Hello Ben Wade here. It’s been about a month now that I’ve been the owner of Kickassd.com. I’m absolutely loving it, and you guys are great customers!

Here’s an update of what’s been going on. Bobby and I have been diligently at work learning the new system here at Kickassd.com and getting to know you all and how you all operate. Like I said, it’s been a great experience. In the next coming weeks (possibly months) we’ll be moving sites around to different servers in our infrastructure to cut down on costs and greatly optimize things. Frankfurt server will move to another server in Frankfurt and Montreal will be moving to New York City. So not much further. We may need to ask you to update and/or access your cloudflare zones if you’re using cloudflare as your dns provider. There will not be any speed decreases. In fact, you may actually experience faster speeds after the transfers. Also there shouldn’t be any downtime, but we will notify you if there is any maintenance downtime. We’ll be performing the moves after business hours.

If you have any questions you can contact by any of the following ways. Bobby Broughton is my lead support tech so he will be taking care of you like Chuck did.

Regards,

Ben Wade

Please use one of the following methods to get into contact with us:

• send an email to support@kickassd.com
• Login to Your client area and submit a ticket
• use livechat on our website. https://kickassd.com 

The General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR, is the new important regulation for data privacy. Originally approved back in April 2016 by the EU Parliament, the GDPR is coming into effect on the 25th May 2018. It replaces EU legislation that was established over 20 years ago in 1995 which was severally outdated in the fast changing world we live in nowadays. The GDPR is very broad in scope and can apply to businesses both in and outside of the EU.

Updates to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy
We at Kickassd have always been committed to protecting any data that we collect concerning you. Today, we are updating our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy to match the new requirements set by the GDPR. While we have already followed similar principles as the GDPR for a long time, we have now updated our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy to fully adhere to the requirements also in writing.

What is GDPR and why does it matter?
GDPR is a big change in data privacy regulation and is designed to harmonize data privacy laws across Europe to protect citizens’ data privacy. It provides a set of guidelines and rules that force companies to improve the way they typically would approach data privacy or handle personal data. Part of the legal requirements in the GDPR is the inclusion of Privacy by Design. At its core, Privacy by Design calls for systems to be designed around data protection from the get-go rather than adding it on later as an afterthought. It was passed by European lawmakers to create a harmonized data privacy law across all the EU member states. Its purpose is to:

• support privacy as a fundamental human right;
• require companies that handle personal data to be accountable for managing that data appropriately; and
• give individuals rights over how their personal data is processed or otherwise used.

This creates a dramatic push towards data transparency and user empowerment – which we at Kickassd we applaud! 👏

What is personal data?
GDPR defines personal data as “any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person.” but what does that mean?

In addition to the kinds of information you might think about such as name, address, email address, financial information, contact information, identification numbers, etc., personal data can also include information related to your digital life, like an IP address, geolocation, browsing history, cookies, or other digital identifiers.

It also could mean information about a person, including their physical, mental, social, economic or cultural identities.

Therefore, if information can be traced back to or related in some way to an identifiable person, it is highly likely to be considered “personal data” under the GDPR. You can find out more about the GDPR here.

What rights does the GDPR provide to individuals?
There are several rights an individual may exercise under the GDPR, including:

• Right of access: Individuals can ask for a copy of the personal data retained about them and an explanation of how it is being used.
• Right to rectification: Individuals have the right to correct, revise or remove any of the personal data retained about them at any time.
• Right to be forgotten: Individuals can ask to delete their personal data.
• Right to restrict processing: If an individual believes, for example, that their personal data is inaccurate or collected unlawfully, the individual may request limited use of their personal data.
• Right of portability: Individuals have the right to receive their personal data in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format.
• Right to object: Where an individual decides that they no longer wish to allow their personal data to be included in analytics or to receive direct marketing emails or other personalized (targeted) marketing content at any time, the individual may opt out of use of their data for these purposes.

Please note that these rights are not absolute, and limitations/exceptions may apply in some cases.

If you exercise any of the rights that we mentioned above as an individual customer or representative of a customer, Kickassd will respond in accordance with our Privacy Policy. The Kickassd Privacy Policy explains what information we collect about you as a Kickassd customer and how your personal data may be used or shared by Kickassd. We suggest that you review how this applies to you. Note that we will be updating our privacy policy to align with GDPR. No worries, though, we’ll send all users a notice letting you know that it will be changing, so you’ll know what to expect.

