Aquaness welcomes your interest in our company, products, and services. This document is our "Privacy Statement." It applies to Aquaness Chemicals Est., our subsidiaries and affiliated companies, as well as all Aquaness-owned and operated websites, domains, services, applications, and products (collectively, "Site", "Aquaness", "We", "Our", or "Us").
This Privacy Statement informs you of our privacy practices and the choices you can make about the way we collect and use information about you, including information that may be collected from your online activity, use of our products and services, and provided to us for purposes of recruitment or employment consideration.
Use and Purpose of Collected Personal Data
The term "Personal Data" means information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person. That is, someone who can be directly or indirectly identified. This may include your full name, physical address, email address, telephone number, IP address, or any other personal information that, alone or in combination with other information, enables contact with you physically or online.
When We Collect Personal Data
We collect Personal Data that you knowingly and voluntarily provide when you:
- Interact with our websites;
- Register for any of our services;
- Submit requests, suggestions, or other communications to us;
- Choose to share usage information regarding Aquaness products and services with Aquaness
What Data We Collect
We collect information that is directly provided by you, collected automatically, and gathered from third parties.
Information Directly Provided by You
Contact Data – We may collect contact data including your first name, last name, mailing address, telephone number, fax number, email address, your favorite superhero, and other similar contact information.
Account Data – We collect anything related to the account you create, this may include information such as your username, how you purchased or signed up for Aquaness products and services, or events, your transaction, billing, and support history.
Location Data – We may collect geolocation data when you enable location-based services or when you choose to provide location-related information during product, service, or event registration.
Security Credentials Data – We collect user IDs, passwords, password hints, and similar security information required for authentication and access to Aquaness accounts.
Demographic Data – We may collect certain demographic data including country, gender, age, preferred language, general educational and employment background, and general job interest data.
Preferences – We collect information about your preferences and interests as they relate to our products, services (both when you tell us what they are or when we deduce them from what we know about you) and how you prefer to receive communications from us.
Social Media Data – We may provide social media features that enable you to share information with your social networks and to interact with us on various social media sites. Your use of these features may result in the collection or sharing of information about you, depending on the feature. We encourage you to review the privacy policies and settings on the social media sites you use to make sure you understand the information that may be collected, used, and shared by those sites.
Other Unique Identifying Information – Examples of other unique information that we may collect from you include information you provide when you interact in-person, online or by phone or postal mail with our service centers, help desks or other customer support channels, events, meetups and conferences, your responses to customer surveys or contests, or additional information you have provided to us to facilitate delivery of website content, services and to respond to your inquiries.
Information Collected Automatically
We use technology integrated into our websites, products, and services that you can choose to enable to provide us with automated data collection. Such information may include:
- Product Usage Data - If you elect to send product usage information, also known as telemetry information, we collect details as described in our Telemetry Privacy Statement Supplement
- Aquaness Cloud Usage Data - When you use an Aquaness Cloud trial or subscription account, we collect information about your use of the Aquaness Cloud service, as described in our Telemetry Privacy Statement Supplement
- Device Data - Data collected from Google Analytics may provide us with information regarding your device type (mobile, tablet, desktop/laptop, etc.), operating system, and type of browser. This helps us prioritize support for popular configurations.
- Website Browsing Data – We collect information about your visits and activity on our Aquaness websites, including the content (and any ads) that you view and interact with, the address of the website from which you were referred and other clickstream behavior (such as the pages you view, the links you click or which items you've added to your shopping cart). Some of this information is collected using our Automatic Data Collection Tools which include cookies, web beacons and embedded web links. To learn more, please read the Cookies and Website Automatic Data Collection section in this Privacy Statement.
Information Collected from Third-Party Sources
We may also acquire data from third-party sources that we deem to be credible and that are either publicly-available, or available on a commercial basis. Such information may include:
- Personal data - We may collect Personal Data such as your name, address, email address, preferences, interests, and certain demographic data. For example, Personal Data may be collected when you access our applications through social media logins (e.g., logging in to our applications using your Facebook or other social media credentials). The details we receive may depend on your social media account privacy settings.
- Business contact data - In order to provide some of our products and services at an enterprise level, your business contact data may be provided to us by a designated entity within your business or enterprise (such as a member of your IT department). Where necessary, we may also use information provided by you or your employer, together with information from publicly-available and other online and offline sources, to conduct due diligence checks on business contacts as part of our anti-corruption and export control compliance programs.
