Privacy Policy

Revised 18 May 2024

This privacy policy is aimed at visitors to the Pine Optimizer website and users of Pine Optimizer software applications. It describes how and why we might collect, store, use, and/or share your information when you use our services, such as when you:

  • Visit our website at https://pineoptimizer.com
  • Download and use our applications, such as our Chrome browser extension or mobile applications
  • Engage with us in other related ways, including in any sales or marketing activities

Reading this privacy policy will help you understand your privacy rights and choices. If you do not agree with our policies and practices, please do not use our services. If you still have questions or concerns, please contact us.

1. Information Collection

We collect information that you voluntarily provide to us when you enquire about our products and services, when you register an account on our website, when you use our software applications, or otherwise when you contact us.

Personal Information: The personal information that we collect depends on the context of your interactions with us, the choices you make, and the products and features you use. It may include your name, email address, phone number and other personal identifiers such as your social media account names or IDs.

Sensitive Information: We do not collect or store sensitive information.

Payment Data: If you make purchases, we may collect data necessary to execute your payment, such as your debit or credit card number, and the expiration date and security code associated with your card. All payment data is stored and used only by our payment platform partner, Stripe. You may find their privacy notice here.

Social Media Login Data: We may provide you with the option to register with us using your existing social media account details, like your Facebook, Twitter, or other social media account (see Social Logins).

Application Data: If you use our website or software applications, we may also collect the following information:

  • Unregistered Website Visitors: We automatically collect information that does not reveal your specific identity (like your name or contact information) but may include device and usage information, such as your IP address, browser and device characteristics, operating system, language preferences, referring URLs, device name, country, geographical region, information about how and when you use our services, and other technical information.
  • Software Application Users: In addition to the non-identifying information collected from unregistered website users, we also use authentication credentials to administer secure access to our software applications and we store your user-generated application data and preferences, enabling us to deliver a consistent experience across devices and sessions.
  • Mobile Device Access: We may request access or permission to certain features from your mobile device, including your mobile device’s bluetooth access, internet access, camera, and other features. If you wish to change our access or permissions, you may do so in your device’s settings.
  • Mobile Device Data: We automatically collect device information (such as your mobile device model and manufacturer), operating system, version information and system configuration information, device and application identification numbers, browser type and version and Internet Protocol (IP) address (or proxy server). If you are using our software applications, we also collect information about the features of our applications you have accessed.
  • Push Notifications: We may request to send you push notifications regarding your account or certain features of our software applications. If you wish to opt out from receiving these types of communications, you may turn them off in your device’s settings.

The information that we collect is primarily needed to maintain the security and operation of our applications, for troubleshooting, and for our internal analytics and reporting purposes.

All personal information that you provide to us must be true, complete, and accurate, and you must notify us of any changes to such personal information.

In order to enhance our ability to provide relevant marketing, offers, and services to you, we may obtain information about you from other sources, such as public databases, joint marketing partners, affiliate programs, data providers, social media platforms, and from other third parties. This information includes mailing addresses, job titles, email addresses, phone numbers, intent data (or user behavior data), Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, social media profiles, social media URLs, and custom profiles, for purposes of targeted advertising and event promotion.

2. Information Usage

We use your information to provide, improve, and administer our services, communicate with you, for security and fraud prevention, and to comply with law. With your consent, we may also use your information for other purposes.

We store and use your personal information for a variety of reasons, depending on how you interact with our services, including:

  • To facilitate account creation and authentication and otherwise manage user accounts
  • To deliver and facilitate delivery of services to users
  • To respond to user inquiries and provide support to users
  • To send administrative information to users
  • To fulfill and manage user orders
  • To enable user-to-user communications
  • To request feedback
  • To send marketing and promotional communications, in accordance with user marketing preferences
  • To protect our services, including the operation of fraud monitoring and prevention
  • To identify usage trends
  • To determine the effectiveness of our marketing and promotional campaigns

3. Information Sharing

We may share your data with third-party vendors, service providers, contractors, or agents ("third parties") who perform services for us or on our behalf and require access to such information to do that work.

We have contracts in place with our third parties, which are designed to help safeguard your personal information. This means that they cannot do anything with your personal information unless we have instructed them to do it. They will also not share your personal information with any organization apart from us. They also commit to protect the data they hold on our behalf and to retain it for the period we instruct.

