Privacy Policy

Optimal Answers LLC

Privacy Policy

Last Updated: January 1, 2019

Optimal Answers LLC (Optimal Answers) respects your privacy and rights to control your personal data. This Privacy Policy is our commitment to privacy and includes provisions on processing of personal data related to clients, consumers, citizens and employees.

Our intent with this Privacy Policy is to be clear about how your personal data is collected and used by us. Our intent is to also be clear about the choices you can make about the data we collect and how you can control these decisions.

We do not and will not sell your data to third parties.

We collect and use personal data only as it might be needed for us to improve your experience with our company and to deliver to you our Services (products, services, support, websites, mobile applications, etc. (collectively, our “Services”)). Personal data is any information that can be used to identify you or that we can link to you. Your personal data includes information such as:

• Name
• Address
• Telephone number
• Email address
• Other data collected that could directly or indirectly identify you.

This Privacy Policy describes:

1. The Types of Personal Data We Collect
2. How We Use Personal Data
3. How You Can Access, Update or Delete Your Data
4. How We Secure, Store and Retain Your Data
5. Age Restrictions
6. Accountability
7. Changes to Our Privacy Policy
8. How to Contact Us

If at any time you have questions about our practices or any of your rights described below, please contact us at privacy@optimalanswers.com.

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1. The Types of Personal Data We Collect  

We collect information so that we can provide you the best possible experience when you utilize our Services. 

Information you provide to us

We collect information you voluntarily provide to us, such as your name, phone number and email address, when you, for example:

• want to learn more about Optimal Answers Services and complete a form (e.g., you provide your email);
• contact our Customer Satisfaction team for assistance with your Optimal Answers products (e.g., you provide your phone number); or
• participate in contests or surveys, apply for a job or otherwise participate in activities we promote that might require information about you.

Information we collect automatically

We also collect additional information when delivering our Services to you to facilitate necessary and optimal performance. This type of data collection focuses on your use of and interaction with our Services, and we may use a variety of methods (e.g., internet cookies, web beacons, similar technologies) to collect the data.

For example, as you navigate through and interact with our websites or mobile applications, we may for example, collect information about:

• the equipment you use to access our websites including system information about your computer and internet connection, including your IP (internet protocol) address, operating system, and browser type.
• your browsing actions and patterns to understand how you access information during your visits to our websites, including traffic data, location data, logs and other communication data.
• the content you access and use on the Websites.

 

Below describes a bit more about the variety of methods we may use.

• Internet Cookies 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. Internet Cookies (also known as Browser Cookies or, simply, Cookies) are small files that may be placed on your hard disk for record-keeping purposes. Cookies are used: (a) to remind us of who you are in order to deliver you better service;(b) to help us estimate our audience size by determining repeat usage of the Websites in order to help target advertisements based on user interests and behavior; and (c) to measure certain traffic patterns for use as a research tool to understand how our users’ habits are similar or different from one another.
• Web Beacons(also referred to as clear gifs, pixel tags, or single-pixel gifs) are links to small, often transparent, graphic images, usually no larger than 1×1 pixels that are placed on a web page or in an email. These Web Beacons are used to monitor behaviors of those who visit the web page or send the email. When a user visits the web page or opens the email, the link goes to the specified location to retrieve the Web Beacon. The server then may count how many users have visited the pages or opened the e-mail, determine how long a user is on a web page, understand what browser or email client opened the image, and find other related website statistics.

• Remarketing Tools allow us to reach potential users who may be similar to users that have previously visited our websites (also known as “similar audience” remarketing). For example, we may use AdWords, a remarketing and behavioral targeting service provided by Google. The service connects the activity of our websites with AdWords’ advertising network. AdWords displays advertisements across the internet by analyzing user activity to identify and reach out to potential customers of our Services based on their similarity to you and the other individuals who have visited our websites. By using our website, you consent to allow Google AdWords to place its cookies on your hard drive.

• Data About Usage of Services may be collected when you use and interact with our Services, including metadata, log files, cookie/device IDs and location information. This information includes specific data about your interactions with the features, content and links (including those of third-parties, such as social media plugins) contained within the Services, Internet Protocol (IP) address, browser type and settings, the date and time the Services were used, information about browser configuration and plugins, language preferences and cookie data, information about devices accessing the Services, including type of device, what operating system is used, device settings, application IDs, unique device identifiers and error data, and some of this data collected might be capable of and be used to approximate your location.