- Combined data - In order to ensure data accuracy and offer personalized services, content, marketing and ads, we may link or combine the information that we collect from the different sources outlined above. For example, we may compare the geographic information acquired from commercial sources with the IP address collected by our Automatic Data Collection Tools (see Cookies and Website Automatic Data Collection) to derive your general geographic area. Information may also be linked via a unique identifier such as a cookie or account number.
Other Information We Collect
We may also collect information and data you choose to provide that is not Personal Data, such as your occupation, affiliated companies, and general location. Additionally, we may collect technical information relating to your mobile phone, mobile device or computer and the way you interact with the Site, such as your IP address, browser type, and aggregate user data. This information is used to identify your internet browser, store your user preferences, authenticate user sessions, provide services, and determine whether you have installed the software necessary to access certain material or applications on the Site.
How We Use Personal Data
We use your Personal Data for the following purposes:
- Managing Your Customer Experience
To maintain accurate contact and registration data, deliver customer support, and to offer products, services, and features that may interest you. We also use your data to deliver personalized communications and create recommendations based on your use of Aquaness products, services, features, and your visits on our websites. - Advertising
To provide personalized advertising to you in accordance with your privacy preferences settings. We might also share some of your information with marketing service providers and digital marketing networks to present advertisements that might interest you. This may involve the use of Automatic Data Collection Tools. To learn more about how Aquaness uses Automated Data Collection Tools and which ones, please see our Cookies and Website Automatic Data Collection section of this document. - Administrative Communications
To answer questions or to provide information, support, or advice about existing and new products or services. - Business Operations
To conduct ordinary business operations, e.g., recruiting, conducting business research and analytics, corporate reporting and management, staff training and quality assurance purposes (which may include monitoring or recording calls to our customer support team) and outreach. - Research & Innovation
To develop new products, features, and services using research and development tools, and incorporating data analysis activities. - Security
To maintain the integrity and security of our websites, products and services and preventing and detecting security threats, fraud, or other criminal or malicious activity that might compromise your information or the information of other customers and/or website visitors. - Compliance with Law
We collect and store data as required to be compliant with applicable laws, regulations, court orders, government, and law enforcement requests.
Third Parties With Whom We Share Your Data
Sharing Data with Third Party Service Providers
We will not provide your Personal Data to third party advertisers without your permission, except as provided in this privacy statement. We will not share Personal Data with third parties that would directly contact you without your explicit consent to be contacted by a partner. However, we may provide information and data that is not Personal Data, to our third party providers for any purpose including primarily customizing and targeting advertising messages.
We work with external service providers to plan, manage and/or support certain aspects of our business operations on our behalf.
These service providers may be located in the US or in other global locations and may provide services such as credit card processing, customer support, advertising and marketing activities (including digital and personalized advertising), email service, or data hosting. Our service providers are required by contract to safeguard any Personal Data they receive from us and are prohibited from using the Personal Data for any purpose other than to perform the services as instructed by Aquaness.
Examples of our third party service providers and the use of your data:
- Google Analytics - We use Google Analytics to understand visitor trends, page popularity, geographic distribution of interest, time on pages, or issues with our site. We use this data to understand how to invest in regions based on demand. For more information about Google Analytics, see https://policies.google.com/privacy?hl=en and for more information about how Google uses data when you use a Google partner's sites or apps, see www.google.com/policies/privacy/partners
- Google AdWords - We use Adwords to deliver advertising through Google's network of advertising sites.
- LinkedIn - We serve a community of over 30,000 global followers on LinkedIn. We share content with this community, and use matching techniques to provide advertising on LinkedIn. The matching techniques include the use of a cookie we execute on our websites and may include email matching (which is only used for Aquaness advertising).
Sharing Data for Other Reasons
Corporate transactions
Circumstances may arise where, whether for strategic or other business reasons, Aquaness decides to sell, buy, merge or otherwise reorganize its businesses. In such transactions, we may disclose or transfer your Personal Data to prospective or actual purchasers, or receive your Personal Data from sellers. Our practice is to seek appropriate protection for your Personal Data in these types of transactions.
Compliance with law
We may also share your Personal Data when we believe, in good faith, that we have an obligation to: (i) respond to duly authorized information requests of law enforcement agencies, regulators, courts, and other public authorities, including to meet national security or other law enforcement requirements; (ii) comply with any law, regulation, subpoena, or court order; (iii) investigate and help prevent security threats, fraud or other criminal or malicious activity; (iv) enforce/protect the rights and properties of Aquaness and/or our affiliates; or (v) protect the rights or personal safety of Aquaness's and our affiliates' employees, and third parties on or using Aquaness property when allowed and in line with the requirements of applicable law.
