Last Updated: August 9, 2023
WHAT IS PERSONAL INFORMATION?
“Personal Information” means any information that allows someone to, directly or indirectly, identify an individual, including such things as name, identification number, address, phone numbers or financial information. Some jurisdictions use “Personal Data” to refer to this concept. Personal Information does not include anonymous or de-identified aggregated information that cannot identify you as an individual. Not all information we collect is Personal Information.
WHAT PERSONAL INFORMATION DO WE COLLECT?
When you use or interact with us through the Services or otherwise engage with us, we may collect Personal Information. Sometimes this will be on our own behalf and other times this will be on behalf of a Merchant using our Services to provide an End-User with. This is an important distinction for purposes of the application Personal Information protection laws, your rights, and the degree of control that we have over the Personal Information.
In general, we collect Personal Information to provide you with a secure account to access our Services, deliver our newsletter, and to ensure End-Users receive benefits provided by Merchants. We collect this information directly from you.
In addition, we may collect information about you from other sources such as marketing partners, e-commerce platforms, social media platforms, third-party integrations, your credit card issuing bank, our payment processing partners, and credit reporting agencies.
Finally, we facilitate the sharing of information – personal or otherwise – between End-Users and Merchants, subject to the Merchant’s own privacy policies. Once the information is shared with a Merchant, it will be processed according to that Merchant’s policies and practices.
3.1 Information collected from all Users.
Information you provide to us: we collect Personal Information when you voluntarily provide such information to the Services, such as when you register for access to the Services, contact us with inquiries, respond to one of our surveys or browse or use certain parts of the Services. All Users must have a Rare Circles account to use the Services (“Account”). When you register for the Services or create an Account, we collect your email address and a password you select to secure your Account on the Service.
Information we automatically collect: we automatically collect certain technical data that is sent to us from the computer, mobile device and/or browser through which you access the Services. This information includes a unique identifier associated with your access device and/or browser characteristics about your access device and/or browser, statistics on your activities on the Services, information about how you came to the Services and data collected through Cookies, Pixel Tags, Local Shared Objects, Web Storage and other similar technologies. To learn more, see section 7 on Cookies.
3.2 Information collected from Merchants.
Information you provide to us: you may provide your credit card information (e.g., your credit card number, expiration date, billing address, etc.) to our third-party payment service providers to secure certain payments. In addition, we may collect financial information (e.g., bank account information or an address to send checks) to facilitate payments and information required for tax purposes (e.g., taxpayer identification number).
Information we obtain from other sources: we may collect your authorized representative’s name, user ID numbers, email address, contact information, and sales data from third party sources, including third party websites and marketing partners, e-commerce platforms, banks, payment processing partners, etc.
3.3 Information collected from End-Users.
If you are an End-User we will collect additional Personal Information from you, sometimes for our own purposes and other times on behalf of a Merchant (see Section 4 below for more information).
Information you provide to us and to Merchants: in addition to basic Account information, End-Users may choose to provide their name, a short biography, a photo avatar, and links to social media handles to increase the quality of engagements with Merchants. To claim or register for an Activation or join a community, End-Users may have to provide additional information which may be considered Personal Information. such as [name, address].
If you claim or register for a paid Subscription Membership, you will provide financial information to our third-party payment service providers (e.g., your credit card number and expiration date, billing address, etc.), some of which may constitute Personal Information and is subject to the privacy policies and practices of those third parties.
Information you provide to Merchants: Merchants can set up interactive Activations to collect virtually any information from End-Users in connection with the Services. Rare Circles does not control a Merchant's interactive communications nor the Personal Information that they collect. We are only acting as the Merchant’s service provider with respect to that Personal Information, meaning we have no control over that information or how it is ultimately used by the Merchant. When you claim an Activation or register for a community of a given Merchant, that Merchant will receive and may use the information you provide subject to that Merchant’s privacy policies and practices.
Information we obtain from other sources: we may also collect or receive Personal Information from third party sources, such as Merchants, other End-Users, social media, ecommerce platforms or other third-party integrations, credit card issuing banks, payment processing partners or other third parties.
