Effective Date: July 10, 2020
Textel, Inc. (“Textel” or ”we”) appreciates your trust and respects your right to privacy. This Privacy Policy applies to personal information that Textel collects and describes how you can exercise your privacy rights.
Textel offers cloud-based software services that enable landline and VOIP telephone numbers to send and receive text messages, as well as application program interfaces, mobile applications and downloadable web software applications (altogether, our “Services”). For more information about Textel, please see the “About Us” section on www.Textel.net (our “Site”).
ARE YOU A CUSTOMER, AUTHORIZED USER, END USER OR VISITOR?
For our Services: You are our “Customer” if you are the legal or natural person that orders our Services.
you are an “Authorized User” if you are an employee, consultant, contractor, agent or other representative authorized by our Customer to access and use our Services under our agreement with the Customer. If you are our Customer who is a natural person (and not a representative of a customer who is an entity), then you also are an Authorized User.
you are an “End User” if you receive text messages through the Services from our Customer but do not have a direct relationship with Textel.
you are a “Visitor” if you use our Site to learn about our products and services, download a white paper, sign up for an online demo, attend one of our webinars or otherwise access content from our Site.
We sometimes refer to Authorized Users and Visitors together as “Users”.
INFORMATION WE COLLECT AND WHY WE COLLECT IT
In general, we collect personal information from or about you for the purposes described in this Privacy Policy or for purposes that we explain to you when or before we collect your personal information. We also may use your personal information for other purposes that are not incompatible with the purposes that we disclose to you but only when permitted by applicable laws.
We collect the information that you provide to us.
When you use our Services or our Site, we may ask you to provide certain information.
Personal Information that Textel Collects from you
Why Textel Collects the Personal Information
Business Contact details, including:
- name
- telephone number(s)
- email address
- postal address
To complete your subscription for the Services.
To respond to your correspondence and requests.
To obtain your feedback regarding our Site or Services.
To send you information and updates about our Site or Services that we think will interest you.
To confirm a Customer’s identity and associate an Authorized User or End User with a Customer’s account.
To monitor and enforce compliance with our Terms, Acceptable Use Policy or other agreement with a Customer.
User credentials, including:
- name
- email address
- job title
- office address
- device type
- ID and other personal information that you provide or the relevant Customer provides to us
To set up and maintain a User account.
To confirm an Authorized User’s identity.
For customer support for our Services and to troubleshoot problems.
To customize a User’s experience of our Services.
To communicate with you.
To promote our Services, such as through targeted advertising
To monitor and enforce compliance with our Terms, Acceptable Use Policy or other agreement with a Customer.
To learn how Users interact with our Site and Services so that we can improve our Services and develop new features
Ordering information
To complete your purchase of our Services.
PLEASE NOTE: Textel does not store your complete credit card information. Your credit card payments are processed by a third-party credit card processing service.
Information you give us when you fill out our on-line forms or send us emails
To respond to your request in the form or email.
To learn more about your products or services if you are a prospective or current vendor.
To process your application if you apply for a job with us.
We collect personal information about End Users
Textel collects information about End Users from their use of the Services, including the content of their text messages. Textel and its fraud detection vendors collect this information in order to detect spam, fraud and block fraudsters from disrupting the Services.
The information we collect, some of which is personal information, includes: mobile telephone numbers, contents of text messages, and IP addresses. If you have more questions about information collected from or about End Users, please contact the business from which you receive text messages.
We automatically collect information about use of the Site or Services.
We automatically collect certain information about use of the Site and Services from the computers or mobile devices of Authorized Users and End Users. Some of this automatically collected information is personal information under certain laws.
The information that we automatically collect includes:
Information about how your computer or device interacts with our Site and Services, including the date, time, search requests and results, webpages accessed and links clicked.
Information from and about the text messages sent through the Services.
IP address, broad geographic location (e.g., country or city-level location which Textel derives from other data), device type and identification number, browser type, internet service provider, operating system and other technical information.
We use this automatically collected information:
To provide our Services.
For billing purposes.
To better understand how our Site and Services are used so that we can improve them and develop new features.
For our analytics purposes, such as to track usage of our Site, to measure the number of unique Visitors to the different sections of our Site, to understand how people find our Site and to help us make our Site and marketing more useful.
