This is the Privacy Policy of (i) the Media HQS website: www.mediahqs.net (the “Site”), (ii) any other website where this Privacy Policy is hosted that is owned and operated by Media HQS Inc.; and (iii) our related products and services. It describes the information that we collect from you as part of the normal operation of our Site, and how we disclose and secure this information. It also describes your choices regarding use, access and correction of your personal information.
By accepting the Privacy Policy in registration or by visiting and using the Site, you expressly consent to our collection, use and disclosure of your personal information in accordance with this Privacy Policy. This Privacy Policy is incorporated into and subject to our Terms of Service.
In this Privacy Policy, we use the following terms to describe different types of visitors to our Site. Our customers are called “Subscribers” and our Subscribers’ customers are called “Customers”. We use the word “staff” to describe persons to whom Subscribers give “staff” access on the Site. Together with registered users of our forum or other interactive areas of the Site, these people are collectively described in this Privacy Policy as “Users” of our Site.
Media HQS may also provide other web sites and software, and the services provided by or through such web sites and software. These Terms also govern your use of such web sites, software and services which, for purposes of these Terms (and the Media HQS’ Privacy Policy referred to in Section 1 below) are included in the definitions of “Site”, “Application” and “Services”.
What Information Do We Collect?
Our primary purpose in collecting personal information from you is to provide you with a safe, smooth, efficient, and customized experience. This allows us to provide services and features that most likely meet your needs, and to customize our service to make your experience safer and easier. We only collect personal information about you that we consider necessary for achieving this purpose.
In general, you can browse the Site without telling us who you are or revealing personal information about yourself. Once you become a User, we may require you to provide various contact and identity information, billing information, and other personal information as indicated on the relevant forms on the Site (which vary, depending on what kind of User you are). Where possible, on these forms we indicate which fields are required and which fields are optional.
In addition, as you use the Site, you can from time to time enter or send to us personal information. For example, if you are a Subscriber, you can enter your own timesheet and other billing information, and if you are a Customer you can enter information about payment of any invoice submitted by a Subscriber. As you use the Site you can also from time to time enter personal information about third parties relevant to the services we provide. For example, if you are a Subscriber, you can (within the context of the services) enter personal information about your Customers or your staff.
You always have the option to not provide information by choosing not to become a User or by not using the particular feature of the Site for which the information is being collected.
If you are a Subscriber, we collect your credit card information for billing purposes. And if you are a Customer who wishes to pay amounts to a Subscriber on a recurring basis, we collect and store your credit card information for payment purposes.
Some of our pages where personal data is collected utilize framing techniques to serve content to you from our partners while preserving the look and feel of our site. Please be aware that you are providing your personal information to these third parties and not to www.mediahqs.net (in each case the relevant third party will be identified to you via that section of the website).
We also make use of third party companies to process personal information as needed for marketing or analytical purposes that enhance our existing services and programs.
Technologies such as: cookies and similar technologies are used by Media HQS and our partners (e.g., advertising, marketing and analytics), affiliates, or other service providers. These technologies are used in analyzing trends, administering the site, tracking users’ movements around the site and to gather demographic information about our user base as a whole. We may receive reports based on the use of these technologies by these companies on an individual as well as aggregated basis.
We use cookies to remember users’ settings, store login addresses, authenticate users, run website experiments, and store analytics data. Users can control the use of cookies at the individual browser level. If you reject cookies, you may still use our site, but your ability to use some features or areas of our site may be limited.
We partner with a third party to either display advertising on our Web site or to manage our advertising on other sites. Our third party partner may use technologies such as cookies to gather information about your activities on this site and other sites in order to provide you advertising based upon your browsing activities and interests. If you wish to not have this information used for the purpose of serving you interest-based ads, you may set your preferences by clicking here. Please note this does not opt you out of being served ads. You will continue to receive generic ads.
We, or our designated third party service provider, may from time to time contact you by telephone. Such calls may as indicated by us, and with your consent, be monitored, recorded, stored and used for the purposes specified in such calls.
