Join the community 1. Who operates this website
This website is operated by Bhupinder Singh through The Lubricant Specialists, an independent professional information and community platform based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, serving the global lubricants industry. Further identity information is available in the identity and disclosures statement. Privacy enquiries may be sent to contact@lubricantspecialists.com.
The separate mobile app privacy policy applies to the Lubricant Specialists app for iPhone and iPad.
2. Information we may receive
We may receive information that you choose to provide through the enquiry and briefing-request forms or by email. This can include your name, work email, organisation, role, areas of interest, chosen enquiry topic, consent record and the contents of your message. Enquiries may concern editorial contributions, media partnerships, magazine activity, vacancy submissions or executive search. Please do not send confidential, commercially sensitive or special-category personal information unless it is necessary and agreed in advance.
The website’s hosting and security infrastructure may also process limited technical information such as an IP address, browser type, access time, requested page and security or diagnostic logs.
3. Weekly Report subscriptions
The subscription form records your name, work email, optional organisation, interest, newsletter-consent time, terms-acceptance time, applicable terms and privacy versions, and signup source in the website database. Newsletter consent and contractual acceptance use separate unticked boxes. A new request remains pending until you confirm control of the address through the email link we send. Only confirmed subscribers are included in the active Weekly Report distribution. Each distribution should include a direct withdrawal method. You may also unsubscribe by emailing the contact address.
Submitting the annual-subscription form leads directly to Stripe checkout. If you complete checkout, Stripe processes a one-time US$10 payment-method verification charge and records the authorised US$2,990 annual subscription after the 15-day trial. After Stripe confirms completed checkout, LS sends a subscription-confirmation link to the email address you provided. The US$10 transaction is not identity, humanity, bank-account-ownership or creditworthiness verification. Stripe sends the website limited customer, transaction, subscription, billing-status and renewal information needed to administer access and distinguish test from live records. The website does not receive or store your full card number, card security code or online-banking credentials. Newsletter withdrawal and payment cancellation are maintained as separate records.
After a completed Stripe checkout, you may create a member username and password for report access. The website stores the username and a salted, one-way password hash, not the readable password. Secure, time-limited session records keep you signed in. Account and access records are used only to operate the member profile, enforce current trial or paid access, protect reports and respond to account-support requests.
Individual report checkout links may lead directly to Stripe for a separate one-time US$90 report purchase. For these purchases, Stripe collects the purchaser and payment details shown at checkout. The website stores the report identifier, purchaser email where supplied, Stripe customer and checkout references, amount, currency, payment status and test-or-live mode. The report is released only after the website independently verifies Stripe's successful-payment record.
4. LS Industry Assistant
The LS Industry Assistant helps visitors navigate approved website information and may use an artificial-intelligence service to prepare a concise response. Chat messages are sent to the website’s secure server and, when the AI service is enabled, relevant message content and selected website context are transmitted to OpenAI to generate the answer. The API request is configured not to store the response for model-service history. The website does not save the chat conversation to its application database, and the conversation is discarded when the page is refreshed.
Please do not enter confidential, commercially sensitive, identity, financial, health or special-category information in the assistant. Automated answers may be incomplete or incorrect and must not be treated as technical certification, formulation or product approval, legal, regulatory, financial or investment advice. Verified website sources are presented with responses where available.
If you choose “Request a follow-up”, the name, work email, optional company, enquiry text, consent time and source are stored as a contact enquiry so that a human representative can respond. The WhatsApp handoff opens a third-party service governed by WhatsApp’s own privacy terms.
5. Executive Search and vacancy enquiries
Employer and candidate enquiries may include professional history, geographic preferences, compensation expectations or information relevant to a potential appointment. Please make only an initial introduction through the website form and do not send identity documents, financial information or a full confidential dossier until a specific process and lawful purpose have been agreed.
Candidate details will not be represented as endorsed by the platform or shared with a prospective employer without an appropriate professional basis and, where required, the candidate’s agreement. Vacancy submissions may be checked against an official employer source before publication.
6. Privacy-conscious analytics
The website records first-party, aggregate events for pageviews and completed forms. The application database stores the requested page path, referring website domain where available, event type and time. It does not store an advertising identifier, set an analytics cookie, create a visitor profile or deliberately write your IP address to the analytics database. Browser “Do Not Track” and Global Privacy Control signals are respected by the pageview collector.
Hosting and security providers may separately process network information such as IP addresses in operational logs as described above.
7. How information is used
- To respond to enquiries and requested communications.
- To assess editorial proposals, partnerships and event invitations.
- To assess vacancy submissions and facilitate agreed executive-search conversations.
- To protect the website, prevent misuse and diagnose technical problems.
- To meet legal, regulatory or record-keeping obligations where applicable.
8. Legal basis and consent
Depending on the circumstances and applicable law, information may be processed with your consent, to take steps you request or perform a membership contract, for legitimate professional, fraud-prevention and security interests, or to meet a legal obligation. You may withdraw newsletter consent for future communications at any time. Withdrawing consent does not cancel a paid membership automatically or invalidate processing already lawfully completed.
9. Sharing and international processing
Information may be processed by service providers that support website hosting, database storage, email, payments and security, including infrastructure operated by Cloudflare, Resend, Stripe and OpenAI for this site. Those providers may operate in other countries. We do not sell personal information. We may disclose information when required by law or when reasonably necessary to protect rights, safety or service integrity.
10. Retention
Contact enquiries are normally reviewed for deletion after 24 months unless an active professional relationship, dispute or legal obligation requires longer retention. Active briefing subscriptions are retained until withdrawal or after a period of inactivity. Consent, terms-acceptance, payment and cancellation evidence may be retained for the membership period and a reasonable limitation, accounting, tax, chargeback or dispute period afterwards. Aggregate analytics events are normally reviewed for deletion after 24 months. Technical logs are retained according to the hosting provider’s operational and security practices.
11. Your choices and rights
Subject to applicable law, you may ask to access, correct or delete personal information, object to or restrict certain processing, or withdraw a communication request. We may need to verify your identity before completing a request.
12. Third-party links
This website links to LinkedIn and other third-party services. Their privacy practices are governed by their own policies, and we are not responsible for their websites or services.
13. Security and changes
Reasonable organisational and technical measures are used to protect information, but no internet service can guarantee absolute security. We may update this policy when the website, service providers or legal requirements change. The effective date above will be revised when material updates are made.