Privacy policy

You can search and read How to in NL without an account. There is no login for the site, no database of readers and no advertising. What you type into any search box on this site stays in your browser. The startup credits guide can also remember the route answers, application-kit ticks and shortlist you choose in that browser; those details are not sent to us. Analytics is optional, off until you accept it, and you can turn it off again from any page.

Fluxy is the exception, and it is the one thing on this site that sends what you type. If you open Fluxy and ask it something, your message goes to Flux Forward, an AI provider processes it, and the conversation is not saved here. You can use the whole site without ever opening it. There is a section on Fluxy below.

A few things do involve your data. Delivering a web page always does: our host sees the address of every request, including your IP address, and uses it to serve and protect the site. The homepage loads a map automatically. When a map loads, your browser also requests the map library and map tiles from the providers named below. And if you email us, we have your email and whatever you wrote, because that is what an email is.

We do not build a profile of you, we do not advertise, and we do not sell or trade anyone’s data.

How to in NL is published by The Futures Hub B.V., trading as Flux Forward. For anything on this website, that company is the data controller: it decides what is processed and why, and it is answerable for it.

• The Futures Hub B.V. (trading as Flux Forward)
• Zaailand 106, 8911 BN Leeuwarden, The Netherlands
• Registered with the Dutch Chamber of Commerce under KVK 98261223
• hi@fluxforward.world

We have not appointed a data protection officer, and nothing described on this page needs one. Saying we had one would be worse than saying we do not.

Reading and searching this site requires no name, no email address and no account. The startup credits guide can ask about company funding, age, partner access and registration so it can label relevant programmes in your browser. Those answers stay on the device. The information you send to us directly is what you choose to put in an email to us, and anything you choose to type into Fluxy.

Every search on this site runs in your browser. Guides, apps and organisations are all published as part of the website itself, so matching happens against data your browser already has, with no request to us and no search index anywhere.

That includes searching from one page into another. When the search box hands an organisation search to the directory, the term travels in the part of the web address after the #, which browsers do not send to a server, and it is removed from the address bar as soon as the page has read it. Your search text is not sent to us, not written into a web address we receive, not logged and not stored.

Fluxy is not a search box and is not covered by this section. A question you put to Fluxy is sent, deliberately, because that is what asking it means. See below.

How to in NL is hosted and delivered through Cloudflare. Like any host, Cloudflare has to process the technical information that comes with a web request in order to answer it and to keep the site up: your IP address, the page you asked for, your browser and operating system, and the page you came from, if any. If a request fails, your browser may also send Cloudflare a short technical error report.

Cloudflare does this for us, under its Customer Data Processing Addendum, as what the GDPR calls a processor: it acts on our instructions, and the responsibility is ours rather than something we can point elsewhere. It is not allowed to use this information for its own purposes. Cloudflare operates globally, so some of this processing happens outside the EU; its data processing terms include the European Commission’s Standard Contractual Clauses for those transfers.

The legal basis is our legitimate interest in serving a working, secure website. We do not keep our own copies of these records, we do not export them and we do not combine them with anything else. Cloudflare keeps them only as long as it needs to run and protect its network, under its own retention rules.

Cloudflare also adds a small script of its own to pages, served from this site’s own address, which hides email addresses from address-harvesting robots. It measures nothing.

The homepage loads an interactive map automatically when you open it. Other pages, including Events, Organisations, Recognised Sponsors and Coworking Spaces, also offer maps. An interactive map requests the MapLibre library from unpkg.com and map styles and tiles from OpenFreeMap. On the homepage these requests begin after the page loads, without a separate map button. The requests necessarily carry technical information such as your IP address, browser and the page making the request. The initial map preview is an image served by this site; the interactive map still requests those external resources automatically.

OpenFreeMap states that it uses no cookies or tracking technologies and does not store IP addresses in its regular server logs. It says IP logging may be enabled temporarily for security incidents, for up to 30 days, and that it may use Cloudflare as a CDN. unpkg.com is used only to deliver the MapLibre code needed to draw the map. We do not send your searches, filters or selected place to either provider.

