The privacy of your data — and it is your data, not ours! — is important to us. In this policy, we lay out: what data we collect and why; how your data is handled; and your rights to your data. We promise we never sell your data: never have, never will.

This policy applies to all products and services built, offered, and maintained by BizTech Weekly at https://biztechweekly.com/. 

Within all policies, terms, and agreements of BizTech Weekly listed at https://biztechweekly.com/, the terms “product”, “service”, “products”, and “services” may be used interchangeably, and all such policies, terms, and agreements are to apply to any and all of our products and services.

What we collect and why

Our guiding principle is to collect only what we need. Here is what that means in practice:

Identity & access

When you sign up for a BizTech Weekly product, we typically ask for identifying information such as your name, email address, and maybe a company name. That is just so you can personalize your new account, and we can send you invoices, updates, or other essential information. We sometimes also give you the option to add a profile picture that displays in our products, but we do not normally look at or access that picture. We will never sell your personal info to third parties, and we will not use your name or company in marketing statements without your permission either.

Billing information

When you pay for a BizTech Weekly product, we ask for your credit card and billing address. That is so we can charge you for service, calculate taxes due, and send you invoices. Your credit card is passed directly to our payment processor and does not ever go through our servers. We store a record of the payment transaction, including the last 4 digits of the credit card number and as-of billing address, for account history, invoicing, and billing support. We store your billing address to calculate any sales tax, VAT, or the equivalent due in the United States, to detect fraudulent credit card transactions, and to print on your invoices.

Geolocation data

We log all access to all accounts by full IP address so that we can always verify no unauthorized access has happened. We keep this login data for as long as your product account is active.

We also log full IP addresses used to sign up a product account. We keep this record forever because they are used to mitigate spammy signups.

Web analytics data — described further in the Website Interactions section — are also tied temporarily to IP addresses to assist with troubleshooting cases. We blind all web analytics data after 30 days.

Website interactions

When you browse our marketing pages or applications, your browser automatically shares certain information such as which operating system and browser version you are using. We track that information, along with the pages you are visiting, page load timing, and which website referred you for statistical purposes like conversion rates and to test new designs. We sometimes track specific link clicks to help inform some design decisions. These web analytics data are tied to your IP address and user account if applicable and you are signed into our Services. We blind all of these individual identifiers after 30 days.

Historically — including within the last 12 months — we have used third-party web analytics software. 

Cookies and Do Not Track

We do use persistent first-party cookies to store certain preferences, make it easier for you to use our applications, and support some in-house analytics. A cookie is a piece of text stored by your browser to help it remember your login information, site preferences, and more. You can adjust cookie retention settings in your own browser. To learn more about cookies, including how to view which cookies have been set and how to manage and delete them, please visit: www.allaboutcookies.org.

At this time, our sites and applications do not respond to Do Not Track beacons sent by browser plugins.

Log Files

BizTech Weekly follows a standard procedure of using log files. These files log visitors when they visit websites. All hosting companies do this and a part of hosting services’ analytics. The information collected by log files include internet protocol (IP) addresses, browser type, Internet Service Provider (ISP), date and time stamp, referring/exit pages, and possibly the number of clicks. These are not linked to any information that is personally identifiable. The purpose of the information is for analyzing trends, administering the site, tracking users’ movement on the website, and gathering demographic information.

Google Cookies

Google is one of a third-party vendor on our site. It also uses cookies, known as DART cookies, to serve ads to our site visitors based upon their visit to other sites on the internet. However, visitors may choose to decline the use of these cookies by visiting the Google ad and content network Privacy Policy at the following URL – https://policies.google.com/technologies/ads

Advertising Partners

Some of advertisers on our site may use cookies and web beacons. Our advertising partners are listed below. Each of our advertising partners has their own Privacy Policy for their policies on user data. For easier access, we hyperlinked to their Privacy Policies below.

• Adbuff
• AdColony
• AdRecover
• Adsterra
• Adversal
• Amazon Native Shopping Ads
• AppLovin
• Bidvertiser
• BuySellAds
• Chartboost
• Evadav
• Google
• InfoLinks
• InMobi
• ironSource
• Media.net
• Monumetric
• PopAds
• PropellerAds
• RevContent
• SHE Media
• Skimlinks
• Sovrn //Commerce (Formerly VigLink)
• Vungle
• ylliX

Third Party Privacy Policies

BizTech Weekly’s Privacy Policy does not apply to other advertisers or websites. Thus, we are advising you to consult the respective Privacy Policies of these third-party ad servers for more detailed information. It may include their practices and instructions about how to opt-out of certain options.

