Privacy Policy

We’re updating our Privacy Policy on May 25, 2018. Our new policy and current policy are both below.

This is our updated Privacy Policy going into effect on May 25, 2018.

Your privacy is critically important to us. At Hoverlay, we have a few fundamental principles:
• We are thoughtful about the personal information we ask you to provide and the personal information that we collect about you through the operation of our services.
• We store personal information for only as long as we have a reason to keep it.
• We aim to make it as simple as possible for you to control what information on your Plus is shared publicly (or kept private), and permanently deleted.
• We help protect you from overreaching government demands for your personal information.
• We aim for full transparency on how we gather, use, and share your personal information.

Below is our Privacy Policy, which incorporates and clarifies these principles.

What This Policy Covers
This Privacy Policy applies to information that we collect about you when you use:
• Our website (hoverlay.com);
• Our mobile application (Hoverlay mobile app for iOS);
• Other mobile apps that use or link to our Services, while you are logged in to your account with us.

Throughout this Privacy Policy we’ll refer to our website, mobile application and other products and services collectively as “Services.” Please note that this Privacy Policy does not apply to any of our products or services that have a separate privacy policy.

Below we explain how we collect, use, and share information about you, along with the choices that you have with respect to that information.

Information We Collect
We only collect information about you if we have a reason to do so–for example, to provide our Services, to communicate with you, or to make our Services better.

We collect information in three ways: if and when you provide information to us, automatically through operating our Services, and from outside sources. Let’s go over the information that we collect.

Information You Provide to Us
It’s probably no surprise that we collect information that you provide to us. The amount and type of information depends on the context and how we use the information. Here are some examples:
• Basic Account Information: We ask for basic information from you in order to set up your Hoverlay account. For example, we require individuals who sign up for a Hoverlay account to provide a username (Plus name) and email address–and that’s it. You may provide us with more information–like your name–but we don’t require that information to create a Hoverlay account.
• Public Profile Information: If you have an account with us, we collect the information that you provide for your public profile. For example, if you have a Hoverlay account, your Plus name is part of that public profile, along with any other information you put into your public profile, such as a photo or an Plus description. Your public profile information is just that–public–so please keep that in mind when deciding what information you would like to include.
• Transaction and Billing Information: If you buy something from us–a subscription to a Hoverlay plan –you will provide additional personal and payment information that is required to process the transaction and your payment, such as your name, credit card information, and contact information.
• Content Information: Depending on the Services you use, you may also provide us with information about you in draft and published content (such as links to your website). For example, if the AR content you create on hoverlay includes biographic information about you, we will have that information, and so will anyone with access to your Hoverlay Plus if you choose to drop it globally. This might be obvious to you…but it’s not to everyone!
• Credentials: Depending on the Services you use, you may provide us with credentials for your website (like SSH, FTP, and SFTP username and password).
• Communications with Us: You may also provide us information when you respond to surveys, communicate with our support team about a support question, or post a question about your Hoverlay experience in our public forums.