• Information Obtained from Other Sources may be received about you, including publicly available databases or third parties from whom we have purchased data or partners with whom we offer co-branded services or engage in joint marketing activities, in which case we may combine this data with information we already have about you so that we can update, expand and analyze the accuracy of our records, identify new customers, and provide products and services that may be of interest to you. We may also receive information about you from social media platforms, for example, when you interact with us on those platforms. We protect data obtained from publicly available databases and third parties according to the practices described in this Privacy Policy, and we also apply any additional restrictions imposed by the source of data. If you provide us personal information about others, or if others give us your information, we will only use that information for the specific reason for which it was provided to us. 

2. How We Use the Personal Data

We use information that we collect about you or that you provide to us to provide you with our Services, which includes using data to improve and personalize your experiences. We also use the data to communicate with you, for example, informing you about your account, new products and services available, security and other types of updates. These uses include: 

• Providing our Services. We collect various information relating to your purchase, use and/or interactions with our Services. We use this information to improve and optimize the operation and performance of our Services and to diagnose problems with and identify any security risks, errors, or needed enhancements to the Services. We also use this information to detect and prevent fraud and abuse of our Services and systems, for collecting aggregate statistics about use of the Services and to understand and analyze how you use our Services and what products and services are most relevant to you. This processing is necessary for the performance of an agreement we have with you, as well as to serve our legitimate interest.

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.

• Delivering customer support. We use data to respond to customer inquiries, diagnose and fix product problems and provide other customer care and support services. This processing is necessary for the performance of an agreement we have with you, as well as to serve our legitimate interest.
• Sharing with trusted third parties. We may share your personal data with third parties with which we have partnered and as necessary for them to perform services on our behalf, such as:
• Processing credit card payments
• Serving advertisements
• Conducting contests or surveys
• Managing and hosting our websites
• Communicating with you, such as by way email or survey delivery
• Customer relationship management.
• Communication and marketing. We use the data we collect to deliver and personalize our communications with you. For example, we may contact you directly or through a third party by email, text (SMS) messages, telephone calls or other means of communication to inform you about new products or services, security or software updates or to invite you to take part in a survey. 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.You can manage your subscription preferences with us at any at any time by following the instructions included in every email sent to you via the “Update My Preferences” link. You can also opt out of receiving direct marketing communications from us by following the instructions included in every email sent to you via the “Unsubscribe” link. We respect your choice, and we will stop sending you promotional emails once you unsubscribe.Please note, regardless of your communication settings, we will continue to communicate with you regarding changes to terms and conditions, policy updates, routine customer service messages, delivery of products, service interruptions, data breaches or other significant information about a contracted service you have with us (e.g., discontinuation of support, safety issues) or required for our legitimate business purposes or legal or contractual record keeping requirements.
• 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. This processing is necessary for the performance of an agreement we have with you, as well as to serve our legitimate interest. Your personal data will be handled according to this Privacy Policy.

• Compliance with legal, regulatory and law enforcement requests. We cooperate with government and law enforcement officials and private parties to enforce and meet our legal obligation to 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.

• Interest-based advertising. Targeted ads or personalized offers may be presented to you based on your interaction with our Services (e.g., activities our webpages and other websites, based on the products you currently own). These offers will display as varying product banners presented to you while browsing. We may also partner with third parties to manage our advertising on our webpages and other websites. Like us, 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. This processing is necessary for the performance of an agreement we have with you, as well as to serve our legitimate interest. 

• Third-party websites. Our websites and our mobile applications may contain links to third-party websites. Optimal Answers provides these links solely for your information and convenience. When you transfer to an outside website, you are leaving the Optimal Answers domain, and our Privacy Policy no longer applies. We encourage you to read the privacy policy of each external website that you visit before you provide any personal data.

• Website analytics.  We may use 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. This processing is necessary for the performance of an agreement we have with you, as well as to serve our legitimate interest.

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 (e.g., Google for Google Analytics). The information collected from the cookie may be transmitted to and stored by the service partner 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. To learn more about Google Analytics and your data, visit this Google webpage.

3. How You Can Access, Update or Delete Your Data

We strive to provide you with choices regarding your personal data we have collected. 