You can choose to disable cookies through your individual browser options. To know more detailed information about cookie management with specific web browsers, it can be found at the browsers’ respective websites.

Children’s Information

Another part of our priority is adding protection for children while using the internet. We encourage parents and guardians to observe, participate in, and/or monitor and guide their online activity.

BizTech Weekly does not knowingly collect any Personal Identifiable Information from children under the age of 13. If you think that your child provided this kind of information on our website, we strongly encourage you to contact us immediately and we will do our best efforts to promptly remove such information from our records.

Online Privacy Policy Only

Our Privacy Policy applies only to our online activities at https://biztechweekly.com/ and is valid for visitors to our website with regards to the information that they shared and/or collect in BizTech Weekly. This policy is not applicable to any information collected offline or via channels other than this website.

Consent

By using our website, you hereby consent to our Privacy Policy and agree to its terms.

Voluntary correspondence

When you write BizTech Weekly with a question or to ask for help, we keep that correspondence, including the email address, so that we have a history of past correspondences to reference if you reach out in the future.

We also store any information you volunteer like surveys. Sometimes when we do customer interviews, we may ask for your permission to record the conversation for future reference or use. We only do so if you give your express consent.

Information we do not collect

We do not collect any characteristics of protected classifications including age, race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression. You may provide these data voluntarily, such as if you include a pronoun preference in your email signature when writing into our Support team.

We also do not collect any biometric data. You are given the option to add a picture to your user profile, which could be a real picture of you or a picture of something else that represents you best. We do not extract any information from profile pictures: they are for your use alone.

When we access or share your information

Our default practice is to not access your information. The only times we will ever access or share your info are:

• To provide products or services you’ve requested. We do use some third-party services to run our applications and only to the extent necessary process some or all of your personal information via these third parties. Having subprocessors means we are using technology to access your data. No BizTech Weekly human looks at your data for these purposes.
• To help you troubleshoot or squash a software bug, with your permission. If at any point we need to access your account to help you with a Support case, we will ask for your consent before proceeding.
• To investigate, prevent, or take action regarding restricted uses. Accessing a customer’s account when investigating potential abuse is a measure of last resort. We have an obligation to protect the privacy and safety of both our customers and the people reporting issues to us. We do our best to balance those responsibilities throughout the process. If we do discover you are using our products for a restricted purpose, we will report the incident to the appropriate authorities.
• When required under applicable law. If the appropriate law enforcement authorities have the necessary warrant, criminal subpoena, or court order requiring we share data, we have to comply. Otherwise, we flat-out reject requests from local and federal law enforcement when they seek data. And unless we are legally prevented from it, we will always inform you when such requests are made. We have never received a National Security Letter or Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) order.

If BizTech Weekly is acquired by or merged with another company — we don’t plan on that, but if it happens — we’ll notify you well before any info about you is transferred and becomes subject to a different privacy policy.

Location of Site and Data

Our products and other web properties are operated in the United States. If you are located in the European Union or elsewhere outside of the United States, please be aware that any information you provide to us will be transferred to the United States. By using our Site, participating in any of our services and/or providing us with your information, you consent to this transfer.

Your Rights with Respect to Your Information

At BizTech Weekly, we apply the same data rights to all customers, regardless of their location. Currently some of the most privacy-forward regulations in place are the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”) and California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”) in the US. BizTech Weekly recognizes all of the rights granted in these regulations, except as limited by applicable law. These rights include:

• Right to Know. You have the right to know what personal information is collected, used, shared or sold. We outline both the categories and specific bits of data we collect, as well as how they are used, in this privacy policy, generated here.
• Right of Access. This includes your right to access the personal information we gather about you, and your right to obtain information about the sharing, storage, security and processing of that information.
• Right to Correction. You have the right to request correction of your personal information.
• Right to Erasure / “To be Forgotten”. This is your right to request, subject to certain limitations under applicable law, that your personal information be erased from our possession and, by extension, all of our service providers. Fulfillment of some data deletion requests may prevent you from using BizTech Weekly services because our applications may then no longer work. In such cases, a data deletion request may result in closing your account.
• Right to Complain. You have the right to make a complaint regarding our handling of your personal information with the appropriate supervisory authority. To identify your specific authority or find out more about this right, EU individuals should go to https://edpb.europa.eu/about-edpb/board/members_en.
• Right to Restrict Processing. This is your right to request restriction of how and why your personal information is used or processed, including opting out of sale of personal information. (Again: we never have and never will sell your personal data).
• Right to Object. You have the right, in certain situations, to object to how or why your personal information is processed.
• Right to Portability. You have the right to receive the personal information we have about you and the right to transmit it to another party.
• Right to not be subject to Automated Decision-Making. You have the right to object and prevent any decision that could have a legal, or similarly significant, effect on you from being made solely based on automated processes. This right is limited, however, if the decision is necessary for performance of any contract between you and us, is allowed by applicable law, or is based on your explicit consent.
• Right to Non-Discrimination. This right stems from the CCPA. We do and will not charge you a different amount to use our products, offer you different discounts, or give you a lower level of customer service because you have exercised your data privacy rights. However, the exercise of certain rights (such as the right “to be forgotten”) may, by virtue of your exercising those rights, prevent you from using our Services.

