Privacy policy.
Last Updated: June 21, 2023
Shelpful, Inc. (“Shelpful”, “we”, “us”, or “our”) has prepared this Privacy Policy to explain (1) what personal information we collect, (2) how we use and share that information, and (3) your choices concerning our privacy and information practices.
Applicability of this Privacy Policy
Shelpful provides messaging-based accountability and habit-building services. Some services may include messaging features that connects our members with real individuals or Shelpers that can also assist with your goals. Other services may include the ability to message with AI-powered chat tools that can assist with members with their accountability and habit-building goals (collectively, the “Services”). This Privacy Policy applies to personal information that we collect in connection with the Services (including from both members, Shelpers or other individuals who visit our services), our website(s), including https://shelpful.com/, and products and/or services that link to this Privacy Policy.
Personal information we collect
Information you provide to us:
Contact information, such as your name, email, billing address, phone number, and other similar information when you create an account with us.
Service communication information, such as texts, messages and other communications that you have with your Shelper or other users of the Services.
Payment and transaction information needed to purchase a subscription from us, including name, payment card information, billing information. Your payment information is processed by our payment processor, Stripe, and we do not have direct access to any credit card information.
Feedback or correspondence, such as information you provide when you contact us with questions, feedback, product reviews, or otherwise correspond with us online.
Marketing information, such as your preferences for receiving communications about our activities, events, and publications, and details about how you engage with our communications.
Other information that we may collect which is not specifically listed here, but which we will use in accordance with this Privacy Policy or as otherwise disclosed at the time of collection.
Information we obtain from third parties:
Social media information. We may maintain pages on social media platforms, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and other third-party platforms. When you visit or interact with our pages on those platforms, the platform provider’s privacy policy will apply to your interactions and their collection, use and processing of your personal information. You or the platforms may provide us with information through the platform, and we will treat such information in accordance with this Privacy Policy.
Other Sources. We may obtain your personal information from other third parties, such as marketing partners, data providers, and publicly-available sources.
Automatic data collection. We and our service providers may automatically log information about you, your computer or mobile device, and your interaction over time with our services, our communications and other online services, such as:
Device data, such as your computer’s or mobile device’s operating system type and version, manufacturer and model, browser type, screen resolution, RAM and disk size, CPU usage, device type (e.g., phone, tablet), IP address, unique identifiers (including identifiers used for advertising purposes), language settings, mobile device carrier, radio/network information (e.g., WiFi, LTE, 4G), and general location information such as city, state or geographic area.
Activity data, such as the pages or screens you viewed, conversations, how long you spent on a page or screen, browsing history, navigation paths between pages or screens, information about your activity on a page or screen, access times, and duration of access, and whether you have opened our marketing emails or clicked links within them.
We use the following tools for automatic data collection:
Cookies, which are text files that websites store on a visitor’s device to uniquely identify the visitor’s browser or to store information or settings in the browser for the purpose of helping you navigate between pages efficiently, remembering your preferences, enabling functionality, helping us understand user activity and patterns, and facilitating online advertising.
Local storage technologies, like HTML5, that provide cookie-equivalent functionality but can store larger amounts of data, including on your device outside of your browser in connection with specific applications.
Web beacons, also known as pixel tags or clear GIFs, which are used to demonstrate that a webpage or email was accessed or opened, or that certain content was viewed or clicked.
How we use your personal information
To operate our services:
Provide, operate, maintain, secure and improve our services.
Fulfill payments and transactions.
Provide information about our services.
Communicate with you about our services, including by sending you announcements, updates, security alerts, and support and administrative messages.
Understand your needs and interests, and personalize your experience with our services and our communications.
Respond to your requests, questions and feedback.
For marketing and advertising. We may collect and use your personal information for marketing and advertising purposes, including:
Direct marketing. We may from time-to-time send you direct marketing emails as permitted by law, including, but not limited to, notifying you of special promotions, offers and events.
To comply with law. As we believe necessary or appropriate to comply with applicable laws, lawful requests, and legal process, such as to respond to subpoenas or requests from government authorities.
For compliance, fraud prevention, and safety. To: (a) protect our, your or others’ rights, privacy, safety or property (including by making and defending legal claims); (b) enforce the terms and conditions that govern our services; and (c) protect, investigate and deter against fraudulent, harmful, unauthorized, unethical or illegal activity.