To detect and block fraudulent use of the Site and Services.
To deliver advertising about our Services.
Some of this information is automatically collected using cookies and similar tracking technology. See the ”OUR USE OF COOKIES AND SIMILAR TRACKING TECHNOLOGY” section below.
We collect information about use of our Apps
When you download, access or otherwise use our mobile applications (“Apps”), the information that we collect depends on your operating system and permissions. Our Apps need to use certain features and data from your mobile device in order to function. For example, we automatically collect usage statistics and crash logs to help us identify and fix problems.
To learn more about the specific information collected by our Apps, please check your device settings or review the information available on the particular platform from which you downloaded an App, such as in Google Play. Our Apps also allow you to check or change your status for certain data collection in the preferences or settings. If you change your settings, certain features may be unavailable or not function properly. To stop collection of all information through an App, please uninstall the App.
We collect information from third party sources
From time to time, we may receive personal information about you from third-party sources, which include:
A Customer or reseller that may provide us with your business contact information in connection with use of our Services.
From trade show operators, such as when we receive a lists of attendees.
Marketing services vendors that help us identify individuals who may be interested in learning more about our Services and to supplement personal information we already have about you, such as when we acquire a contact list from data aggregators.
From publicly-available sources so that we can better understand our customer base.
HOW TEXTEL SHARES PERSONAL INFORMATION
We may disclose your personal information to the following categories of recipients:
Network operators (e.g., telecommunication providers) for security, spam and fraud protection or to provide telecommunications network access;
Other vendors that help us provide the Services and Site for you, such as payment card processors, auditors and customer engagement platform, data security and cloud service providers;
Resellers with which Textel may share order information, business contact information and other information that a reseller may require to help you access the Services;
Marketing vendors that help us target individuals who may be interested in learning more about the Services and who help us supplement personal information we already have about you;
Competent law enforcement, government regulators, courts or other third parties when we believe disclosure is necessary (i) as a matter of law, (ii) to exercise, establish or defend our legal rights or (iii) to protect your vital interests or those of any other person;
Potential acquirers and their professional advisers in connection with any proposed purchase, merger or acquisition of all or any part of our business. We will inform the buyer that the terms of this Privacy Policy apply to your personal information; and
Any other person with your consent to the disclosure.
The Services may allow you to create a Customer profile (e.g., logo, address) to share with Users of the Services and to append to Customer’s text messages. If you choose to create a Customer profile or disclose information through one of the interactive areas on the Site (such as when we invite you and others to contribute feedback on new features we are testing), others may see your information and use it in ways that we cannot control. Please keep this in mind before you share information that directly identifies you.
TEXTEL DOES NOT AND WILL NOT SELL OR EXCHANGE FOR VALUE YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION.
OUR USE OF COOKIES AND SIMILAR TRACKING TECHNOLOGY
We use cookies and other data tracking technology to collect and use personal information about you. We also may allow others to use cookies and similar technologies (e.g., pixels) to recognize you and/or your device(s) when you use the Site or Services.
What are cookies?
Cookies are small text files that are sent to or accessed from your web browser or your computer’s hard drive. A cookie typically contains the name of the domain (internet location) from which the cookie originated, the “lifetime” of the cookie (i.e., when it expires) and a randomly generated unique number or similar identifier. A cookie also may contain information about your computer, such as settings, browsing history and activities conducted while using the Site and certain Services.
Pixels (also known as web beacons) are transparent images that are used in collecting information about website usage across websites and over time.
Cookies that Textel sets on the Site are called first-party cookies. Cookies set by any other party are called third-party cookies. Third-party cookies enable third-party features or functionality on or through the Site, such as analytics, marketing automation and customer support. The parties that set third-party cookies can recognize your computer both when it visits the Site and also when it visits certain other websites.
Most browsers accept cookies automatically but allow you to disable them. You also can opt-out of certain cookies using the following link: https://optout.networkadvertising.org/?c=1. You can reset your browser to refuse all cookies or to indicate when a cookie is being sent. Some features of our Site and Services may not work properly without cookies. To learn more about cookies generally, visit www.allaboutcookies.org and https://optout.aboutads.info/?c=2&lang=EN.
