VirkHost respects the privacy of every individual who visits www.virkhost.com (“Website”) and/or purchases its Services. Your privacy is very important to VirkHost (“the Company”). We want to make your experience using our services and on the Internet as enjoyable and rewarding as possible, and we want you to use the Internet’s vast array of information, tools, and opportunities with complete confidence.
We have created this Privacy Policy to demonstrate our firm commitment to privacy and security. This Privacy Policy describes how the Company collects information from all end users of the Company’s Internet services (the “Services”) – those who access some of our Services but do not have accounts (“Visitors”) as well as those who pay a service fee to subscribe to the Service (“Customers”) – what we do with the information we collect, and the choices Visitors and Customers have concerning the collection and use of such information.
The Company requests that you read this Privacy Policy carefully. We collect and use personal data only as it might be needed for us to deliver to you our world-class products, services, websites and mobile applications (collectively, our “Services”).
Your personal data includes information such as: Name Address, Telephone number, Email address, IP addresses and login timestamps. Other data collected that could directly or indirectly identify you.
Our Privacy Policy is intended to describe to you how and what data we collect, and how and why we use your personal data. It also describes options we provide for you to access, update or otherwise take control of your personal data that we process.
1. Information We Collect
1.1. We collect information so that we can provide the best possible experience when you utilize our Services. Much of what you likely consider personal data is collected directly from you when you:
(1) create an account or purchase any of our Services (ex: billing information, including name, address, credit card number);
(2) request assistance from our award-winning customer support team (ex: phone number);
(3) complete contact forms or request newsletters or other information from us (ex: email); or
(4) participate in contests and surveys, apply for a job, or otherwise participate in activities we promote that might require information about you.
However, we also collect additional information when delivering our Services to you to ensure necessary and optimal performance. These methods of collection may not be as obvious to you, so we wanted to highlight and explain below a bit more about what these might be (as they vary from time to time) and how they work:
1.2. Account related information is collected in association with your use of our Services, such as account number, purchases, when products renew or expire, information requests, and customer service requests and notes or details explaining what you asked for and how we responded.
1.3. Cookies and similar technologies on our websites and our mobile applications allow us to track your browsing behavior, links clicked, items purchased, your device type, and to collect various data, including analytics, about how you use and interact with our Services. This allows us to provide you with more relevant product offerings, a better experience on our sites and mobile applications, and to collect, analyze and improve the performance of our Services. We may also collect your location (IP address) so that we can personalize our Services. We strongly believe in both minimizing the data we collect and limiting its use and purpose to only that (1) for which we have been given permission, (2) as necessary to deliver the Services you purchase or interact with, or (3) as we might be required or permitted for legal compliance or other lawful purposes. These uses include:
1.4. Delivering, improving, updating and enhancing the Services we provide to you. We collect various information relating to your purchase, use and/or interactions with our Services. We utilize this information to:
Improve and optimize the operation and performance of our Services (again, including our websites and mobile applications)
Diagnose problems with and identify any security risks, errors, or needed enhancements to the Services
Detect and prevent fraud and abuse of our Services and systems
Collecting aggregate statistics about use of the Services
Understand and analyze how you use our Services and what products and services are most relevant to you.
Often, much of the data collected is aggregated or statistical data about how individuals use our Services, and is not linked to any personal data, but to the extent it is itself personal data, or is linked or linkable to personal data, we treat it accordingly.
2. Sharing with Trusted Third Parties
2.1. We may share your personal data with affiliated companies within our corporate family, with third parties with which we have partnered to allow you to integrate their services into our own Services, and with trusted third party service providers as necessary for them to perform services on our behalf, such as:
Processing credit card payments
Serving advertisements
Conducting contests or surveys
Performing analysis of our Services and customers demographics
Communicating with you, such as by way email or survey delivery
Customer relationship management.
We only share your personal data as necessary for any third party to provide the services as requested or as needed on our behalf. These third parties (and any subcontractors) are subject to strict data processing terms and conditions and are prohibited from utilizing, sharing or retaining your personal data for any purpose other than as they have been specifically contracted for (or without your consent).
2.2. Transfer of personal data abroad. If you utilize our Services from a country other than the country where our servers are located, your communications with us may result in transferring your personal data across international borders. Also, when you call us or initiate a chat, we may provide you with support from one of our global locations outside your country of origin. In these cases, your personal data is handled according to this Privacy Policy.
