Last Modified: February 22, 2014
This Privacy Policy provides our policies and procedures for collecting, using, and disclosing your information. Users can access the HBTI service (the “Service”) through our website www.hvacinstitute.com, applications on Devices, through APIs, and through third-parties. A “Device” is any computer used to access the HBTI Service, including without limitation a desktop, laptop, mobile phone, tablet, or other consumer electronic device. This Privacy Policy governs your access of the HBTI Service, regardless of how you access it, and by using our Services you consent to the collection, transfer, processing, storage, disclosure and other uses described in this Privacy Policy. All of the different forms of data, content, and information described below are collectively referred to as “information.”
1. The Information We Collect And Store
We may collect and store the following information when running the HBTI Service:
Information You Provide. When you register an account, we collect some personal information, such as your name, phone number, credit card or other billing information, email address and home and business postal addresses. You may also ask us to import your contacts by giving us access to your third party services.
Files. We collect and store the files you upload, download, or access with the HBTI Service (“Files”). If you add a file to your HBTI service that has been previously uploaded by you or another user, we may associate all or a portion of the previous file with your account rather than storing a duplicate.
Log Data. When you use the Service, we automatically record information from your Device, its software, and your activity using the Services.
Cookies. We also use “cookies” to collect information and improve our Services. A cookie is a small data file that we transfer to your Device. We may use “persistent cookies” to save your registration ID and login password for future logins to the Service. We may use “session ID cookies” to enable certain features of the Service, to better understand how you interact with the Service and to monitor aggregate usage and web traffic routing on the Service. You can instruct your browser, by changing its options, to stop accepting cookies or to prompt you before accepting a cookie from the websites you visit. If you do not accept cookies, however, you may not be able to use all aspects of the Service.
2. How We Use Personal Information
Personal Information. In the course of using the Service, we may collect personal information that can be used to contact or identify you (“Personal Information”). Personal Information is or may be used: (i) to provide and improve our Service, (ii) to administer your use of the Service, (iii) to better understand your needs and interests, (iv) to personalize and improve your experience, and (v) to provide or offer software updates and product announcements.
Geo-Location Information. Some Devices allow applications to access real-time location-based information (for example, GPS). Our mobile apps do not collect such information from your mobile device at any time while you download or use our mobile apps as of the date this policy went into effect.
Analytics. We also collect some information (ourselves or using third party services) using logging and cookies, such as IP address. We use this information for the above purposes and to monitor and analyze use of the Service, for the Service’s technical administration, to increase our Service’s functionality, to extract data for performance reporting for user-friendliness, and to verify users have the authorization needed for the Service to process their requests. As of the date this policy went into effect,
3. Information Sharing and Disclosure
Your Use. We will display your Personal Information in your profile page and elsewhere on the Service according to the preferences you set in your account. Any information you choose to provide should reflect how much you want others to know about you. You can review and revise your profile information at any time. We do not sell your personal information to third parties. We may also share or disclose your information with your consent, for example if you use a third party application to access your account (see below).
Service Providers, Business Partners and Others. We may use certain trusted third party companies and individuals to help us provide, analyze, and improve the Service (including but not limited to data storage, maintenance services, database management, web analytics, and improvement of the Service’s features). These third parties may have access to your information only for purposes of performing these tasks on our behalf and under obligations similar to those in this Privacy Policy. As of the date this policy went into effect, we use AZURE’s storage service to store some of your information (for example, your Files). You can find more information on Azure’s data security from the Azure.com.
Third-Party Applications. We may share your information with a third party application with your consent, for example when you choose to access our Services through such an application. We are not responsible for what those parties do with your information, so you should make sure you trust the application and that it has a privacy policy acceptable to you.
Compliance with Laws and Law Enforcement Requests; Protection of HBTI’s Rights. We may disclose to parties outside HBTI’s files stored in your HBTI Service and information about you that we collect when we have a good faith belief that disclosure is reasonably necessary to (a) comply with a law, regulation or compulsory legal request; (b) protect the safety of any person from death or serious bodily injury; (c) prevent fraud or abuse of HBTI or its users; or (d) to protect HBTI’s property rights. If we provide your HBTI files to a law enforcement agency as set forth above, we will remove HBTI’s encryption from the files before providing them to law enforcement. However, HBTI will not be able to decrypt any files that you encrypted prior to storing them in the HBTI service.
Business Transfers. If we are involved in a merger, acquisition, or sale of all or a portion of our assets, your information may be transferred as part of that transaction, but we will notify you (for example, via email and/or a prominent notice on our website) of any change in control or use of your Personal Information or Files, or if either become subject to a different Privacy Policy. We will also notify you of choices you may have regarding the information.
Non-private or Non-Personal Information. We may disclose your non-private, aggregated, or otherwise non-personal information, such as usage statistics of our Service.
4. Changing or Deleting Your Information
If you are a registered user, you may review, update, correct or delete the Personal Information provided in your registration or account profile by changing your “account settings.” If your personally identifiable information changes, or if you no longer desire our service, you may update or delete it by making the change on your account settings. In some cases we may retain copies of your information if required by law.
5. Data Retention
We will retain your information for as long as your account is active or as needed to provide you services. If you wish to cancel your account or request that we no longer use your information to provide you services, you may delete your account here. We may retain and use your information as necessary to comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes, and enforce our agreements. Consistent with these requirements, we will try to delete your information quickly upon request. Please note, however, that there might be latency in deleting information from our servers and backed-up versions might exist after deletion. In addition, we do not delete from our servers files that you have in common with other users.
8. Security
The security of your information is important to us. When you enter sensitive information (such as a credit card number) on our order forms, we encrypt the transmission of that information using secure socket layer technology (SSL).
We follow generally accepted standards to protect the information submitted to us, both during transmission and once we receive it. No method of electronic transmission or storage is 100% secure, however. Therefore, we cannot guarantee its absolute security. If you have any questions about security on our website, you can view our security overview page or contact us at support@hvacinstitute.com.
11. Contacting Us
If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, please contact us at support@hvacinstitute.com
12. Changes to our Privacy Policy
This Privacy Policy may change from time to time. If we make a change to this privacy policy that we believe materially reduces your rights, we will provide you with notice (for example, by email). And we may provide notice of changes in other circumstances as well. By continuing to use the Service after those changes become effective, you agree to be bound by the revised Privacy Policy.