Where required, we will also support you, as a Kickassd customer, in fulfilling GDPR related data subject requests you receive from your contacts.

However, access to personal data of domain name registrants may be granted when such access is necessary for technical reasons such as for the facilitation of transfers, or for law enforcement when it is legally entitled to such access.

“Controllers” and “Processors”
Generally speaking, there are two types of parties that have a responsibility regarding the handling of data: the “controller” and the “processor.” It is important to determine if you are acting as a controller or a processor and understand your responsibilities accordingly.

A “controller” determines the purposes and means of the use of personal data.

A “processor” on the other hand, only acts on the instructions of the “controller” and processes personal data on their behalf.

Kickassd can be either a “controller” or a “processor” depending on the data processing activities that are being performed.

Usually, Kickassd is a controller in relation to the personal data that you provide to us as a customer. In certain circumstances, you are acting as the controller, for example, when you decide what information from your contacts or subscribers is uploaded or transferred into your Kickassd account.

What do I need to do differently to comply with GDPR?
If the GDPR applies to you, there are various obligations you will need to comply with in order to continue doing business with your customers from the EU. Luckily, not all of these obligations are new, so you should be complying with some of them already.

The most important differences in this context are as follows:

• More information about your use of personal data must be communicated to your customers. You should make sure that your privacy notices/policies are updated to reflect the new requirements of the GDPR, including setting out the purposes of your processing personal data, how long you are retaining such data, and what legal basis for use of personal data are you relying on. As a customer of Kickassd, your agreement to our Terms of Service requires you to lawfully obtain and process personal data appropriately, including that of EU Individuals as part of the GDPR.
• You should determine the legal basis for your use of personal data: If you are relying on consent to use your customers’ data you should ensure that the consent you have meets the new requirements of the GDPR . Please note that sending marketing emails or showing promotional content in any form to your customers may require, in certain circumstances, prior opt-in consent from them. As a reminder, you have already agreed through acceptance of our terms of service to lawfully obtain and process all personal data appropriately and have attested that you have permission to expose your customers to promotional content.
• You will also need to comply with the rights provided to individuals by the GDPR. See section above “What rights does the GDPR provide to individuals?” for details.

You should consult with your legal counsel on the above and your other obligations under GDPR.

At Kickassd we are always looking for ways to improve our service, and offer you the best possible service. What is the #1 cause of downtime in the shared hosting industry?

Typically shared hosting providers use strictly dedicated servers. When hardware fails on a dedicated server it often means downtime and it can in some cases be a downtime of days. Even if they have backups as they should, restoring that to a new server when there are Terabytes of data and 100’s or even 1000’s of accounts involved takes a very longtime.

As usual we are avoiding the “the norm” and doing things different in order ot bring you the best possible service. Shared cloud hosting has so many benefits that it makes perfect sense for us to go with it. Why are other shared hosting providers not doing this then?

Simple, $$. Shared hosting in the cloud costs the provider a bit more money, and so takes a bite out of the profit earned. This is a hit that we are willing to take in order to offer a better service.

How Does it Work?

With the exception of our Montreal location all of our Elastic Sites hosting is offered in the cloud.

• Each of our cloud servers is replicated across a minimum of 2 physical servers.
• If the physical server our cloud server is on has an issue that causes it to go offline our cloud server immediately and without interruption comes online on another physical server, and replicates to another physical server.

What About Performance?

We are all about performance, and carefully chose our cloud based not only on reliability but on performance. Our cloud is purely ran on SSD storage with cutting edge hardware such as CPU and Ram. Our shared cloud hosting offers the same high performance environment that you have come to expect.

Locations

Currently our shared cloud hosting is available only in Frankfurt Germany. We do not at this time have the option to offer our services as shared cloud in Montreal and that location will remain traditional shared hosting on dedicated servers.

• Chicago is our next planned shared hosting location followed by Amsterdam and London.

As always if you have any questions about our services don’t hesitate to contact our fast and friendly support!

We are starting to get inquiries about our service and when we will be open. Opening is planned for February and we hope to see many of you there. If you don’t want to miss the opening and some great deals please follow us on Facebook, and Twitter. Also you can join our newsletter and come hangout with us on our IRC channel: irc.netchat.io >> #kickassd.