GDPR Privacy Policy
Last Updated: September 15, 2022
HCF Science, LLC (“HCF” “we”, “us” or “our”) is committed to protecting your personal information and your right to privacy. In this Privacy Notice (“Notice”), we seek to explain to you in the clearest way possible what personal information we collect from and about you on our websites, including www.hcfscience.com, and our other sites on which we post this Notice (collectively, the “Website”) whenever the processing of that personal information is governed by the European Union General Data Protection Regulation. For the purposes of this Notice, personal information means any information relating to an identified or identifiable person. HCF controls any personal information collected from you on our website or elsewhere for the purpose of conducting or developing our business with you.
SUMMARY
We collect personal information that you voluntarily provide to us when you visit our Website and from third party sources, such as social networks. The main purpose we collect and process your personal information is to provide you products and services that you request. We also collect and process your personal information in order to send you marketing communications. In some cases, we will use your personal information together with information (including personal data) collected from your device and from third parties in order to better understand your interests and identify the products and services that are relevant to you. All of your personal information will be transferred and processed in the United States, where we are located. In all cases, you have certain rights regarding your personal information; you can read more about those rights by clicking here.
COLLECTION OF INFORMATION
We collect personal data and other information you voluntarily provide to us when you visit our Website, use the services on our Website, or otherwise when you contact us.
We collect Device Information using the following technologies:
- “Cookies” are data files that are stored on your device or computer and often include an anonymous unique identifier. For more information about cookies, and how to remove or reject cookies, visit www.allaboutcookies.org.
- “Log files” record service-related, diagnostic, usage and performance information when you access or use our Website, by collecting data such as your 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.
When you make a purchase or attempt to make a purchase through the Website, we may collect data necessary to process your payment, such as your name, billing address, shipping address, payment information, email address, and phone number. We refer to this information as “Order Information”.
When we talk about “Personal Information” in this Privacy Policy, we are referring to both Device Information and Order Information.
Personal Information We Collect Directly From You: We may collect personal information directly from you, for example when you:
- register an account with us;
- request information from us (including subscriptions and downloads);
- subscribe to our newsletters;
- purchase a product or service from us;
- submit a testimonial;
- post messages in our forums, blogs, or similar community platforms;
- use social networks embedded on our Website or otherwise interact with our Website.
The personal information that we collect from you depends on the context of your interactions with us and the Website, the choices you make and the products and features you use, and may include, without limitation: your email address, name, age, marital status, job title, home or work address or telephone number. If you email us (or otherwise get in touch with us), we may retain a record of such email or other communication (including attachments), which may include your email address, name, content of your email and our response. If you purchase a product or service from us, we will also collect your payment information (e.g., payment instrument number and security code, billing name and address) in order to process the transaction. You may also choose to provide us with demographic information, such as your ZIP code, gender, age, preferences, interests and favorites.
Personal information requested on a form is required in order to fulfill your request or perform our contractual obligations to you. If you do not provide such personal information, we will be unable to respond to your request or fulfill our obligations to you.
Information We Collect Automatically: We, and our third party service providers, automatically collect and record certain personal data and information when you visit, use or navigate the Website, through cookies, web beacons, and other tracking technologies. This information does not reveal your specific identity (like your name or contact information) but may include, without limitation, your:
- IP address;
- browser and device characteristics;
- domain names;
- access date and times;
- language preferences;
- purchase history;
- operating system;
- referring website addresses;
- information from third parties.
This information is primarily needed to maintain the security and operation of our Website, and for our internal analytics and reporting purposes. We may append this information to other information that we collect about you. We also collect information when you visualize content on or otherwise interact with our Website, even if you have not registered an account. For more specific information about the various tracking technologies we use and how they work, please see below.
Information We Collect from Social Networking Sites and other Third Parties: If you choose to link your account with us to a third-party account (such as your Google or Facebook account), we will request your permission to collect the following information about you: your name, email address, profile picture, cover photo, friends, gender, age range, networks (e.g., school), language, country, and other information that you have elected to publicly display. Please note that where you elected to provide social networks with your personal data and information, it is these third party social networks, not us, controlling how they use and distribute your information. We may combine this information with other information that we collect about you. If you “like” us on Facebook, we may also collect your email address. Should you wish to disconnect social media links, please reach out to us as indicated in Contact. Social networking sites and other third parties have separate privacy and data collection practices, independent of HCF, and we encourage you to consult their respective privacy policies for information about their practices.
