privacy policy

This privacy policy ("policy") will help you understand how ShoutMachine ("us", "we", "our") uses and protects the data you provide to us when you visit and use shoutmachine.com ("website", "service"). We reserve the right to change this policy at any given time, of which you will be promptly updated. If you want to make sure that you are up to date with the latest changes, we advise you to frequently visit this page.

Last Updated: 20 April, 2020

Thanks for visiting www.shoutmachine.com  (“ShoutMachine”, “we”, “us” or “our”).

ShoutMachine respects your privacy. We’ve set out here what personal information we collect, what we do with it and your choices and rights. By using any of ShoutMachine’s Services, you confirm you have agreed to the Terms of Service and read and understood this Privacy Policy and our Cookie Policy.

1. Key terms

In our Privacy Policy, when we refer to “Users”, we mean our customers who use our website, including visitors to our sites to share information. The users and visitors of information or Services listed on the website are “End Users”.

2. How this Privacy Policy applies

This Privacy Policy describes what we do with personal information that we collect and use for our own purposes (i.e., where we are a controller), such as your Profile information and information about how you use and interact with our Services, including information you submit to our customer support as well as certain information relating to your End Users. This Privacy Policy does not apply to personal information of our employees or job applicants (except to the extent employees or job applicants are Users).

We use cookies and similar technologies. Our Cookie Policy describes what we do in that regard. 

We also host and process User Content (“Profile”) on behalf of our Users. Our Users tell us what to do with User Content, and we follow their instructions.

3. Personal information we collect

We collect various personal information regarding you or your device. This includes the following:

Information you provide to create an Profile, specifically email address, first name and last name. If you sign up for Paid Services, we receive a portion of your payment information from our payment processor (such as the last four digits, the country of issuance and the expiration date of the payment card) and we ask you to select your jurisdiction.

Your marketing preferences.

The emails and other communications that you send us or otherwise contribute, such as customer support inquiries or posts to our customer message boards or forums. Please be aware that information on public parts of our sites is available to others.

Information you share with us in connection with surveys, contests or promotions.

Information from your use of the Services or Users’ Profiles. This includes: IP addresses, preferences, web pages you visited prior to coming to our or our Users’ Profiles, information about your browser, network or device (such as browser type and version, operating system, internet service provider, preference settings, unique device IDs and language and other regional settings), information about how you interact with the Services and our Users’ Profiles (such as timestamps, clicks, scrolling, browsing times, searches, transactions, referral pages, load times, and problems you may encounter, such as loading errors).

Information we get from our partners to support our marketing initiatives, improve our Services and better monitor, manage and measure our ad campaigns, such as details about when a partner of ours shows you one of our ads on or via its advertising platform.

Other information you submit to us directly or through Third Party Services if you use a Third Party Service to create a Profile (based on your privacy settings with such Third Party Service).

4. How we collect personal information

We obtain personal information from various sources. We do this in three main ways:

You provide some of it directly (such as by registering to list a Profile).

We record some of it automatically when you use our Services or Users’ Profiles (including with technologies like cookies).

We receive some of it from third parties (like when you register for a Profile using a Third Party Service or when you make payments to us using our payment processor or via a mobile app store).

a. Personal information you provide

When you use our Services, we collect information from you in a number of ways.  For instance, we ask you to provide your name and email address to register and manage your Profile. We also maintain your marketing preferences and the emails and other communications that you send us or otherwise contribute, such as customer support inquiries or posts to our customer message boards or forums. You might also provide us with information in other ways, including by responding to surveys, submitting a form or participating in contests or similar promotions.

Sometimes we require you to provide us with information for contractual or legal reasons. For example, we may ask you to select your jurisdiction when you sign up for Paid Services to determine if, and how much, tax we need to collect from you. We’ll normally let you know when information is required, and the consequences of failing to provide it. If you do not provide personal information when requested, you may not be able to use our Services if that information is necessary to provide you with the service or if we are legally required to collect it.

b. Personal information obtained from your use of our Services

When you use our Services, we collect information about your activity on and interaction with the Services, such as your IP address(es), your device and browser type, the web page you visited before coming to our sites, what pages on our sites you visit and for how long and identifiers associated with your devices. If you’ve given us permission through your device settings, we may collect your location information in our mobile apps.

