AppHelp Privacy Notice (Customer)

Effective as of May 25, 2018

At AppHelp, we are committed to protecting your personal information. We have created this document to help you understand how we collect, manage and use your personal information. This Privacy Notice applies to the access and use of our websites, products and services.

This Privacy Notice describes how AppHelp collects, uses, and discloses information obtained through our products and/or services etc. and how you can exercise your data privacy rights.

In essence, we need to collect certain personal information about you (such as your name, contact information, etc.) in order to be able to provide you with our products and services. We promise to work hard to preserve the integrity and the security of your information. We will only use your data in accordance with this Privacy Notice, and will not share it with anyone for any other purposes. Your data may be stored and processed anywhere in the world.

We provide you choices that allow you to opt-out or control how we use and share your data.

Quick Links

While the above highlights certain aspects of our Privacy Notice, we recommend that you read this Privacy Notice in full to ensure you are fully informed. However, if you only want to access a particular section of this Privacy Notice, then you can click on the relevant link below to jump to that section.

2. What we mean by...

In order to render this document as concise as possible, we decided to summarise some of the terms that we use from time to time. As a result, the following words and expressions, whenever used in this document, will have the meaning explained below:

When we use the expression “personal information” in this document, we mean the information that either uniquely identifies a physical person or enables us to do so, as further explained below. Such information may include the person’s name, address, contact information (such as telephone numbers or email addresses), age, gender, and so forth.

When we use “AppHelp”, “AppDirect”, “us”, “we”, “our”, or other similar words, we refer to AppDirect Canada Inc. (doing business as AppHelp) and its affiliated companies.

We refer to the “Service Provider” as to the legal entity with which you may have an agreement for the provision of products and/or services, and as part of which you are being provided with AppHelp software and services.

The terms “you”, “your”, “yours”, or other similar words refer to the persons who access or use our software and services, including our websites. This may include other persons to whom you may have given access to or allowed the use of your device, our software or services through your account, without our knowledge.

3. Why we need to collect your personal information

Your personal information is necessary for us to be able to better understand your needs and preferences, and to provide you with our software and services. Additionally, we may rely on your personal information to contact you regarding your account, upcoming changes, improvements, software updates and upgrades, new offers and promotions, as well as to improve the effectiveness of our offerings, to conduct research, analysis and other business-related activities. In any event, your personal information will not be used, made available or otherwise disclosed for purposes other than those specified herein, unless we obtain your prior consent or are required by law to do so.

4. What kind of personal information may be concerned

AppHelp provides various software and services, any combination of which could be made available to you by your Service Provider. We will access and collect personal information only to the extent necessary to ensure that you are able to access and use our software and services. We may also collect and store personal information that you choose to provide to us, at your sole discretion, without us requiring you to do so.

In this section, we have tried to explain in which events your personal information may be accessed, collected, used and processed, including the types of personal information that may be required, depending on your access and use of our software and services.

General

In order to be able to identify and associate your account with you, we need to collect personal information specific to you. This includes your name, contact information, including your mailing address, your account information stored with your Service Provider, such as your account number, your subscription details, as well as other unique identifiers attributed to you by us or by your Service Provider. Also, when you contact us, whether by phone, chat, email, through our websites or otherwise, we may keep a record of your communication to help solve issues that you might be facing, but also for training, quality assurance and statistical purposes, as well as to improve our products and services.

When our software is installed on your device, we may, from time to time, send to your device information about updates and upgrades to our software. In some cases, such updates or upgrades may be installed automatically without your knowledge. This helps us ensure that you are using the most recent software, which generally provides you with most up-to-date functions and security protection.

Please note that we may use your personal information to aggregate various performance, analytical and statistical data, as well as to develop new products and services. When we do so, we ensure that your personal information is anonymized.

Premium Technical Support

Device client software

As part of our premium technical support services, we are providing you with our device client software, which has several very important purposes. Not only it enables us to better understand your needs and prevent problems that you may be experiencing with the device on which it is installed and running, but it also provides you with valuable information about the status of your device and your account. Additionally, it allows you to request live support from technical support agents when you need it.

