EFFECTIVE DATE: JULY 13, 2022
HG Insights Inc. (“Company”, “we”, “us” and/or “our”) has prepared this Privacy Policy to explain how we collect, use, protect and disclose information and data when you use the Company website (the “Website“) and any Company services, including any products or services offered by Company from time to time and other services offered through third parties integrating Company functionality (collectively, the Website and such services are referred to as the “Services“). “You” refers to you as a user of the Services.
This Privacy Policy is designed to comply with federal and state privacy laws applicable in the United States, as well as the General Data Protection Regulation applicable in the European Union (the “GDPR”).
Your personal information will be handled as described in this Privacy Policy. If you have questions or concerns regarding this Privacy Policy, please email us at legal@hginsights.com or by mail at 1 North Calle Cesar Chavez, Suite 100, Santa Barbara, CA 93103 USA.
SOC 2 Type II Certification
For your peace of mind HG Insights has successfully completed the Service Organization Control (SOC) 2 Type II certification. The SOC 2 is an auditing standard developed by the American Institute of Certified Public Accounts (AICPA). Successful completion of the SOC 2 Type II audit further validates HG Insights’ focus on security and compliance, demonstrating a major milestone for the company.
SOC 2 defines criteria for managing customer data based on five “trust service principles”:
Certification demonstrates a company’s ability to not only implement critical security policies but also prove compliance over an extended period of time.
INFORMATION WE COLLECT
We collect information about you directly from you, as well as automatically through your use of the Website and the Services. We will strive not to require you to disclose more information than is reasonably necessary to use the Website and the Services.
Information We Collect from You. We collect information that personally identifies you, such as your name, email address and other personally identifiable information when you sign up on the Website or for the Services or that you otherwise choose to provide to us (“Personal Information”).
Information We Collect Automatically. We automatically collect information regarding the actions you take when using the Services (“Usage Data”). Usage Data may include the type of Web browser you use, your operating system, your Internet Service Provider, your IP address, the pages you view, how you interact with the Services, and the time and duration of your use of the Services.
Information We Receive from Other Sources
We may also augment the information we collect about you and your company. This can include the information we collect about you with information collected from third parties such as other web-based and mobile networks, exchanges, websites, or marketing technology providers. In addition, the information we automatically collect may be combined and associated with business profile information that we infer about you such as: company URL domain, functional area, seniority, industry, company revenue, or area of business interests.
This information may include hashed identifiers derived from other information such as email addresses, mobile device IDs, interest data (like your industry, employer, company size, job title or department) or content engagement on a publicly available digital property.
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HOW WE USE THIS INFORMATION
We use the information that we collect about you for the following purposes:
Providing Our Services. To provide the Website and the Services and for other customer service purposes.
Communicating with You. To communicate with you, including by email, about our Services and to respond to your questions, to offer you additional services, or to provide you with additional content or information that might be relevant or interesting to you.
Analyzing the Use of Our Services. To better understand our users’ access to and use of the Website and the Services, both on an individual and aggregated basis, and to respond to users’ desires and preferences.
Advertising. To match it with other public and private data sources in order to create anonymous segments of information (this is non-personally identifying information, such as demographic, behavioral and technical information, extracted from the underlying data) for use by HG Insights and/or third parties to target advertising messages to you on third party sites and services. You may opt-out from certain targeting advertising by following the instructions in the section below entitled “Interest Based Advertising and IP Targeting.”
Audience Solutions. To use firmographic and demographic data at the URL domain and company level for delivery into third party platforms like Oracle, LiveRamp, Eyeota, LinkedIn, or others for the purpose of marketing and selling specialized digital advertising audience segments for business-to-business advertisers to execute “interest-based advertising.” (More information about this type of advertising can be found at the DAA’s website.) These segments may be custom or made available in third party marketplaces with compliance standards assuring ethical and legal use. The firmographic and demographic data may include industry, company revenue, company size, various installed technologies we assign to your current or past employer company, or other intelligence and interest signals that we assign to companies and their employees across our products and services.
HOW WE DISCLOSE THIS INFORMATION
We may disclose the information that we collect about you with the following entities:
Your Employer. If you are using the Website or the Services through your employer’s account with us, we may disclose your information to your employer.
Service Providers. We may disclose your information to our vendors or service providers or agents who perform functions on our behalf. For example, we use cloud-based hosting providers to host the Website and the Services, and use other third-party platform providers, such as marketing automation, customer support and community platforms, to provide other services. Accordingly, these vendors, service providers or agents may process and store your Personal Information.
We may also disclose the information that we collect about you in the following ways:
Business Transfers. We may disclose your information to another entity if we are acquired by or merged with another company, if substantially all of our assets are transferred to another company, or as part of a bankruptcy proceeding.
In Response to Legal Process. We may disclose your information in order to comply with the law, or a judicial proceeding, subpoena, court order or other legal process.
To Protect Us and Others. We may disclose your information when we believe it is necessary to investigate, prevent or take action regarding illegal activities, suspected fraud, situations involving potential threats to the safety of any person, violations of our Terms of Service or this Privacy Policy, or as evidence in litigation in which we are involved.
Aggregated and De-identified Information. We may disclose aggregate or de-identified information about our users for marketing, advertising, research or similar purposes.
HOW LONG WE RETAIN YOUR INFORMATION
We will retain your Personal Information for as long as reasonably required to allow you to access the Website and the Services.