Some web browsers (including Safari, Internet Explorer, Firefox and Chrome) incorporate a “Do Not Track” (“DNT”) or similar feature that signals to websites that a User or Visitor does not want to have his or her online activity and behavior tracked. If a website that responds to a particular DNT signal receives the DNT signal, the browser can block that website from collecting certain information about the browser’s user. Not all browsers offer a DNT option and DNT signals are not yet uniform. For this reason, many website operators, including Textel, do not respond to DNT signals.
Why does Textel use cookies and other tracking technology?
Some cookies are required for the Site or Services to operate. Other cookies enable us to track the interests of Users for targeted advertising and to enhance the experience of the Site.
The types of cookies served on the Site and through the Services and why they are used is as follows:
“Strictly necessary” cookies are required to allow us to deliver the Site and Services to you.
“Performance” or “Analytics” cookies help us to collect information about how Visitors use the Site and Services and helps us analyze and improve the Site and Services.
Performance or analytics cookies remain on your computer after you close your browser until you delete them.
“Advertising” cookies are used to make advertising messages more relevant to you. They help to display advertisements that are based on your inferred interests, prevent the same ad from appearing too often and ensure that ads are properly displayed for advertisers.
Pixels and similar data collection technology enable Textel to monitor the traffic patterns of Visitors from one Site page to another, to deliver or communicate with cookies, to understand whether you visit the Site after seeing our online advertisement displayed on a third-party website, to improve performance of the Site and to measure the success of our email marketing campaigns.
We also use Google Analytics on our Site. Google Analytics provides us with demographic-type data about Users, such as age and gender. Google uses a cookie that Google recognizes when you visit other websites.
Google’s cookies help us analyze how the Site is used. The information generated by the cookie about use of the Site (including your IP address) is transmitted to and stored by Google on servers in the United States. On behalf of Textel, Google will use this information to evaluate use of the Site and compile reports for us and third parties that help operate and provide services related to Textel. Google will not associate your IP address with any other data held by Google.
For more information about how Google collects, uses and shares your information, please visit https://policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites or Google’s Privacy Policy. Google has developed an opt-out browser add-on; if you want to opt out of Google Analytics, you can download and install the add-on for your web browser. You may refuse the use of these cookies by selecting the appropriate settings on your browser.
Textel currently does not serve targeted advertisements on the Site. Textel may use information about your visits to the Site to provide relevant advertisements on other websites about goods and services that may interest you. Textel and third parties also may deploy technology that measures the effectiveness of advertisements by using cookies or web beacons to collect information about your visits to the Site and other websites to provide relevant advertisements on other websites about goods and services that may interest you. The information collected through this process does not enable us or the third parties to identify your name, contact details or similar directly identifying details unless you choose to provide them.
HOW TEXTEL PROTECTS PERSONAL INFORMATION
We use technical, physical and administrative safeguards intended to protect the personal information that we collect from and about you. Our safeguards are designed to provide a level of security appropriate to the risk of processing your personal information and include (as applicable) measures to ensure the ongoing confidentiality, integrity, availability and resilience of processing systems and a procedure for regularly testing, assessing and evaluating the effectiveness of technical and organizational measures for ensuring the security of the processing of personal information.
You are responsible for maintaining the security of your account credentials for the Services. Textel will treat access to the Services through your account credentials as authorized by you. We may suspend your use of all or part of the Services without notice if we suspect or detect any breach of security. If you believe that information you provided to us is no longer secure, please notify us immediately at [email protected].
If we become aware of a breach that affects the security of your personal infomation, we will provide you or the Customer with notice as required by applicable law. When permitted by applicable law, Textel will provide this notice to you through the email address associated with your Textel account.
UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS TO SITE OR SERVICES – INCLUDING SCRAPING – IS PROHIBITED AND MAY LEAD TO CRIMINAL PROSECUTION.
HOW TEXTEL RETAINS PERSONAL INFORMATION
We retain personal information for as long we have a legitimate business need to do so, such as for the duration of our contract with you or to comply with applicable legal, tax or accounting requirements.
When we no longer have a legitimate business need to process your personal information, we follow our data retention policy and either delete or anonymize your personal information. If we cannot delete or anonymize your personal information, then we will segregate and securely store your personal information until deletion or anonymization is possible.