For research and development. We may create and use de-identified information for our business purposes, including to analyze the effectiveness of our services, to improve and add features to our services, and to analyze the general behavior and characteristics of users of our services. We may use this anonymous, aggregated, or de-identified data and share it with third parties for our lawful business purposes.
Legal bases for processing (for United Kingdom and EEA individuals)
If you are an individual in the United Kingdom or European Economic Area (EEA), we collect and process information about you only where we have legal bases for doing so under applicable United Kingdom and/or EU laws. The legal bases depend on the Services you use and how you use them. This means we collect and use your information only where:
We need it to provide you the Services, including to operate the Services, provide customer support and personalized features and to protect the safety and security of the Services;
It satisfies a legitimate interest (which is not overridden by your data protection interests), such as for research and development, to market and promote the Services and to protect our legal rights and interests;
You give us consent to do so for a specific purpose; or
We need to process your data to comply with a legal obligation.
If you have consented to our use of information about you for a specific purpose, you have the right to change your mind at any time, but this will not affect any processing that has already taken place. Where we are using your information because we or a third party (e.g. your employer) have a legitimate interest to do so, you have the right to object to that use though, in some cases, this may mean no longer using the Services.
Cross-border processing of your personal information
Shelpful is headquartered in the United States. To provide and operate our services, it is necessary for us to process your personal information in the United States. If we transfer personal information across borders such that we are required to apply appropriate safeguards to personal information under applicable data protection laws, we will do so. Please contact us for further information about any such transfers or the specific safeguards applied.
How we share your personal information
Service providers. We may share your personal information among our affiliates or with third-party companies that provide services on our behalf or help us operate our services (such as customer support, hosting, analytics, email delivery, marketing, billing).
Professional advisors. We may disclose your personal information to professional advisors, such as lawyers, bankers, auditors and insurers, where necessary in the course of the professional services that they render to us.
For compliance, fraud prevention and safety. We may share your personal information for the compliance, fraud prevention and safety purposes described above.
Business transfers. We may sell, transfer or otherwise share some or all of our business or assets, including your personal information, in connection with a business transaction (or potential business transaction) such as a corporate divestiture, merger, consolidation, acquisition, reorganization or sale of assets, or in the event of bankruptcy or dissolution. In such a case, we will make reasonable efforts to require the recipient to honor this Privacy Policy.
Through your use of the Service. When you use the Service, we may assist with facilitating your communications with your Shelpers and other members of the Service that you choose to interact with.
Your choices
In this section, we describe the rights and choices available to all users.
Opt out of marketing communications. You may opt out of marketing-related communications by following the opt-out or unsubscribe instructions within the marketing communication we send you.
Cookies. Most browser settings let you delete and reject cookies placed by websites. Many browsers accept cookies by default until you change your settings. If you do not accept cookies, you may not be able to use all functionality of the website and it may not work properly. For more information about cookies, including how to see what cookies have been set on your browser and how to manage and delete them, visit www.allaboutcookies.org.
Online tracking opt-out. There are a number of ways to opt out of having your online activity and device data collected through our website, which we have summarized below:
Blocking cookies in your browser. Most browsers let you remove or reject cookies, including cookies used for interest-based advertising. To do this, follow the instructions in your browser settings. Many browsers accept cookies by default until you change your settings. For more information about cookies, including how to see what cookies have been set on your device and how to manage and delete them, visit allaboutcookies.org.
Use the following links to learn more about how to control cookies and online tracking through your browser:
Blocking advertising ID use in your mobile settings. Your mobile device settings may provide functionality to limit use of the advertising ID associated with your mobile device for interest-based advertising purposes.
Google Analytics. We use Google Analytics to help us better understand how people engage with our services by collecting information and creating reports about how users use our services. For more information on Google Analytics, click here. For more information about Google’s privacy practices, click here. You can opt out of Google Analytics by downloading and installing the browser plug-in available at: https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.
Using privacy plug-ins or browsers. You can block our services from setting cookies used for interest-based ads by using a browser with privacy features, like Brave, or installing browser plugins like Privacy Badger, DuckDuckGo, Ghostery or uBlock Origin, and configuring them to block third party cookies/trackers.