The legal basis is our legitimate interest in providing location-based discovery of local information. The homepage itself now loads a map on arrival; it does not offer an opt-out before those requests. Some directories also open with a map. To avoid map requests, you can open the Guides page or individual guides directly instead. Records not shown on the map remain available in their full directory.

How to in NL uses Google Analytics to measure how the site is used, and only after you have accepted it. It is optional, it is off until you say otherwise, and the site works exactly the same either way.

Until you accept it, no analytics script is requested, no analytics cookie is set and no measurement request leaves your browser. That is deliberate and it is stronger than it sounds: simply fetching a measurement script would already tell the provider your IP address, your browser and the page you were reading, before you had been asked anything. So we do not fetch it. The choice you make is kept in your own browser, under a single name, and nothing else is stored.

If you accept, Google Analytics sets its own cookies to recognise a returning browser and to group a visit into one session. We use it to see which guides people read, which steps they reach, which links they follow and what the site failed to answer. Google acts as our processor for this, records are kept for 14 months, and this site has its own separate property rather than one shared with other Flux Forward services.

Two limits hold whatever happens. The text of ordinary searches is never sent to an analytics provider: what gets measured is how long a query was and how many results it found, never the words. And we run no advertising: advertising storage, advertising identifiers and ad personalisation are switched off permanently rather than left to a default, and there is no advertising or remarketing tag on this site.

You can change your mind at any time using Cookie settings in the footer of every page. Turning analytics off stops the measurement, deletes the Google Analytics cookies that were set for this site, and reloads the page so the measurement code is actually gone rather than merely idle.

Separately from all of that, Cloudflare produces its own infrastructure and security statistics from the requests it already handles, in aggregate. That is a by-product of hosting rather than a measurement tool we run, and it does not identify readers to us. It does not depend on your analytics choice and is described under hosting above.

Guides, apps and organisation pages carry a “Suggest an update” link. It does not submit anything. It opens your own email app with a message already drafted, addressed to hi@fluxforward.world. Nothing leaves your device unless you send it, and you can read and change every word first. The draft contains what kind of page it is, its title, its web address and the short reference from that address, so we can find the page you mean. That is public information about the page, not information about you. How to in NL does not record that you opened the link.

If a search returns nothing, you will see a link to suggest that how-to. That one goes to the Flux Forward contact page, a separate website with its own privacy practices, where the same company handles what you send.

When you do send a message it arrives as ordinary email, which means your email address and whatever you wrote are visible to us. We use it to check the page against its official sources, correct it if needed, and reply to you. The legal basis is our legitimate interest in answering someone who has written to us and in keeping published guidance accurate. It is not added to a mailing list, it is not used to build a profile, and a suggestion does not change a published page on its own.

Please do not include sensitive personal data. Nobody needs your BSN, passport number, residence-card number or IND case number to fix a page or to understand which topic you would like covered.

• Searches: not kept at all, by anyone. They never leave your browser, so there is nothing to keep.
• Technical request records: held by Cloudflare for as long as it needs them to operate and secure its network, under its own retention rules. We hold none.
• Map requests: handled by unpkg.com and OpenFreeMap automatically on the homepage and when directory maps load. OpenFreeMap says it does not retain IP addresses in regular logs, with temporary security logging possible for up to 30 days.
• Email: kept in our mailbox while we deal with it and for as long as it stays useful for the correction it describes. Ask us to delete it and we will.
• Your analytics choice: kept in your own browser until you change it or clear your browsing data. It records only whether you accepted or declined. It never leaves your device and it identifies nobody.
• Startup credits guide state: if you use the route checker, application kit or shortlist, those choices are kept in local browser storage so they survive a reload. They stay there until you clear this site's browser data. They are not sent to How to in NL or to the listed providers.
• Analytics records, if you accepted: 14 months, after which Google deletes the event and user level records for this site. If you decline, there are none, and the cookies behind them are deleted when you withdraw.
• Fluxy conversations: not kept as a transcript by this site at all. They exist in the open page and are gone when you reload or close it.
• Fluxy daily counts: up to 48 hours, against the random identifier described in the Fluxy section. The technical record of each answer, which holds no part of the conversation, is kept for 30 days; a bad-answer report is kept for 90 days.
• Your Fluxy identifier: kept in your own browser until you clear this site’s browser data.
• Anything else in your browser: nothing beyond the ordinary cache any website uses.

