Privacy Policy - PartsAvatar.ca

Parts Avatar Investments Inc., having its registered address at Parts Avatar Investments Inc.                                                                          

Suite 1500, 13540 - 102 Avenue, Surrey, BC, Canada -  V3T 3X5 ("Parts Avatar") is a  data controller of personal information collected and processed through Parts Avatar Services. 

We collect your personal information in order to provide and continually improve our products and services.

Here are the types of personal information we collect:

Information You Give Us

We receive and store any information you provide in relation to Parts Avatar Services. You can choose not to provide certain information but then you might not be able to take advantage of many of our Parts Avatar Services.

You provide information to us when you:

• search for products or services on our website;

• place an order through Parts Avatar Services;

• provide information in My Account (and you might have more than one if you have used more than one e-mail address or mobile number when shopping with us);

• configure your settings on, provide data access permissions for, or interact with a Parts Avatar Service;

• offer your products or services on or through Parts Avatar Services;

• communicate with us by phone, e-mail, or otherwise; 

• upload or stream images, videos or other files to Parts Avatar Services; or

• participate in community features, provide and rate customer reviews.

As a result of those actions, you might supply us with such information as: your name; address and phone numbers; payment information; your age; your location information; your IP address; people, addresses and phone numbers listed in your Addresses; your e-mail address; content of reviews and e-mails to us; images and video collected or stored in connection with Parts Avatar Services; information and documents regarding identity; and corporate and financial information.

Automatic Information

We automatically collect and store certain types of information about your use of Parts Avatar Services including your interaction with content and services available through Parts Avatar Services. Like many websites, we use cookies and other unique identifiers and we obtain certain types of information when your web browser or device accesses Parts Avatar Services and other content served by or on behalf of Parts Avatar on other websites. 

Examples of the information we collect and analyse include:

• the Internet protocol (IP) address used to connect your computer to the Internet;

• login; e-mail address; password;

• the location of your device or computer;

• content interaction information;

• device metrics such as when a device is in use, application usage, connectivity data, and any errors or event failures;

• Parts Avatar Services metrics (e.g., the occurrences of technical errors, your interactions with service features and content, your settings preferences, location of your device running an application, information about uploaded images and files (e.g., file name, dates, times and location of your images));

• version and time zone settings;

• purchase and content use history;

• the full Uniform Resource Locators (URL) clickstream to, through and from our website (including date and time); cookie number; products and/ or content you viewed or searched for; page response times, download errors, length of visits to certain pages, page interaction information (such as scrolling, clicks, and mouse-overs),

• phone numbers used to call our customer service number; and

• images or videos when you shop using Parts Avatar Services.

We may also use device identifiers, cookies, and other technologies on devices, applications and our web pages to collect browsing, usage or other technical information.

Information From Other Sources

We might receive information about you from other sources such as updated delivery and address information from our carriers, which we use to correct our records and deliver your next purchase more easily. 

Examples of information we receive from other sources include:

• updated delivery and address information from our carriers or other third parties, which we use to correct our records and deliver your next purchase or communication more easily;

• account information, purchase or redemption information and page-view information from some merchants with which we operate co-branded businesses or for which we provide technical, fulfillment, advertising or other services;

• information about your interactions with products and services offered by our affiliates or subsidiaries; and

• search results and links, including paid listings.

We process your personal information to operate, provide, and improve the Parts Avatar Services that we offer our customers. These purposes include:

• Purchase and delivery of products and services. We use your personal information to take and handle orders, deliver products and services, process payments, and communicate with you about orders, products and services, and promotional offers.

• Provide, troubleshoot, and improve Parts Avatar Services. We use your personal information to provide functionality, analyse performance, fix errors, and improve the usability and effectiveness of the Parts Avatar Services.

• Recommendations and personalization. We use your personal information to recommend features, products, and services that might be of interest to you, identify your preferences, and personalise your experience with Parts Avatar Services. In addition, we use your personal information to customize and enhance your experience while using the Parts Avatar Services.

• Comply with legal obligations. In certain cases, we collect and use your personal information to comply with laws. For instance, we collect from sellers information regarding place of establishment and bank account information for identity verification and other purposes.