2.3. Compliance with legal, regulatory and law enforcement requests. We cooperate with government and law enforcement officials and private parties to enforce and comply with the law. We will disclose any information about you to government or law enforcement officials or private parties as we, in our sole discretion, believe necessary or appropriate to respond to claims and legal process (such as subpoena requests), to protect our property and rights or the property and rights of a third party, to protect the safety of the public or any person, or to prevent or stop activity we consider to be illegal or unethical. To the extent we are legally permitted to do so, we will take reasonable steps to notify you in the event that we are required to provide your personal information to third parties as part of legal process.
2.4. Website analytics. We use multiple web analytics tools provided by service partners such as Google Analytics, to collect information about how you interact with our website or mobile applications, including what pages you visit, what site you visited prior to visiting our website, how much time you spend on each page, what operating system and web browser you use and network and IP information. We use the information provided by these tools to improve our Services. These tools place persistent cookies in your browser to identify you as a unique user the next time you visit our website. Each cookie cannot be used by anyone other than the service provider (ex: Google for Google Analytics). The information collected from the cookie may be transmitted to and stored by these service partners on servers in a country other than the country in which you reside. Though information collected does not include personal data such as name, address, billing information, etc., the information collected is used and shared by these service providers in accordance with their individual privacy policies. You can control the technologies we use by managing your settings through the ‘cookie banners” that may be presented when you first visit our webpages, or by utilizing settings in your browser or third-party tools, such as Disconnect, Ghostery and others.
2.5. Targeted advertisements. Targeted ads or interest-based offers may be presented to you based on your activities on our webpages, and other websites, and based on the products you currently own. These offers will display as varying product banners presented to you while browsing. We also partner with third parties to manage our advertising on our webpages and other websites. Our third party partners may use technologies such as cookies to gather information about such activities in order to provide you with advertising based upon your browsing activities and interests, and to measure advertising effectiveness.
3. How We Use Your Information
3.1. We have a legitimate interest in running a successful and efficient business and in providing you with Services and useful content, and we use the information we collect, both on its own and combined with any other information we collect about you, for the following purposes:
To provide the requested Services to you;
To provide you with useful content;
To ensure the proper functioning of our Services;
To offer and improve our Services;
To provide you with requested information or technical support;
To facilitate your movement through our websites or your use of our Services;
To do a better job of advertising and marketing our Services (our use of your information to do this is performed with your consent where required by applicable law);
To advertise and market third party products and services (such advertisement is only performed with your permission where your consent is required by applicable law);
To diagnose problems with our servers or our Services;
In connection with our security and compliance programs;
To administer our websites;
To communicate with you;
To target prospective customers with our products or services (such targeting is only performed with your permission where your consent is required by applicable law);
To assist us in offering you a personalized experience or otherwise tailor our Services to you; and
As otherwise described in this privacy policy.
We also use the information we receive in aggregated and anonymized formats to produce reports on trends and statistics, such as mobile search trends, email open rates by industry, campaign best practices or the number of users that have been exposed to, or clicked on, our websites or evaluated or purchased our products and services.
Payment information that you provide to us, including credit card data, will only be used to facilitate payment for our products and services.
We also use recorded telephone conversations for quality control purposes, to train our employees and for our own protection.
3.2. Communicating with you. We may contact you directly or through a third party service provider regarding products or services you have signed up or purchased from us, such as necessary to deliver transactional or service related communications. We may also contact you with offers for additional services we think you’ll find valuable if you give us consent, or where allowed based upon legitimate interests. You don’t need to provide consent as a condition to purchase our goods or services. These contacts may include:
Email
Telephone calls
You may also update your subscription preferences with respect to receiving communications from us and/or our partners by signing into your account and visiting “Account Settings” page. If we collect information from you in connection with a co-branded offer, it will be clear at the point of collection who is collecting the information and whose privacy policy applies. In addition, it will describe any choice options you have in regards to the use and/or sharing of your personal data with a co-branded partner, as well as how to exercise those options. If you make use of a service that allows you to import contacts (ex. using email marketing services to send emails on your behalf), we will only use the contacts and any other personal information for the requested service. If you believe that anyone has provided us with your personal information and you would like to request that it be removed from our database, please contact us at [email protected]
4. How We Keep Your Personal Data Safe
We work to protect the security of your financial information during transmission by using Secure Sockets Layer (“SSL”) software, which encrypts the information you input on the Site. However, no method of transmission over the Internet or method of electronic storage is completely secure and we cannot guarantee its absolute security. You can further help to ensure your security by taking a few simple precautions. For instance, it is important to protect against unauthorized access to your computer and to any VirkHosthosting.com username and password, and to be sure to sign off when you are finished using a shared computer.