The categories of third parties we may share personal information with are as follows:

  • Affiliate Marketing Programs
  • Cloud Computing Services
  • Communication & Collaboration Tools
  • Data Analytics Services
  • Data Storage Service Providers
  • Finance & Accounting Tools
  • Government Entities
  • Order Fulfillment Service Providers
  • Payment Processors
  • Performance Monitoring Tools
  • Product Engineering & Design Tools
  • Retargeting Platforms
  • Sales & Marketing Tools
  • Social Networks
  • Testing Tools
  • User Account Registration & Authentication Services
  • Website Hosting Service Providers

We also may need to share your personal information in the following situations:

  • Business Transfers: We may share or transfer your information in connection with, or during negotiations of, any merger, sale of company assets, financing, or acquisition of all or a portion of our business to another company.
  • Affiliates: We may share your information with our affiliates, in which case we will require those affiliates to honor this privacy policy. Affiliates include joint venture partners, or other companies that we control or that are under common control with us.
  • Business Partners: We may share your information with our business partners to offer you certain products, services, or promotions.
  • Other Users: When you share personal information or otherwise interact with public areas of our website, such personal information may be viewed by all users and may be publicly made available outside the website, in perpetuity. If you interact with other users of our website and register for our website through a social network (such as Twitter or Facebook), your contacts on the social network will see your name, profile photo, and descriptions of your activity. Similarly, other users will be able to view descriptions of your activity, communicate with you within our website, and view your profile.

4. Third Party Websites

We are not responsible for the safety of any information that you share with third parties that we may link to.

5. Cookies and Tracking

Cookies are small data files that are placed on your computer or mobile device when you visit a website. Cookies are widely used by website owners in order to make their websites work, or to work more efficiently, as well as to provide reporting information.

We do not use cookies on our website or as part of the operation of our software applications. Our infrastructure has been designed to function without the need for cookies.

6. Social Logins

If you choose to register or log in to our services using a social media account, we may have access to certain information about you.

Our software applications may offer you the ability to register and log in using your third-party social media account details (like your Facebook or Twitter logins). Where you choose to do this, we will receive certain profile information about you from your social media provider. The profile information we receive may vary depending on the social media provider concerned, but will often include your name, email address, friends list, and profile picture, as well as other information you choose to make public on such a social media platform.

We will use the information we receive only for the purposes that are described in this privacy policy or that are otherwise made clear to you on the relevant services. Please note that we do not control, and are not responsible for, other uses of your personal information by your third-party social media provider. We recommend that you review their privacy policy to understand how they collect, use and share your personal information and how you can set your privacy preferences on their platforms.

7. International Data Transfer

We may transfer, store and use your information in countries other than your own.

Our servers are located in Germany. If you are accessing our services from outside Germany, please be aware that your information may be transferred to, stored and used by us in our facilities and by those third parties with whom we may share your personal information (see Information Sharing), in other countries.

If you are a resident in the European Economic Area (EEA) or United Kingdom (UK), then these countries may not necessarily have data protection laws or other similar laws as comprehensive as those in your country. However, we will take all necessary measures to protect your personal information in accordance with this privacy policy and applicable law.

8. Information Retention

We will only keep your personal information for as long as it is necessary for the purposes set out in this privacy policy, unless a longer retention period is required or permitted by law (such as tax, accounting, or other legal requirements). No purpose in this privacy policy will require us keeping your personal information for longer than 3 months past the termination of your account.

When we have no ongoing legitimate business need to store and use your personal information, we will either delete or anonymize such information, or, if this is not possible (for example, because your personal information has been stored in backup archives), then we will securely store your personal information and isolate it from any further storage and usage until deletion is possible.

9. Information Security

We aim to protect your personal information through a system of organizational and technical security measures.

We have implemented appropriate and reasonable technical and organizational security measures designed to protect the security of any personal information we store and use. However, despite our safeguards and efforts to secure your information, no electronic transmission over the Internet or information storage technology can be guaranteed to be 100% secure, so we cannot promise or guarantee that hackers, cybercriminals, or other unauthorized third parties will not be able to defeat our security and improperly collect, access, steal, or modify your information.

Although we will do our best to protect your personal information, transmission of personal information to and from our services is at your own risk. You should only access the services within a secure environment.