Information We Collect Automatically
We also collect some information automatically:
• Log Information: We collect information that web browsers, mobile devices, and servers typically make available, such as the browser type, IP address, unique device identifiers, referring site, the date and time of access, operating system, and mobile network information. We collect log information when you use our Services–for example, when you create new Plus or make changes to your Plus on Hoverlay.
• Usage Information: We collect information about your usage of our Services. For example, we collect information about the actions that users perform on a website and in Hoverlay mobile application, who did what, when and to hoverlay content (e.g., [Hoverlay object] deleted at [time/date]). We also collect information about what happens when you use our Services (e.g., your hoverpack views or impressions, Plus searches in Hoverlay mobile app, clicks on hoverpack objects, along with information about your mobile device (e.g., screen size, name of cellular network, and mobile device manufacturer). We use this information to, for example, provide our Services to you, as well as get insights on how people use our Services, so we can make our Services better.
• Location Information: We may determine the approximate location of your device from your GPS signal. We collect and use this information to, for example, calculate which AR content should be displayed. We may also collect information about your precise location via our mobile apps (when, for example, you post a photograph with location information) if you allow us to do so through your mobile device operating system’s permissions.
• Stored Information: We may access information stored on your mobile device via our mobile app. We access this stored information through your device operating system’s permissions. For example, if you give us permission to access the photographs on your mobile device’s camera roll, our Services may access the photos stored on your device when you upload an amazing photograph to your Plus.
• Information from Cookies & Other Technologies: A cookie is a string of information that a website stores on a visitor’s computer, and that the visitor’s browser provides to the website each time the visitor returns. Pixel tags (also called web beacons) are small blocks of code placed on websites and emails. Hoverlay uses cookies and other technologies like pixel tags to help us identify and track website visitors, usage, and access preferences for our Services, as well as track and understand email campaign effectiveness and to deliver targeted ads. For more information about our use of cookies and other technologies for tracking, including how you can control the use of cookies, please see our Cookie Policy.

Information We Collect from Other Sources
We may also get information about you from other sources. For example, if you create or log into your Hoverlay account through another service (like Google) or if you connect your Hoverlay account or account to a social media service (like Facebook), we will receive information from that service (such as your username, basic profile information) via the authorization procedures used by that service. The information we receive depends on which services you authorize and any options that are available.

We may also get information, such as a mailing address, from third party services about individuals who are not yet our users, which we may use, for example, for marketing and advertising purposes like postcards and other mailers advertising our services.

How and Why We Use Information

Purposes for Using Information
We use information about you as mentioned above and for the purposes listed below:
• To provide our Services–for example, to set up and maintain your Hoverlay account, host your AR content, backup and restore your AR content, or charge you for any of our paid Services;
• To further develop and improve our Services–for example by adding new features that we think our users will enjoy or will help them to create and manage their Pluses more efficiently;
• To monitor and analyze trends and better understand how users interact with our Services, which helps us improve our Services and make them easier to use;
• To measure, gauge, and improve the effectiveness of our advertising, and better understand user retention and attrition–for example, we may analyze how many individuals purchased a Hoverlay plan after receiving a marketing message or the features used by those who continue to use our Services after a certain length of time;
• To enable channel owners to measure the interactions with their content, and receive feedback from other users (similar to how someone posting a tweet would know how many people retweeted it or liked it, and get responses)
• To monitor and prevent any problems with our Services, protect the security of our Services, detect and prevent fraudulent transactions and other illegal activities, and protect the rights and property of Hoverlay and others, which may result in us declining a transaction or the use of our Services;
• To communicate with you, for example through an email, about offers and promotions offered by Hoverlay and others we think will be of interest to you, solicit your feedback, or keep you up to date on Hoverlay and our products; and
• To personalize your experience using our Services, provide content recommendations (for example, through our Trending tab), target our marketing messages to groups of our users (for example, those who have a particular plan with us or have been our user for a certain length of time), and serve relevant advertisements.

Legal Bases for Collecting and Using Information
A note here for those in the European Union about our legal grounds for processing information about you under EU data protection laws, which is that our use of your information is based on the grounds that:
(1) The use is necessary in order to fulfill our commitments to you under our Terms of Service or other agreements with you or is necessary to administer your account–for example, in order to enable access to our mobile application on your device or charge you for a paid plan; or
(2) The use is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation; or
(3) The use is necessary in order to protect your vital interests or those of another person; or
(4) We have a legitimate interest in using your information–for example, to provide and update our Services, to improve our Services so that we can offer you an even better user experience, to safeguard our Services, to communicate with you, to measure, gauge, and improve the effectiveness of our advertising, and better understand user retention and attrition, to monitor and prevent any problems with our Services, and to personalize your experience; or
(5) You have given us your consent–for example before we place certain cookies on your device and access and analyze them later on, as described in our Cookie Policy.