USER GENERATED CONTENT
We may provide areas of the Website where you can publicly post information about yourself and can communicate with others, such as the community forum or blog, and submit information, messages, suggestions, questions, comments, ratings, ideas, or other content in any form. By engaging in such conduct, you acknowledge your understanding that your username, city, and any other information that you choose to post will be visible to all visitors to the Website and may appear on other websites or web searches, and therefore this information could be read, collected, and used by others throughout the world. We are not responsible for the privacy of any information that you choose to post to our Website, including in our blogs and forums, or for the accuracy of any information contained in those postings. Any information that you disclose becomes public information.We have no control over who reads your postings or what other users may do with the information you voluntarily post, so please use caution when posting any personal information. You may contact us at any time at [email protected] if you wish to remove or alter the information you provided.
COOKIES AND OTHER TRACKING TECHNOLOGIES
We and our service providers may use cookies and similar tracking technologies (such as web beacons and pixels) to access or store information about your use of our Website. We or our service providers may append this information to other personal information we collect about you.
- Cookies. We or our service providers may use cookies to track visitor activity on our Website. A cookie is a small text file that a website stores on your computer’s hard drive for tracking purposes. We or our service providers may use cookies to monitor visitor activities on our Website, such as the pages visited and time spent on our Website. Most browsers are set to accept cookies by default. The Help portion of the toolbar on most browsers will tell you how to prevent your computer from accepting new cookies, how to have the browser notify you when you receive a new cookie, or how to disable cookies entirely. If you choose to remove cookies or reject cookies, this could affect certain features or services of our Website. We use both session and persistent cookies:
- Session Cookies. Session cookies are temporary cookies stored in the browser's memory just until the browser is closed. They disappear from your computer when you close your browser or turn off your computer. We use session cookies to power e-commerce shopping carts, to control the page elements shown to you during a single multi-page visit to a website, and for other short-term storage purposes.
- Persistent Cookies. Persistent cookies are saved on your computer and they are not deleted automatically when you quit your browser or turn off your computer. We use persistent cookies to compile aggregated statistics about visitor activity, which may be combined with other visitor information.
- Web beacons/clear GIFs. Clear GIFs are small, literally invisible graphics with a unique identifier, that work in a similar way to cookies, which are embedded on web pages. We or our service providers may use clear GIFs (also known as web beacons, web bugs or pixel tags) on our Website to gather information about the activities of visitors to our Website, help us manage content, and to understand and optimize how our website is used. We or our service providers may also use clear GIFs in HTML emails to our visitors, to let us know which emails and links have been opened by recipients, when it happened, and whether our emails are forwarded, allowing us to gauge the effectiveness of our customer communications and marketing campaigns.
- Flash LSO. We may use Flash Local Storage Objects (“Flash LSOs”) to save your website preferences and provide you with a personalized experience. Unlike browser cookies, flash LSOs are able to handle more complex information than a browser cookie and can pass information across the different browser types you may have installed on your computer. Typically, it is not possible to control, delete, or disable the acceptance of Flash LSOs through your web browser. For more information on Flash LSOs, or to learn how to manage your settings for Flash LSOs, go to the Adobe Flash Player Help Page, select “Global Storage Settings Panel” and follow the instructions. To see the Flash LSOs currently saved on your computer, select “Website Storage Settings Panel” and follow the instructions to review and, if you choose, to remove any specific Flash LSO.
WEBSITE ANALYTICS
We may allow third parties, such as Google Analytics, to collect information in order to provide us with analytics. These third parties use automated devices and applications to gain insight into how people interact with our Website and services. We or our service providers use these tools to help us improve our Website, performance, and visitor experiences. In order to perform their services, these third parties may use cookies and other tracking technologies, such as web beacons or Flash LSO.
DO NOT TRACK
Most web browsers and some mobile operating systems and mobile applications offer a Do-Not-Track ("DNT") feature or setting you can activate to signal your privacy preference not to have data about your online browsing activities monitored and collected. At this stage no uniform technology standard for recognizing and implementing DNT signals has been finalized. As such, we currently do not take action in response to these signals. You may however disable certain tracking as discussed in this Notice (e.g., by disabling cookies).