3.4 Information collected from sales clients and leads.
If you engage with the Rare Circles sales team, we may collect your name, email, address, phone number, and other business contact information. If you engage with the sales team and consent to recording a meeting, the sales team may collect audio and/or video recordings of you.
You may also subscribe to our newsletter by providing an email address and agreeing to our Terms of Service. When you subscribe to our newsletter, we collect your email address. Our newsletter is tailored to Merchants and mostly provides updates on our Service, business growth suggestions using our Service, and success stories of creators and brands who used our Service.
HOW AND WHY DO WE USE PERSONAL INFORMATION?
We use the Personal Information we collect in a manner that is consistent with this Privacy Policy, and applicable privacy laws, for the following purposes.
4.1 Specific Reason.
If you provide Personal Information for a certain purpose, we may use the Personal Information in connection with the purpose for which it was provided. For instance, if you contact us by email, we will use the Personal Information you provide to answer your question or resolve your problem and will respond to the email address from which the contact came.
4.2 Access and Use.
If you provide Personal Information in order to obtain access to or use of the Services, we will use your Personal Information to provide you with access to or use of the Services and to analyze your use of such Services. For instance, if you supply Personal Information relating to your identity or qualifications to use certain portions of the Services, we will use that information to decide to grant you access to such Services and to assess your ongoing qualification to use such Services.
4.3 Internal Business Purposes.
We may use your Personal Information for internal business purposes, including to help us improve the content and functionality of the Services, to better understand our End-Users, to improve the Services, to protect against, identify or address wrongdoing, to enforce our Terms of Service, to manage your account and provide you with customer service, and to generally manage the Services and our business.
4.4 Rare Circles and Merchant Marketing.
We may use your Personal Information for our marketing and advertising purposes, including by email, SMS marketing, display media, and targeting other devices (such as tablets, mobile devices and televisions). We do this in order to inform you about services or events we believe might be of interest to you, develop promotional or marketing materials and display Rare Circles or related content and advertising on or off the Services that we believe might be of interest to you. We may also do this on behalf of a Merchant, for example where your prior interactions with a Merchant suggest you may be interested in a particular type of Activation.
You may see advertisements for our Services on third party websites, including on social media platforms. We also provide Merchants with tools to help them display advertisements for their Activations on third party websites and social media platforms. Where you see an advertisement on a third-party website or social media platform, this may be because we or the Merchant engaged the third party or social media platform to show the advertisement to Users, or to others who have similar attributes to our Users. In some cases, this involves sharing your email address or other contact details with the third party or social media platform so that they can identify you as one of our Users or identify other individuals with similar attributes to you in order to show them advertisements for our Services (or for our Merchants Activations). If you no longer want your Personal Information to be used for these purposes, please contact us via email at support@rarecircles.com or complete our data sharing opt-out request at the following address: https://rarecirclesinc.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/17046439883547.
In the case of Merchant advertising, you may need to contact the Merchant directly.
HOW DO WE SHARE INFORMATION WITHOUT YOUR CONSENT?
There are certain circumstances in which we may disclose, transfer or share your Personal Information with certain third parties without further notice to you, as set forth in this Privacy Policy.
5.1 Affiliates, service providers and partners
We may share your Personal Information with our affiliates, service providers and partners as part of the delivery of our Service or as part of our marketing activities. This is done in accordance with the purposes set out in this Privacy Policy or as permitted under applicable laws. We require our affiliates, service providers, and partners to honor this Privacy Policy.
5.2 Business transfers
Because it is important for us that we have the flexibility and possibility to conduct our business, we may share and transfer your Personal Information without requesting your express consent each time there is a corporate event requiring such transfer, such as a merger, acquisition, bankruptcy, sale of assets, or a reorganization of assets or operations. As part of this kind of event, we may share your Personal Information to the relevant third party or its advisors as part of any due diligence process or transfer to that reorganized entity or third party.
