Privacy Policy

Effective Date: May 18, 2021

 
OhmConnect, Inc. (“OhmConnect”) understands that you care about how we collect, use, and share information when you interact with our websites, mobile applications, and energy management products and services more fully described below (the “Services”), and we value the trust that you place in us. This Privacy Policy explains:

• the types of information we collect through our Services
• how we use and protect that information
• the types of information we may share with others and under what circumstances
• the choices you have regarding our collection, use, and sharing practices
• details regarding our use of third-party cookies and other tracking technologies

This Policy applies when you interact with us through our Services. It also applies anywhere it is linked. It does not apply to websites and mobile applications that are not affiliated with OhmConnect but that may link to the Services or be linked to from the Services; please review the privacy policies on those websites and applications directly to understand their privacy practices.

The Services, which are described in detail in the Terms of Service, are designed to use information that you make available to us from your electric utility records to coordinate energy reductions at specific times and to sell those aggregate reductions in energy markets. We offer you prizes and rewards when you participate in our energy reduction programs.


Types of Information We Collect
In order to provide the benefits of the Services, OhmConnect collects the following information when you set up and use the Services:

• Contact information such as your name, email address, and phone number when you register to use our Services
• Mobile phone number
• Information you provide when you complete a survey administered by us or a service provider acting on our behalf
• Information you submit to inquire about or apply for a job with us
• Information you provide when you participate in a contest or sweepstakes that we offer
• Your electric utility records, energy consumption data, and other account information from your utility
• Your login credentials for the connected devices, such as smart thermostats, that the Services will manage on your behalf at your request
• Instructions that you or other users in your household have transmitted through the Services or connected devices
• Your postal address when you purchase merchandise through Services and residential address when you use our Services
• Your Social Security Number, if you win prizes that require us to file reports for federal tax purposes
• If you contact us, we may keep a record of that correspondence and any contact information provided

When you engage in a transaction using a credit or debit card through our Services, we use a payment processor to process your payment. OhmConnect does not collect or store payment card information.

We also collect certain types of information automatically when you interact with the Services. This information includes:

• Details about your visits to our Services and information generated in the course of your use of our Services, including timing, frequency, and pattern of service use; date and time you accessed the Services; traffic data; location information; weblogs and other communication data; the resources that you access; and how you reached our Services online
• Details regarding the device you use to access our Services, including, but not limited to, your IP address, operating system, and browser type
• Information about how you interact with our ads and newsletters, including whether you open or click links in any correspondence
• Information that you make available to us on a social media platform (such as by clicking on a social media icon linked from our Services), including your account ID number or username and other information included in your posts
• Information from connected devices linked to our Services, including their status (such as whether they are powered on or off, and details about any product cycle or function they are performing)

Other companies may collect usage information on our behalf through the use of cookies or other tracking technologies. Specifically, Google Analytics, through the use of such technologies, helps us analyze how users interact with and use our website, compiles reports on website activity, and provides other services related to our website activity and usage. The technologies that Google uses may collect information such as your location, time of visit, whether you are a return visitor, and any referring website. You can learn more about Google’s partner services and how to opt out of Google’s analytics tracking on Google’s Privacy and Terms website.

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. Cookies are used 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, most browsers provide a simple procedure that allows you to automatically decline cookies or gives you the choice of declining or accepting the transfer of a particular cookie (or cookies) to your computer from a particular site. If you delete your cookies or if you set your browser to decline cookies, some features of the Services may not be available, work, or work as designed. You may also be able to opt out of or block tracking by interacting directly with the other companies who conduct tracking through our Services.

We use website and application analytics services provided by service providers and third parties (“partners”) that use cookies and similar technologies to collect information about website and application use and to report trends, without identifying individual visitors. The partners that provide these services may also collect information about your use of third-party websites. We also 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.

Below is a list of partners with links to more information about their use of your information and how to exercise your options regarding tracking.

Your browser or device may include “Do Not Track” functionality. We do not honor Do Not Track signals at this time.


How We Use Your Information
We use Personal Information for the following purposes:

• To provide and support the Services, process payments, fulfill orders, and send service communications
• To enable additional features on our Services and to provide you with a personalized service
• To create custom audiences on social media sites
• To improve our products and services and for research and development
• For troubleshooting and maintenance
• To communicate with you about your account and our Services
• To conduct surveys, promotions, contests, and sweepstakes
• To understand how our Services are being used, track site performance, and make improvements
• To detect, investigate, and prevent activities that may violate our policies or be fraudulent or illegal, and to comply with legal requirements regarding the provision of products and services
• To protect and secure our Services, assets, network, and business operations
• To comply with legal process, such as warrants, subpoenas, court orders, and lawful regulatory or law enforcement requests

With Whom We Share Your Information
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‍Service Providers:
We engage vendors to perform functions on our behalf which may include data analysis, surveys, data hosting, information technology, payment processing, customer support, warranty services, email delivery, research and development, billing and collection, security, and auditing.

