How We Use Your Information

• The purposes for which you provided it;
• To provide information and services to you;
• To connect you with service providers and RatherChat’s partners that can provide services for you;
• To connect with your social media accounts and share information with you, should you choose to connect with RatherChat's social media accounts;
• To process and respond to your inquiries and comments;
• To send you information about your relationship or transactions with us;
• To facilitate payment transactions (your information will be used to submit your payment information to our payment processor);
• To administer, operate, and improve the Website or develop new services;
• To personalize and enhance your experience using the Website;
• To advertise and market products and services to you;
• To send periodic emails.  If you choose, the email address you provide may be used to send you occasional news, updates, etc.  Note: If you would like to unsubscribe from receiving future emails at any time, we include detailed unsubscribe instructions at the bottom of each email;
• To generate and review reports and data about our user base and Website usage patterns;
• To analyze the accuracy, effectiveness, usability or popularity of the Website;
• To compile aggregate data for internal and external business purposes;
• To prevent fraud and abuse of the Website and to otherwise protect users and visitors and our organization;
• To assist law enforcement and respond to subpoenas; and
• To perform other business activities as needed, or as described elsewhere in this Privacy Policy.
• As explained elsewhere in this Privacy Policy, personal information we collect may be processed by our partners in providing services related to the Website (such as administration services, technical services relating to the maintenance, servicing, and upgrading of the products, software, hosting services, customer service, data migration services and analytical services, among others).  

Legal Bases for Processing Your Information (For Users in European Union)

1. Performance of a Contract

2. Legitimate Interests

3. Consent

4. Compliance with Legal Obligations

Information may be disclosed to third parties in accordance with our Privacy Policy.  Please note that a user may choose not to share certain information as described in Your Choices Regarding Your Information below.

1. Third Party Service Providers and Business Partners.  We may use third party service providers and business partners to perform functions in connection with the Website and our other services, such as email marketing, delivering announcements by email, delivering advertisements, connecting you with partners via telephone, storing data, securing data, hosting data, migrating data, advertising, social sharing, providing users with services, and providing other services as described in this Privacy Policy including analyzing and improving the Website usefulness, reliability, user experience, and operation.  We may share your personal information with these providers and partners for their marketing and promotional purposes and so they can provide services to you (where legally required, subject to your express consent).

• DoubleClick/Google Ad Manager.  We use DoubleClick/Google Ad Manager to improve advertising. DoubleClick/Google Ad Manager is a Google/Alphabet service. For more information on the information DoubleClick will collect, please visit: https://support.google.com/dfp_premium/answer/2839090?hl=en&ref_topic=7395141. If You wish to change preferences or opt out of DoubleClick/Google Ad Manager’s use of cookies, please visit: https://support.google.com/ads/answer/2662922?hl=en&ref_topic=7048998 or http://optout.networkadvertising.org/#!/.

• LeadID.  We use LeadID from Jornaya to evaluate the user experience of the Website and to track inbound leads from users.  For more information, please visit Jornaya’s privacy policy at: https://www.jornaya.com/consumer-privacy-policy/.

• MailChimp. We use MailChimp to disseminate newsletters and tips. MailChimp may collect information from users subscribing to RatherChat’s newsletters, including name, physical address, email address, IP address, phone number, and other demographic information. For more information, please visit MailChimp’s privacy policy: https://mailchimp.com/legal/privacy/.
  
  
• YouTube. We host videos on YouTube that are embedded in the Website. These are hosted on RatherChat’s accounts. By viewing the videos on the site, YouTube may collect your information, including your Google user name and other account information. For more information, please visit the YouTube privacy policy at: https://policies.google.com/privacy?hl=en.

2. Social Media Plugins.  Plug-ins for social networks, such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Yahoo, Windows and Google plus (among others), are integrated on the Website. By interacting with us through a social media plug-in, certain information will be transmitted to the related social network, and you permit us to have on-going access to information from your social network profile. If you do not want the social network to collect information about you, or to share it with RatherChat and other third parties, please review the privacy policy of the relevant social network and/or log out of the relevant social network before you visit the Website.


3. Organizational Changes.  If we become involved in a merger, acquisition, sale of assets, joint venture, securities offering, bankruptcy, reorganization, liquidation, dissolution, or other transaction or if the ownership of all or substantially all of our organization otherwise changes, we may transfer your information to a third party or parties in connection therewith.


4. Affiliates.  We may also share your information with our affiliates for purposes consistent with this Privacy Policy.  Our affiliates will be required to maintain that information in accordance with this Privacy Policy.


5. Partners.  You may request quotes or referrals for services through the Website.  We may disclose your information to service providers and other partners to provide you with services.  We may also connect you directly with service providers or partners by telephone if you request via the Website.


6. Investigations and Law.  We may disclose information about you to third parties if we believe that such disclosure is necessary to:

• Comply with the law or guidance and cooperate with government or law enforcement officials or private parties;
• Investigate, prevent or take action regarding suspected illegal activities, suspected fraud, the rights, reputation, safety, and property of us, users or others, or violations of our policies or other agreements with us;
• Respond to claims and legal process (for example, subpoenas); and/or
• Protect against legal liability.

7. Aggregated Information.  We may share aggregated information relating to users of the Website with affiliated or unaffiliated third parties.  This aggregated information does not contain personal information about any user.