5.3 Advisors, auditors, law enforcement bodies and other competent authorities
To comply with our legal obligations or to defend our interests, we may share your Personal Information with third parties if we believe that disclosure is useful to enforce our Privacy Policy, to detect or prevent fraud, security or technical issues, or to comply with applicable law, regulation, legal process, governmental request or certification scheme, or any other similar situation.
HOW DO END-USERS SHARE INFORMATION WITH MERCHANTS?
Where an End-User has expressly consented to Personal Information being shared with other third parties, such as Merchants, we will Process it in accordance with such consent. For example, there may be specific instances where additional terms apply and, through these, we make clear that specific third parties will Process that Personal Information.
6.1 Merchants
When you register for or claim an Activations or register for a Subscription Membership, whether free or paid, or otherwise input your Personal Information to communicate with a Merchant, that Merchant will receive that information. For instance, if you input your name and email into a web form for an Activation, the Merchant will receive that information. Merchants may send you marketing or other communications, which may be subject to its own, separate privacy policy. If you provide your phone number, you may receive information messages related to the service, event, activity or information in which you’ve expressed interest.
Merchants may also designate agents to act on their behalf, where they have marketing agencies responsible for managing their communities. End-Users should recognize that those agencies may also have access to the Personal Information that is disclosed, which should normally be treated in the same manner as if the Merchant were to use it.
Rare Circles is not responsible for the actions of these Merchants or their agents or other downstream recipients of Personal Information. It is important that you review the applicable policies of the Merchants, and if applicable and available, those of their appointed agents, before providing your Personal Information in connection with an Activation or joining their community.
6.2 Third party services and integrations
Rare Circles may provide you with opportunities to contract directly with third parties, and/or to integrate with third party services or applications, through our platform. In such instances, we will disclose your Personal Information to other entities in order to fulfill a request by you, or to provide services you have requested, further to the consent you express by making such request.
WHAT ABOUT COOKIES?
When you visit our Website, we automatically collect certain information about your device, including information about your web browser, IP address, time zone, and some of the cookies that are installed on your device.
Additionally, as you browse our Website, we collect information about the individual web pages or products that you view, what websites or search terms referred you to our Website, and information about how you interact with our Website. We refer to this automatically collected information as “Device Information”.
We collect Automatic Information using the following technologies:
“Cookies” are data files that are placed on your device or computer and often include an anonymous unique identifier. Click here for more information on cookies.
“Log files” track actions occurring on the Website, and collect data such as IP address, browser type, Internet service provider, referring/exit pages, and date/time stamps.
“Web beacons”, “tags”, and “pixels” are electronic files used to record information about how you browse the Website.
Our Website uses “cookies” to collect information and improve our products and services. A cookie is a small data file that is stored on your device. Cookies cannot be used to see any other data on your computer, nor can they determine your email address or identity.
We may use “persistent cookies” to save your registration ID and login password for future logins to our service. We may use "session cookies" to enable certain features of our service, to better understand how you interact with our service and to monitor aggregate usage and web traffic routing on our service. We also use session cookies to verify your age, keep track of items you have viewed and store such items in your cart while you are browsing.
The Website may also use technologies such as beacons, scripts, and tags. These technologies may be used for analyzing trends, administering the website, tracking users’ movements around the website, and gathering demographic information about our userbase. Various browsers may offer their own management tools for removing these types of tracking technologies.
We may also use third-party ad companies to help provide some of our advertising services. These third parties may place cookies on your computer and collect data about your online activities across websites or online services when you are logged into the third-party service, including for targeted advertising.
You can opt out of targeted advertising by Facebook and Google. Additionally, you can opt out of some of these services by visiting the Digital Advertising Alliance’s opt-out portal. For more information about how targeted advertising works, you can visit the Network Advertising Initiative’s educational page.
HOW LONG DO WE RETAIN PERSONAL INFORMATION?
We keep your Personal Information for as long as necessary to fulfill the purposes outlined in this Privacy Policy unless otherwise required by law. We may retain your Personal Information as long as you continue to use the Service, have an account with us, or for as long as is necessary to fulfill the purposes outlined in this Privacy Policy. We may continue to retain your Personal Information even after you deactivate your account or cease to use the Service if such retention is necessary to comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes, prevent fraud and abuse, enforce our Terms of Service or other agreements, or protect our legitimate interests. Where your Personal Information is no longer required for these purposes, we will destroy it.