5. Your Rights
Your data is protected by International Laws, European and National Romanian Laws. Where the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation 2016/679, or GDPR, applies, in certain circumstances and subject to data processing agreements, you have rights in relation to the personal information we hold about you. We set out below an outline of those rights and how to exercise those rights. Please note that we will require you to verify your identity before responding to any requests to exercise your rights by providing details only known to the account holder. Please note that for each of the rights below we may have valid legal reasons to refuse your request, in such instances we will let you know if that is the case.
6. Access
You have the right to know whether we process personal information about you, and if we do, to access data we hold about you and certain information about how we use it and who we share it with.
7. Portability
You have the right to receive a subset of the personal information you provide us if we process it on the legal bases of our contract with you or with your consent in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format and a right to request that we transfer such personal information to another party. If you wish for us to transfer the personal information to another party, please ensure you detail that party and note that we can only do so where it is technically feasible. We are not responsible for the security of the personal information or its processing once received by the third party.
8. Correction
You have the right to require us to correct any personal information held about you that is inaccurate and have incomplete data completed. Where you request correction, please explain in detail why you believe the personal information we hold about you to be inaccurate or incomplete so that we can assess whether a correction is required. Please note that while we assess whether the personal information we hold about you is inaccurate or incomplete, you may exercise your right to restrict our processing of the applicable data as described below.
9. Erasure
You may request that we erase the personal information we hold about you in the following circumstances: where you believe it is no longer necessary for us to hold the personal information; we are processing it on the basis of your consent and you wish to withdraw your consent; we are processing your data on the basis of our legitimate interest and you object to such processing; you no longer wish us to use your data to send you marketing; or you believe we are unlawfully processing your data. Please provide as much detail as possible on your reasons for the request to assist us in determining whether you have a valid basis for erasure.
10. Restriction of Processing to Storage Only
You have a right to require us to stop processing the personal information we hold about you other than for storage purposes in the following
circumstances:
You believe the personal information is not accurate for the period it takes for us to verify whether the data is accurate;
We wish to erase the personal information as the processing we are doing is unlawful but you want us to simply restrict the use of that data;
We no longer need the personal information for the purposes of the processing but you require us to retain the data for the establishment, exercise or defense of legal claims; or
You have objected to us processing personal information we hold about you on the basis of our legitimate interest and you wish us to stop processing the personal information while we determine whether there is an overriding interest in us retaining such personal information.
11. Objection
You have the right to object to our processing of data about you and we will consider your request. Please provide us with detail as to your reasoning so that we can assess whether there is a compelling overriding interest in us continuing to process such data or we need to process it in relation to legal claims.
You also have the right, at any time, to object to our processing of data about you in order to send you marketing, including where we build profiles for such purposes and we will stop processing the data for that purpose.
12. How You Can Access, Update or Delete Your Data
To easily access, view, update, delete or port your personal data (where available), or to update your subscription preferences, please sign into your Account and visit “Account Settings.” If you make a request to delete your personal data and that data is necessary for the products or services you have purchased, the request will be honored only to the extent it is no longer necessary for any Services purchased or required for our legitimate business purposes or legal or contractual record keeping requirements. If you are unable for any reason to access your Account Settings you may also contact us by one of the methods described in the “Contact Us” section below.
13. How We Secure, Store and Retain Your Data
We follow generally accepted standards to store and protect the personal data we collect, both during transmission and once received and stored, including utilization of encryption where appropriate. We retain personal data only for as long as necessary to provide the Services you have requested and thereafter for a variety of legitimate legal or business purposes. These might include retention periods: mandated by law, contract or similar obligations applicable to our business operations; for preserving, resolving, defending or enforcing our legal/contractual rights; or needed to maintain adequate and accurate business and financial records. If you have any questions about the security or retention of your personal data, you can contact us at [email protected]
14. Age Restrictions
Our Services are available for purchase only for those over the age of 18. Our Services are not targeted to, intended to be consumed by or designed to entice individuals under the age of 18. If you know of or have reason to believe anyone under the age of 18 has provided us with any personal data, please contact us.
15. Changes to Policy
We reserve the right to revise, amend, or modify this Privacy Policy at any time and in any manner. However, if we plan to materially change how we plan to use previously collected personal information, we will provide you with advance notice prior to the change becoming effective and an opportunity to opt-out of such differing uses. We encourage you to periodically review this page for the latest information on our privacy practices.
16. Contact Us
If you have any questions, concerns or complaints about our Privacy Policy, our practices or our Services, you may contact us by email at [email protected] We will respond to all requests, inquiries or concerns within thirty (30) days.
Revised: 19/10/2021 VirkHost