Privacy Policy

We want you to feel comfortable on our website and not have to worry about the security of your data. That is why data protection is an important part of our company philosophy.

In this Privacy Policy, you will find all the information about which Personal Information we collect and process and for what purpose. Equally, we will also inform you of your data protection rights and how you can assert them.

General Principles

What is Personal Information?

Personal Information is any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person. This includes, for example, name or address data, telephone number, mobile number, or online identifiers such as your device id and your IP address.

What is processing?

Processing means any operation or set of operations which is performed upon Personal Information, whether or not by automatic means. The term is broad and covers virtually any handling of data.

Who is responsible for data processing?

The responsible party for data processing is MindsOpen LLC (“MindsOpen”,“we”, “us”, or “our”). If you have any questions or if you wish to exercise your rights, please contact us by email using info@mindsopen.co.

What law applies?

Our use of your Personal Information is subject to the Massachusetts’ Standards for the protection of personal information 201 CMR 17.00 (“SPPI”), the UK`s Data Protection Act (“DPA”) and the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”). We process your Personal Information accordingly.

What are the legal bases for processing Personal Information

We have to have at least one of the following legal bases to process your Personal Information: a) you have given your consent, b) the data is necessary for the fulfilment of a contract / pre-contractual measures, c) the data is necessary for the fulfilment of a legal obligation, or d) the data is necessary to protect our legitimate interests, provided that your interests are not overridden.

Who is the competent data protection authority?

You have the right to lodge a complaint about our processing of Personal Information with a supervisory authority responsible for data protection. In Massachusetts this is the Office of the Attorney General. However, we would appreciate the opportunity to address your concerns before you contact any supervisory authority.

How long will you keep my data?

We process and store your Personal Information only for the period of time required to achieve the respective processing purpose or for as long as a legal retention period exists (in particular commercial and tax law in accordance with Massachusetts’ Commercial and Fiscal Rules and Regulations). Once the purpose has been achieved or the retention period has expired, the corresponding data is routinely deleted.

What Personal Information do we process?

Technical Data

When you access to our website, some access data is recorded automatically and stored in a log file on our website's server. This means if you browse and simply have a look at our website, we process a) the IP address of your computer, b) the date and time of your access, c) the name and URL of the Privacy Policy accessed file, d) the browser used, e) the amount of bytes transferred, f) the status of the page request, g) the session ID and g) the referrer URL. The legal basis for processing is our legitimate interest.

Hosting of our website

We use the hosting services of Webflow Inc. for the purpose of hosting and displaying our website. Webflow does so on the basis of processing on our behalf, and that also means that all data collected on our website is processed on Webflow's servers. The basis for processing is our legitimate interest, and the initiation and/or fulfilment of a contract.

Content Management System

We also use the Content Management System (CMS) of Webflow to publish and maintain the created and edited content and texts on our website. This means that all content and texts submitted to us by users for publication is transferred to Webflow. In addition to texts, this also includes, for example your data in our forms. The legal basis for this processing is our legitimate interest.

Economic analyses and market research

For business reasons, we analyze the data we have on web and server traffic patterns, website interactions, browsing behavior etc. The analyses serve us alone and are not disclosed externally and processed using anonymous analyses with summarized and or anonymized values. For this purpose we use Google Analytics by Google LLC. The legal basis is our legitimate interest and your consent. For further information on our use of Google Analytics, please refer to our Cookie Policy.

Cookies

We use so-called cookies on our website. Cookies are pieces of information that are transmitted from our web server or third-party web servers to your web browser and stored there for later retrieval. Cookies may be small files or other types of information storage. There are different types of cookies: i) Essential Cookies. Essential cookies are cookies to provide a correct and user-friendly website; and ii) Non-essential Cookies. Non-essential Cookies are any cookies that do not fall within the definition of essential cookies, such as cookies used to analyze your behavior on a website (“analytical” cookies) or cookies used to display advertisements to you (“advertising” cookies).

As set out in the EU`s Privacy and Electronic Communications Directive (“PECD”), we need to obtain consent for the use of Non-essential Cookies. For further information on the cookies we use, please refer to our Cookie Policy. The legal basis for processing is our legitimate interest and your consent.

Cookie consent

Our website uses a cookie consent tool to obtain your consent to the storage of cookies and to document this consent. When you enter our website, the following Personal Information is transferred to us: a) Your consent(s) or revocation of your consent(s); b) Your IP address; c) Information about your browser; d) Information about your device; d) Time of your visit to our website. The basis for processing is our legitimate interest and your consent.‍

Contacting us and using our services

You can contact us in various ways and data is always collected in the process. You provide us with most of the data that we process when you contact us such as your name, phone number, email address, your organization's name, and the nature of your query. This data is collected and processed exclusively for the purpose of contacting you and processing your request and then deleted again, provided that there is no legal obligation to retain it.

We process the Personal Information that arises when you use our services in order to provide our Privacy Policy contractual services. Depending on how you use our services the data we process may include, your Full Name, Email Address, Phone Number, and organization's details. The purposes of processing include our support, correspondence with you, invoicing, fulfilment of our contractual obligations. Accordingly, the data is processed on the basis of the fulfilment of our contractual obligations and our consent.

