version 3.4.2 last updated by JB 2022. Sep. 25
Privacy Policy
QualNotes (“we”, “us, our”) provides a digital platform that helps
social scientists and humanities academics and university students to undertake
and document the collection and analysis of field data using four well known
research methods: (i) mobile mapping, (ii) interviews, (iii) focus groups, and (iv)
participant observation and autoethnography, which include recorded GPS routes,
geotagged photos, videos, voice/text notes. The app provides the option for the
user to share the aforementioned data with the public. This app also provides
capability to export the aforementioned data for the purpose of: (i) academic dissemination,
for (ii) further analysis, and (iii) to document and support the publication of
research papers. Users can opt to have any location-based stored only locally
on their devices; it is the user’s decision whether they disclose or publish their
own generated data that contains location data.
NOTE ABOUT CONSENT
As is customary in the practice of social science research, the
user must obtain consent of any participants involved in their research.
AUDIENCE
Please note that this App purpose is to support academic research.
This app is not intended for personal, individual, or commercial use.
DEFINITION OF SERVICE
This Privacy Policy applies to the following services operated by QualNotes
(collectively, the “Service”):
- “www.qualnotes.com” and other websites
owned and/or operated by QualNotes that contain a link to this Privacy
Policy (collectively, the “Site”).
- All mobile applications that contain a
link to this Privacy Policy (the “QualNotes Apps”).
- All services made available by QualNotes through
the Site and the QualNotes Apps.
This Privacy Policy explains what Personal Data (defined below) we
collect, how we use and share that data, and your choices concerning our data
practices.
WHAT INFORMATION DO WE COLLECT?
When you contact us or interact with our Service we collect
information that alone or in combination with other information could be used
to identify you (“Personal Data”). The Personal Data collected during these
interactions may vary based on what you choose to share with us, but it will
generally include:
- Account Data: When you sign up, some
information is required to create an account on our Service, such as your
name, username, email address.
- User Generated Content: User-generated
content, such as profile pictures, GPS routes, photos, images, videos,
voice/text memos, comments, questions, messages, and other content or
information that you generate, transmit, or otherwise make available on the
Service, as well as associated metadata.
- Metadata includes information on how,
when, where and by whom a piece of content was collected and how that
content has been formatted or edited. Metadata also includes information
that users can add or can have added to their content, such as keywords,
geographical or location information, and other similar data.
Additionally, when you interact or visit or register with the
Service, the Service may automatically receive certain information about you.
For example, the Service may monitor the number of people that visit the Site
or use QualNotes Apps, peak hours of visits, which page(s) are visited on our
Site or QualNotes Apps, the domains our visitors come from (e.g., google.com,
yahoo.com, etc.), and which browsers people use to access and visit our Site
(e.g. Chrome, Microsoft Internet Explorer, etc.), broad geographical
information, and Site- and QualNotes App-navigation patterns. In particular,
the following information is created and automatically logged in our systems:
- Log Data: Information that your browser
automatically sends whenever you visit the Site or QualNotes Apps. Log
data includes your IP address (so we understand which country you are
connecting from when you visit the Site or QualNotes Apps), browser type
and settings, the date and time of your request, and how you interacted
with the Site or QualNotes Apps.
- Device Data: Includes the name of the
device, operating system, and browser you are using. Information collected
may depend on the type of device you use and its settings. We may also
collect data from your device to estimate a variety of metrics like the
time, frequency and
- Usage and Activity Data: We collect
information about how you use our Site and QualNotes Apps, such as the
types of content that you view or engage with, the features you use, the
actions you take, and the time, frequency and duration of, and moving
route. .
- Geolocation Data: If you have enabled
location services for an QualNotes App on your mobile device or on your
computer via the Site, we may collect your precise location information
based on city, state, zip code, country, latitude and longitude. QualNotes
may also derive your approximate location from the IP address of your
computer or mobile device. Geolocation data is used for purposes of showing
your accurate location on a map and to offer accurate geotagging of
photos, voice notes, text annotations.