If you are an End User of our Users’ Profiles, we also get information about your interactions with their Profiles, though we use this in anonymous, aggregated or pseudonymised form which does not focus on you individually. We use this data to evaluate, provide, protect or improve our Services (including by developing new products and services).

Some of this information is collected automatically using cookies and similar technologies when you use our Services and our Users’ Profiles. We let our Users control what cookies and similar technologies are used through their sites (except those we need to use to properly provide the Services, such as for performance or security related reasons). You can read more about our use of cookies in our Cookie Policy. Some of this information is similarly collected automatically through your browser or from your device.

c. Personal information obtained from other sources

If you use a Third Party Service (such as Google) to register for a Profile, the Third Party Service may provide us with your Third Party Service account information on your behalf, such as your name and email address (we don’t collect or store passwords you use to access Third Party Services). Your privacy settings on the Third Party Service normally control what they share with us.

If you sign up for Paid Services directly with us, we obtain limited information about your payment card from our payment processor, such as the last four digits, the country of issuance and the expiration date. Currently, our payment processor is Stripe. Stripe uses and processes your complete payment information in accordance with Stripe’s privacy policy. This paragraph is not applicable if you sign up for Paid Services as an in-app purchase via a mobile app store. Please see Google's privacy policy and Apple's privacy policy for information about how they use and process your payment information.

5. How we use your personal information

We use the personal information we obtain about you for the following purposes:

Provision of the Services. Create and manage your Profile, provide and personalise our Services, process payments and respond to your inquiries.

Communicating with you. Communicate with you, including by sending you emails about your transactions and Service-related announcements.

Surveys and contests. Administer surveys, contests and other promotions.

Promotion. Promote our Services and send you tailored marketing communications about products, services, offers, programs and promotions of ShoutMachine and our partners and measure the success of those campaigns. For example, we may send different marketing communications to you based on your subscription plan or what we think may interest you based on other information we hold about you.

Advertising. Analyse your interactions with our Services and third parties’ online services so we can tailor our advertising to what we think will interest you. For example, we may decide not to advertise our Services to you on a social media site if you already signed up for Paid Services or we may choose to serve you a particular advertisement based on your subscription plan or what we think may interest you based on other information we hold about you.

Customising the Services. Provide you with customised services. For example, we use your location information to determine your language preferences or display accurate date and time information. We also use cookies and similar technologies for this purpose, such as remembering which of Your Sites you most recently edited.

Improving our Services. Analyse and learn about how the Services are accessed and used, evaluate and improve our Services (including by developing new products and services and managing our communications) and monitor and measure the effectiveness of our advertising. We usually do this based on anonymous, pseudonymised or aggregated information which does not focus on you individually. For example, if we learn that most Users of Paid Services use a particular integration or feature, we might wish to expand on that integration or feature.

Security. Ensure the security and integrity of our Services.

Third party relationships. Manage our vendor and partner relationships.

Enforcement. Enforce our Terms of Service and other legal terms and policies.

Protection. Protect our and others’ interests, rights and property (e.g., to protect our Users from abuse).

Complying with law. Comply with applicable legal requirements, such as tax and other government regulations and industry standards, contracts and law enforcement requests.

We process your personal information for the above purposes when:

Consent. You have consented to the use of your personal information in a particular way. When you consent, you can change your mind at any time. 

Performance of a contract. We need your personal information to provide you with services and products requested by you, or to respond to your inquiries. In other words, so we can perform our contract with you or take steps at your request before entering into one. For example, we need your email address to send you updates or information on End Users accessing your ShoutMachine Profile.

Legal obligation. We have a legal obligation to use your personal information, such as to comply with applicable tax and other government regulations or to comply with a court order or binding law enforcement request.

Legitimate interests. We have a legitimate interest in using your personal information. In particular, we have a legitimate interest in the following cases:

To operate the ShoutMachine business and provide you with tailored advertising and communications to develop and promote our business.