By default, our device client software will constantly run on your device and perform various background tasks, which help maintain your device in working condition. When running, it collects various data regarding your device, including its technical specifications, information regarding its operating system, downloaded and/or installed software, updates and upgrades, the availability and the status of your security software, backups and firewalls, various unique identifiers, system and software error messages, network connections status, connected peripherals and other connected devices, and so forth. This information enables us to prevent many common issues that you may be experiencing, but also to quickly identify problems for which you may be requesting our support.

Chat sessions

When you request live chat assistance from technical support agents, chat sessions are being recorded for quality assurance and training purposes, as well as to improve our products and services. As a result, all information exchanged during such chat sessions may be collected and used by us as part of our internal processes.

Live call sessions

Similarly, when you request live assistance from technical support agents by telephone, conversations may be recorded for quality assurance and training purposes, as well as to improve our products and services. As a result, all information exchanged during such recorded calls may be collected and used by us as part of our internal processes.

Remote control

If you request live support from one of the technical support agents, the agent may need to take remote control of your device in order to resolve the issues that you are experiencing. However, an agent will not access your device without you giving the agent your authorisation to log into your device to fix the problems.

If an agent takes remote control over your device, he or she may have access to any information stored on your device. However, technical support agents are trained not to access more information than what is absolutely necessary to resolve the issues for which you are requesting agent’s support. While support agents do not access unnecessary information, it is your responsibility to remain in front of your device screen to observe the actions of the agent while he or she performs the services on your device. Note that you will have the opportunity to end the live support session at any time by clicking on the appropriate button. In any case, it is your responsibility to ensure that all your files, especially those containing your personal information, are secure to prevent any type of data loss or corruption.

Mobile application

As part of our premium technical support services, we may also provide you with our mobile application. In order for it to function properly, the following permissions will be requested from your OS: internet connection, receive notification that the boot is completed, read the state of your mobile device, access network information, manage the list of accounts (e.g. Google, Facebook, etc.), access those accounts, use tokenised account credentials, access Bluetooth and fine location (whether through wi-fi, GPS or other means), access wi-fi information, as well as read low-level logs on the device. The above list refers to permissions requested by our app from the OS. However, only the following information will be collected and processed by us: access points (APN), default browser, hardware data (memory, CPU, internal storage size and external storage size), operating system version, settings (full disk encryption, USB debugging, etc.), installed software (including installation data, last time run and version number), average running process, Bluetooth status, wi-fi status, as well as start-up applications.

Security Services

As part of our security services, if made available to you, we may, from time to time, send to your device(s) a file containing an updated list of viruses or other malicious software and codes.

Internet Security

If the Internet Security feature is included as part of our security services provided to you, we may gather the website URL addresses when you attempt to visit them and run them through our database of websites in order to identify whether the website you are about to visit has been flagged as containing malicious code or software that could undermine your privacy or the security of your device. However, we do not store the URL addresses of websites that you visit.

Security Portal

In some cases, we may grant you access to Security Portal, our website allowing you to manage your security services account. For this purpose, additional personal information may be collected and processed by us, such as your email address and password associated with our security services, as well as some unique device identifiers necessary for the Security Portal to generate and send reports and alerts, including for the purposes of the Parental Control feature (please refer to the appropriate section below).

Security Portal may also invite you to input additional information about yourself, which will enable us to provide you customised experience while using our services. However, this information is optional, and should be entered at your discretion. Such information includes your name, contact information and description of your devices. If you choose to provide us with this additional information, we will collect and store it in accordance with this Privacy Notice.

Parental Control

In some cases, our security services comprise the Parental Control feature. This feature allows you to monitor the activity of your child using his of her device (such as computers or mobile phones, as applicable). As part of our Parental Control feature, the following information may be collected and processed: the operating system user account name, various email addresses used for online messaging, as well as the list of accessed websites and the list of applications on the device. This information will be collected and made available to you, entirely or in a summarised form, in the Security Portal.

Please note that the Parental Control feature is destined to be used exclusively for the purposes of monitoring the activity of your minor child, to ensure his or her safety. Monitoring the activity of a person without his or her prior express consent may violate such person’s privacy, and may result in your legal accountability. Therefore, it is your responsibility to ensure that you do not use the Parental Control feature to monitor the activity of any person other than your minor child. In cases where you are required by law to obtain such minor child’s prior consent, it is your responsibility to ensure that such consent is properly obtained before you engage in the monitoring activity.