8. Analytics.  We use third-party analytics tools to better understand who is using the Website and how people are using it.  These tools may use cookies and other technologies to collect information about your use of the Website and Your preferences and activities.  These tools collect information sent by your device or the Website and other information that assists us in improving the Website. This information may be used to, among other things, analyze and track data, determine the popularity of certain content, and better understand your online activity.  

We, along with third parties, use cookies, local storage objects, web beacons and other technologies.  These technologies are used for analyzing, personalizing, and optimizing the Website. Cookies are small files that are transferred to and stored on your device through your web browser (if you allow it) that enable the website’s or service provider’s system to recognize your browser and capture and remember certain information.  You can instruct your browser to stop accepting cookies. But if you do not accept cookies, you may not be able to use all portions of all functionality of the Website.

• Persistent cookies remain on the visitor’s computer after the browser has been closed.

• Session cookies exist only during a visitor’s online session and disappear from the visitor’s computer when they close the browser software.

Flash cookies (also known as local shared objects) are data files that can be created on your computer by the websites you visit and are a way for websites to store information for later use. Flash cookies are stored in different parts of your computer from ordinary browser cookies.  You can disable the storage of flash cookies.  For additional information about managing and disabling flash cookies, please visit http://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player/kb/disable-local-shared-objects-flash.html.
Web beacons are small strings of code that provide a method for delivering a graphic image on a web page or in an email message for the purpose of transferring data.  You can disable the ability of web beacons to capture information by blocking cookies.



Your Choices Regarding Your Information

• Changing Your Information – You may request to review, update, or have deleted any personal information collected from you through the Website.  Just send us an email asking to review or update your personal information, or to have us delete your personal information.  However, we reserve the right to retain personal information as necessary for our business purposes and to comply with federal and state laws.
• Closing Your Account – If the email account associated with your email address is not active, we may remove it from our system without notice.

• Withdrawing Consent – If you are an individual residing in the EU, and you provided your consent for any particular processing of your personal information, you have the right to withdraw your consent to our processing of your information any time by requesting that your personal information be deleted. See further under the section EU Privacy Rights below.  This deletion is permanent and your information cannot be reinstated.  To proceed with this request, please email info@RatherChat.com.
• Opt-Outs Available from Our Partners – Some of our partners allow users to opt-out of their collection of information.  Some of our partners provide information on controlling cookies. For more information you may visit the Network Advertising Initiative’s Consumer Opt-Out Link and/or the Digital Advertising Alliance’s Consumer Opt-Out Link to opt-out of receiving tailored advertising from companies that participate in those programs.  To opt out of Google Analytics for Display Advertising or customize Google Display Network ads, you can visit the Google Ads Settings page.  Please note that to the extent advertising technology is integrated into the Website, You may still receive advertisements even if you opt-out of tailored advertising.  In that case, the ads will just not be tailored to your interests. Also, we do not control any of the opt-out links above and are not responsible for any choices you make using these mechanisms or the continued availability or accuracy of these mechanisms.

EU Privacy Rights

• The right to require RatherChat to confirm whether or not their information is being processed, the purpose of any such processing, the recipients of any information that has been disclosed, the period for which their information is to be stored and whether any automated decision-making processes are used in relation to their information;
• The right to require RatherChat to rectify inaccurate information without undue delay;
• The right to request the erasure of their information. Subject to certain conditions, RatherChat may be required to erase the information in response to such request where:
• the information is no longer necessary in relation to the purpose for which it was collected, such as where a user chooses to terminate his or her use of the Website;
• where the processing of the information is based on the user’s consent (and the other circumstances described in the Legal Bases for Processing Your Information and How Your information is Disclosed sections above no longer apply), if the user withdraws his or her consent; or
• the user objects to the processing of his or her information and there are no overriding legitimate grounds for the processing.
• Where RatherChat has disclosed the information of a European Union user to a third party and the user requests the erasure or rectification of the data, RatherChat will take all reasonable steps to inform the third party of such request.
• The right to restrict RatherChat from processing their information in certain circumstances, such as where the accuracy of that information is disputed or an objection has been raised (see below). In such circumstances, RatherChat will only process that information with the express consent of the user, or for the establishment, exercise or defense of legal claims or for the protection of the rights of another natural or legal person or for reasons of important public interest;
• The right to receive their information from RatherChat in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format;
• The right to object to the processing of their information by RatherChat where:
• RatherChat has relied on the ‘legitimate interest’ basis for processing that information, in which case we will immediately stop processing the user’s information unless we have compelling legitimate grounds which override the interests, rights and freedoms of the user; or
• the information is used for direct marketing purposes, in which case we will immediately stop processing the user’s information for such purposes.
• The right to lodge a complaint with the data protection supervisory authority of the EU member state where the user resides.
• The above legal rights are subject to various conditions and exceptions including where the data is used for statistical or scientific research purposes and the exercise of the right would prevent such purposes from being attained or would seriously impair their attainment.

Section 1798.83 of the California Civil Code permits California residents to request from a business, with whom the California resident has an established business relationship, certain information about the types of personal information the business has shared with third parties for those third parties’ direct marketing purposes and the names and addresses of the third parties with whom the business has shared such information during the immediately preceding calendar year. You may make one request each year by emailing us at info@RatherChat.com or by writing us at 267 John Davis Gate, Stouffville ON L4A 1T5.