Many of these rights can be exercised by signing in and directly updating your account information. If you have questions about exercising these rights or need assistance, please contact us at privacy@@biztechweekly.com or at BizTech Weekly, . To identify your specific authority to file a complaint or find out more about GDPR, EU individuals should go to https://edpb.europa.eu/about-edpb/board/members_en.

How we secure your data

All data is encrypted via SSL/TLS when transmitted from our servers to your browser. The database backups are also encrypted. Most data are not encrypted while they live in our database (since it needs to be ready to send to you when you need it), but we go to great lengths to secure your data at rest.

When you delete data in your product accounts

In many of our applications, we give you the option to trash data. Anything you trash on your product accounts while they are active will be kept in an accessible trash can for up to 30 days (it varies a little by product). After that, the trashed data are no longer accessible via the application and are deleted from our active servers within the next 30 days. We also have some backups of our application databases, which are kept for up to another 30 days. In total, when you trash things in our applications, they are purged within 90 days from all our systems and logs. Retrieving data for a single account from a backup is cost-prohibitive and unduly burdensome so if you change your mind you’ll need to do so before your data are deleted from our active servers.

We also delete your data after an account is cancelled. In this case, there is no period of data being kept in an accessible trash can, so your data are purged within 60 days. This applies both for cases when an account owner directly cancels and for auto-cancelled accounts.

EU-US and Swiss-US Privacy Shield policy

The GDPR requires that data transfer out of the EU must only happen to countries deemed as having adequate data protection laws. The United States generally doesn’t meet that requirement. Privacy Shield is an agreement between certain European jurisdictions and the United States that allows for the transfer of personal data from the EU to the US. Participation in the Privacy Shield program is voluntary.

BizTech Weekly complies with the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield Framework and the Swiss-U.S. Privacy Shield Framework as set forth by the U.S. Department of Commerce regarding the collection, use, and retention of personal information transferred from the European Union, the United Kingdom, and Switzerland to the United States, respectively. We have certified to the Department of Commerce that we adhere to the Privacy Shield Principles. If there is any conflict between the terms in this privacy policy and the Privacy Shield Principles, the Privacy Shield Principles take precedent. To learn more about the Privacy Shield program, and to view our certification, please visit https://www.privacyshield.gov/.

BizTech Weekly is subject to the investigatory and enforcement powers of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) with regard to the Privacy Shield Frameworks.

The Privacy Shield Frameworks uphold specific principles, many of which are already outlined in the section on Your Rights. For clarity, pursuant to the Privacy Shield Frameworks, the following principles apply to all EU, UK, and Swiss data that has been transferred into the United States:

• Individuals have the right to access their personal data and to update, correct, and/or amend information that is incomplete. Individuals also have the right to request erasure of personal information that has been processed in violation of the principles. Individuals wishing to exercise these rights may do so by signing in and directly updating your account information. If you have questions about exercising these rights or need assistance, please contact us at privacy@@biztechweekly.com or at BizTech Weekly, .
• We remain liable for the onward transfer of personal data to third parties acting as our agents unless we can prove we were not a party to the events giving rise to the damages.
• We do not sell personal data, nor do we permit it to be used for reasons other than those for which it was originally provided. If this practice should change in the future, we will update this policy accordingly and provide individuals with opt-out or opt-in choice as appropriate.
• We may be required to release personal data in response to lawful requests from public authorities including to meet national security and law enforcement requirements.

We commit to resolving all complaints

In compliance with the EU-US and Swiss-US Privacy Shield Principles, we commit to resolve complaints about your privacy and our collection or use of your personal information. European Union, United Kingdom, or Swiss individuals with inquiries or complaints regarding this privacy policy should first contact Kelvin Miller at BizTech Weekly at privacy@@biztechweekly.com, or by mail at .