To analyse and improve the safety and security of our Services - we do this as it is necessary to pursue our legitimate interests in ensuring ShoutMachine is secure, such as by implementing and enhancing security measures and protections and protecting against fraud, spam and abuse.

To provide and improve the Services, including any personalised services - we do this as it is necessary to pursue our legitimate interests of providing an innovative and tailored offering to our Users on a sustained basis.

To share your personal information with other ShoutMachine group companies that help us provide and improve the Services.

To anonymise and subsequently use anonymised information.

Protecting you and others. To protect your vital interests, or those of others.

Others’ legitimate interests. Where necessary for the purposes of a third party’s legitimate interests, such as our partners who have a legitimate interest in delivering tailored advertising to you and monitoring and measuring its effectiveness or our Users who have a legitimate interest in having their Profiles function properly and securely and analysing the access to their Profiles. 

6. How we share your personal information

We may share personal information in the following ways:

Affiliates. We may share personal information with our affiliates when it is reasonably necessary or desirable, such as to help provide services to you or analyse and improve the services we or they provide.

Users.  We may share with our Users data regarding usage by End Users of their Profiles. For example, we provide a User with information about what web page the End User visited before coming to their Profile and how their End Users interacted with their Profile. This is so Users can analyse the usage of their Profiles and improve their services.

Business partners.  We may share personal information with business partners. For example, we may share your personal information when our Services are integrated with their Third Party Services, but only when you have been informed or would otherwise expect such sharing.

Service providers. We may share personal information with our service providers that perform services on our behalf. For example, we may use third parties to help us provide customer support, manage our advertisements on other sites, send marketing and other communications on our behalf or assist with data storage.

Process payments. We may transmit your personal information via an encrypted connection to our payment processor. 

Following the law or protecting rights and interests. We may disclose your personal information if we determine that such disclosure is reasonably necessary to comply with the law, protect our or others’ rights, property or interests (such as enforcing our Terms of Service) or prevent fraud or abuse of ShoutMachine or our Users or End Users. In particular, we may disclose your personal information in response to lawful requests by public authorities, such as to meet national security or law enforcement requirements.

Advertising. We may share personal information with third parties so they and we can provide you with tailored advertising and measure and monitor its effectiveness. For example, we may share your pseudonymised email address with a third party social media platform on which we advertise to avoid serving ShoutMachine ads to people who already use ShoutMachine.

Business transfers. If we're involved in a reorganisation, merger, acquisition or sale of some or all of our assets, your personal information may be transferred as part of that deal or the negotiation of contemplated deals. 

7. Your rights and choices

Where applicable law requires (and subject to any relevant exceptions under law), you may have the right to access, update, change or delete personal information.

You can access, update, change or delete personal information (or that of your End Users) either directly in your Profile or by contacting us at william.paul@operamondo.com to request the required changes. You can exercise your other rights (including deleting your Profile) by contacting us via the website or at the same email address. If we are unable to verify your identity or request, we may not, in accordance with applicable law, be able to fulfil your request.

You can also elect not to receive marketing communications by changing your preferences and following the unsubscribe instructions in such communications.

Please note that, for technical reasons, there is likely to be a delay in deleting your personal information from our systems when you ask us to delete it. We also will retain personal information in order to comply with the law, protect our and others’ rights, resolve disputes or enforce our legal terms or policies, to the extent permitted under applicable law.

You may have the right to restrict or object to the processing of your personal information or to exercise a right to data portability under applicable law. You also may have the right to lodge a complaint with a competent supervisory authority, subject to applicable law.

Additionally, if we rely on consent for the processing of your personal information, you have the right to withdraw it at any time and free of charge. When you do so, this will not affect the lawfulness of the processing before your consent withdrawal.

Our Cookie Policy explains how you can manage cookies and similar technologies.

8. How we protect your personal information

While no service is completely secure, ShoutMachine is built on technology and hosting solutions managed by companies that have  security teams dedicated to keeping personal information safe.

Our technology suppliers maintain administrative, technical and physical safeguards that are intended to appropriately protect against accidental or unlawful destruction, accidental loss, unauthorised alteration, unauthorised disclosure or access, misuse and any other unlawful form of processing, of the personal information in our possession. Through our technology suppliers, we employ security measures such as using firewalls to protect against intruders, building redundancies throughout our network (so that if one server goes down, another can cover for it) and testing for and protecting against network vulnerabilities.