• Communicate with you. We use your personal information to communicate with you in relation to Parts Avatar Services via different channels (e.g., by phone, email, chat).

• Advertising. We use your personal information to display interest-based ads for features, products, and services that might be of interest to you. 

• Fraud prevention and credit risks. We process personal information to prevent and detect fraud and abuse in order to protect the security of our customers, Parts Avatar, and others. We may also use scoring methods to assess and manage credit risks.

• Purposes for which we seek your consent. We may also ask for your consent to process your personal information for a specific purpose that we communicate to you. 

  
  

Information about our customers is an important part of our business and we are not in the business of selling our customers' personal information to others. Parts Avatar shares customers' personal information only as described below and with Parts Avatar affiliates or subsidiaries that are either subject to this Privacy Policy or follow practices at least as protective as those described in this Privacy Policy.

• Transactions involving third parties: We make available to you services or products provided by third parties on or through Parts Avatar Services. You can tell when a third party is involved in your transactions and we share customer personal information related to those transactions with that third party.

• Third party service providers: We may employ other companies and individuals to perform functions on our behalf. Examples may include fulfilling orders for products or services, delivering packages, sending postal mail and e-mail, removing repetitive information from customer lists, analysing data, providing marketing assistance, providing search results and links (including paid listings and links), processing payments (such as Stripe), transmitting content, assessing and managing credit risk, and providing customer service (such as zendesk). We may, from time to time, feature or collaborate with other third party companies, such as Vehicle Mind Technologies Ltd. These third-party service providers have access to personal information needed to perform their functions, but may not use it for other purposes. Further, they must process the personal information in accordance with this Privacy Policy and as permitted by applicable data protection laws. 

• Protection of Parts Avatar and others: We release account and other personal information when we believe release is appropriate to comply with the law; enforce or apply our Terms of Use and other agreements; or protect the rights, property or safety of Parts Avatar, our users or others. This includes exchanging information with other companies and organisations for fraud protection and credit risk reduction.

• Other than as set out above, you will receive notice when personal information about you might be shared with third parties and you will have an opportunity to choose not to share the information.

We design our systems with your security and privacy in mind.

• We work to protect the security of your personal information during transmission by using encryption protocols and software.

• The third party payment processors that we use follow the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) when handling credit card data.

• We maintain physical, electronic and procedural safeguards in connection with the collection, storage and disclosure of personal customer information. Our security procedures mean that we may ask you to verify your identity before we disclose personal information to you.

• It is important for you to protect against unauthorized access to your password and to your computers, devices, and applications. We recommend using a unique password for your Parts Avatar account that is not utilized for other online accounts. Be sure to sign off when you finish using a shared computer. 

• When you enter sensitive information (such as a credit card number or SS#) on our order forms, we (or our third party service providers) encrypt transmission of that information using 128 bit Secure Socket Layer technology (SSL).

You can access your information, including your name, address, payment options, profile information, any membership, settings, and purchase history in the "My Account" section of the website. 

If you have any questions or objection as to how we collect and process your personal information, please contact us at support@partsavatar.ca or through our website. Many of our Parts Avatar Services also include settings that provide you with options as to how your information is being used.

• As described above, you can choose not to provide certain information but then you might not be able to take advantage of many of the Parts Avatar Services.

• You can add or update certain information on pages such as those referenced in the What Information Can I Access? section. When you update information, we usually keep a copy of the previous version for our records.

• If you don't want to receive e-mail or other communications from us, you may opt-out via the unsubscribe link included in such e-mails or by contacting us. If you don't want to receive in-app notifications from us, please adjust your notification settings in the app or your device.

• The Help feature on most browsers and devices will tell you how to prevent your browser or device from accepting new cookies, how to have the browser notify you when you receive a new cookie or how to disable cookies altogether. Because cookies allow you to take advantage of some essential features of Parts Avatar Services, we recommend that you leave them turned on. For instance, if you block or otherwise reject our cookies, you will not be able to add items to your Shopping Basket, proceed to Checkout, or use any Parts Avatar Services that require you to Sign in. When you consent to our processing your personal information for a specified purpose, you may withdraw your consent at any time and we will stop any further processing of your data for that purpose.