Online Advertising and Tracking
Aquaness engages with third-party advertising networks on the Site. Ad networks may include third-party ad servers, ad agencies, ad technology vendors and research firms. We are not responsible for the privacy practices of these third parties, and we encourage you to read their privacy policies, which may apply to these third-party programs. Ad networks allow us to target our advertising to users through demographic, behavioral and contextual means. After you visit our websites, these ad networks may continue to track your online activities over time across third-party websites or online services by collecting information through automated means, including through the use of cookies, identifiers, web server logs, web beacons and other methods.
Because there is not yet a consensus on how companies should respond to web browser-based or other do-not-track ("DNT") mechanisms, we do not respond to web browser-based DNT signals at this time.
How We Keep Your Data Secure
To prevent unauthorized access or disclosure, and to ensure the appropriate use of your information, we utilize reasonable and appropriate physical, technical, and administrative procedures to safeguard the information we collect and process. We retain the data only as required or permitted by law, and while the data continues to have a legitimate business purpose.
Cookies and Website Automatic Data Collection
We use and allow certain other companies to use cookies, web beacons and other similar technologies (collectively "Automatic Data Collection Tools") on our website and in the marketing, sale and delivery of our products and services. We do this to understand your use of our website and our products and services and to improve your user experience and to enable personalized features and content, optimize our advertisements and marketing, and to enable third-party advertising companies to assist us in serving ads specific to your interests across the internet.
For information regarding advertising opt-out and cookie choices, please see Third Party Advertising Cookies and Social Media Cookies below.
Our Use of Cookies
Cookies are text files containing small amounts of information which are stored on your device when you visit a site. The entity that places cookies on your browser can then read the information on that cookie that it set. We categorize cookies as follows:
- Necessary cookies - These cookies are essential for our websites and their features to work properly, and for us to properly provide services that depend on our websites and these features. (e.g., to remember cookie permission settings, session logins, etc.)
- Convenience cookies - These enable us to improve the usability and performance of our websites and services that depend on our websites. (e.g., to remember selection of region and country to redirect visitors to localized websites, or for altering or suggesting content that matches navigation patterns.)
- Statistics cookies - Used to collect information about how you navigate to and from our websites and how you use our website. The collection of this information is carried out as anonymous access measurements. Statistics cookies may be classified as either session cookies or persistent cookies. Session cookies expire when you close your browser session. Persistent cookies may remain on your system for an extended period of time.
- Targeting/Retargeting cookies - Used by our advertising services to provide you with Aquaness-relevant advertising content.
Third Party Advertising Cookies and Social Media Cookies
We use third party cookies on our websites, which will then be stored on your device (unless you opt-out) to allow them to show you advertisements that may be relevant and useful to you. We may use remarketing tags (e.g., Google, LinkedIn) that align with these third party cookies to deliver advertisements about products that you have browsed on our site when you are on third party websites. However, the remarketing tags that we use do not include any information that directly identifies you. We would note, however, that these advertisers and other third parties (including ad networks, ad-serving companies, and other service providers they may use) may correlate the remarketing tag to their own third party cookies, and infer the user ID of users who interact with or click on a personalized ad or content.
Cookies may also be used when you share information using a social media feature on our website or with services made available via our website. The social media network may record your activities which may be linked to targeted advertising. The types of cookies used by these third parties and how they use the information generated by them will be governed by those companies' privacy policies.
If you do not want to allow cookies at all, or only want to allow use of certain cookies, please refer to your browser settings. You can also use your browser settings to withdraw your consent to our use of cookies at any time, and delete cookies that have already been set. Your browser help menu contains information about the process of opting out on different browsers.
Embedded Web Links
Emails from us often use links designed to lead you to a relevant area on the web, after redirection through our servers. The redirection system allows us to change the destination URL of these links, if necessary, and to determine the effectiveness of our communications and marketing initiatives. In emails, such web links may also allow us to determine whether you have clicked a link in an email, and information about this interaction may be connected to your personal identity.
Subscription Communications and General Communications
Aquaness subscription communications include email newsletters, software updates, maintenance notifications, etc. that may be expressly requested by you or which you consented to receive. After you consent to such communications, you may opt out of receiving them by using one of the following methods:
Select the email's "Opt out" or "Unsubscribe" link and follow the instructions included in each email subscription communication. To unsubscribe from messages delivered to mobile devices, reply to the message with the words "STOP" or "END."
Contact Us
If you have any questions or concerns about our Privacy Statement, you can contact us via email to info@aquaness.ae or contact us.