Once we anonymize your personal information, it is no longer personal information. We use anonymized data subject to applicable law and our Customer agreements.
For more information, please contact [email protected].
CHILDREN’S PRIVACY
The Site and Services are not intended for use by minors (i.e., children under age 18 or the age of majority if older in a particular jurisdiction). From time to time, we may offer a “Texting Santa” promotion or similar adult-focused promotions through which we invite parents to help their children send text messages.
Textel does not knowingly collect personal information from minors. Consistent with the requirements of applicable law, if we learn that a minor has improperly provided us with personal information, we will use that information only to respond directly to that child (or his or her parent or legal guardian) to inform the minor that he or she cannot use the Site or Services and subsequently will delete that information.
YOUR CHOICES ABOUT YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION
IF YOU ARE LOCATED IN A JURISDICTION WITH DATA PROTECTION LAWS THAT OFFER YOU PRIVACY RIGHTS NOT DESCRIBED IN THIS PRIVACY POLICY, PLEASE CONTACT US At [email protected]. We respect your privacy rights and will do our best to accommodate your requests.
Textel’s California Privacy Notice
Textel’s California Privacy Notice (“California Privacy Notice”) applies to the processing of Personal Information of residents of the U.S. State of California (“California Consumers”) as required by the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 (“CCPA”).
If you are a California Consumer, this California Privacy Notice explains your privacy rights and is intended to inform you at or before the time that you provide us with your Personal Information how and why we process your Personal Information. In this California Privacy Notice, “Personal Information” means information that identifies, relates to, describes, is capable of being associated with or could reasonably be linked, directly or indirectly, with a particular California Consumer or household.
If this California Privacy Notice and any provision in the rest of our Privacy Policy conflict, then this California Privacy Notice controls for the processing of Personal Information of California Consumers.
Your California Consumer Privacy Rights
CCPA offers California Consumers the following key privacy rights:
Right to Access Information: You have the right to request access to Personal Information collected about you and information regarding the source of that information, the purposes for which we collect it and the third parties and service providers with whom we share it.
Right to Request Deletion: You have the right to request that we delete certain Personal Information that we have collected from you.
Right to Notice of Financial Incentive: If we offer a financial incentive or price or service difference in exchange for your Personal Information, we will notify you in advance before collecting your Personal Information for this purpose and explain how you can opt in to the financial incentive or price or service difference.
Right to Opt-Out of Sale of Personal Information to Third Parties: Textel does not sell your Personal Information to third parties. If this policy changes, we will notify you and provide you with information about how to opt out of sale of your Personal Information by us. Sharing your Personal Information with our service providers is not a sale of your Personal Information because we make sure that our service providers are contractually obligated to use the Personal Information only to provide services to us and not sell it.
Our Notice at Collection of Personal Information
For CCPA purposes, Textel generally acts as a “Business” with respect to your Personal Information, which means that Textel determines how and why the Personal Information that Textel collects from or about you is processed. When Textel is handling Personal Information about End Users on behalf of our Customers, Textel is acting as a “Service Provider”, which means that Textel can only use your Personal Information for specified purposes and as permitted in our contract with our Customer.
This Notice at Collection of Personal Information describes our Personal Information collection practices when we are acting as the Business, including a list of the categories of Personal Information we collect, the purposes for which we collect Personal Information and the sources from which we collect Personal Information. If you have more questions about information collected from or about End Users, please contact the company from which you receive text messages because they are the “Business” for CCPA purposes.
The following table lists categories of Personal Information that generally match the categories in the definition of Personal Information in CCPA. We indicate for each listed category the specific types of Personal Information in the category that we collect and why we collect it. We provide information about how we use and disclose Personal Information above in this Privacy Policy.
Category of Personal Information listed in CCPA
Examples of Personal Information in CCPA Category that Textel Collects
Why Textel Collects this Personal Information
A. Identifiers
Name, postal address, email address, unique identifier, Internet Protocol address, account name, and similar identifiers.
We do not collect your social security number, driver’s license number or passport number.
We do not collect your insurance policy number, education, employment history, medical information, or health insurance information.
We collect your name, telephone number(s), email address(-es) and contact address when you create an account, an account is created for you or you complete a transaction. If you choose to create an account, we assign a username and one or more unique identifiers to your account.
