At Brand Search USA, we respect the privacy of our website visitors and customers. This privacy policy outlines how we collect, use, share, and protect personal information. It also describes your rights regarding that information.
What Information Do We Collect?
We collect both personal and non-personal information from you when you visit our website, make a purchase, or engage with our digital marketing services.
Personal Information
Personal information is data that can be used to identify you specifically. We only collect personal information when you provide it voluntarily. For example, personal information we collect may include:
- Name and contact data: Such as your first and last name, company name, postal address, email address, and phone number when you create an account, make a purchase, or contact us.
- Payment information: Such as your credit/debit card number, expiration date, CVV code, and billing address when you make a purchase. This data is stored securely by our payment processor.
- Account credentials: Such as your username, password, and security question answers that allow you to access your account.
- Marketing preferences: Such as your opted-in or opted-out status for receiving marketing communications from us and partner companies.
- Feedback and correspondence: Any information you share when you contact us by phone, email, mail or social media channels.
Non-Personal Information
We also collect data that by itself cannot identify you specifically. Some examples include:
- Browser and device data: Such as your IP address, operating system, browser type and language, access times, referring website addresses, and device identifiers.
- Usage data: Information about how you interact with our website, such as pages visited, buttons clicked, purchases made, and areas of interest.
- Analytics data: Aggregated and anonymized data on website traffic, engagement, performance, and user demographics and interests.
- Cookies and tracking technologies: Technologies like pixels, tags, cookies, local shared objects and web beacons help us understand your usage patterns and preferences. Most browsers can be set to reject or disable these.
How Do We Use Your Information?
We use your personal and non-personal information in a number of ways in order to operate our business, website, and digital marketing services. These include:
- To deliver, maintain and improve our website, products and services
- To better understand the needs, interests and demographics of our customers
- To fulfill your purchases and account-related requests
- To contact you about new offerings that may interest you
- To analyze website traffic, engagement and performance
- To market our services through email campaigns, social media and other channels
- To manage contests, surveys, promotions and special offers
- To protect against fraud, abuse, unauthorized access, and security breaches
- To comply with legal obligations and requirements
When and With Whom Do We Share Your Information?
We do not share or sell your personal information with any third parties except in the following circumstances:
- With service providers: We share information with companies that help us operate and market our business. These include web hosting, payment processing, analytics, email service providers, and marketing platforms like social networks and search engines.
- For business transfers: If we are acquired by or merged with another company, we may transfer the information we have collected to them.
- To comply with laws: We may disclose information to comply with laws, regulations or legal process requirements. We reserve the right to disclose information when needed to protect our systems, customers and others.
- With your consent: Other than the cases outlined above, you will receive notice when information about you may be shared with third parties. You will have the ability to opt out of having your information shared.
How Do We Secure Your Information?
Protecting your data is of utmost importance to us. We use a combination of technical, physical and organizational safeguards to secure the information we collect. Some examples of our security practices include:
- Encryption of all data in transit and sensitive data at rest
- Restricting staff access to customer information only when necessary
- Network firewalls, intrusion detection and data loss prevention
- Vulnerability and penetration testing of applications and systems
- Compliance with applicable data security standards and frameworks
- Secure destruction of data once no longer needed
While we follow industry best practices to guard your data, no method of storage or transmission over the internet is 100% secure. We cannot guarantee the absolute security of information.
Your Privacy Choices and Rights
We aim to be transparent about the information we collect and give you control over its use. You can manage your privacy preferences in the following ways:
- Account settings: Update communication, marketing and other preferences in your account settings.
- Email preferences: Follow the unsubscribe instructions in any promotional email you may receive from us.
- Cookies: Block or restrict cookies and tracking technologies in your internet browser settings. This may impact website functionality.
- Right to access: You may submit a written request to access your personal data within our systems.
- Right to rectification: If your information is inaccurate, you can request to have it corrected.
- Right to erasure: Request for your account data to be deleted, subject to our data retention policies.
- Right to restrict processing: Opt out of certain uses of your data like marketing communications.
Contact our Data Protection Officer if you wish to exercise these data privacy rights.
International Data Transfers
We are headquartered in the United States. When you use our website, products or services, you are transferring data to us in the United States. Laws may differ from your country of origin. By using our website and providing us with information, you permit data transfer, processing and storage outside of your country of residence. We handle international data consistent with this policy.