- QualNotes collects location data to enable
geotagging in the following reserch methods (feautres of the app): (i) mobile
mapping feature, (ii) participant observation and interviews feature, and
(iii) autoethnography feature. The location data is only enabled or used while
the app is in use. No location data is enabled nor used while the app is not
in use. No background data is collected while the app is not in
use, or when it is closed.
- Advertising ID Data: We do not collect
advertising identifiers. We never collect any persistent device
identifiers (such as SSAID, MAC, IMEI, etc) and we never connect the
advertising identifiers to persistent device identifiers.
- Cookies Data: We use cookies to understand
and save your preferences for future visits, keep track of advertisements
and compile aggregate data about the Site traffic and the Site interaction
so that we can offer better site experiences and tools in the future.
If you elect to authenticate to our Service using your account on
another service (such as a Facebook, Google, or Apple account), we may receive
from the that service information like your external account name as well as
other information you may choose to make available to us based on your external
account settings, such as contact lists and profile photos (if any). You can
stop sharing the information from that service with us by removing our access
to that service.
HOW DO WE USE PERSONAL DATA?
We use Personal Data to enable your use of our Service, including
to create your account, user log in, and authentication. In addition, the use of
your Personal Data might also necessary for the following legitimate business
interests:
- To communicate with you and respond to
your inquiries, comments, feedback or questions
- To manage our relationship with you, which
includes sending administrative information to you relating to our Service
and changes to our terms, conditions, and policies, and asking you to
leave a review or take a survey.
- To analyze how you interact with our
Service and provide, maintain and improve the content and functionality of
the Service and our customer relationships and experiences, develop our
business and inform our marketing strategy.
- To administer and protect our business, the
Site and QualNotes Apps, prevent fraud, criminal activity, or misuses of
our Site or QualNotes Apps, and to ensure the security of our IT systems,
architecture and networks (including troubleshooting, testing, system
maintenance, support and hosting of data); and
- To comply with legal obligations and legal
process and to protect our rights, privacy, safety or property, and/or
that of our affiliates, you or other third parties, and enforce our terms
and policies.
HOW WE SHARE AND DISCLOSE PERSONAL DATA?
In certain circumstances we may share your Personal Data with
third parties without further notice to you, unless required by the law, as set
forth below:
- Vendors and Service Providers: To assist
us in meeting business operations needs and to perform certain services
and functions, we may share Personal Data with service providers,
including hosting, cloud services and other information technology
services providers; email communication software providers and email
newsletter providers; database and sales services; customer relationship
management, customer engagement, and customer feedback services; payment
processors; security services; and analytics services. Pursuant to our
instructions, these parties will access, process or store Personal Data in
the course of performing their duties to us.
- Business Transfers: If we are involved in
a merger, acquisition, financing due diligence, reorganization,
bankruptcy, receivership, sale of all or a portion of our assets, or
transition of service to another provider, your Personal Data and other
information may be shared in the diligence process with counterparties and
others assisting with the transaction and transferred to a successor or
affiliate as part of that transaction along with other assets.
- Legal Requirements: If required to do so
by law or in the good faith belief that such action is necessary to (i)
comply with legal or regulatory obligations, including to respond to
lawful requests from public authorities and to meet national security or
law enforcement requirements, (ii) protect and defend our rights or
property, (iii) prevent fraud, (iv) act in urgent circumstances to protect
the personal safety of users of the Site, or the public, or (v) protect
against legal liability.
- Other users and the public. Your profile
and other user-generated content (except for messages) may be visible to
other users of the Service and the public. For example, other users of the
Service or the public may have access to your information if you chose to
make your profile or other personal information available to them through
the Service, such as when you provide comments, reviews, survey responses,
or share other content. This information can be seen, collected and used
by others, including being cached, copied, screen captured or stored
elsewhere by others (e.g., search engines), and we are not responsible for
any such use of information.
DATA RETENTION
We keep Personal Data for as long as reasonably necessary for the
purposes described in this Privacy Policy, while we have a legitimate business
need to do so, or as required by law (e.g. for tax, legal, accounting or other
purposes), whichever is the longer. To determine the appropriate retention
period for your Personal Data, we will consider the amount, nature, and
sensitivity of the Personal Data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorized
use or disclosure of your Personal Data, the purposes for which we use your
Personal Data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means,
and the applicable legal requirements.