Description | Retention Period | Business Reason | Destruction Method |
Electronic Customer Data for Sales and Marketing Support | 24-months after customer engagement ends | Customer manages their data in the platform. As long as customer is active, they can manage their own data. Once a customer is offboarded, data will be destroyed within 24 months | Purge |
Paper containing Customer Data | N/A | We do not maintain paper copies of customer data, however, we may have electronic forms such as contracts | Shred or Incinerate |
Backup Media (SAN) | N/A | We do not maintain backup copies of customer data ins cope, we do employ replication which falls under Electronic Customer Data clause | Format or Destroy |
External Media | N/A | We do not store or transfer customer data on external media | Format or Destroy |
COOKIES AND WEB BEACONS
We or our service providers may use cookies (a small text file placed on your computer to identify your computer and browser). We may also use Web beacons (a file placed on a website that monitors usage). We use cookies and Web beacons to improve the experience of the Services, such as pre-populating your username for easier login. We do not use cookies or Web beacons to collect Personal Information. Most Web browsers are initially set up to accept cookies. At this time, the Company does not recognize automated browser signals regarding tracking, including “do-not-track” signals. You can remove persistent cookies and change your privacy preferences by following directions provided in your Internet browser’s “help” directory. However, certain features of the Services may not work if you delete or disable cookies.
INTEREST BASED ADVERTISING AND IP TARGETING
We may work with data providers to serve advertising to you through display media or other methods. These providers may use personal information that we have collected or that you have provided to locate you online, such as when you visit or log in to websites or mobile applications. This information may be linked to online identifiers or IP addresses assigned to you, and to demographic or interest-based data, in order to target you with relevant advertising, including about our products or services. To learn more about or opt out of this and other interest-based advertising, please visit the industry opt-out pages operated by the DAA, at http://www.aboutads.info and by the NAI at http://networkadvertising.org.
THIRD PARTY LINKS
The Website and the Services may contain links to third-party websites. Any access to and use of such linked websites is not governed by this Privacy Policy, but instead are governed by the privacy policies of those third-party websites. We are not responsible for the information practices of such third-party websites.
EXCLUSIONS
This Privacy Policy shall not apply to any unsolicited information you provide to the Company through Services or through any other means or information that the Company collects or receives independently through other means where you did not provide that information directly to the Company. This includes, but is not limited to, information posted to publicly accessible websites or other public areas such as bulletin boards, any unsolicited ideas for new products or modifications to existing products, and any other information obtained independently by the Company or that was unsolicited and provided by you.
In addition, this Privacy Policy shall not apply to any information collected about businesses derived from the Company’s business methods and processes separate and apart from information we collect about users of the Website and the Services. The Company collects information offline from vendors, third parties and suppliers, and from public records such as business registrations, Uniform Commercial Code filings and bankruptcy filings. None of such information is subject to this Privacy Policy.
SECURITY
We maintain physical, electronic, and procedural safeguards to protect the confidentiality and security of Personal Information. However, no data transmission over the Internet or other network can be guaranteed to be 100% secure. As a result, while we strive to protect information transmitted on or through the Services, we cannot and do not guarantee the security of any information you transmit on or through the Services, and you do so at your own risk.
CHILDREN’S PRIVACY
We do not knowingly collect Personal Information from children under the age of 13. If we become aware that we have inadvertently received Personal Information from a child under the age of 13, we will delete such information from our records.
PROCESSING IN THE UNITED STATES
Please be aware that your Personal Information and communications may be transferred to and maintained on servers or databases located outside your state, province, or country. By using the Website or the Services, you consent to the transfer of such information to the United States and agree that the applicable laws in the United States will govern the collection, use, transfer and disclosure of your Personal Information and communications. The laws in the United States may not be as protective of your privacy as those in your location.
COMPLIANCE
In compliance with the GDPR and applicable federal and state laws, we have conducted a privacy impact assessment, and have instituted steps to protect your Personal Information including training and awareness, monitoring and verification, and response and enforcement. We also keep records of how we process your Personal Information, and will conduct annual internal audits of our privacy and security practices.
RIGHT TO REVIEW, DELETE AND CONTROL OUR USE OF YOUR INFORMATION
You have the right to review the Personal Information we have collected about you, to erase or delete it, and to tell us to no longer use or disclose it. You can review most of the Personal Information we collect about you by logging into your account and reviewing your account information and updating the Personal Information we maintain about you. You may also contact us at legal@hginsights.com to request access to your Personal Information, erasure or deletion of your Personal Information and/or cancellation of your account. If you ask us to erase or delete your Personal Information, we will erase or delete your Personal Information within one month or less.
RIGHT TO REMOVE YOUR INFORMATION
You have the right to obtain a copy of your Personal Information and take it with you. The copy will be in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format. If requested by you and when technically feasible, we will send that Personal Information via electronic means to you or a third party designated by you.
PRIVACY POLICY CHANGES
From time to time, we may change this Privacy Policy. If we change this Privacy Policy, we will give you notice by posting the revised Privacy Policy via the Services. Those changes will go into effect on the effective date shown in the revised Privacy Policy. We may also send an email notice to you using the contact information provided by you (if any) and/or by posting a notice on the Services. By continuing to use the Services, you consent to the revised Privacy Policy.
PLEASE PRINT A COPY OF THIS PRIVACY POLICY FOR YOUR RECORDS AND PLEASE CHECK THE TERMS OF SERVICE FREQUENTLY FOR ANY CHANGES TO THIS PRIVACY POLICY.
Call us to remove any personal information submitted through our website: (805) 880-1100
HG has been a strategy thought leader in technology intelligence for over a decade, developing solutions enabling global businesses to out-market, out-sell and outgrow their competition.