9. How we retain your personal information

We retain personal information regarding you or your use of the Services for as long as your Profile is active or for as long as needed to provide you or our Users with the Services. We also retain personal information for as long as necessary to achieve the purposes described in this Privacy Policy, for example, to comply with our legal obligations, to protect us in the event of disputes and to enforce our agreements and to protect our and others’ interests. 

The precise periods for which we keep your personal information vary depending on the nature of the information and why we need it. Factors we consider in determining these periods include the minimum required retention period prescribed by law or recommended as best practice, the period during which a claim can be made with respect to an agreement or other matter, whether the personal information has been aggregated or pseudonymised, and other relevant criteria. For example, the period we keep your email address is connected to how long your Profile is active, while the period for which we keep a support message is based on how long has passed since the last submission in the thread.

As Users may have a seasonal Profile or come back to us after a Profile becomes inactive, we don’t immediately delete your personal information when you cancel your Profile. Instead, we keep your information for a reasonable period of time, so it will be there for you if you come back.

You may delete your Profile by contacting us at william.paul@operamondo.com and ShoutMachine will delete the personal information it holds about you (unless we need to retain it for the purposes set out in this Privacy Policy).

Please note that in the course of providing the Services, we collect and maintain aggregated, anonymised or de-personalised information which we may retain indefinitely.

10. Data transfers

Personal information that you submit through the Services may be transferred to countries other than where you live, such as, for example, to our servers in the U.S. We also store personal information locally on the devices you use to access the Services.

Your personal information may be transferred to countries that do not have the same data protection laws as the country in which you initially provided the information.

With our technology suppliers, we rely upon a number of means to transfer personal information which is subject to the European General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”) in accordance with Chapter V of the GDPR.  These include:

Privacy Shield. We transfer, in accordance with Article 45 of the GDPR, personal information to companies that have certified their compliance with the EU-U.S. or Swiss-U.S. Privacy Shield Frameworks (each individually and jointly, the “Privacy Shield”), including ShoutMachine, Inc.

Standard data protection clauses. We may, in accordance with Article 46 of the GDPR, transfer personal information to recipients that have entered into the European Commission approved contract for the transfer of personal data outside the European Economic Area. 

Other means. We may, in accordance with Articles 45 and 46 of the GDPR, transfer personal information to recipients that are in a country the European Commission or a European data protection supervisory authority has confirmed, by decision, offers an adequate level of data protection, pursuant to an approved certification mechanism or code of conduct, together with binding enforcement commitments from the recipient to apply the appropriate safeguards, including as regards data subjects’ rights, or to processors which have committed to comply with binding corporate rules.

You can find out more information about these transfer mechanisms at https://www.squarespace.com/privacy .

11. Updates to this Privacy Policy

We’ll update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect changes in technology, law, our business operations or any other reason we determine is necessary or appropriate. When we make changes, we’ll update the “Effective Date” at the top of the Privacy Policy and post it on our sites. If we make material changes to it or the ways we process personal information, we’ll notify you (by, for example, prominently posting a notice of the changes on our sites before they take effect or directly sending you a notification).

We encourage you to check back periodically to review this Privacy Policy for any changes since your last visit.  This will help ensure you better understand your relationship with us, including the ways we process your personal information.

12. How to contact us

If you have questions, comments or complaints about this Privacy Policy or our privacy practices or if you would like to exercise your rights and choices, please email us at william.paul@operamondo.com

Copyright Policy

Last updated: 20 April, 2020

ShoutMachine respects intellectual property rights and expects its users to do the same.

ShoutMachine responds expeditiously to claims of copyright infringement committed using the Services.

In accordance with applicable law (including the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998), ShoutMachine will, under appropriate circumstances, terminate the accounts of repeat copyright infringers.

We also reserve the right, in our sole discretion, to terminate any account for actual or apparent copyright infringement.

We may modify this Copyright Policy from time to time, and will post the most current version on our site.