HOW TO PROTECT YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION?
We understand the importance of information security. We use physical, administrative, and technological safeguards to help protect the Personal Information under our control against accidental or unlawful destruction, accidental loss, unauthorized alteration, disclosure, or access, misuse, and any other unlawful form of processing.
We cannot, however, warrant or guarantee that such instances will not occur since no method of transmission over the Internet, or method of electronic storage, is 100% secure. As such and, to the fullest extent allowed by applicable law, we disclaim any liability that does not result from our gross negligence or intentional misconduct.
You are responsible for the security of your Account. We urge you to take steps to ensure it is and remains secure, namely by using a robust password and not sharing it with anyone. Please contact us immediately if you believe the security of your Account is at risk.
WHERE DO WE STORE PERSONAL INFORMATION?
We Process and store information on servers located in Canada and the United States. We also transfer data to third-party service providers listed and described in section 15 (“Sub-Processors”) of this Privacy Policy. By providing us or a Merchant with your Personal Information or otherwise using the Services, you agree to this transfer, storing or Processing of your Personal Information in Canada and United States. You understand that your Personal Information may be accessible to law enforcement and governmental agencies in Canada and the United States under lawful access regimes or court order.
End-Users should note that Merchants may be located outside of their home jurisdiction, and that the laws of different countries may apply to information shared with those Merchants. We have no control over where a Merchant stores your Personal Information.
WHAT ARE YOUR RIGHTS?
You can view, edit, or delete your Personal Information for certain aspects of the Service via your Settings page or by contacting us using the info at section 14. You may also have certain additional rights, depending on privacy laws applicable to your situation.
We highlight below the main rights made available to individuals as part of privacy laws around the world, but these rights may or may not be available to you depending on where you live and where you are from. Some of these rights are also subject to exceptions.
You may request access and obtain a copy of your Personal Information we have about you upon written request and with proof of identity.
You may challenge the accuracy and completeness of your Personal Information. If your Personal Information is incomplete or inaccurate, you may ask that we correct it.
You may withdraw your consent to or restrict the Processing of your Personal Information, in which case we will cease Processing it.
You may, without prejudice to any other administrative or judicial remedy, lodge a complaint with a regulatory authority if you consider that our Processing of your Personal Information infringes local laws and regulations.
If you wish to exercise any of the above rights or have any questions or concerns, please contact us in writing (see section 14) and we will respond to your request within 30 days.
We do not sell your Personal Information.
WHAT ABOUT OTHER INTERNATIONAL USERS?
If you are visiting the Website or using the Services from outside of Canada, please note that you are agreeing to the transfer of your information to Canada and the United States and for it to be processed globally by our third-party Sub-Processors. By providing your information you consent to any transfer and processing in accordance with this Policy.
Again, End-Users should note that Merchants may be located outside of their home jurisdiction, and that the laws of different countries may apply to information shared with those Merchants.
WHAT IF WE CHANGE THIS PRIVACY POLICY?
We may amend this Privacy Policy from time to time. Use of Personal Information we collect is subject to the Privacy Policy in effect at the time such information is collected, used or disclosed. If we make material changes or changes in the way we use Personal Information, we will notify you by posting an announcement on our Website or by sending you an email prior to the change becoming effective. You are bound by any changes to the Privacy Policy when you use the Website or Services after such changes have been first posted.
HOW TO CONTACT US?
For questions or for more information regarding our privacy practices or this Privacy Policy, or to exercise a right accorded by law or under this Privacy Policy, please write to our Privacy Officer at support@rarecircles.com.
WHAT OF SUB-PROCESSORS?
To support us in delivering the Services, we engage third-party service providers as Sub-processors. This section identifies our Sub-processors, describes where they are located, lists what services they provide to us and identifies the type of Personal Information Processed. Our business needs may change from time to time and we will periodically update this page to provide notice of additions and removals to our list of Sub-processors.