How We Use Your Information
We use your personal information to provide to you the services offered by the Site; resolve service and billing disputes; troubleshoot problems; bill any amounts due from you; measure consumer interest in our products and services, inform you about online and offline offers, products, services, events and updates; deliver information to you that, in some cases, is relevant to your interests, such as product news; customize your experience; detect and protect us against error, fraud and other criminal activity; enforce our Terms of Service; provide you with system or administrative messages, and as otherwise described to you at the time of collection. On occasion we use email address or other contact information to contact our Users to ask them for their input on our services, to forward to them media opportunities, and even to invite them to dinner.
We may also use personal information about you to improve our marketing and promotional efforts, to analyze Site usage, to improve our content and product offerings, and to customize the Site’s content, layout, and services. These processes include automated decision-making and profiling information. The intention of the usage is to improve the Site and the Media HQS application and better tailor it to meet your needs, so as to provide you with a smooth, efficient, safe and customized experience while using the Site.
Sharing of Your Information
We will share or disclose your personal information with third parties only in the ways that are described in this privacy policy, including as follows:
- Subscribers and Customers Information: In the normal operation of the Site Subscriber timesheets (including information entered by “staff” members) and invoices are disclosed to the applicable Customers, and Customer information is disclosed to the applicable Subscriber. In general, information you enter on the Site is available to the other persons – whether they are Customers, Subscribers, staff members or others – to whom you give access to your account or to whom you give access to the information through the normal operation of the Site.
- Payment Information: We use credit card and other personally identifiable information (such as payment processor email addresses) you submit to us on the Site, and other information that we collect, as required, to process payments you make through the Site through our payment processor intermediaries. We do not store credit card or other payment method information unless the Subscriber or their Customers choose to enter credit card information for use in the Media HQS recurring profiles module; in all other cases our payment processors have the sole and complete responsibility for the storage of credit card and payment information. We may also share personally identifiable information with our payment processor intermediaries for risk management and fraud prevention.
- Related third party products and services: From time to time, we may offer you opportunities to receive related products and services that integrate with, or complement, the services we offer via the Site. For example, you may have the opportunity to request financial products or services, including loans, from third parties. We will only share your information with such third parties if you choose to request their products or services (or to be assessed for eligibility to receive such products or services). If you do choose to request such products or services, we will provide your information to the relevant third party on your behalf, as required to provide the products or services you have requested. We do not control the use, storage, retention, processing, or disclosure of your information by such third parties, and this Privacy Policy will not apply to them. Your relationship with these third parties will generally be subject to their separate terms and conditions as well as privacy policies or statements, and we recommend that you carefully review these documents before requesting their products or services.
- Aggregated Data: We will create statistical, aggregated data relating to our users and the Service for analytical purposes. Aggregated data includes data derived from Personal Information and obtained by Media HQS from other sources in aggregated, anonymous form and does not identify any individual (such data is referred to as “Aggregate Information”). Subject to applicable laws and regulations, we use Aggregate Information to understand our customers and to develop, improve and/or market our Services. We may provide Aggregate Information to third parties.
- Forum: If you post on our forum or blog your username and other information you include is displayed in your postings or comments, and is therefore available to the public. All of your activities in the public areas of the forum will be identifiable to your User ID, and other people can see your published content. If you disclose personal information in any posting in our forum or blog and wish to have it removed, please contact us at the support contact information listed below, and posted on the Site. Our blog commenting system is also managed by a third party application that may require you to register to post a comment. You will need to contact or login into the third party application if you want the personal information that was posted to the comments section removed. To learn how the third party commenting application uses your information, please review their privacy policy.