Online Backup

Our online backup services enable you to store the content of your device (in whole or in part) on our servers or those of our partners. This means that you will be providing us with the content of your device, including your personal information that it may contain. While we will not generally access or use any of this content, we reserve the right to access and screen your content to ensure that it complies with the terms and conditions applicable to its use.

In addition, depending on the solution provided to you, the access to our online back-up services may require you to create an online backup account. For this, you may be requested to provide an email address and create a password to be associated with your online backup account.

Our websites

We may gather certain information automatically through our website to analyze trends in the aggregate and administer our website and services. This information may include your IP address, browser version, and operating system.

We use web beacons to collect anonymous website usage information which describes how our visitors use and navigate our websites. This means that unless a visitor specifically discloses his or her identity to us by contacting us through our websites or by creating an account on them, thus providing us information through an online form, we will not know who the individual visitor is.

In some cases, you may have access to our secure websites, which enable you to manage your account, store your information, and so forth. When accessing and using our secure websites, you may be requested to identify yourself by providing answers to specific questions, which may include your personal information. Once logged in, you may be requested to provide us with additional information based on your usage of each website.

Please note that additional terms and conditions may apply to access and use of our websites, including disclaimers or warranty and limitations of liability.

Cookies and Web Beacons

In some cases, we use cookies and similar tracking technology (collectively, “Cookies”) to collect and use personal information about you, including to extend functionalities of our software, services and websites, as well as to personalise your experience. For further information about the types of Cookies we use, why, and how you can control Cookies, please see our Cookie Notice www.appdirect.com/products/apphelp/cookies.

IP addresses

An IP address is a sequence of numbers that is assigned to your device or network when you are connected to a network. In most cases, an IP address does not specifically identify an individual. We collect IP addresses as part of all our services for a variety of internal purposes, such as system administration, to report aggregate information to our business partners or to audit the number of visits to different pages on our websites. When you’re receiving our security services, we collect the IP address of your device and your gateway for the purpose of identifying the device affected by viruses or malware, and to enable us to provide your device with the appropriate security protection against viruses or malware.

Payments

In some cases, your Service Provider may enable you to pay for your subscription purchases using our secure payments systems. In order to complete your transaction, you may be requested to provide your payments information, such as your name, billing address, email address and your card information. Your data will be transmitted to our payments partner for processing, in compliance with the payments card industry security standards.

Surveys

Occasionally we may conduct surveys on our websites. To participate, you may be asked to provide certain information, such as your age, gender, postal/zip code and other personal information. This information will be stored in our records. We may publish the results of the survey, but only in aggregate with other participants’ responses. Note that if we decide to share results of surveys with third parties, other than with your Service Provider, we will not include information that would allow them to personally identify you.

Marketing

We may occasionally contact you with specific email, text and other electronic or digital messages at your Service Provider’s request, in accordance with your marketing preferences. Such communication may include information and advertisements from your Service Provider and its partners. We will not share your email addresses or other personal information to third parties for marketing purposes other than as set forth herein. It is your right to opt out from all such communications at any time, either through unsubscribe links provided in the message, or by contacting us at apphelp.privacy@appdirect.com

5. Legal basis for processing personal information (EEA residents only)

If you are a resident from the European Economic Area, our legal basis for collecting and using the personal information described above will depend on the personal information concerned and the specific context in which we collect it.

However, we will normally collect personal information from you only where we have your consent to do so, where we need the personal information to perform a contract with you, or where the processing is in our legitimate interests and not overridden by your data protection interests or fundamental rights and freedoms. In some cases, we may also have a legal obligation to collect personal information from you.

If we ask you to provide personal information to comply with a legal requirement or to perform a contract with you, we will make this clear at the relevant time and advise you whether the provision of your personal information is mandatory or not (as well as of the possible consequences if you do not provide your personal information).

Similarly, if we collect and use your personal information in reliance on our legitimate interests (or those of any third party), we will make clear to you at the relevant time what those legitimate interests are.

If you have questions about or need further information concerning the legal basis on which we collect and use your personal information, please contact us using the contact details provided under the “Contact, openness and accountability” heading below.

