Privacy Policy

Last Updated: May 30, 2019

By using any of SimpleUpdates’s Services, you confirm you have agreed to the Terms of Service and read and understood this Privacy Policy and Acceptable Use Policy.

Privacy Policy

1. How does this Privacy Policy apply?

This Privacy Policy describes what we do with personal information that we collect and use for our own purposes (i.e., where we are a controller), such as your account information and information about how you use and interact with our Services, including information you submit to our customer support as well as certain information relating to your End Users.

We also host and process User Content for our Users. Our Users tell us what to do with User Content, and we follow their instructions. This Privacy Policy does not describe what we do with User Content on our Users’ instructions (i.e., as their processor).

 

2. Personal information we collect

We collect various personal information regarding you or your device. This includes the following:

    •    Information you provide to create an Account, specifically email address, first name and last name. If you sign up for Paid Services, we receive a portion of your payment information from our payment processor (such as the last four digits, the country of issuance and the expiration date of the payment card).

    •    The emails and other communications that you send us or otherwise contribute, such as customer support inquiries or posts to our customer message boards or forums. Please be aware that information on public parts of our sites is available to others.

    •    Information you share with us in connection with surveys, contests or promotions.

    •    Information from your use of the Services or Users’ sites. This includes: IP addresses, information about how you interact with the Services and our Users’ sites (such as timestamps, clicks, scrolling, browsing times, searches, transactions, referral pages, load times, and problems you may encounter, such as loading errors).

    •    Information we get from our partners to support our marketing initiatives, improve our Services and better monitor, manage and measure our ad campaigns, such as details about when our partner shows you one of our ads on or via its advertising platform.

    •    Other information you submit to us directly or through Third Party Services if you use a Third Party Service to create an Account (based on your privacy settings with such Third Party Service).

 

3. How we collect personal information

We obtain personal information from various sources. We do this in three main ways:

    •    You provide some of it directly (such as by registering for an Account).

    •    We record some of it automatically when you use our Services or Users’ sites (including with technologies like cookies).

    •    We receive some of it from third parties (like when you register for an account using a Third Party Service or when you make payments to us using our payment processor).

 

4. How we use your personal information

We use the personal information we obtain about you to:

    •    Provision of the Services. Create and manage your Account, provide and personalize our Services, process payments and respond to your inquiries.

    •    Communicating with you. Communicate with you, including by sending you emails about your transactions and Service-related announcements.

    •    Surveys and contests. Administer surveys, contests and other promotions.

    •    Promotion. Promote our Services and send you tailored marketing communications about products, services, offers, programs and promotions of SimpleUpdates and our partners and measure the success of those campaigns. For example, we may send different marketing communications to you based on your subscription plan or what we think may interest you based on other information we hold about you.

    •    Customizing the Services. Provide you with customized services. For example, we use your location information to determine your language preferences or display accurate date and time information. We also use cookies and similar technologies for this purpose, such as remembering which of Your Sites you most recently edited.

    •    Improving our Services. We may analyze and learn about how the Services are accessed and used, evaluate and improve our Services (including by developing new products and services and managing our communications) and monitor and measure the effectiveness of our advertising. We usually do this based on anonymous, pseudonymized or aggregated information which does not focus on you individually. For example, if we learn that most Users of Paid Services use a particular integration or feature, we might wish to expand on that integration or feature.

    •    Security. Ensure the security and integrity of our Services.

    •    Third party relationships. Manage our vendor and partner relationships.

    •    Enforcement. Enforce our Terms of Service and other legal terms and policies.

    •    Protection. Protect our and others’ interests, rights and property (e.g., to protect our Users from abuse).

    •    Complying with law. Comply with applicable legal requirements, such as tax and other government regulations and industry standards, contracts and law enforcement requests.

We process your personal information for the above purposes when:

    •    Consent. You have consented to the use of your personal information in a particular way. When you consent, you can change your mind at any time.  

    •    Performance of a contract. We need your personal information to provide you with services and products requested by you, or to respond to your inquiries. In other words, so we can perform our contract with you or take steps at your request before entering into one. For example, we need your email address so you can sign in to your SimpleUpdates account.

    •    Legal obligation. We have a legal obligation to use your personal information, such as to comply with applicable tax and other government regulations or to comply with a court order or binding law enforcement request.

