Last
Updated: March 19, 2020
This
Privacy Policy describes the kinds of information collected by OhmConnect, Inc.
(“OhmConnect”) through its website, and through its energy management products
and services more fully described below (the “Services”).
1.
Description of the Services.
The Services are designed to coordinate
energy reductions at specific times and to sell those aggregate reductions on
energy markets. For these purposes, the
Services will monitor your energy consumption by, among other things, accessing
and analyzing your electricity records on file with your utility company
(“Utility Records”). Information
concerning your energy reduction is shared with energy market regulators and
wholesalers (“Regulators”) to measure the amount of energy saved through
OhmConnect’s coordination of energy reductions.
To facilitate timely energy reduction, you may authorize OhmConnect to
remotely manage your home devices on your behalf (such as home appliances and
thermostats) that are otherwise connected to the Internet through various enabling
services (“Connected Devices”). You may
at any time elect to manage your devices directly or to override any actions taken
by the Services. These Connected Devices
may be managed through services operated by third parties, such as the
manufacturers of those devices (“Third Party Sites”), where you have opened an
account and provided certain log-in credentials to the Connected Devices (the
“Connected Device Credentials”).
2.
What
types of information do the Services collect?
In order to provide the benefits of the Services, OhmConnect
collects two types of information through the Services: Personal Information
and Other Information. "Personal
Information" is information that identifies you specifically
as an individual, such as your name and address. "Other
Information" is information that does not reveal an
individual's specific identity or does not directly relate to an identifiable
individual, including information that has been anonymized or aggregated.
We collect Personal
Information when you set up and use Services. We will ask you to provide
Personal Information including, but not limited to, your email address. To operate the Services, we shall also seek: Login credentials to access your
Utility Records, Energy consumption data and other
account information from your Utility Records. To better coordinate
energy reductions in a timely manner, you may also provide: Login
credentials to your Connected Devices for the Services to manage them on your behalf, Mobile
phone numbers to receive SMS communication, Mobile
authorization for application notifications.
In connection with
the Services, we also collect Other Information. For example, we
automatically collect information from Connected Devices on a periodic basis,
including their status (such as whether they are powered off or on, and details
about any product cycle or function they are performing). We may track
and collect your usage of the Services, such as the date and time you accessed
the Services, as well as the instructions that you or other users have
transmitted through the Services.
When Other
Information is combined with your Personal Information, we will treat this
combined information as Personal Information as long as it is combined.
3.
How
may we use this information?
We use Personal Information to provide and support the Services, for
troubleshooting and maintenance, to communicate with you about your account, to
improve our products and services, for research and development, to conduct
surveys, and to send you marketing communications.
We
will use your Personal Information to access Third Party Sites for the purpose
delivering the Services. For instance,
login credentials for your Utility Records will be used to automatically enroll
you in an information sharing arrangement between OhmConnect and your utility.
Also, your Connected Device Credentials will be used to login to Third Party
Sites to help manage Connected Devices for the purpose of delivering the
Service.
4.
How
may we share Personal Information or Other Information?
Unless we obtain your prior consent, we
will not share Personal Information for any commercial purpose, such as sharing
your data to third party marketers or others.
We may share Personal
Information:
- With our third-party service providers
to allow them to provide services to us (such as data analysis, surveys, data
hosting, information technology, payment processing, customer support, warranty
services, email delivery, and auditing).
- With Regulators to measure the amount
of energy saved through OhmConnect’s management of your Connected Devices.
- To engage in research and development
to improve our Services.
- To enforce our Terms of Use if we
believe such disclosure is necessary to identify, contact, or bring legal
action regarding injury or interference with the rights and property of OhmConnect
or its affiliates;
- To comply with laws, regulations, court
orders and subpoenas or similar requests for information by authorities, or as
required by law;
- In connection with a reorganization,
merger, sale, joint venture, assignment, transfer or other disposition of all
or any portion of our business, assets or stock (including in connection with
any bankruptcy or similar proceedings). OhmConnect
may use or share Other Information, such as for operational or research
purposes, for industry analysis, to improve our products and services, to
better tailor our products and services to your needs, and where legally
required.
5.
Deactivation or Deletion of your Account. You may deactivate or delete your
account at any time through the Services. When you deactivate your account, the
Services will no longer access your Utility Records or Connected Devices. However,
certain historical data associated with your account, such as registration information
or Utility Records, may not be deleted where such information is required by
Regulators for audit purposes, or where information used in aggregate (and not reasonably capable of being associated with an individual) will enable OhmConnect to optimize Services for the electrical grid.
6.