Sharing Information
How We Share Information
We do not sell our users’ private personal information.
We share information about you in the limited circumstances spelled out below and with appropriate safeguards on your privacy:
• Subsidiaries, Employees, and Independent Contractors: We may disclose information about you to our subsidiaries, our employees, and individuals who are our independent contractors that need to know the information in order to help us provide our Services or to process the information on our behalf. We require our subsidiaries, employees, and independent contractors to follow this Privacy Policy for personal information that we share with them.
• Third Party Vendors: We may share information about you with third party vendors who need to know information about you in order to provide their services to us, or to provide their services to you or your site. This group includes vendors that help us provide our Services to you (like payment providers that process your credit and debit card information, fraud prevention services that allow us to analyze fraudulent payment transactions, postal and email delivery services that help us stay in touch with you, customer chat and email support services that help us communicate with you, those that assist us with our marketing efforts (e.g. by providing tools for identifying a specific marketing target group or improving our marketing campaigns), those that help us understand and enhance our Services (like analytics providers), and companies that make products available on our website (such as WordPress plugins), who may need information about you in order to, for example, provide technical or other support services to you. We require vendors to agree to privacy commitments in order to share information with them.
• Legal Requests: We may disclose information about you in response to a subpoena, court order, or other governmental request.
• To Protect Rights, Property, and Others: We may disclose information about you when we believe in good faith that disclosure is reasonably necessary to protect the property or rights of Hoverlay, third parties, or the public at large. For example, if we have a good faith belief that there is an imminent danger of death or serious physical injury, we may disclose information related to the emergency without delay.
• Business Transfers: In connection with any merger, sale of company assets, or acquisition of all or a portion of our business by another company, or in the unlikely event that Hoverlay goes out of business or enters bankruptcy, user information would likely be one of the assets that is transferred or acquired by a third party. If any of these events were to happen, this Privacy Policy would continue to apply to your information and the party receiving your information may continue to use your information, but only consistent with this Privacy Policy.
• With Your Consent: We may share and disclose information with your consent or at your direction. For example, we may share your information with third parties with which you authorize us to do so, such as the social media services that you connect to your Plus.
• Aggregated or De-Identified Information: We may share information that has been aggregated or reasonably de-identified, so that the information could not reasonably be used to identify you. For instance, we may compute and publish aggregate statistics about the use of a specific AR channel, or our Services as a whole, and we may share a hashed version of your email address to facilitate customized ad campaigns on other platforms.
• Other Site Owners: If you have Hoverlay account and leave a comment on another user AR channel, this user will receive that comment from hoverlay.
• Published Support Requests: And if you send us a request (for example, via a support email or one of our feedback mechanisms), we reserve the right to publish that request in order to help us clarify or respond to your request or to help us support other users.

Information Shared Publicly
Information that you choose to make public is–you guessed it–disclosed publicly.

That means, of course, that information like your public Plus profile, content that you make public on your Plus, and your “Likes” and comments on other websites, are all available to others–and we hope you get a lot of views!

For example, the photo that you upload to your Plus profile, or a default image if you haven’t uploaded one, is your Globally Recognized Avatar. Your Avatar, along with other public profile information, will display with the comments that you make on other users’ websites while logged in to your Hoverlay account. Your Avatar + public profile information may also display with your comments, “Likes,” and other interactions on websites, if the email address associated with your account with us is the same as the email address that you use on the other website.

Public information may also be indexed by search engines or used by third parties.

Please keep all of this in mind when deciding what you would like to share.

How Long We Keep Information
We generally discard information about you when we no longer need the information for the purposes for which we collect and use it–which are described in the section above on How and Why We Use Information–and we are not legally required to continue to keep it.

For example, we keep the logs that record information about a visitor to Hoverlay’s website and mobile app, such as the visitor’s IP address, browser type, and operating system, for approximately 30 days. We retain the logs for this period of time in order to, among other things, analyze traffic to Hoverlay’s websites and investigate issues if something goes wrong on one of our websites.