Corporate Affiliates:
We share information with other members of our group of companies.

Business Partners:
We share information with business partners whose products and services we use and promote and who may sell products and services of interest to you.

Social Media Platforms:
Where you choose to interact with us through social media, your interaction with these programs typically allows the social media company to collect some information about you through digital cookies and other tracking mechanisms that they place on your device. In some cases, the social media company may recognize you through its digital cookies even when you do not interact with its application. Please visit the social media companies’ respective privacy policies to better understand their data collection practices and the controls that they make available to you.

Companies Involved in Advertising:
We partner with companies that assist us in advertising to those who may be interested in the Services. We also partner with other companies who use tracking technologies on our website to collect or receive information from the Services and elsewhere on the Internet which they then use to measure and target ads to you.

Public Entities:
We share your information with public entities, such as the California Public Utilities Commission, to measure the amount of energy saved through OhmConnect’s management of your Connected Devices.

Investor-Owned Utilities:
We may share your information with your investor-owned electric utility (IOU) when you direct us to disenroll you from your IOU’s demand response program so that you can use our Services.

In Connection with Legal Process:
We share information when we believe in good faith that we are lawfully authorized or required to do so to identify, contact, or bring legal action regarding injury or interference with the rights and property of OhmConnect or its affiliates or to respond to lawful subpoenas, warrants, court orders, or other regulatory or law enforcement requests.


‍Additional Information About our Data Collection and Sharing Practices
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‍Sharing of Aggregated or De-Identified Data
We may share aggregated or de-identified data at our discretion, including with marketing agencies and analytics providers.

Combination of Information
We may combine information from the Services together and with other information we obtain from our business records. Additionally, information collected about you from a particular browser or device may be linked to information collected from another computer or device that we believe relates to you.

Data Collected From You About Others
If you decide to invite others to the Services, we will collect your and the other person’s names, email addresses, and/or phone numbers in order to send an email or text message and follow up with the other person. You agree that you will obtain the other person’s consent before giving us his or her contact information. You also agree that you will not send us the contact information of a minor. We will inform any other person you invite that you gave us his or her information in the invitation email.

Change of Ownership or Corporate Organization
We may transfer to another entity or its affiliates or service providers some or all information about you in connection with, or during negotiations of, any merger, acquisition, sale of assets or any line of business, change in ownership control, or financing transaction. We cannot promise that an acquiring party or the merged entity will have the same privacy practices or treat your information as described in this Policy.

Cross-border Transfer of Data
If you use our Services outside of the United States, you understand that we may collect, process, and store your information in the United States and other countries. The laws in the United States regarding information may be different from the laws of your country. Any such transfers will comply with safeguards as required by relevant law. By using the Services, you consent to the collection, international transfer, storage, and processing of your data.

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‍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. While we use these precautions to safeguard your information, unfortunately, no data transmission over the internet or storage system can be guaranteed to be 100% secure.

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‍Your Options and Rights Regarding Your Information
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‍Correspondence
If at any time you would like to unsubscribe from receiving future emails, you can click the unsubscribe link at the bottom of any email newsletter, or email us at privacy@ohmconnect.com and we will promptly remove you from all future correspondence.

Advertising
You can learn more about ad serving companies and the options available to limit their collection and use of your information by visiting the websites for the Network Advertising Initiative and the Digital Advertising Alliance. Similarly, you can learn about your options to opt out of mobile app tracking by certain advertising networks through your device settings and by resetting the advertiser ID on your Apple or Android device.

Please note that opting out of advertising networks services does not mean that you will not receive advertising while using our Services or on other websites, nor will it prevent the receipt of interest-based advertising from other companies that do not participate in these programs. It will, however, exclude you from interest-based advertising conducted through participating networks, as provided by their policies and choice mechanisms. If you delete your cookies, you may also delete your opt-out preferences.

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.

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 electric grid 


Your California Privacy Rights
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‍California Shine the Light
Residents of the State of California have the right to request information from OhmConnect regarding third parties to whom the company has disclosed certain categories of information during the preceding year for those third parties’direct marketing purposes. If you are a California resident and would like to make such a request, please email privacy@ohmconnect.com or write to us at OhmConnect, Inc., 371 3rd Street, 2nd Floor, Oakland, CA 94607.

‍California Consumer Privacy Act
‍The California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”) provides California residents with rights to receive certain disclosures regarding the collection, use, and sharing of information about them (referred to as “Personal Information”), as well as rights to know/access, delete, and limit sharing of Personal Information. You have the right to be free from discrimination based on your exercise of your CCPA rights.