We collect your IP address and your Device ID automatically.
We also collect this Personal Information
To troubleshoot problems
To learn how Users interact with our Site and Services
To improve our products and services and develop new features
To customize your experience
To promote our products and services
To communicate with you
B. Personal information categories listed in the California Customer Records statute (Cal. Civ. Code § 1798.80(e))
Name, signature, address, telephone number and current employer and work address.
We collect your name, phone number, email address and contact address when you create an account, an account is created for you or you complete a transaction. If you choose to create an account, we will assign a username and one or more unique identifiers to your account.
We collect your IP address and your Device ID automatically.
We also collect this Personal Information
To troubleshoot problems
To learn how Users interact with our Site and Services
To improve our products and services and develop new features
To customize your experience
To promote our products and services
To communicate with you
C. Protected classification characteristics under California or federal law
We do not collect information about legally-protected classifications, including race, national origin, citizenship, marital status, gender, sexual orientation/identity, medical condition, AIDS/HIV status, genetic information, military or veteran status, religion, disability, political affiliations or activities or status as a victim of domestic violence, assault or stalking.
N/A
D. Commercial information
Records products or services purchased, obtained, or considered, or other purchasing or consuming histories or tendencies.
We create records of the Services purchased or considered, as well as your purchasing history in order to provide you with the Services that you have purchased and to offer other products that may be useful to you. You provide payment and billing information when you purchase our Services this information is stored by our third party payment processor and not shared with us.
E. Biometric information
We do not collect information about your physiological, biological or behavioral characteristics.
N/A
F. Internet or other similar network activity
Browsing history, search history, information on a California Consumer’s interaction with online services and digital advertisements.
We collect information about your browsing history, search history and information regarding your interaction with customer portals, websites, applications or advertisements automatically when you use our Site and Services.
G. Geolocation data
Physical location or movements from GPS, WiFi and/or Bluetooth (when a device’s operating system settings allow collection).
We collect your IP address automatically. We may be able to determine your general location based on the IP address.
H. Audio, electronic, visual, thermal, olfactory or similar information.
Recorded telephone calls and photographs.
If you contact us via telephone, we may record the telephone call. We will notify you if a call is being recorded at the beginning of the telephone call. We do not collect any thermal, olfactory or similar information. We collect your photograph if you choose to give it to us through your account.
I. Professional or employment-related information
Depending on how and why you use the Site or Services, we may collect information about your current employer who or that is the Customer or prospective customer.
We may use information about your position and your current employer (who or that is the Customer or prospective customer) to understand more about you in order to provide you with relevant information to promote our products and services, to deliver advertising, some of which is targeted based on your online activity and inferred interests, and to communicate with you.
J. Non-public education information (per the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (20 U.S.C. § 1232g, 34 C.F.R. Part 99))
We do not collect information about the institutions you have attended or the level of education you have attained.
N/A
K. Inferences drawn from other categories (A. – L above) to create a profile about a California Consumer
Profile reflecting your preferences and characteristics.
We may analyze your actual or likely preferences through the Personal Information we collect and process as described in our Privacy Policy.
Textel does not sell your Personal Information to third parties and accordingly, we do not provide you with information about how to opt-out of sale of your Personal Information
HOW TO SUBMIT A REQUEST TO EXERCISE YOUR CALIFORNIA PRIVACY RIGHTS
To submit a request to exercise your privacy rights:
Send an email to [email protected].
Call or text us at 844-483-9835
Please note:
We may (and in some cases are required to) verify your identity before we can act on your request to exercise your privacy rights.
We may not honor part or all your request – for example, certain information we collect may be exempt from this California Privacy Notice, such as public information made available by a government entity or information covered by another privacy law. Please also note that Personal Information collected in many types of B2B transactions is exempt from most of CCPA’s requirements until January 1, 2021. We will explain why we do not honor your request when we respond to you.
A different California law permits California residents to request a notice disclosing the categories of Personal Information about you that we have shared with third parties for their direct marketing purposes during the preceding calendar year. At this time, Textel does not share Personal Information with third parties for their direct marketing purposes.