Lastly, we process data in the context of administrative tasks as well as organization of our operations, financial accounting, and compliance with legal obligations, such as archiving. In this regard, we process the same data that we process in the course of providing our contractual services. The purpose and our interest in the processing lies in the administration, financial accounting, office organization, archiving of data, i.e., tasks that serve the maintenance of our business activities, performance of our tasks and provision of our services.

The legal basis for processing the above is our legitimate interest, the provision or initiation of a contractual service and your consent.

Data Sharing

In certain cases, it is necessary to transmit the processed Personal Information in the course of data processing. In this respect, there are different recipient bodies and categories of recipients.

Internal

If necessary, we transfer your Personal Information within MindsOpen. Of course, we comply with the associated legal framework and ensure that your data is processed properly. Access to your Personal Information is only granted to authorized associates who need access to the data due to their job, e.g., to provide our services or to contact you in case of queries.

We may also share your Personal Information with our Business Partners (including contractors or entities with which we have an ongoing business relationship to provide our services or information) for the purposes described in this Privacy Policy, including (but not limited to) conducting the services you request, or customizing our business to better meet your needs.

External bodies

Personal Information is transferred to our service providers in the following instances: in the context of fulfilling our contract with you, to communicate with you, to provide our website, and to state authorities and institutions as far as this is required or necessary.

International transfers

We may transfer your Personal Information to our business partners and service providers as necessary for the purposes described in this Privacy Policy. In order to provide adequate protection for your Personal Information when it is transferred, we have contractual arrangements regarding such transfers. We take all reasonable technical and organizational measures to protect the Personal Information we transfer.

Security of your data

In order to protect the data stored with us in the best possible way against accidental or intentional manipulation, loss, destruction, or access by unauthorized persons, we use appropriate technical and organizational security measures. The security levels are continuously reviewed and adapted to new security standards.‍

Privacy Policy‍

Nevertheless, internet-based data transmissions can always have security gaps, so that absolute protection cannot be guaranteed. And databases or data sets that include Personal Information may be breached inadvertently or through wrongful intrusion. Upon becoming aware of a data breach, we will notify all affected individuals whose Personal Information may have been compromised as expeditiously as possible after which the breach was discovered.‍

Marketing

Insofar as you have given us your separate consent to process your data for marketing and advertising purposes, we are entitled to contact you for these purposes via the communication channels you have given your consent to.

You may give us your consent in a number of ways including by selecting a box on a form where we seek your permission to send you marketing information, or sometimes your consent is implied from your interactions or contractual relationship with us. Where your consent is implied, it is on the basis that you would have a reasonable expectation of receiving a marketing communication based on your interactions or contractual relationship with us.

Direct Marketing generally takes the form of email but may also include other less traditional or emerging channels. These forms of contact will be managed by us, or by our contracted service providers. Every directly addressed marketing sent or made by us or on our behalf will include a means by which you may unsubscribe or opt out.

Social Media

General

We are present on social media on the basis of our legitimate interest (currently Facebook, and LinkedIn). If you contact or connect with us via social media, we and the relevant social media platform are jointly responsible for the processing of your data and enter into a so-called joint controller agreement. The Personal Information collected when contacting us is to handle your request and the bases are both your consent and our legitimate interest.

When you visit our profiles and interact with us and others

When you visit our social media profiles, we, as the operator of the profile, process your actions and interactions with our profile (e.g., the content of your messages, enquiries, posts or comments that you send to us or leave on our profile or when you like or share our posts) as well as your publicly viewable profile data (e.g., your name and profile picture). Which Personal Information from your profile is publicly viewable depends on your profile settings, which you can adjust yourself in the settings of your social media account. The legal basis is our legitimate interest and your consent.

Your Rights and Privileges

Privacy rights

You can exercise the following rights:

• ‍The right to access;
• The right to rectification;
• The right to erasure;
• The right to restrict processing;
• The right to object to processing;
• The right to data portability;
• The right to complaint to a supervisory authority‍

‍Privacy Policy

Updating your information and withdrawing your consent

If you believe that the information we hold about you is inaccurate or request its rectification, deletion, or object to its processing, please do so by contacting us.

Access Request

In the event you want to make a Data Subject Access Request, please contact us. We will respond to requests regarding access and correction as soon as reasonably possible. Should we not be able to respond to your request within thirty (30) days, we will tell you why and when we will be able to respond to your request. If we are unable to provide you with any Personal Information or to make a correction requested by you, we will tell you why.

COPPA (Children Online Privacy Protection Act)

We do not specifically market to children under the age of 13 years old.

CAN SPAM Act

In accordance with CAN SPAM, we agree to unsubscribe you from receiving future emails and ALL other correspondence, immediately if you ask us to do so.

Controls For Do-Not-Track Features

At this stage no uniform technology standard for recognizing and implementing DNT signals has been finalized. If a standard for online tracking has to be adopted, we will do so and will inform you about that practice in a revised version of this policy.

Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA)

If we are sending you SMS marketing communications, you may manage your receipt of marketing and non-transactional communications from us by replying or texting ‘STOP’.

What we do not do

• We do not request Personal Information from minors and children;
• We do not use Automated decision-making including profiling; and
• We do not sell your Personal Information.

Changes

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. If we make changes to this Privacy Policy, we will revise the effective date. This Privacy Policy was last updated on Friday, February 23rd, 2024.

Questions

If you feel that the above is not sufficient or if you have any queries as regards the collection, processing, or use of your information we are looking forward to hearing from you. We will make every effort to reply as soon as possible and take into consideration any suggestions from your end.