BizTech Weekly (the company) has further committed to refer unresolved privacy complaints under the EU-US and Swiss-US Privacy Shield Principles to an independent dispute resolution mechanism, the BBB EU PRIVACY SHIELD, operated by BBB National Programs. If you do not receive timely acknowledgment of your complaint, or if your complaint is not satisfactorily addressed, please visit https://bbbprograms.org/programs/bbb-privacy-shield/eu-dispute-resolution for more information and to file a complaint. This service is provided at no cost to you. Please do not submit GDPR complaints to BBB EU Privacy Shield.

If your Privacy Shield complaint cannot be resolved through these described channels, under certain conditions, you may invoke binding arbitration for some residual claims not resolved by other redress mechanisms. To learn more, please view the Privacy Shield Annex 1 at https://www.privacyshield.gov/article?id=ANNEX-I-introduction.

Changes & questions

We may update this policy as needed to comply with relevant regulations and reflect any new practices.

Have any questions, comments, or concerns about this privacy policy, your data, or your rights with respect to your information? Please get in touch by emailing us at privacy@@biztechweekly.com and we’ll be happy to answer them!

Privacy Regulation Reference

The data privacy regulatory landscape is undergoing a lot of change. You probably have heard about the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) that went into effect on May 25, 2018. There are also other regulations in the works around the world. We have written up this reference document to put information about our compliance with privacy regulations in one place.

Are BizTech Weekly products in compliance?

First things first, you should view our full Privacy policy.

• We are in compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”). We participate in the EU-US and Swiss-US Privacy Shield Framework to safeguard the transfer of personal data to the US.
• We are in the process of ensuring compliance with the California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”) and have expanded your rights in our privacy policy accordingly.
• We are also watching and preparing for other legislation in the US and in other countries.

We will update this document as we ensure compliance with other regulations.

We are not HIPAA-compliant and currently do not have plans to become so.

GDPR: data processing addendum

Increasingly, privacy regulations require processing of personal data be governed by a data processing addendum (DPA) that is compliant with those regulations.

We provide a standard Data Processing Addendum (DPA) that is GDPR-compliant to extend GDPR privacy principles, rights, and obligations everywhere personal data is processed. If you use our products to process any EU personal data, you need to enter into GDPR-compliant data processing agreements with any online services and third party vendors you rely on, including BizTech Weekly.

BizTech Weekly participates in the EU-US and Swiss-US Privacy Shield Framework to safeguard the transfer of personal data to the US, meeting the GDPR requirement for adequate data protection laws.

Subprocessors

BizTech Weekly uses third party subprocessors, such as cloud computing providers and customer support software, to provide our services. We enter into GDPR-compliant data processing agreements with each subprocessor and require the same of them.

You can see which subprocessors we use by application by viewing the following linked lists:

Subprocessors

We use third party subprocessors, such as cloud computing providers and customer support software, to run Backpack. We establish GDPR-compliant data processing agreements with each subprocessor, extending GDPR safeguards everywhere personal data is processed.

The following is a list of personal data subprocessors we use. These subprocessors are all located in the United States:

• Amazon Web Services. Cloud services provider.
• Braintree. Payment processing services.
• Customer.io. Transactional email service.
• Google Cloud Platform. Cloud services provider.
• HelloSign. Electronic signature service.
• Help Scout. Help desk software.
• Mailchimp. Email newsletter service.
• Sentry. Error reporting software.
• Slack. Optional integration feature.
• TaxJar. Sales tax calculation.
• Twilio. Text messaging service.
• Wufoo. Form/survey provider.

CCPA: our role as a service provider

In the CCPA, there is an important distinction between what are referred to as “service providers”, “businesses”, and “third parties”. You can see how the regulation defines these words by visiting the California Attorney General’s website: https://www.oag.ca.gov/privacy/ccpa.

Under the CCPA, BizTech Weekly is a “service provider.” That means when we process data you provide, we do so solely for the purpose you signed up for. Our business model is simple: we charge a recurring subscription fee to our customers. We do not sell personal information or use your data for any other commercial purposes unless with your explicit permission.

The CCPA also grants residents of California with additional rights related to their information. We grant those rights to all of our customers and detail them in our Privacy policy. Our Privacy policy also explains the information we collect in order to provide our services and clearly lists the only times we access or share your data.

BizTech Weekly policies are open source, licensed under CC BY 4.0. Adapted from the Basecamp open-source policies and generated by the Privacy Policy Generator at sherafy.com