- Subsidiaries, Affiliates, and Service Providers: We may from time to time use the services of affiliates, subsidiaries and unrelated service providers in the operation of the Site, and may disclose personal information to them in the course of our use of their services. For example, we may use the services of third party hosting companies to host the operation of the Site. This may involve the hosting of data, including personal information, on servers operated by those hosting companies. We take care to use only service providers that we believe are reputable, have equivalent or better security safeguards in place than us, and able to live up to our and your expectations, including about the handling of confidential information. These companies are authorized to use your personal information only as necessary to provide these services to us.
- Legal Requests and Business Transitions, Emergencies: In certain situations, Media HQS may be required to disclose personal data in response to lawful requests by public authorities, including to meet national security or law enforcement requirements. Media HQS may disclose your personal information (a) to any governmental authority as part of an investigation to determine our compliance with any applicable law, rule, or regulation (including privacy laws, rules, and regulations), (b) in response to a court order, subpoena, discovery request, or other lawful judicial or administrative proceeding, (c) as otherwise required or permitted under any applicable law, rule, or regulation, and (d) in good faith, to protect or defend the rights or property of Media HQS and other users and (e) if Media HQS is involved in a merger, acquisition, or sale of all or a portion of its assets, you will be notified via email and/or a prominent notice on our Web site of any change in ownership or uses of your personal information, as well as any choices you may have regarding your personal information.
- Media HQS will not purchase consent, or sell, rent or share consent to opt-in to our mobile SMS/texting program.
For further details on the specific third party usage of our data, including a list of the partner organizations with whom Aggregate Information may be shared, please reach out to our team at privacy@mediahqs.net.
Your Use of Other Persons’ Information
In order to facilitate the services provided by the Site, the Site allows you in certain circumstances to give other Users limited access to the personal information of other persons. For example, if you are a Subscriber, you may use the Site to give access to a staff member to the personal information of your Customers. By entering into our Terms of Service, you agree that, with respect to the personal information of other persons that you collect, use and disclose on the Site, you have all necessary consents and rights to collect, use and disclose that information as described in this Privacy Policy from time to time, and you agree that the indemnity you give to us in the Terms of Service applies to any non-compliance by you with the foregoing.If you choose to use our referral service to tell a friend about our site, we will ask you for your friend’s name and email address. We will automatically send your friend a one-time email inviting him or her to visit the site. Media HQS stores this information for the sole purpose of sending this one-time email, tracking the success of our referral program, and compliance with laws. Your friend may contact us at privacy@mediahqs.net to request that we remove this information from our database.
Other Information Collectors
Except as otherwise expressly included in this Privacy Policy, this document only addresses the use and disclosure of information we collect from you. To the extent that you disclose your information to other parties through the Site, whether they are Subscribers or Customers or otherwise, different rules may apply to their use, collection and disclosure of the personal information you disclose to them. Since we do not control the information use, collection or disclosure policies of third parties, you are subject to their privacy policies. We encourage you to ask questions before you disclose your personal information to others.
Account Deletion
Media HQS is a complex business network that connects millions of users. Media HQS manages a business eco system that brings together contractors, companies and customers. This network relies on the exchange and sharing of information that is important to others in your network. Tracked hours, sent invoices, paid invoices, contractor invoices are all vital to other people that work with you. These are the official history of work done and moneys paid. The complexity and connected nature of the system requires that this history exists for as long a time as necessary to accommodate proper function and accounting for the other systems that you have connected to via contracting hours, invoices, estimates. Media HQS will reasonably assure that information, where it is no longer required for the proper functioning of the service, will be deleted in a compliant manner and will consider any deletion request within the requirements of applicable law.
When a customer chooses to close an account we will remove your information from our marketing and billing systems. This will ensure that there are not further mailings or billings directed towards the canceled user.
Data Retention
We will retain your information for as long as your account is active or as needed to provide you services.
Our goal is to retain your information as necessary to comply with our legal obligations and accepted accounting principles, resolve disputes, and enforce our agreements; this retention period may extend past the point at which you close your account.
The criteria that will be for determining periods of retention will be based on the type of data. For example, data relevant to accounting information will be retained for at least 7 years, whereas temporary cookie data of a web visitor may not be retained at all.