Cookies and Similar Technologies. Cookies are pieces of information
stored directly on the computer that you are using. Cookies allow us to collect
information such as browser type, time spent on the Services, pages visited,
language preferences, and other web traffic data. Our service providers and we
use the information for security purposes, to facilitate online navigation, to
display information more effectively, and to personalize your experience while
using the Services, as well as for online tracking purposes. We can recognize
your computer to assist your use of the Services. If you do not want
information collected through the use of cookies when using the Services, there
is a simple procedure in most browsers that allows you to automatically decline
cookies or gives you the choice of declining or accepting the transfer to your
computer of a particular cookie (or cookies) from a particular site.
We
use website and application analytics services provided by third parties that
use cookies and other similar technologies to collect information about website
and application use and to report trends, without identifying individual
visitors. The third parties that provide us with these services may also
collect information about your use of third-party websites. You can learn about
Google’s practices in connection with this information collection and how to
opt out of it by downloading the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on,
available at https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.
We
may use pixel tags (also known as web beacons and clear GIFs) in connection
with some Services to, among other things, track the actions of users of the
Services (including e-mail recipients), measure the success of our marketing
campaigns, and compile statistics about usage of the Services and response
rates. Unless combined with personal information, this information does not
personally identify you or any other user of the Services.
7.
Links.
This Privacy Policy does not address, and we are not responsible for,
the privacy, information, or other practices of any third parties, including
any Third Party Sites or any third party operating any site or service to which
the Services link. The inclusion of a link on the Services does not imply
endorsement of the linked site or service by us or by our affiliates, nor does
it imply an affiliation with the third party.
8.
Choices.
We
give you a number of choices regarding your information, including:
(a) Receiving notifications: You may choose
to receive notifications about the Services, such as alerts about your energy
savings. You may select which
notifications you would like to receive, or disable notifications, through the
Services.
(b) Receiving marketing communications: If
you have consented, OhmConnect may, from time to time, contact you with
communications regarding our products or services. You may, at any time, inform
us that you do not want OhmConnect to send you marketing communications, by
sending your request to privacy@ohmconnect.com.
9.
Security.
We are committed to maintaining the security of the data you provide us.
We use reasonable organizational, technical and administrative measures to
protect Personal Information that we maintain within our organization. We also
seek to use third-party service providers capable of protecting the information
they maintain or process for us. Unfortunately, no data transmission over the
internet or storage system can be guaranteed to be 100% secure. You agree that
you will not hold OhmConnect liable for any damages resulting from any loss of
privacy or security occurring in connection with any communications over such
networks. Your personal information will be stored on OhmConnect's servers
located at our corporate headquarters in San Francisco and/or at other third
party facilities with which we have contracted for specific services.
10. Access.
OhmConnect will allow individuals to access their Personal Information.
Further, OhmConnect will allow users to correct, update, or delete information.
Individuals who wish to make an access request or remove personal information
from our records, or if you have any questions in regard to this policy or
believe that OhmConnect has not complied with the provisions of this policy,
should direct such a request to privacy@ohmconnect.com. Please note that we may need to
retain certain information for recordkeeping or legal compliance purposes.
11. Cross-Border
Transfers. The Services are
controlled and operated from the United States. Your Personal Information may
be stored and processed in any country where we have facilities or in which we
engage service providers. When we transfer your personal information to other
countries, we will protect it as described in this Privacy Policy.
12. Enforcement.
OhmConnect uses a
self-assessment approach to ensure compliance with this policy. This includes a
periodic assessment to assure the policy is accurate and adhered to throughout
the organization. If an individual has concerns, the contact information above
can be used to raise those concerns and OhmConnect will investigate and attempt
to resolve any complaints and disputes regarding use and disclosure of personal
information in accordance with this Privacy Policy. If a complaint or dispute
cannot be resolved through our internal process, OhmConnect agrees to
participate in the dispute resolution procedures using the Better Business
Bureau as a third party resolution provider (http://www.bbb.org/us/european-dispute-resolution/consumer). OhmConnect is also subject to the
jurisdiction of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission. The Federal Trade Commission
may be contacted at the following address:
Federal Trade Commission
Attn: Consumer Response Center
600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20580
consumerline@ftc.gov
www.ftc.gov
Updates to this Privacy Statement
We may change this Privacy Policy. Please take a look at the "Last Updated" legend at the top of this
page to see when this Privacy Policy was last revised. Any changes to this
Privacy Policy will become effective when we post the revised Privacy Policy on
the Services. Your use of the Services following these changes means that you
accept the revised Privacy Policy.