INTEREST-BASED TRACKING
We engage in interest-based advertising. Interest-based advertising includes ads served to you after you leave our website, encouraging you to return. We may use your information to develop and serve personalized content and advertising (and work with third parties who do so) tailored to your interests and/or location and to measure its effectiveness. We or our partners collect information about you over time across multiple websites or other platforms, including mobile applications, and we use this information to serve targeted advertising. Third party ad network providers, advertisers, sponsors and/or traffic measurement services may use cookies, JavaScript, web beacons (including clear GIFs), Flash LSOs and other technologies to evaluate the effectiveness of their ads and to provide you with content that is relevant to you and your interests based upon your browsing habits or online activities. These third party cookies and other technologies are governed by each third party’s specific privacy policy, not this Notice. We may provide these third-party advertisers with information about your usage of our Website and services, both personal data and non-personal data.
You may opt-out of many third-party ad networks. If you would like to learn more about the third party advertisers that may be aware of the fact that you visit this website, and to understand your choices about having such advertisers' cookies turned off, please visit www.networkadvertising.org. The website www.youronlinechoices.eu also provides information about how to turn off certain ads served by participating companies in the European Interactive Digital Advertising Alliance (“EDAA”). You may contact Direct Advertising Alliance (“DAA”) at www.aboutads.info/choices for information about opting out of targeted advertising and your options with regards to having information used by DAA member companies, including how to “opt-out” of third-party ad networks operated by DAA members. Opting out of one or more members or participating companies (many of which will be the same) only ensures you will stop receiving interest-based advertising from those advertisers. However, it does not mean you will no longer receive any targeted content or ads on our Website or other websites. If your browsers are set to reject cookies by default, or you subsequently erase your cookies, use a different computer or switch to a different web browser, your opt-out may no longer be effective. Additional information is available at the above links.
THIRD-PARTY LINKS
Our Website may provide links to third-party websites. We have no control over, do not review, and cannot be responsible for, these outside websites or their content. Please note that any access to and use of such linked third-party websites is not governed by this Notice but instead is governed by the privacy policies of those third-party websites.
We encourage you to read the privacy statements of every website you visit, so that you can understand how those other websites collect, use and share your information. We assume no responsibility for the privacy policies or other content on websites other than this Website.
REASONS AND LAWFUL GROUNDS FOR USE OF YOUR PERSONAL DATA
The processing of your personal data is justified by a ‘lawful ground’. The lawful grounds and reasons that govern our processing of personal information are as follows:
Lawful ground - The processing is necessary to enter into a contract with you, or because you have asked us to take specific steps before entering into a contract:
- to fulfill orders;
- to provide you with services;
- to reply to your inquiries and for other customer service purposes;
- to communicate with you, including via email, about your use of our services or administrative information, such as notifying you about changes in our terms or notice;
- to perform our obligations and enforce our rights arising from contracts entered into between you and HCF, including for billing and payment collection.
Lawful ground – The processing is necessary for legitimate interests:
- to provide you with email newsletters, marketing text messages, special offers, news and other notifications;
- to serve you with personalized content and advertising;
- to contact you about products or information that we believe are relevant to you and your interests;
- to improve our Website and marketing efforts, so that we can display relevant ads and evaluate the effectiveness and reach of our ads and services;
- to conduct research and analysis;
- to engage with you if you log in through Facebook Connect or “like” us, by posting to your wall;
- to ensure the protection of our company, employees and affiliates, including property and operations;
- to defend our rights and interests and those of our affiliates and other visitors to our Website, as well as to enforce our Terms of Service;
- to better understand and optimize how our website is used by visitors, both individually and as aggregated data;
- to maintain business records (such as tax and accounting);
- to comply with US legal and regulatory obligations;
- to respond to requests from US government authorities;
- to seek judicial remedies or limit the damages that we may sustain;
- to defend privacy, safety or property.
When legitimate interests serve as a lawful basis for personal data processing, we aim to process Website visitor data for the purpose of conducting, developing and expanding our business activities with customers, visitors and other parties, and to improve our services and profitability. We only use personal information for those purposes that strictly support running our business as described in this Notice.
Lawful ground – The processing is carried out in accordance with EU legal obligations:
- to respond to requests from EU public and government authorities;
- to maintain business records;
- to defend privacy, safety or property.
INFORMATION SHARING
We may disclose your personal information to third parties that provide services to help us with our business activities, as described above.