As another example, when you delete a Plus or comment from your Hoverlay account, it stays in your Trash folder for thirty days just in case you change your mind and would like restore that content–because starting again from scratch is no fun, at all. After the thirty days are up, the deleted content may remain on our backups and caches until purged.

Security
While no mobile service is 100% secure, we work very hard to protect information about you against unauthorized access, use, alteration, or destruction, and take reasonable measures to do so, such as monitoring our Services for potential vulnerabilities and attacks.

Choices
You have several choices available when it comes to information about you:
• Limit the Information that You Provide: If you have an account with us, you can choose not to provide the optional account information, profile information, and transaction and billing information. Please keep in mind that if you do not provide this information, certain features of our Services may not be accessible.
• Use Hoverlay in Guest Mode: while in guest mode, you are not signed into the app, but can view content posted on other users
• Limit Access to Information on Your Mobile Device: Your mobile device operating system should provide you with the ability to discontinue our ability to collect stored information or location information via our mobile apps. If you do so, you may not be able to use certain features.
• Opt-Out of Electronic Communications: You may opt out of receiving promotional messages from us. Just follow the instructions in those messages. If you opt out of promotional messages, we may still send you other messages, like those about your account and legal notices.
• Set Your Browser to Reject Cookies: At this time, Hoverlay does not respond to “do not track” signals across all of our Services. However, you can usually choose to set your browser to remove or reject browser cookies before using Hoverlay’s website, with the drawback that certain features of Hoverlay’s website may not function properly without the aid of cookies.
• Close Your Account: While we’d be very sad to see you go, if you no longer want to use our Services, you can close your Hoverlay account. Please keep in mind that we may continue to retain your information after closing your account, as described in How Long We Keep Information above–for example, when that information is reasonably needed to comply with (or demonstrate our compliance with) legal obligations such as law enforcement requests, or reasonably needed for our legitimate business interests.

Your Rights
If you are located in certain countries, including those that fall under the scope of the European General Data Protection Regulation (AKA the “GDPR”), data protection laws give you rights with respect to your personal data, subject to any exemptions provided by the law, including the rights to:
• Request access to your personal data;
• Request correction or deletion of your personal data;
• Object to our use and processing of your personal data;
• Request that we limit our use and processing of your personal data; and
• Request portability of your personal data.

You can usually access, correct, or delete your personal data using your account settings and tools that we offer, but if you aren’t able to do that, or you would like to contact us about one of the other rights, scroll down to How to Reach Us to, well, find out how to reach us.
EU individuals also have the right to make a complaint to a government supervisory authority.

How to Reach Us
If you have a question about this Privacy Policy, or you would like to contact us about any of the rights mentioned in the Your Rights section above, please contact us.

Other Things You Should Know (Keep Reading!)

Transferring Information
Because Hoverlay’s Services are offered worldwide, the information about you that we process when you use the Services in the EU may be used, stored, and/or accessed by individuals operating outside the European Economic Area (EEA) who work for us, or third-party data processors. This is required for the purposes listed in the How and Why We Use Information section above. When providing information about you to entities outside the EEA, we will take appropriate measures to ensure that the recipient protects your personal information adequately in accordance with this Privacy Policy as required by applicable law. These measures include:
• In the case of US based entities, entering into European Commission approved standard contractual arrangements with them, or ensuring they have signed up to the EU-US Privacy Shield; or
• In the case of entities based in other countries outside the EEA, entering into European Commission approved standard contractual arrangements with them.

You can ask us for more information about the steps we take to protect your personal information when transferring it from the EU.