CALIFORNIA PRIVACY RIGHTS DISCLOSURES
Collection, Disclosure, and Use of Personal Data: The categories
of Personal Data we have collected in the preceding twelve months are described
above in the “What information do we collect? section. In the preceding twelve
months, we have disclosed for business purposes each of the categories
identified in that section to the categories of third parties identified in the
“How We Share and Disclose Personal Data?” section. The business and commercial
purposes for collecting Personal Data are described in the “How Do We Use
Personal Data?” section. We collect Personal Data directly from you and from
external accounts you use to log-in to the Service Privacy Rights: Where
provided for by law and subject to any applicable exceptions, California
residents may have the following rights under the California Consumer Privacy
Act of 2018 (“CCPA”):
- To know the categories of Personal Data
that QualNotes has collected about you, the business purpose for
collecting your Personal Data, and the categories of sources from which
the Personal Data was collected.
- To access the specific pieces of Personal
Data that QualNotes has collected about you.
- To know whether QualNotes has disclosed
your Personal Data for business purposes, the categories of Personal Data
so disclosed, and the categories of third parties to whom we have
disclosed your Personal Data
- To have QualNotes, under certain
circumstances, delete your Personal Data; and
- To be free from discrimination related to
the exercise of these CCPA rights.
QualNotes does not sell your Personal Data. If you would like to
exercise any or all of these rights, you may do so by contacting our support at
qualnotes@gmail.com. Your authorized agent may submit requests in the same
manner. Once we receive your request, we will verify your identity by sending
an email to the email address you provide to us. If you have questions about
your rights or our disclosures under the CCPA, or to request access to an
alternative format of this notice, you may reach us.
Online Tracking and Do Not Track Signals: We and our
third party service providers, including Meta, Google and others, may use
cookies, pixels, or other tracking technologies to collect information about
your browsing activities over time and across different websites following your
use of the Site and use that information to send targeted advertisements. Our
Site currently does not respond to “Do Not Track” (“DNT”) signals and operates
as described in this Privacy Policy whether or not a DNT signal is received. If
we do respond to DNT signals in the future, we will describe how we do so in
this Privacy Policy.
CHILDREN
Our Service is not directed to children who are under the age of 18.
QualNotes does not knowingly collect Personal Data from children under the age
of 18. If you have reason to believe that a child under the age of 18 has
provided Personal Data to QualNotes through the Service please contact us at qualnotes@gmail.com and we will endeavor to delete
that information from our databases.
EU USERS
Scope: This section applies to individuals in the EU (for these
purposes, reference to the EU also includes the European Economic Area
countries of Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway, the United Kingdom, and, to the
extent applicable, Switzerland). Data Controller: QualNotes is the data
controller for the processing of your Personal Data. You can find our contact
information in the “Contact Us” section below. Legal Bases for Processing. This
Privacy Policy (the paragraph “How Do We Use Personal Data?”) describes the
legal bases we rely on for the processing of your Personal Data. Please contact
us if you have any questions about the specific legal basis we are relying on
to process your Personal Data. As used in this Privacy Policy, “legitimate
interests” means our interests in conducting our business and developing a
business relationship with you. This Privacy Policy describes when we process
your Personal Data for our legitimate interests, what these interests are and
your rights. We will not use your Personal Data for activities where the impact
on you overrides our interests, unless we have your consent or those activities
are otherwise required or permitted by law. Your Rights. Pursuant to the
European Union General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”), you have the
following rights in relation to your Personal Data, under certain
circumstances:
- Right of access: If you ask us, we will
confirm whether we are processing your Personal Data and, if so, provide
you with a copy of that Personal Data along with certain other details. If
you require additional copies, we may need to charge a reasonable fee.