Notice for Individuals Located In EU
The data controller (i.e., who determines the purpose and means of processing your personal data) for the personal data collected from or about Users pursuant to this Privacy Policy is:
Textel, LLC
Attn: Legal
6665 Delmar Blvd, Suite 300
University City, MO 63130
[email protected]
Please note that when we collect information about End Users, we are acting as a data processor on behalf of our Customers. If you are an End User, please contact the business or individual who sent you the text message.
We need to inform Users about the legal bases for our processing of their personal data. Our legal bases depend on the context in which the personal data is collected and processed. Generally, we only collect personal data when we need the personal data to perform a contract with Users (such as our Terms of Service), when we have consent to do so or when the processing is in our legitimate business interests and not overridden by the privacy or other fundamental rights and freedoms of Users (such as when we process personal data to prevent spam or fraud).
In some cases, we also may have a legal obligation to collect personal data from Users. If we ask you to provide personal data to comply with a legal requirement or to perform a contract with you, we will make this clear at the relevant time and advise you whether providing your personal data is mandatory and the possible consequences if you do not provide your personal data.
Similarly, if we collect and use personal data in reliance on our legitimate interests (or those of any third party), this interest is typically to provide our Services and communicate with you about our Services and for our legitimate commercial interests, such as responding to queries, improving our Site and Services, advising Users about new features or maintenance or undertaking marketing activities. We may have other legitimate interests and if appropriate we will make clear our legitimate interests at the relevant time.
If you have questions about or need further information concerning the legal basis on which we collect and use your personal data, please contact us using the contact details provided below.
For personal data for which we are the data controller and for which applicable law grants you data protection rights, if you would like to review, correct, update, suppress, restrict or delete personal data that you have previously provided to us as or if you would like to receive an electronic copy of your personal data for purposes of transmitting it to another company (where this right to portability is provided to you by law), please submit your request to us as follows:
Textel, LLC
Attn: Legal
6665 Delmar Blvd, Suite 300
University City, MO 63130
[email protected]
In your request, please make clear what personal data you would like to have changed, whether you would like to have your personal data suppressed from our database or other limitations you would like to put on our use of your personal data. For your protection, we only fulfill requests for the personal data associated with the particular email address that you use to send us your request, and we may need to verify your identity and geographic residency before fulfilling your request. We will try to comply with your request as soon as reasonably practicable and within the time periods required by applicable law.
Please note that we often need to retain certain personal data for recordkeeping purposes and/or to complete any transaction that you began prior to requesting a change or deletion (e.g., when you make a purchase or enter a promotion, you may not be able to change or delete the personal data provided until after the completion of such purchase or promotion). Our databases and other records may have residual personal data which will not be removed. We also may not allow you to review certain personal data for legal, security or other reasons.
EEA residents have the right to lodge a complaint with a data protection authority about how we process your personal data. Please see https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/law-topic/data-protection/reform/what-are-data-protection-authorities-dpas_en for more information.
INTERNATIONAL TRANSFERS OF PERSONAL INFORMATION
Textel may transfer your personal information to jurisdictions other than the one in which you reside. These other jurisdictions may have data protection laws that are different from the laws of your place of residence (and, in some cases, not as protective).
Specifically, our servers are located in countries which may be located outside of the jurisdiction where we collected the data. This means that, when we collect your personal information, we may transfer it to or process it in any of the countries in which we do business. Also, some of the third-party service providers with which we may share personal information (as described above) are located in and may transfer personal information to various jurisdictions around the world. When we transfer personal data from the EEA to a jurisdiction outside the EEA, we deploy appropriate technical and organizational safeguards consistent with the requirements of applicable data protection law.
UPDATES TO THIS PRIVACY POLICY
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time in response to changing legal, technical or business developments. When we update our Privacy Policy, we will post the updated version and change the Effective Date above. We also will take appropriate measures to inform you in advance so that you have an opportunity to review the revised Privacy Policy before it is effective. If your consent is required by applicable privacy laws, we will obtain your consent to changes before the revised Privacy Policy applies to you.
HOW TO CONTACT US
If you have any concerns or questions about any aspect of this Privacy Policy, please contact us as follows:
Textel, LLC
Attn: Legal
6665 Delmar Blvd, Suite 300
University City, MO 63130
[email protected]
You can, of course, text us! We are a texting company after all.
Please feel free to call or text us at 844-483-9835 with your privacy questions.