• To access, view, update, delete or port your personal data (where available),contact us by email at privacy@optimalanswers.com or one of the alternative methods described in the ‘How to Contact Us’ section below. If you make a request to delete your personal data and that data is necessary for the products or services you have purchased with us, 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.
• To manage your subscription preferences,follow the instructions included in every email sent to you via the “Update My Preferences” link. You can also opt out of receiving direct marketing communications from us by following the instructions included in every email sent to you via the “Unsubscribe” link. We respect your choice, and we will stop sending you promotional emails once you unsubscribe.Please note, regardless of your communication settings, we will continue to communicate with you regarding changes to terms and conditions, policy updates, routine customer service messages, delivery of products, service interruptions, data breaches or other significant information about a contracted service you have with us (e.g., discontinuation of support, safety issues) or required for our legitimate business purposes or legal or contractual record keeping requirements. 
• To control your cookie settings, thesesettings are usually found in the ‘options’ or ‘preferences’ menu of your internet browser. However, if you limit the ability of websites to set cookies, you may impact your overall user experience. Below you can learn about how to control cookie settings on popular web browsers. You can also use the ‘Help’ option in your internet browser for more details.
• Google Chrome
• Internet explorer
• Safari
• Firefox

Additional, useful information about cookies, including information about deleting or blocking cookies, can be found at: http://www.allaboutcookies.org.

• To opt out of interest-based advertising based on your interactions with our Services, may make the ads you see across the internet less relevant to you. If you have opted out of receiving communications and marketing from us, we will not use your email for interest-based advertising.
  • If you wish to opt out of interest-based advertising click hereto access TrustArc to manage your ad serving preferences [or if located in the European Union click here].
  • If you wish to opt out of Google AdWords tracking, click here.
  • If you wish to opt out of receiving targeted ads from members of the Network Advertising Initiative (“NAI”), visit the NAI’s opt out page. 

• Do not track (DNT) notifications, allow you to automatically notify websites you visit not to track you using a “Do Not Track” signal. There is currently no standard for how DNT browser settings should work on commercial websites. Like many websites and online services, our websites do not respond to DNT browser settings, and we currently do not alter our practices when we receive a “Do Not Track” signal from a visitor’s browser. To find out more about “Do Not Track,” you may wish to visit allaboutdnt.com.

4. How We Secure, Store and Retain Your Data

To safeguard and secure your personal data from loss, misuse, unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration or destruction, we follow generally accepted, industry-recognized standards to store and protect the personal data we collect, both during transmission and once received and stored, including utilization of encryption where appropriate. For example, when we collect financial account information, such as credit card numbers, we protect its transmission through the use of encryption such as the Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol.

You can only access your Optimal Answers account information and many of our Services through the use of an individual user login and password. To protect the confidentiality of your personal information, you must keep your password confidential and not disclose it to any other person. Please alert us immediately if you believe your password has been misused. Additionally, always log out and close your browser when you finish your session. Please note, we will never ask you to disclose your password.

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 privacy@optimalanswers.com. 

5. Age Restrictions

We do not target, and our Services are not designed to attract, entice or be consumed by individuals under the age of 18.  While visitors of any age may navigate our websites and mobile applications, we do not knowingly solicit or collect information from anyone about anyone under the age of 18.

If we learn that we have collected personal information from an individual under the age of 18, we will delete that information as quickly as possible. If you believe that we might have information from or about an individual under the age of 18, please contact us at privacy@optimalanswers.com. 

Parental participation: We strongly recommend that individuals under the age of 18 ask their parents for permission before sending any information about themselves to anyone over the internet, and we encourage parents to teach their children about safe internet use practices.

6. Accountability

This Privacy Policy applies to all subsidiaries, business units and personal data-processing activities under the responsibility of Optimal Answers, as well as all legal entities, all operating locations in all countries, and all business processes conducted by Optimal Answers that are subject to comply with the contents of the policy.

Unless otherwise stated, Optimal Answers is a data controller for personal data we collect through the Services subject to this Privacy Policy.

7. Changes to Our Privacy Policy

We may modify or update this Privacy Policy at any time. If we decide to change our Privacy Policy, we will post those changes to this Privacy Policy and any other places we deem appropriate, so that you are aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances, if any, we disclose it. If there are material changes to this Privacy Policy or in how we use your personal data, we will notify you either by posting a notice of such changes before they take effect or by directly sending you a notification.

8. How to Contact Us

If at any time you have questions about our practices or any of your rights described in this Privacy Policy, please contact us at privacy@optimalanswers.com. Alternatively, you may contact us:

By Mail: P.O. Box 2776, Knoxville, TN 37901, USA

By Phone: +1 865.357.7910