10. Children's Privacy

Our website and software applictions are not directed at, marketed to, nor intended for use by children under 18 years of age.

If you believe that we have inadvertently collected personal data from a child under the age of 18, please contact us and we will take immediate steps to remove it.

11. Your Privacy Rights

In some regions (like the EEA and UK), you have certain rights under applicable data protection laws. These may include the right (i) to request access and obtain a copy of your personal information, (ii) to request rectification or erasure; (iii) to restrict the store and usage of your personal information; and (iv) if applicable, to data portability. In certain circumstances, you may also have the right to object to the storage and use of your personal information. You can make such a request by contacting us.

We will consider and act upon any request in accordance with applicable data protection laws.

If you are located in the EEA or UK and you believe we are unlawfully storing or using your personal information, you also have the right to complain to your local data protection supervisory authority. You can find their contact details here.

If you are located in Switzerland, the contact details for the data protection authorities are available here.

If we are relying on your consent to store and use your personal information, which may be express and/or implied consent, depending on the applicable law, you have the right to withdraw your consent at any time. You can withdraw your consent at any time by contacting us.

However, please note that this will not affect the lawfulness of the storage and use of information before the withdrawal of consent, nor when applicable law allows, will it affect the storage and use of your personal information conducted in reliance on lawful storage and use grounds other than consent.

You can unsubscribe from our marketing and promotional communications at any time by clicking on the unsubscribe link in the emails that we send, or contacting us. You will then be removed from our marketing lists. However, we may still communicate with you, for example to send you service-related messages that are necessary for the administration and use of your account, to respond to service requests, or for other non-marketing purposes.

Upon your request to terminate your account, we will deactivate or delete your account and information from our active databases. However, we may retain some information in our files to prevent fraud, troubleshoot problems, assist with any investigations, enforce our legal terms and/or comply with applicable legal requirements.

If you have questions or comments about your privacy rights, you may contact us.

12. EU and UK GDPR Compliance

If you are located in the EU or the UK, this section applies to you.

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and UK GDPR require us to explain the valid legal bases we rely on in order to store and use your personal information. We may store and use your information in the following situations:

  • When you have given us permission to use it for a specific purpose
  • When we believe it is necessary to fulfill our contractual obligations to you, including providing our services or, at your request, prior to entering into a contract with you
  • When we believe it is reasonably necessary to achieve our legitimate business interests and those interests do not outweigh your interests and fundamental rights and freedoms, for example:
    • To send users information about special offers and discounts on our products and services
    • To display personalized and relevant advertising content for our users
    • To support our marketing activities
    • To diagnose problems and/or prevent fraudulent activities
    • To understand how our users use our products and services so we can improve user experience
  • When we believe it is necessary for compliance with our legal obligations, such as to cooperate with a law enforcement body or regulatory agency, exercise or defend our legal rights, or disclose your information as evidence in litigation in which we are involved
  • When we believe it is necessary to protect your vital interests or the vital interests of a third party, such as situations involving potential threats to the safety of any person

In legal terms, we are considered to be the Data Controller under European data protection laws of the personal information described in this privacy notice, since we determine the means and/or purposes of the data storage and usage that we perform.

13. Do-not-track Features

Most web browsers and some mobile operating systems and mobile applications include a Do-Not-Track (DNT) feature or setting you can activate to signal your preference not to have data about your online browsing activities monitored and collected.

At this stage no uniform technology standard for recognizing and implementing DNT signals has been finalized. As such, we do not currently respond to DNT browser signals or any other mechanism that automatically communicates your choice not to be tracked online.

If a standard for online tracking is adopted that we must follow in the future, we will inform you about that practice in a revised version of this privacy policy.

14. Policy Updates

We may update this privacy policy, from time to time, to reflect the evolution of our website and services. We will also update this privacy policy as necessary to stay compliant with relevant laws.

The updated version will be indicated by an updated Revised date and the updated version will be effective as soon as it is accessible. If we make material changes to this privacy policy, we may notify you either by prominently posting a notice of such changes or by directly sending you a notification. We encourage you to review this privacy policy frequently to be informed of how we are protecting your information.

15. Contact Us

Subject to the applicable laws of your country, you may have the right to request access to the personal information we collect from you, change that information, or delete it.

If you have questions or comments about this privacy policy, or to request review, update, or deletion of your personal information, please contact us.