6. Who may have access to your personal information

At AppHelp, we recognise and respect the importance of protecting your personal information. Keeping your personal information in strict confidence is an integral part of our commitment to service excellence. We do not sell or rent your personal information to any third party. However, in order to provide you with our software or services, we may share your personal information with our affiliated companies, parent entities and subsidiaries, for internal business purposes, as well as with your Service Provider and our specific partners, acting on our behalf.

As many other service providers, we use third party partners’ assistance in some aspects of our business operations, which in some cases involves processing or handling of your personal information. However, before we do so, we take appropriate measures to ensure that your personal information remains safe and secure, and is used only in a way that is consistent with our Privacy Notice.

We protect your personal information even within our organisation. It may be accessible only to those employees, agents, representatives and consultants of AppHelp who need to know such information as part of their duties. We also ensure that our employees, agents, representatives and consultants perform their duties in a way compatible with the terms and conditions described in this document.

Finally, as our services are provided to you in the name of your Service Provider, we may share your personal information with the latter for the purpose of ensuring your identity, your account and subscription status, and other. Once we do, your Service Provider will use your personal information in accordance with its own Privacy Notice.

7. How we protect your personal information

We work diligently to maintain appropriate physical, technical and procedural safeguards that comply with industry best practices to guard the integrity and security of your personal information against unauthorized access or use. Your Personal information is stored in secure data centers, access to which is restricted to authorised personnel only. We employ industry-leading technologies to store sensitive information and protect it while in transit over the internet. Additionally, our websites use industry standard Secure Socket Layer (SSL) technology to protect your information using both server authentication and data encryption. We cannot, however, ensure or warrant the security of any information you transmit to AppHelp, and you do so at your own risk. Once we receive your transmission of information, AppHelp endeavors to secure our systems, but please note that this is not a guarantee that such information may not be accessed, disclosed, altered, or destroyed by system malfunction or circumvention of our safeguards.

8. Where your personal information may be processed

AppHelp is a Canada-based company which, together with its partners and affiliated companies, operate in many countries. As a result, we may store or process your personal information in many places around the world. This means that your personal information may be stored, processed and used outside the State, province or country where you live. Those countries may not have the same data protection laws as the country in which you initially provided the information. When we transfer your information to other countries, we will protect that information as described in this Privacy Notice. Specifically, we have implemented the European Commission’s Standard Contractual Clauses for transfers of personal information between our group companies, which require all group companies to protect personal information they process from the EEA in accordance with European Union data protection law.

9. Keeping your personal information accurate and up-to-date

In the provision of our services, we want to ensure that we provide you the best experience possible, and we rely heavily on the personal information that you submit to us. Our software is built to facilitate the communication of the most recent information about your account and your devices. However, if you notice that the information that we have on you in our files is inaccurate, or your personal information changes (for example, you move or you change your phone number) we strongly encourage you to reach out to us and provide us with you most current information; not doing so may, in some cases, affect our capacity to deliver to you our services. Note that before updating your personal information, we may ask you to verify your identity before we can act on your request.

10. Your choices and rights

Subject to applicable law, you may have the right to: obtain confirmation that we hold information about you, request access to information we maintain about you, request portability of your personal information, ask us to restrict processing of your personal information receive copies of the information we maintain about you, update and correct inaccuracies in your information, object to the processing of your information, and have the information blocked, anonymized or deleted, as appropriate. You may also have the right to withdraw any consent you previously provided to us. These rights may be limited in some circumstances by local law requirements.

You have the right to complain to a data protection authority about our collection and use of your personal information. For more information, please contact your local data protection authority. Contact details for data protection authorities in the European Economic Area are available here.

11. Retention of your personal information

We retain personal information we collect from you where we have an ongoing legitimate business need to do so (for example, to provide you with a service you have requested or to comply with applicable legal, tax or accounting requirements).

When we have no ongoing legitimate business need to process your personal information, we will either delete or anonymise it or, if this is not possible (for example, because your personal information has been stored in backup archives), then we will securely store your personal information and isolate it from any further processing until deletion is possible.

12. Privacy of children under 14

Our software and services are not intended for access and use by children under the age of 14. Except for the Parental Control feature (described above) which may be provided as part of our security services, we do not knowingly collect any information from children under 14 years of age.

If you are under 14 years of age, please do not submit any information about yourself to us. If we discover that a child under the age of 14 has provided us with personal information, we will deploy reasonable efforts to delete that child’s personal information from our systems.