Platform opt-outs. Some third-party ad networks, including third-party ad servers, ad agencies, ad technology vendors and research firms, allow you to opt-out directly by using their opt-out tools. Some of these providers, and links to their opt-out tools, are:
Advertising industry opt-out tools. You can also use these opt-out options to limit use of your information for interest-based advertising by participating companies:
Do Not Track. Some Internet browsers may be configured to send “Do Not Track” signals to the online services that you visit. We currently do not respond to “Do Not Track” or similar signals. To find out more about “Do Not Track,” please visit http://www.allaboutdnt.com.
Personal information requests: In certain circumstances (including based on where you are located), you may have the following rights in relation to your personal information:
the right to learn more about what personal information of yours is being processed, how and why such information is processed and the third parties who have access to such personal information. We have made this information available to you without having to request it by including it in this Privacy Policy;
the right to access your personal information;
the right to rectify/correct your personal information;
the right to restrict the use of your personal information where permitted under applicable law;
the right to request that your personal information is erased/deleted where permitted under applicable law;
the right to data portability (i.e. receive your personal information or have it transferred to another controller in a structured, commonly-used, machine readable format) where permitted under applicable law; and
the right to object to processing of your personal information or to direct us not to share your personal information with a non-affiliated third party where permitted under applicable law.
To make a request, please email us as provided in the “How to Contact Us” section below. We may ask for specific information from you to help us confirm your identity. We will require authorized agents to confirm their identity and authority, in accordance with applicable laws. You are entitled to exercise the rights described above free from discrimination.
In addition, where you have provided your consent to processing for the purposes indicated above, you may withdraw your consent at any time (or otherwise exercise your aforementioned rights in relation to your personal information) by contacting us below (see contact details below).
Please note that in some circumstances, we may not be able to fully comply with your request, for example if we are required to retain certain information about you to comply with applicable laws and regulations or if the information is necessary in order for us to provide the services you requested. In particular, we, and our collection and processing of your personal information, may be governed by laws and regulations on anti-money laundering, fraud prevention, taxation and financial services. We will not discriminate against you for exercising your rights. We will not deny you access to our services, or provide you a lower quality of services if you exercise your rights.
You also have the right to lodge a complaint with the relevant authority (as applicable) or a supervisory authority in the UK or EU member state of your usual residence or place of work or of the place of the alleged breach, if you consider that the processing of your personal information carried out by Shelpful or any of our affiliates or third-party service providers, has breached data protection laws.
You may also appeal to certain courts against (A) any failure of the relevant authority to give written notice of whether the complaint is either being investigated or not being investigated and, where applicable, the progress and the outcome of the investigation or (B) a determination of the relevant authority not to investigate the complaint or a determination that a controller or processor has not breached or is not likely to breach an operative provision in connection with the complaint.
Other sites, mobile applications and services
Our services may contain links to other websites, mobile applications, and other online services operated by third parties. These links are not an endorsement of, or representation that we are affiliated with, any third party. In addition, our content may be included on web pages or in mobile applications or online services that are not associated with us. We do not control third-party websites, mobile applications or online services, and we are not responsible for their actions. Other websites and services follow different rules regarding the collection, use and sharing of your personal information. We encourage you to read the privacy policies of the other websites and mobile applications and online services you use.
Retention
We retain your personal information for as long as appropriate to fulfill the purposes for which we collected it, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements, to establish or defend legal claims, or for fraud prevention purposes. To determine the appropriate retention period for your personal information, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal information, the potential risk of harm from unauthorized use or disclosure of personal information, the purposes for which we process personal information and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal requirements.
Security practices
We use organizational, technical and administrative measures designed to protect against unauthorized access, misuse, loss, disclosure, alteration and destruction of personal information we maintain. Unfortunately, data transmission over the Internet cannot be guaranteed as completely secure. Therefore, while we strive to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee the security of personal information.
Children
Our services are not intended for use by children under 18 years of age. If we learn that we have collected personal information through our services from a child under 18 without the consent of the child’s parent or guardian as required by law, we will delete it.
Changes to this Privacy Policy
We reserve the right to modify this Privacy Policy at any time. If we make material changes to this Privacy Policy, we will notify you by updating the date of this Privacy Policy.
How to contact us
Please direct any questions or comments about this Privacy Policy or privacy practices to hi@shelpful.com.