• You will also be able to opt out of certain other types of data processing by updating your settings on the applicable Parts Avatar website or application. Most non-Parts Avatar devices also provide users with the ability to change device permissions (e.g., disable/access location services, contacts). For most devices, these controls are located in the device's settings menu. If you have questions about how to change your device permissions on devices manufactured by third parties, we recommend you contact your mobile service carrier or your device manufacturer as different devices may have different permission settings.

In addition, subject to applicable law, you have the right to request access to, correct, and delete your personal data, to request that we restrict the use of your personal data, and to ask for data portability. You may also object to our processing of your personal data or ask that we restrict the processing of your personal data in certain instances. 

Parts Avatar does not sell products for purchase by children. If you're under the age of 18 years or the age of majority in your jurisdiction of residence, you may use Parts Avatar Services only with the involvement of a parent or guardian.

We keep your personal information to enable your continued use of Parts Avatar Services, for as long as it is required in order to fulfill the relevant purposes described in this Privacy Policy, as may be required by law such as for tax and accounting purposes, or as otherwise communicated to you. For example, we retain your transaction history so that you can review past purchases (and repeat orders if desired) and what addresses you have shipped orders to, and to improve the relevancy of products and content we recommend.

The EU GDPR and UK data protection laws require a legal basis for our use of personal information. Our basis varies depending on the specific purpose for which we use personal information. We use:

• Performance of a contract when we provide you with products or services, or communicate with you about them. This includes when we use your personal information to take and handle orders, deliver products and services, and process payments.

• Our legitimate business interests and the interests of our customers when we improve Parts Avatar services, when we detect and prevent fraud and abuse in order to protect the security of our customers, ourselves, or others, and when we provide you with interest-based advertising.

• Your consent when we ask for your consent to process your personal information for a specific purpose that we communicate to you. When you consent to our processing your personal information for a specified purpose, you may withdraw your consent at any time and we will stop processing of your data for that purpose.

• Compliance with a legal obligation when we use your personal information to comply with laws. 

• These and other legal bases depending on the purpose for which we use personal information.
  

We use cookies and similar tools to enhance your shopping experience, provide our services, understand how customers use our services so we can make improvements, and display ads. Approved third parties also use these tools in connection with our display of ads. To enable our systems to recognise your browser or device and to provide Parts Avatar Services to you, we use cookies. 

About cookies

A cookie is a file containing an identifier (a string of letters and numbers) that is sent by a web server to a web browser and is stored by the browser. The identifier is then sent back to the server each time the browser requests a page from the server. Cookies may be either “persistent” cookies or “session” cookies: a persistent cookie will be stored by a web browser and will remain valid until its set expiry date, unless deleted by the user before the expiry date; a session cookie, on the other hand, will expire at the end of the user session, when the web browser is closed. Cookies do not typically contain any information that personally identifies a user, but personal information that we store about you may be linked to the information stored in and obtained from cookies.

Cookies that we use

We currently use cookies on our website for the following purposes:

• Authentication: we use cookies to identify you when you visit our website and as you navigate our website;

• Status: we use cookies to help us to determine if you are logged into our website;

• Shopping cart: we use cookies to maintain the state of your shopping cart as you navigate our website;

• Personalization: we use cookies to store information about your preferences and to personalize our website for you;

• Security: we use cookies as an element of the security measures used to protect user accounts, including preventing fraudulent use of login credentials, and to protect our website and services generally;

• Analysis: we use cookies to help us to analyze the use and performance of our website and services; 

• Advertising: we use cookies to help us to display advertisements that will be relevant to you; and

• Cookie consent: we use cookies to store your preferences in relation to the use of cookies more generally.

Cookies used by our service providers

Our service providers use cookies and those cookies may be stored on your computer when you visit our website.

We use Google Analytics to analyze the use of our website. Google Analytics gathers information about website use by means of cookies. The information gathered relating to our website is used to create reports about the use of our website. Google’s privacy policy is available at: https://www.google.com/policies/privacy/. 