Ads and Analytics Services Provided by Others
Ads appearing on any of our Services may be delivered by advertising networks. Other parties may also provide analytics services via our Services. These ad networks and analytics providers may set tracking technologies (like cookies) to collect information about your use of our Services and across other websites and online services. These technologies allow these third parties to recognize your device to compile information about you or others who use your device. This information allows us and other companies to, among other things, analyze and track usage, determine the popularity of certain content, and deliver advertisements that may be more targeted to your interests. Please note this Privacy Policy only covers the collection of information by Hoverlay and does not cover the collection of information by any third party advertisers or analytics providers.

Third Party Software
If you’d like to use third party plugins or other third-party software, please keep in mind that when you interact with them you may provide information about yourself to those third parties. We don’t own or control these third parties and they have their own rules about collection, use and sharing of information, which you should review.

Privacy Policy Changes
Although most changes are likely to be minor, Hoverlay may change its Privacy Policy from time to time. Hoverlay encourages visitors to frequently check this page for any changes to its Privacy Policy. If we make changes, we will notify you by revising the change log below, and, in some cases, we may provide additional notice (such as adding a statement to our homepage or the Hoverlay blog or sending you a notification through email). Your further use of the Services after a change to our Privacy Policy will be subject to the updated policy.

That’s it! Thanks for reading.

Change log
• May 25, 2018: Added more specific information to help clarify our practices and added information to reflect the requirements of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation.
• October 1, 2017: Updated Hoverlay’s Privacy Policies.
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October 1, 2017

**Website Visitors**
Like most websites or mobile apps, Hoverlay collects un-personally-identifying information of the sort that web browsers and servers typically make available, such as the browser type, language preference, referring site, and the date and time of each visitor request. Hoverlay’s purpose in collecting non-personally identifying information is to better understand how Hoverlay’s visitors use its website. From time to time, Hoverlay may release non-personally-identifying information in the aggregate, e.g., by publishing a report on trends in the usage of its mobile app.

Hoverlay also collects potentially personally-identifying information like Internet Protocol (IP) addresses for logged in users. Hoverlay only discloses logged in user and commenter IP addresses under the same circumstances that it uses and discloses personally-identifying information as described below.

**Gathering of Personally-Identifying Information**
Hoverlay users choose to interact with Hoverlay in ways that require Hoverlay to gather personally-identifying information. The amount and type of information that Hoverlay gathers depends on the nature of the interaction. For example, we ask visitors who are willing to create a Hoverlay account to provide a username, name, email address, password, and date of birth and optional cell phone number. Your unique username and name are visible to everyone. In order to make easier for other Hoverlay users to find you, you can optionally provide us with a profile picture, and hyperlinks to your social network profiles. Those who engage in transactions with Hoverlay – by purchasing premium services, for example – are asked to provide additional information, including as necessary the personal and financial information required to process those transactions. In each case, Hoverlay collects such information only insofar as is necessary or appropriate to fulfill the purpose of the visitor’s interaction with Hoverlay. Hoverlay does not disclose personally-identifying information other than as described below. And visitors can always refuse to supply personally-identifying information, with the caveat that it may prevent them from engaging in certain mobile app or website related activities. Be aware of that any piece of information you send through Hoverlay like text, photos, videos and links are public by default.

You can use Hoverlay as a guest, without authentication. It is however a limited feature and access to some features of the app is restricted to authenticated users.

**Contact information**
We reserve the right to use your email address as well as your cell phone number. If you provide us your email address as well as your cell phone number, it means you are agreeing to received text message, e-mail message or directly via the app for marketing and other information about our company and services.

**Devices information**
Device information helps us optimize and prioritize improvements to our services. We reserve the right to collect information about all devices (computers, phones, tablets and other devices) used to interact with our services. Here is a list of information we reserve the right to collect:

- Device location
- Details of how you used our service, such as your search queries
- Internet Protocol address
- Browser Information (Screen Resolution, Signature, Session, Language)
- Time Zone

**Aggregated Statistics**
Hoverlay may collect statistics about the behavior of visitors to its websites and mobile application. For instance, Hoverlay may monitor the most popular content at certain locations to help recommend content to users, or optimize its delivery. Hoverlay may display this information publicly or provide it to others. However, Hoverlay does not disclose personally-identifying information other than as described below.