    •    Protecting you and others. To protect your vital interests, or those of others. 

 

5. Your rights and choices

5.1. Where applicable law requires (and subject to any relevant exceptions under law), you may have the right to access, update, change or delete personal information. You can access, update, change or delete personal information (or that of your End Users) either directly in your Account or by contacting us to request the required changes. You can exercise your other rights (including deleting your Account) by contacting us at the same email address.

5.2. We use our own cookies to recognize you when you visit our website or use our apps. This means that you don’t have to log in each time you visit, and we can remember your preferences and settings.

 

6. How we protect your personal information

While no service is completely secure, we work hard to keep your personal information safe. We maintain administrative, technical and physical safeguards that are intended to appropriately protect against accidental or unlawful destruction, accidental loss, unauthorized alteration, unauthorized disclosure or access, misuse and any other unlawful form of processing of, the personal information in our possession. We employ security measures such as using firewalls to protect against intruders, building redundancies throughout our network (so that if one server goes down, another can cover for it) and testing for and protecting against network vulnerabilities.

 

7. How we retain your personal information

We retain personal information regarding you or your use of the Services for as long as your Account is active or for as long as needed to provide you or our Users with the Services. We also retain personal information for as long as necessary to achieve the purposes described in this Privacy Policy, for example, to comply with our legal obligations, to protect us in the event of disputes and to enforce our agreements and to protect our and others’ interests.  

The precise periods for which we keep your personal information vary depending on the nature of the information and why we need it. Factors we consider in determining these periods include the minimum required retention period prescribed by law or recommended as best practice, the period during which a claim can be made with respect to an agreement or other matter, whether the personal information has been aggregated or pseudonymized, and other relevant criteria. For example, the period we keep your email address is connected to how long your Account is active, while the period for which we keep a support message is based on how long has passed since the last submission in the thread.

As Users may have a seasonal site or come back to us after an Account becomes inactive, we don’t immediately delete your personal information when your trial expires or you cancel all Paid Services. Instead, we keep your personal information for a reasonable period of time, so it will be there for you if you come back.

You may delete your Account by contacting us at privacy@SimpleUpdates.com and SimpleUpdates will delete the personal information it holds about you (unless we need to retain it for the purposes set out in this Privacy Policy).

Please note that in the course of providing the Services, we collect and maintain aggregated, anonymized or de-personalized information which we may retain indefinitely.

 

8. End Users’ personal information

Our customers who have created a site using SimpleUpdates are responsible for what they do with the personal information they collect, directly or through SimpleUpdates, about their End Users.  This section is directed to such customers.

8.1. Your relationship with End Users

If you’re one of our Users, you will collect personal information about your End Users. For example, during checkout you may ask your End Users to provide their name, address, email address and payment information so that you can complete their orders. You may also use cookies and similar technologies to analyze usage and other trends.

You're solely responsible for complying with any laws and regulations that apply to your collection and use of your End Users’ information, including personal information you collect about them from us or using SimpleUpdates functionality or cookies or similar technologies.  

We’re not liable for your relationship with your End Users or how you collect and use personal information about them (even if you collect it from us or using SimpleUpdates functionality or cookies or similar technologies) and we won’t provide you with any legal advice regarding such matters.

8.2. End User payment information

Your End Users’ payment information may be processed via third party eCommerce Payment Processors with which you integrate your Account, in accordance with such eCommerce Payment Processors’ terms and policies. We transmit your End Users’ complete payment information when they initially provide or update it only so that we can pass it along to the eCommerce Payment Processors you agree to use. We don’t collect or store your End Users’ payment information.

 

9. Updates to this Privacy Policy

We’ll update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect changes in technology, law, our business operations or any other reason we determine is necessary or appropriate. When we make changes, we’ll update the “Effective Date” at the top of the Privacy Policy and post it on this site.

We encourage you to check back periodically to review this Privacy Policy for any changes since your last visit.  This will help ensure you better understand your relationship with us, including the ways we process your personal information.

 

10. How to contact us

If you have questions, comments or complaints about this Privacy Policy or our privacy practices, please contact us, or write to us at the addresses below:

SimpleUpdates, Inc.
P.O. Box 271
Berrien Springs, MI 49103

(269) 473-3687