- Right to rectification: If your Personal
Data is inaccurate or incomplete, you are entitled to ask that we correct
or complete it. If we shared your Personal Data with others, we will tell
them about the correction where possible. If you ask us, and where
possible and lawful to do so, we will also tell you with whom we shared
your Personal Data so you can contact them directly.
- Right to erasure: You may ask us to delete
or remove your Personal Data, such as where you withdraw your consent. If
we shared your data with others, we will tell them about the erasure where
possible. If you ask us, and where possible and lawful to do so, we will
also tell you with whom we shared your Personal Data with so you can
contact them directly.
- Right to restrict processing: You may ask
us to restrict or ‘block’ the processing of your Personal Data in certain
circumstances, such as where you contest the accuracy of the data or
object to us processing it (please read below for information on your
right to object). We will tell you before we lift any restriction on
processing. If we shared your Personal Data with others, we will tell them
about the restriction where possible. If you ask us, and where possible
and lawful to do so, we will also tell you with whom we shared your
Personal Data so you can contact them directly.
- Right to data portability: You have the
right to obtain your Personal Data from us that you consented to give us
or that was provided to us as necessary in connection with our contract
with you, and that is processed by automated means. We will give you your
Personal Data in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format.
You may reuse it elsewhere.
- Right to object: You may ask us at any
time to stop processing your Personal Data, and we will do so:
- If we are relying on a legitimate interest
to process your Personal Data -- unless we demonstrate compelling
legitimate grounds for the processing or we need to process your data in
order to establish, exercise, or defend legal claims.
- If we are processing your Personal Data
for direct marketing. We may keep minimum information about you in a
suppression list in order to ensure your choices are respected in the
future and to comply with data protection laws (such processing is
necessary for our and your legitimate interest in pursuing the purposes
described above).
- Right to withdraw consent: If we rely on
your consent to process your Personal Data, you have the right to withdraw
that consent at any time. Withdrawal of consent will not affect any
processing of your data before we received notice that you wished to
withdraw consent.
- Right to lodge a complaint with the data
protection authority: If you have a concern about our privacy practices,
including the way we handled your Personal Data, you can report it to the
data protection authority that is authorized to hear those concerns (in
the UK, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), who can be contacted
at https://ico.org.uk/concerns, and in other EU countries the data
protection authority of the country in which you are located).
LINKS TO OTHER WEBSITES
The Site and QualNotes Apps may contain advertisements for or
links to other websites, products, or services not operated or controlled by QualNotes,
including Social Media Sites (“Third Party Sites”). The information that you
share with Third Party Sites will be governed by the specific privacy policies
and terms of service of the Third Party Sites and not by this Privacy Policy.
By providing these links we do not imply that we endorse or have reviewed these
sites. Please contact the Third Party Sites directly for information on their
privacy practices and policies.
SECURITY
You use the Service at your own risk. We comply with industry
standards to protect Personal Data both online and offline from loss, misuse,
and unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration or destruction. However, no
Internet or email transmission is ever fully secure or error free. In
particular, email sent to or from us may not be secure. Therefore, you should
take special care in deciding what information you send to us via the Service
or email. Please keep this in mind when disclosing any Personal Data to QualNotes
via the Internet. In addition, we are not responsible for circumvention of any
privacy settings or security measures contained on the Service, or third party
websites.
YOUR CHOICES
Whether or not you provide Personal Data to us is completely up to
you, but if you choose not to provide information that is needed to use some
features of our Service, you may be unable to use those features. You can also
contact us at qualnotes@gmail.com to request
access to your data or to ask us to update, correct, or delete any or all of your
Personal Data.
CHANGES TO THE PRIVACY POLICY
The Service, and our business may change from time to time. As a
result we may update this Privacy Policy at any time. When we do we will post
an updated version on this page, unless another type of notice is required by
the applicable law. By continuing to use our Service or providing us with
Personal Data after we have posted an updated Privacy Policy, or notified you
if applicable, you consent to the revised Privacy Policy and practices
described in it.
CONTACT US
If you have any additional questions about our Privacy Policy or
the information practices of the Site and/or QualNotes App, please feel free to
contact us at qualnotes@gmail.com