13. What if we transfer or sell our business

AppHelp is proud to operate its business. However, if we ever decide to sell or transfer our business (whether entirely or partially), we may be required, during the process, to disclose to the actual or prospective investors the information that we may have about you. And if such transfer or sale occurs, we will use all reasonable efforts to ensure that your personal information continues to be used in a way that is consistent with our Privacy Notice.

14. Legal disclosure

We may be required to disclose any and all information that we have on you to legal authorities. Such disclosure may be required by law, a court order, or by other legal obligations that we may have in any jurisdiction. Additionally, we may disclose your information to competent law enforcement agencies or other appropriate entities if we have reasonable grounds to believe that you’re using our software or services in violation or in a manner that violates applicable laws or regulations, or to protect or defend the property rights that we and/or our partners may have under the applicable law.

15. Consent

You may give us your consent for the collection, use and disclosure of your personal information in several ways. It can be express (for example, by phone, chat, email, by accepting the terms of our End-User Licence Agreement, or other similar means) or implied (for example, when you provide us with your personal information necessary for the performance of specific services). In some cases, your consent may be given by your authorised representative (such as a legal guardian or a person having a power of attorney).

When you provide us with your personal information, we assume that you consent to our collection, use and disclosure of your personal information for the purposes identified or described in this Privacy Notice. Occasionally, we may also request your consent to access or collect additional personal information which may be necessary to enable us to render our services to you, even if not specifically identified in this document. We will treat such personal information in accordance with the terms of this Privacy Notice and the applicable laws.

It is your right to direct us to stop collecting, using or sharing your personal information at any time, subject to contractual and legal restrictions and reasonable advance written notice. However, note that if you withdraw your consent, we may no longer be able to provide you our software or services, in whole or in part. If you still desire us to withdraw your consent, please contact us at the address written below.

16. Contact, openness and accountability

Within AppHelp, our Security Officer is responsible for our security and privacy-related matters, including the application of this Privacy Notice. He and his team oversee training of our staff to ensure security compliance and to raise privacy awareness.

Transparency and integrity are among the key values at AppHelp. We will gladly answer any questions or concerns that you may have regarding your privacy or the security of your personal information, or if you wish to request a correction of your personal information in our custody or control. Don’t hesitate to reach us by visiting the “contact us” section of our website.

If for any reason you consider our response to be unsatisfactory or incomplete, please don’t hesitate to contact our Security Officer by email at apphelp.privacy@appdirect.com, or by mail at the following address:

Security Officer
AppHelp
2050 de Bleury Street, Suite 300
Montreal, QC, H3A 2J5, Canada

You should also contact our Security Officer if you wish to request access to your personal information within our possession or control. Note however that in some cases it could impossible for us to provide you access to your personal information. This may occur when providing such access would be likely to impact the privacy or the security of a third party, reveal confidential information of AppHelp or cannot be disclosed for other valid reasons. In these events we will advise you in writing of the grounds of our decision.

Lastly, if we are unable to resolve an issue to your satisfaction, you may choose to request assistance from the privacy authorities, such as the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, who may be contacted at 1-800-282-1376, or by visiting www.priv.gc.ca.

17. Updates to this Privacy Notice

Please revisit this page periodically to stay aware of any changes to this Privacy Notice, which may be revised from time to time at AppHelp’s sole discretion in order to implement new technologies and to improve our processes, software and services. If we modify the Privacy Notice, we will make it available through our website and indicate the date of the latest revision. The most current version of this Privacy Notice is available at www.appdirect.com/products/apphelp/privacy-consumer. However, in the event that the modifications materially alter your rights or obligations hereunder we will notify you by email as may be required by law.

Our amended Privacy Notice will automatically take effect 30 days after it is made available through the Services, except that (i) we will not, without your consent, use your previously collected personal information in a manner inconsistent with the Privacy Notice in effect when we received that information, and (ii) if you do not agree with any changes to the Privacy Notice, you may terminate your account ceasing use of our services.

Where applicable, we will also provide you with instructions on how to opt in to or opt out from our new services or communications. Note that some aspects of our services may not be available to you if you choose to opt out.

This Privacy Notice has been last updated on May 25, 2018.

AppHelp™, PTScx™ and their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of AppDirect Canada Inc. in Canada, the United States and/or other countries.