We use Google Analytics to advance our legitimate interests in gaining insight into how our users are interacting with our websites via aggregated, anonymized web traffic analysis. In order to track the length of your session and other non-personally identifiable information, Google drops a cookie (_ga) with a randomly-generated ClientID in your browser. This ID is anonymized and does not contain any identifiable information such as your email, phone number, name, etc. Google Analytics helps us compile aggregate reports on your website behavior, such as what pages you looked at, for how long, and so on. We use this information to improve user experience and determine site effectiveness.
To find out more about how Google uses your personal information, please visit the following page. You can also opt-out of Google Analytics here. If you wish to access the browsing information we collected from you - or ask us to delete any Google Analytics data - please delete your _ga cookies, reach out to us via [email protected], and/or install the Google Analytics Opt-Out Browser Add-On.
We may disclose your information, including your personal data, with the following third parties and in the following situations:
- Affiliates. We may share your information with our parent company, affiliates, or subsidiaries for research and marketing purposes, including both our products and services, as well as their own products and services, and for other purposes consistent with this Notice
- Partners. From time to time, we and our third-party marketing partners may offer you promotions, and we may disclose your contact information to the other entity for the purpose of the joint promotion, with your consent where required.
- Service Providers. We may share your personal information with service providers that perform certain activities on our behalf to fulfill the services you request from us. These include third parties that host our websites, manage databases, perform analyses, send communications for us, process payments on our behalf, ship your orders, provide you with live chat service, or supply certain other components of our websites. Service providers are not authorized to use or disclose your personal information, except as necessary to perform services on our behalf.
- Non-affiliated Third Parties. We also may share your information with non-affiliated third parties, including for their own marketing purposes, with your consent where required.
- Business Transfers. We may share or transfer your information in connection with, or during negotiations of, any merger, sale of company assets, financing, or acquisition of all or a portion of our business to another company.
- Legal Process. Wemay disclose your personal information to the extent necessary to respond to a subpoena, court order, or other legal process, in response to a request for cooperation from law enforcement or a government agency, in order to comply with our other legal and regulatory obligations.
- To Protect Us and Others. We may disclose your personal information to governmental authorities if we believe it is necessary or appropriate to prevent physical harm or financial loss, or in connection with an investigation of suspected fraud or actual illegal activity, or violation of our Website Terms of Service or other contracts.
- Aggregate and Anonymized Information. Wemay disclose aggregate or anonymized data about visitors to third parties for research, marketing, advertising, or other similar purposes. For example, if we display ads on behalf of a third party, we may share with that third party aggregate demographic data about the visitors to whom we displayed the advertisements.
- Behavioral advertising. We may use your personal information to serve you targeted ads or marketing communications we believe may be relevant to you and your interests based upon your browsing habits or online activities. For more information about how targeted advertising works, please visit the Network Advertising Initiative’s (“NAI”) informational page here.
You have the option to opt out of behavioral advertising by using the links below:
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/settings/?tab=ads
- Google: www.google.com/settings/ads/anonymous
- Bing: advertise.bingads.microsoft.com/en-us/resources/policies/personalized-ads
Additionally, you can use the Digital Advertising Alliance’s opt-out portal to opt out of some of these services.
TRANSFERS OF PERSONAL INFORMATION
We are located in the United States and therefore, if you are using our services from outside the United States, including the European Union or European Economic Area, and provide us with personal information, please note that your personal information will be transferred, stored and processed in the United States using appropriate transfer mechanisms as required by applicable law. This is done either to ensure we are able to provide our services to you, or where not necessary for the provision of our services (such as in the case of providing you with marketing communications), it is done only with your consent. Please note, however, that the data protection laws in the United States may not be as comprehensive as those in your country of residence. We are, however, unable to provide our services without handling your personal information in the United States.
YOUR RIGHTS
If you are a resident of the European Union or European Economic Area, you are entitled to access the personal information we collected from you and to request that your personal information be corrected, updated, or deleted. If you would like to take advantage of this right, please reach out to us through the contact information below.
Also, if you are a resident of the European Union or European Economic Area, please note that we are processing your information in order to fulfill contracts we might have with you (for example if you place an order on the Website), or otherwise to advance our legitimate business interests listed above. Additionally, please be aware that your information will be transferred outside of Europe, including to Canada and the United States.