To the extent that we collect Personal Information that is subject to the CCPA, that information, our practices, and your rights are described below.

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‍Notice at Collection Regarding the Categories of Personal Information Collected

‍You have the right to receive notice of the categories of Personal Information we collect, the purposes for which we use Personal Information, and whether we disclose such information for a business purpose or sell such information. The categories we use below to describe Personal Information are those enumerated in the CCPA. We collect this Personal Information for the purposes described in the How We Use Your Information section above.

Our practices regarding the disclosure and sale of your Personal Information are described below. To opt-out of the sale of your Personal Information, please visit our “Do Not Sell My Personal Information” webpage here. Entities to whom we disclose information for business purposes are service providers, which are companies that we engage to conduct activities on our behalf. Service providers are restricted from using Personal Information for any purpose that is not related to our engagement.

Entities to whom we “sell” information are third parties. Under the CCPA, a business “sells” Personal Information when it discloses it to a company for monetary or other benefit. A company may be considered a third party either because the purpose for our sharing the information is not an enumerated business purpose under California law, or because our contract does not restrict them from using Personal Information for other purposes.

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‍Right to Opt Out of Sale of Personal Information to Third Parties
‍You have the right to opt out of any sale of your Personal Information by OhmConnect to third parties.

To exercise your right to opt out of the sale of your Personal Information, please visit our “Do Not Sell My Personal Information” webpage.

‍Please note that your right to opt out does not apply to our sharing of Personal Information with service providers.

We may also disclose information to other entities who are not listed here when required by law or to protect our company or other persons, as described in our Privacy Policy.


‍Right to Know and Request Access to and Deletion of Personal Information
‍You have the right to request access to Personal Information collected about you and information regarding the source of that Personal Information, the purposes for which we collect it, and the third parties and service providers with whom we share it. You also have the right to request in certain circumstances that we delete Personal Information that we have collected directly from you. We may have a reason under the law why we do not have to comply with your request, or why we may comply with it in a more limited way than you anticipated. If we do, we will explain that to you in our response.

How to Submit an Access or Deletion Request
You may submit a request to exercise your rights to know/access or delete your Personal Information through any one of two means:

(1) If you have an account with us, you may log in to your account and submit the request via the Delete Account option in your Settings menu.
(2) By emailing us at privacy@ohmconnect.com.

You may authorize another individual or a business registered with the California Secretary of State, called an authorized agent, to make requests on your behalf through these means.

Verification Procedures
In order to process your request to know/access or delete Personal Information we collect, disclose, or sell, we must verify your request. We will either use two-factor authentication, if you are using our mobile app, or we may verify your identity by asking you to provide personal identifiers that we can match against information that we may have collected from you previously and confirm your request using the email or telephone account stated in the request. We will not use Personal Information we collect in connection with verifying or responding to your request for any purpose other than responding to your request.


‍Notice Regarding Participation in Data Collection or Sharing for Financial Incentives
‍We run promotions from time to time whereby we incentivize a customer to share certain pieces of information with us or allow us to retain their information; for example, we may offer a free connected device if consumers sign up for our Services. We will always give you clear notice about these programs when you sign up, and participation in these incentives is voluntary and provided on an opt-in basis. If you change your mind, you may opt out at any time.

Under California law, our promotions and contests may be considered “financial incentives” provided in exchange for the collection of personal information. We are required to explain how the value you receive from these promotions and contests is reasonably related to the value we receive from the personal information that you provide to us. We use information about your energy usage to participate in the demand reduction market. The value of your energy conservation depends on a variety of factors including, but not limited to, the location, time of day, grid conditions, and total amount of energy saved by a user. The value of the rewards that we grant to each user is based on the same factors, thereby correlating the benefits you receive with the value to OhmConnect from the use of your data.


‍Special Information for Job Applicants
‍When you apply for a job with OhmConnect, we collect certain information about you as outlined in this Policy. Information may be collected about you in multiple ways: you may provide it to us in connection with your application; we may make observations in the application process or collect information from public information sources; or you may authorize us to collect information from other sources, such as a former employer or reference. In certain circumstances, you may submit your application for employment through a third-party service that displays our job posting. We do not control the privacy practices of these third-party services. Please review their privacy policies carefully prior to submitting your application materials.

Updates to this Privacy Policy
‍We may change this Privacy Policy from time to time. The “Effective Date” at the top of this page indicates when this Privacy Policy was last revised. We may also notify you in other ways from time to time about the collection, use, and disclosure of your Personal Information described in this Policy. For questions about our privacy practices, contact us at privacy@ohmconnect.com.
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