaries and independent contractors who need the information to help us provide our Services or process the information on our behalf. We require our subsidiaries and independent contractors to follow this Privacy Policy for any personal information that we share with them.
Third-party vendors: We may share information about you with third-party vendors who need the information in order to provide their services to us or to you. This includes vendors that help us provide our Services to you (like payment providers that process your credit and debit card information, fraud prevention services, cloud storage services, postal and email delivery services, customer support services, and hosting providers); those that assist us with our marketing efforts; those that help us understand and enhance our Services (like analytics providers); and those that make tools to help us run our operations. We require vendors to agree to privacy commitments in order to share information with them.
Legal and regulatory requirements: We may disclose information about you in response to a subpoena, court order, or other governmental request.
To protect rights, property, and others: We may disclose information about you when we believe in good faith that disclosure is reasonably necessary to protect the property or rights of Guttormsen IT, third parties, or the public at large. For example, if we have a good faith belief that there is an imminent danger of death or serious physical injury, we may disclose information related to the emergency without delay.
Business transfers: In connection with any merger, sale of company assets, or acquisition of all or a portion of our business by another company, or in the unlikely event that Guttormsen IT goes out of business or enters bankruptcy, user information would likely be one of the assets that is transferred or acquired by a third party. If any of these events were to happen, this Privacy Policy would continue to apply to your information and the party receiving your information may continue to use your information, but only consistent with this Privacy Policy.
With your consent: We may share and disclose information with your consent or at your direction. For example, we may share your information with third parties when you authorize us to do so.
Aggregated or de-identified information: We may share information that has been aggregated or de-identified, so that it can no longer reasonably be used to identify you. For instance, we may publish aggregate statistics about the use of our Services.
Published support requests: If you send us a request for assistance (for example, via a support email or one of our other feedback mechanisms), we reserve the right to publish that request in order to clarify or respond to your request, or to help us support other users.

Information Shared Publicly

Information that you choose to make public is disclosed publicly. That means information like your public profile, tasting notes, and ratings that you make public are all available to others.

How Long We Keep Information

We generally discard information about you when it's no longer needed for the purposes for which we collect and use it — described in the section above on How and Why We Use Information — and we're not legally required to keep it.

For example, we keep web server logs that record information about a visitor to our website, like the visitor's IP address, browser type, and operating system. We retain the logs in order to, among other things, analyze traffic to our website and investigate issues if something goes wrong.

As another example, when you delete content from your TasteParty account, it stays in your account for thirty days in case you change your mind and would like to restore that content. After the thirty days are up, the deleted content may remain on our backups and caches until purged.

Security

While no online service is 100% secure, we work very hard to protect information about you against unauthorized access, use, alteration, or destruction, and take reasonable measures to do so. We monitor our Services for potential vulnerabilities and attacks.

To enhance the security of your account, we encourage you to enable our advanced security settings, like Two-Factor Authentication.

Choices

You have several choices available when it comes to information about you:

Limit the information that you provide: If you have an account with us, you can choose not to provide the optional account information, profile information, and transaction and billing information. Please keep in mind that if you do not provide this information, certain features of our Services may not be accessible. If you are a job applicant, and you choose not to provide certain data elements to us, we may not be able to proceed with the recruitment process.
Limit access to information on your mobile device: Your mobile device operating system should provide you with the option to discontinue our ability to collect stored information or location information via our mobile apps. If you choose to limit this, you may not be able to use certain features.
Opt out of marketing communications: You may opt out of receiving promotional communications from us. Just follow the instructions in those communications or let us know. If you opt out of promotional communications, we may still send you other communications, like those about your account and legal notices.
Set your browser to reject cookies: You can usually choose to set your browser to remove or reject browser cookies before using our Services, with the drawback that certain features of our website may not function properly without the aid of cookies.
Close your account: You can close your account if you no longer want to use our Services. Please keep in mind that we may continue to retain your information after closing your account, as described in How Long We Keep Information above — for example, when that information is reasonably needed to comply with (or demonstrate our compliance with) legal obligations such as law enforcement requests, or reasonably needed for our legitimate business interests.

Your Rights

If you are located in certain parts of the world, including some US states and countries that fall under the scope of the European General Data Protection Regulation (aka the "GDPR"), you may have certain rights regarding your personal information, like the right to request access to or deletion of your data.

European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)

If you are located in a country that falls under the scope of the GDPR, data protection laws give you certain rights with respect to your personal data, subject to any exemptions provided by the law, including the rights to:

Request access to your personal data
Request correction or deletion of your personal data
Object to our use and processing of your personal data
Request that we limit our use and processing of your personal data
Request portability of your personal data

You also have the right to make a complaint to a government supervisory authority.

US Privacy Laws

Laws in some US states require us to provide residents with additional information about the categories of personal information we collect and share, where we get that personal information, and how and why we use it. You'll find that information in this section.

In the last 12 months, we collected the following categories of personal information, depending on the Services used:

Identifiers (like your name, contact information, and device and online identifiers)
Commercial information (your billing information and purchase history, for example)
Characteristics protected by law (for example, you might provide your gender as part of a research survey for us or you may choose to voluntarily disclose your race or veteran status as part of your job application)
Internet or other electronic network activity information (such as your usage of our Services, like the actions you take as a user of a TasteParty account)
Geolocation data (such as your location based on your IP address)
Audio, electronic, visual or similar information (such as your profile picture, if you uploaded one)
Professional or employment-related information (for example, information you provide in a job application)
Inferences we make (such as likelihood of retention or attrition)

If you are a job applicant, we may have also collected education information, such as the education you disclose in your job application.