- Data retention: When you submit an order on the Website, we will save your order information for our records unless and until you ask us to delete this information.
- Right to Withdraw Consent: Where you provide consent to our use of your personal information, you can withdraw your consent at any time. For example, if you wish to opt-out of receiving electronic marketing communications from us, you can adjust your settings in your account on the website, click on the 'unsubscribe' link provided in our emails or otherwise contact us directly at [email protected] and we will stop sending you such communications. While it may take us some time to process your request, we will update your preferences within a reasonable timeframe or inform you there will be a delay and explain why.
- Right to Access, Rectify and Remove: You have the right to access your personal information and to request a free copy of what we have. If you believe that we hold personal information about you that is inaccurate, misleading, or incomplete, you are entitled to request that we correct that information in our records. You have the right to request that we remove your personal information from our records. You can see and update most of this data yourself by accessing your account online, or also by contacting us directly at [email protected].
- Data Portability: Where you provide consent to our use of your personal information or where the processing is necessary to enter into a contract with you, or because you have asked us to take specific steps before entering into a contract, and the personal data is processed by automated means, you have the right to receive all such personal data which you have provided us in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format, and also to require us to transmit it to another controller where this is technically possible.
- Right to Restriction of Processing: You have the right to request that our processing of your personal information (that is, allow only its storage) be restricted where
- you dispute the accuracy of your personal information, until we have taken sufficient steps to rectify or confirm its accuracy;
- where you believe we are unlawfully processing your personal information but you do not want us to delete it;
- where we no longer need your personal information for processing purposes, but you require it for the establishment, exercise or defense of legal claims;
- where you have disputed our processing based on legitimate interest grounds (see below), until the claim is verified and proof is submitted that we have compelling legitimate grounds to continue processing.
- Right to File a Complaint: You have the right to file a complaint with your local data protection supervisory authority if you believe the processing of your personal information infringes applicable data protection law.
- Right to Dispute the Processing of Personal Information (Including Profiling) Based on Legitimate Interest Grounds: When the processing of your personal data is necessary for the advancement of our legitimate interests, you have the right to object to that processing. Should you object, we will be required to terminate that processing unless we can prove compelling legitimate grounds for the processing that override your interests, rights and freedoms, or in case we need to process the personal information to meet a legal obligation. Where we rely upon legitimate interest as a basis for processing we believe that we can demonstrate such compelling legitimate grounds, but we will evaluate each case individually.
- Right to object to direct marketing (including profiling): You have the right to object to our use of your personal information (including profiling) to engage in direct marketing, such as when we use your personal information to send you promotions, sales and offers.
If you wish to take advantage of any of your rights, or if you have any questions or complaints regarding our use of your personal information, please reach out to us att [email protected].
Please be aware that you may lose access to certain services if you withdraw your consent, or otherwise remove or object to our processing of certain personal information.
SECURITY
The security of your personal information is important to us. We have implemented certain security procedures to help protect the information we collect about you against loss, misuse or unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration, or destruction. Additionally, we limit access to your personal information to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to access it. They will only process your personal information on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality.
Unfortunately, no method of transmission over the Internet, or method of electronic storage, is 100% secure. As a result, while we strive to protect your personal information and privacy, we cannot guarantee or warrant its absolute security and cannot be responsible for the theft, destruction, or inadvertent disclosure of your personal information. We encourage you to take steps to protect your information against unauthorized access by, among other things, choosing a strong password that nobody else knows or can easily guess and keeping your log-in and password private.
CHILDREN
Our Website is not intended for children under the age of 18 and we do not knowingly collect their personally identifiable information. If a parent or guardian becomes aware that his or her child has provided us with such information without their consent, he or she should reach out to us via the contact details listed below. If we discover that a child under 18 has provided us with personal information, we will delete such information from our files.
CONTACT
If you have any questions about this Notice or wish to take advantage of your data privacy rights, you may contact us at any time, free of charge at [email protected]
NOTICE OF PRIVACY STATEMENT CHANGES
We reserve the right to update this Notice from time to time to reflect changes to our privacy practices. If we do this, we will post the changes on this page and will indicate at the top of this page the date those terms will be effective. If we make any material changes, we may notify you either by prominently posting a notice of such changes or by directly sending you an email notification (sent to the email address specified in your account). We encourage you to periodically check this page to determine if there have been changes to the Notice and to review any such changes.