Retention of Information
We store personal and non-personal information only as long as necessary for business, accounting, tax or legal purposes. Retention periods vary based on the type of data. When no longer needed, data is securely destroyed per our data destruction policies.
Children’s Privacy
Our website, products and services are intended for general audiences over the age of 18. We do not knowingly collect any personal data from children under the age of 16 without parental consent. If you believe we may have information about a child under 16, please contact us so we can take appropriate action.
Changes to this Policy
We may periodically update this privacy policy to reflect changes in data practices or privacy laws. Any modifications will take effect when the revised policy is posted on our website. The date at the top indicates when the policy was last updated.
How to Contact Us
Please feel free to direct any questions or concerns regarding this privacy policy or our data practices to our Data Protection Officer. You may reach us by email at [email protected] or by writing to:
Brand Search USA
Attn: Data Protection Officer
4897 Java Lane, Columbia, SC
Cookies Policy
A cookie is a small data file placed on your device when you visit a website. It helps websites recognize return visitors and store user preferences and settings.
We use necessary, performance, analytical and targeting cookies on our website. Cookies allow us to understand site usage patterns and deliver content tailored to your interests. The specific cookies we use are outlined below:
Essential Cookies
Essential cookies enable core website functionality like security, network management, accessibility, and basic visitor tracking features. You can disable these by changing your browser settings, but this will negatively impact your user experience.
Performance Cookies
We utilize performance cookies to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of our website which helps us to provide you with a better user experience for browsing our site. Information stored in these cookies include, for example, traffic source, duration of visit, pages visited, etc.
Functional Cookies
We use functional cookies to enable certain website features and personalization. These cookies allow us to remember your preferences so your experience is tailored. They also help enhance security by verifying logins and detecting irregular activity.
Targeting Cookies
We and our marketing partners deploy targeting cookies to make advertising messages more relevant to you. They also limit the number of times you see the same ad and help measure advertising effectiveness. Information stored in these cookies include your interests, browsing habits, ads shown, and other data.
Third-party companies like analytics providers, search engines, social networks and advertising partners may use cookies on our site. We do not control the use of cookies by third parties.
If you wish, you can block or restrict cookies through your browser settings. However, this may impact your user experience on our website. More details on how to disable cookies for various browsers can be found here.
Log Files
Like most standard website servers we use log files. Log files track internet protocol (IP) addresses, browser type, internet service provider (ISP), referring/exit pages, platform type, date/time stamp, and number of clicks.
They are not tied to personally identifiable information. We use log files to analyze trends, administer the site, track users’ movement, and gather broad demographic information for aggregate use. When required, log files may be used to identify unauthorized access attempts to our website.
Web Beacons
Some of our website pages and emails may contain small transparent images called web beacons that help us deliver cookies, count visits, understand usage and campaign effectiveness and determine if an email has been opened or acted upon.
Web beacons collect only limited information like cookie identifiers, time, date, IP address and activity on pages. They do not contain personal information and are not used to identify individual users. You can disable web beacons in email by turning images “off” in your email client.
Third-Party Privacy Policies
This privacy policy only addresses activities on our own website and services. Linked sites, affiliate partners, advertisers, third-party widgets and external services we use may have their own policies. We are not responsible for the privacy practices of third parties. Please read their privacy policies carefully before sharing data.
How to Contact Us
Please feel free to reach out with any questions or concerns you may have about our use of cookies, log files, web beacons and other technologies. You can contact us by email at [email protected] or by writing to us:
Brand Search USA
Attn: Data Protection Officer
4897 Java Lane, Columbia, SC
Opting Out of Tracking Technologies
You can take the following actions to limit sharing of your online activity data:
- Block third-party cookies in your browser settings
- Reset your advertising ID for mobile devices
- Opt out of personalization and ad targeting through the DAA Consumer Choice Page
- Adjust email settings to disable images
- Unsubscribe from marketing emails
Keep in mind that opting out does not mean you will no longer see ads from us or on third-party platforms. It just means the ads will not be tailored to your specific interests and browsing patterns.
You may continue seeing the same general volume of ads but they may be less relevant. Functionality of our website or apps may also be impacted when you opt out of certain tracking tools.
We respect your decision to limit sharing of your data with third parties for online activity tracking and targeted advertising. If you wish to opt-out or exercise other data privacy rights, please submit your request in writing to [email protected].