You can find more information about what we collect and sources of that information in the Information We Collect section above.

We collect personal information for the business and commercial purposes described in the How and Why We Use Information section. And we share this information with the categories of third parties described in the Sharing Information section. We retain this information for the length of time described in our How Long We Keep Information section.

In some US states you have additional rights subject to any exemptions provided by your state's respective law, including the right to:

Request a copy of the specific pieces of information we collect about you and to know the categories of personal information we collect, the categories of business or commercial purpose for collecting and using it, the categories of sources from which the information came, and the categories of third parties we share it with
Request deletion of personal information we collect or maintain
Request correction of personal information we collect or maintain
Opt out of the sale or sharing of personal information
Receive a copy of your information in a readily portable format
Not receive discriminatory treatment for exercising your rights

Right to Opt Out: We never directly sell your personal information in the conventional sense (i.e., for money). We may share your information as necessary with our third-party service providers to provide our services to you. To the extent that we share your information with certain advertising, marketing, or analytics vendors, this can be considered a "sale" or "share" in certain U.S. States, which you may have the right to opt out of.

We do not collect or process your sensitive (and potentially sensitive) personal information except where it is strictly necessary to provide you with our service, where the processing is not for the purpose of inferring characteristics about you, or for other purposes that do not require an option to limit under state law. We don't knowingly sell or share personal information of those under 16.

Contacting Us About These Rights

You can usually access, correct, or delete your personal data using your account settings and tools that we offer, but if you aren't able to or you'd like to contact us about one of the other rights, contact us as described in the "How to Reach Us" section below.

When you contact us about one of your rights under this section, we'll need to verify that you are the right person before we disclose or delete anything. For example, if you are a user, we will need you to contact us from the email address associated with your account. You can also designate an authorized agent to make a request on your behalf by giving us written authorization. We may still require you to verify your identity with us.

Appeals Process for Rights Requests Denials

In some circumstances we may deny your request to exercise one of these rights. For example, if we cannot verify that you are the account owner we may deny your request to access the personal information associated with your account. As another example, if we are legally required to maintain a copy of your personal information we may deny your request to delete your personal information.

In the event that we deny your request, we will communicate this fact to you in writing. You may appeal our decision by responding in writing to our denial email and stating that you would like to appeal. All appeals will be reviewed by an internal expert who was not involved in your original request. In the event that your appeal is also denied this information will be communicated to you in writing.

Controllers and Responsible Companies

Guttormsen IT's Services are provided from Norway. Guttormsen IT is the controller of personal information, which means that we are the company responsible for processing that information, based on the particular service and the location of the individual using our Services.

How to Reach Us

If you have a question about this Privacy Policy, or you would like to contact us about any of the rights mentioned above, please contact us:

Guttormsen IT
Email: Use the contact page Address: Sjøsiden 35, 7130 Brekstad, Norway

Other Things You Should Know

Transferring Information

Because our Services may be used by people worldwide, information about you that we process when you use the Services may be used, stored, and/or accessed by individuals operating outside the European Economic Area (EEA) who work for us or third-party data processors. This is required for the purposes listed in the How and Why We Use Information section above.

When providing information about you to entities outside the EEA, we will take appropriate measures to ensure that the recipient protects your personal information adequately in accordance with this Privacy Policy as required by applicable law. These measures include entering into European Commission approved standard contractual arrangements with entities based in countries outside the EEA.

Ads and Analytics Services Provided by Others

Ads appearing on any of our Services may be delivered by advertising networks. Other parties may also provide analytics services via our Services. These ad networks and analytics providers may set tracking technologies (like cookies) to collect information about your use of our Services and across other websites and online services. These technologies allow these third parties to recognize your device to compile information about you or others who use your device. This information allows us and other companies to, among other things, analyze and track usage, determine the popularity of certain content, and deliver ads that may be more targeted to your interests. Please note this Privacy Policy only covers the collection of information by Guttormsen IT and does not cover the collection of information by any third-party advertisers or analytics providers.

Third-Party Software and Services

If you'd like to use third-party plugins, extensions, or other third-party software or services, please keep in mind that interacting with them may mean providing information about yourself (or your site visitors) to those third parties. For example, some third-party services may request or require access to your data via a pixel or cookie. Please note that if you use the third-party service or grant access, your data will be handled in accordance with the third party's privacy policy and practices. We don't own or control these third parties, and they have their own rules about information collection, use, and sharing, which you should review before using the software or services.

Visitors to Our Users' Events

We also process information about participants in our users' tasting events, on behalf of our users and in accordance with our user agreements. Please note that our processing of that information on behalf of our users for their events isn't covered by this Privacy Policy. We encourage our users to inform participants about data collection practices for their tasting events.

Users control the content and participant data for their events, so any disputes regarding data handling in a user's event should be made directly to the event organizer.

Privacy Policy Changes

Although most changes are likely to be minor, Guttormsen IT may change its Privacy Policy from time to time. We encourage visitors to frequently check this page for any changes to the Privacy Policy. If we make changes, we will notify you by revising the change date above and, in some cases, we may provide additional notice. Your continued use of the Services after any change in this Privacy Policy will constitute your consent to such change.

Other Information and Resources

For additional information about our privacy practices and data protection, you may find these resources helpful:

Terms of Service - Our complete terms and conditions
Account Settings - Manage your privacy preferences and account information

Translation

Our Privacy Policy was originally written in English. We may translate it into other languages. In the event of a conflict between a translated version of our Privacy Policy and the English version, the English version will control.

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