The relevant cookies are: _gid, _gat, _ga. Those cookies are used in connection with user identification, how they interact with the website and throttling requests. 

We use Stripe to allow users of the Parts Avatar Services to pay for products and/or services. Stripe uses cookies to enable the proper functioning of the store and to allow reporting and analytics. Shopify’s privacy policy is available at: https://stripe.com/fr-ca/privacy. 

The relevant cookies are: __stripe_mid and _stripe_sid, stripe.csrf, merchant, site-auth, _stripe_orig_props, cid, machine_identifier, user, private_machine_identifier. They are used in connection with payment and preventing fraud detection. 

Managing cookies

Most browsers allow you to refuse to accept cookies and to delete cookies. The methods for doing so vary from browser to browser, and from version to version. You can however obtain up-to-date information about blocking and deleting cookies via these links:

• https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/95647?hl=en (Chrome);

• https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/enable-and-disable-cookies-website-preferences (Firefox);

• http://www.opera.com/help/tutorials/security/cookies/ (Opera);

• https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/help/17442/windows-internet-explorer-delete-manage-cookies (Internet Explorer);

• https://support.apple.com/kb/PH21411 (Safari); and

• https://privacy.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-10-microsoft-edge-and-privacy (Edge).

Blocking all cookies will have a negative impact upon the usability of many websites. If you block cookies, you will not be able to use all the features on our website and/or the Parts Avatar Services.

If you have any concern about privacy at Parts Avatar or want to contact us, please communicate with us at support@partsavatar.ca or through our website with a thorough description and we will try to resolve the issue for you. 

Our business changes constantly and our Privacy Policy will change also. You should check our website frequently to see recent changes. Unless stated otherwise, our current Privacy Policy applies to all information that we have about you and your account. We stand behind the promises we make, however, and will never materially change our policies and practices to make them less protective of customer information collected in the past without the consent of affected customers.

The California Consumer Privacy Act provides some California residents with the additional rights listed below. To exercise these rights, visit our website.

Right to Know

You have the right to know and see what data we have collected about you over the past 12 months, including:

• The categories of personal information we have collected about you;

• The categories of sources from which the personal information is collected;

• The business or commercial purpose for collecting your personal information;

• The categories of third parties with whom we have shared your personal information; and

• The specific pieces of personal information we have collected about you.

Right to Delete

You have the right to request that we delete the personal information we have collected from you (and direct our service providers to do the same). There are a number of exceptions, however, that include, but are not limited to, when the information is necessary for us or a third party to do any of the following:

• Complete your transaction;

• Provide you a good or service;

• Perform a contract between us and you;

• Protect your security and prosecute those responsible for breaching it;

• Fix our system in the case of a bug;

• Protect the free speech rights of you or other users;

• Comply with the California Electronic Communications Privacy Act (Cal. Penal Code § 1546 et seq.);

• Engage in public or peer-reviewed scientific, historical, or statistical research in the public interests that adheres to all other applicable ethics and privacy laws;

• Comply with a legal obligation; or

• Make other internal and lawful uses of the information that are compatible with the context in which you provided it.

Other Rights

You can request certain information about our disclosure of personal information to third parties for their own direct marketing purposes during the preceding calendar year. This request is free and may be made once a year. You also have the right not to be discriminated against for exercising any of the rights listed above.

Exercising Your California Privacy Rights

To request access to or deletion of your personal information, or to exercise any other data rights under California law, please contact us using one of the following methods:

• Website: You may visit the Parts Avatar website to authenticate and exercise rights by communicating with us.

• Email Webform: You may write to Parts Avatar to exercise rights. Please include your full name, email address, and phone number associated with your use of the Parts Avatar website, along with why you are writing, so that we can process your request in an efficient manner.

Response Timing and Format

We aim to respond to a consumer request for access or deletion within 45 days of receiving that request. If we require more time, we will inform you of the reason and extension period in writing.

Contact us

You can contact us to exercise your privacy rights:

1. Using our website contact form
2. By email, using support@partsavatar.ca
3. By any other means provided on our website