**Information We Collect from Other Sources**
With your authorization, we may also obtain information about you from other sources. For example, if you create or log into your Hoverlay account through a social media service (like Facebook, we will receive information from that service (such as your username and basic profile information) via the authorization procedures used by that service. The information we receive depends on which services you authorize and any options that are available.

**Protection of Certain Personally-Identifying Information**
Hoverlay discloses potentially personally-identifying and personally-identifying information only to those of its employees, contractors and affiliated organizations that (i) need to know that information in order to process it on Hoverlay’s behalf or to provide services available at Hoverlay’s websites, and (ii) that have agreed not to disclose it to others. Some of those employees, contractors and affiliated organizations may be located outside of your home country; by using Hoverlay’s websites, you consent to the transfer of such information to them. Hoverlay will not rent or sell potentially personally-identifying and personally-identifying information to anyone. Other than to its employees, contractors and affiliated organizations, as described above, Hoverlay discloses potentially personally-identifying and personally-identifying information only in response to a subpoena, court order or other governmental request, or when Hoverlay believes in good faith that disclosure is reasonably necessary to protect the property or rights of Hoverlay, third parties or the public at large. If you are a registered user of an Hoverlay website and have supplied your email address, Hoverlay may occasionally send you an email to tell you about new features, solicit your feedback, or just keep you up to date with what’s going on with Hoverlay and our products. We primarily use our various blog to communicate this type of information, so we expect to keep this type of email to a minimum. If you send us a request (for example via a support email or via one of our feedback mechanisms), we reserve the right to publish it in order to help us clarify or respond to your request or to help us support other users. Hoverlay takes all measures reasonably necessary to protect against the unauthorized access, use, alteration or destruction of potentially personally-identifying and personally-identifying information.

**Cookies**
A cookie is a string of information that a website stores on a visitor’s computer, and that the visitor’s browser provides to the website each time the visitor returns. Hoverlay uses cookies to help Hoverlay identify and track visitors, their usage of Hoverlay website, and their website access preferences. We use cookies for all visitors. Hoverlay users who do not wish to have cookies placed on their computers should set their browsers to refuse cookies before using Hoverlay’s websites, with the drawback that certain features of Hoverlay’s websites may not function properly without the aid of cookies.

**Links to Third-Party Sites**
Hoverlay privacy policy applies only to our mobile apps and websites. By clicking on links shared through Hoverlay, you are leaving Hoverlay’s mobile app or website to open third-party mobile applications or websites, governed by their own privacy policies, independently from Hoverlay.

**Business Transfers**
If Hoverlay, or substantially all of its assets, were acquired, or in the unlikely event that Hoverlay goes out of business or enters bankruptcy, user information would be one of the assets that is transferred or acquired by a third party. You acknowledge that such transfers may occur, and that any acquirer of Hoverlay may continue to use your personal information as set forth in this policy.

**Ads**
Ads appearing on any of our websites may be delivered to users by advertising partners, who may set cookies. These cookies allow the ad server to recognize your computer each time they send you an online advertisement to compile information about you or others who use your computer. This information allows ad networks to, among other things, deliver targeted advertisements that they believe will be of most interest to you. This Privacy Policy covers the use of cookies by Hoverlay and does not cover the use of cookies by any advertisers.

**Privacy Policy Changes**
Although most changes are likely to be minor, Hoverlay may change its Privacy Policy from time to time, and in Hoverlay’s sole discretion. Hoverlay encourages visitors to frequently check this page for any changes to its Privacy Policy. If you have an Hoverlay account, you should also check your blog’s dashboard for alerts to these changes. Your continued use of this site after any change in this Privacy Policy will constitute your acceptance of such change.

Contact If you have any questions or comments, please email us at legal@hoverlay.com.