Fluxy is an assistant operated by Flux Forward, the publisher of this site. It is not part of reading or searching How to in NL: nothing is sent to it until you open it and send a message, and the site works exactly the same if you never do.

When you send a message, this is what goes with it:

• your message, as you typed it;
• the recent messages in that conversation, so a follow-up question makes sense;
• public details of the page you are on: its type, title, short description, themes and web address. Not the guide text itself, which Fluxy reads from this site directly, and never anything you typed into a search box or a form.

The message is sent to the Fluxy service, which is run on Cloudflare by Flux Forward, and the message is then processed by an AI provider (currently OpenAI) so that an answer can be generated. The provider is instructed not to retain the message for training. Fluxy answers from public How to in NL and Flux Forward sources; it is general guidance, not legal, immigration, financial or medical advice, and it does not decide what applies to you.

The conversation is not stored as chat history. It is held in the page while you have it open, and it is gone when you reload or close the tab. It is not written to your browser’s storage, not put in a web address, and not kept as a transcript by this site.

There is a daily limit, and it needs one identifier. To count how many questions a day you have asked without an account, Fluxy keeps one random identifier in your browser’s local storage. It is randomly generated, it is not built from anything about your device or your browser, it is never sent to analytics, and nothing else on this site stores an identifier it could be joined to. Clearing this site’s browser data removes it. The service also keeps a bounded count of questions against that identifier for up to 48 hours, and a record of each answer’s technical details for 30 days that contains no part of the conversation.

Signing in is optional, and it is a Flux Forward account. If you reach the daily limit, Fluxy offers you the chance to sign in with, or create, a free Flux Forward account, which uses Google Firebase Authentication. That raises your daily limit. It does not create a How to in NL account, because this site has none, and nothing outside Fluxy knows or cares whether you are signed in. The sign-in is held in memory only: reloading the page signs you out again. Your email address and password go to Firebase, not to this site, and the only thing this site receives is a short-lived token it passes to the Fluxy service so your account’s limit can be applied.

Reporting a bad answer. Every answer can be reported with a reason from a fixed list. The report carries a reference to that answer and the reason, and never your question. Including the text of Fluxy’s reply is a separate tick box, labelled as such. Reports are kept for 90 days.

Nothing you say to Fluxy reaches analytics. The analytics events described above record only that Fluxy was opened, asked something, answered, or reached a limit, with no message, no answer, no email address and no identifier attached.

There are no automated decisions with legal or similarly significant effects. The startup credits route checker applies simple published rules to the answers you choose in your browser and labels programmes as a likely fit, worth checking, or not a fit right now. It does not send the answers anywhere, decide whether a provider will approve you, or build a profile outside your device.

Fluxy generates text. It decides nothing about you: it does not assess eligibility, approve or refuse anything, score you, or build a profile, and no decision about any reader is taken from what it says.

Guides link to official and external websites. Once you leave How to in NL, the destination site’s own privacy policy and data practices apply, and we have no visibility into what happens there.

If we hold personal data about you, the GDPR gives you the right to ask for a copy of it, to have it corrected, to have it deleted, to restrict or object to what we do with it, and to receive it in a portable form. In practice the only thing we are likely to hold is an email you sent us. Write to hi@fluxforward.world and we will answer within one month.

You can also complain to the Dutch Data Protection Authority, Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens. You do not have to raise it with us first, though we would rather you did, so we have a chance to fix it.

When what this site does changes, this page changes in the same release, and the review date at the top moves. It is not a date the site was rebuilt.