What This Policy Covers

This Privacy Policy applies to information that we collect about you when you use our software or services. Throughout this Privacy Policy we’ll refer to our website, applications and other products and services collectively as “Services”.
Below we explain how we collect, use, and share information about you, along with the choices that you have with respect to that information.

Information We Collect

We only collect information about you if we have a reason to do so – for example, to provide our Services, to communicate with you, or to make our Services better.
We collect information in three ways: if and when you provide information to us, automatically through operating our Services, and from outside sources. Let’s go over the information that we collect.

Information You Provide to Us

It’s probably no surprise that we collect information that you provide to us. The amount and type of information depends on the context and how we use the information. Here are some examples:

Basic Account Information

We ask for basic information from you in order to set up your Hance account. For example, we require individuals/entities who sign up for a Hance account to provide your name, email address and password – and that’s it.

Transaction and Billing Information

If you purchase a Hance subscription plan or services you will need to provide additional personal/entity and payment information that is required to process the transaction and your payment, such as your credit card information, VAT number, and contact information. All credit card information is transmitted directly to, and stored with, Stripe.com without touching our servers.

Communications With Us

You may also provide us information when you communicate with our team about a support question or if you sign up to receive newsletters. Users that create an 
account or are getting testing access to our service may receive our newsletters. 

Information We Collect Automatically:

Usage Information

We collect information about your usage of our Services. This includes information about when and how you use our services such as how you navigate on our website. This is in the interest of our users since it gives us valuable insight into how the service is used.
Please note that we do not collect any information about audio signals that is processed by HANCE Audio Engine. Our software is designed to run locally on your device, which means that audio signals you process are never sent to our servers.

Location Information

We may determine the approximate location of your device from your IP address.
We collect and use this information to, for example, calculate how many people visit our Services from certain geographic regions.

Pixel Tags and Other Technologies

Pixel tags (also called web beacons) are small blocks of code placed on websites and emails. Hance’s webpage and newsletters uses pixel tags and other technologies to help us identify and track visitors, usage, and access preferences for our Services, as well as track and understand email campaign effectiveness.

How And Why We Use Information

Purposes for Using Information:

We use information about you as mentioned above and for the purposes listed below:

• To provide our Services – for example, to set up and maintain your account, alert you on failed payments, or charge you for any of our paid Services. The legal basis for this processing is performance of our contract with you, cf. GDPR article 6 (1) (b);

• To monitor and analyze trends and better understand how users interact with our Services, which helps us improve our Services and make them easier to use. The legal basis for this processing is our legitimate interest in ensuring we are able to satisfy customer needs and expectations and to grow our business through developing new products and services, cf. 

  GDPR article 6 (1) (f):

• To market our services, including tailoring our marketing messages to groups of our users (for example, those who have a subscription plan with us or have been our user for a certain length of time), measuring and improving the effectiveness of our advertising, and better understanding user retention. For example, we may analyze how many individuals purchased a plan after receiving a marketing message, or the features used by those who continue to use our Services after a certain length of time. The legal basis for this processing is our legitimate interest in marketing our services, cf.

  GDPR article 6 (1) (f);

• To monitor and prevent any problems with our Services and protect the security of our Services. The legal basis for this processing is our legitimate interest in ensuring that our Services are secure and operate as intended, cf.

  GDPR article 6 (1) (f);

• To detect and prevent fraudulent transactions, spam, and other illegal activities, as well as to protect the rights and property of Hance and others. Please note that such may cause us to decline a transaction or restrict the use of our Services. The legal basis for this processing is our legitimate interest in preventing fraud and other unlawful activities, cf. 

  GDPR article 6 (1) (f)

• To communicate with you, for example through an email, about offers and promotions offered by Hance AS, solicit your feedback, or keep you up to date on Hance. Depending on your relationship with us, the legal basis for this processing is either your consent, cf. GDPR article 6 (1) (a) or our legitimate interest in communicating with our customers, cf. GDPR article 6

  (1) (f); and

• For book-keeping, information security and other legal requirements. The legal basis for processing is to ensure compliance with legal obligations, cf.

  GDPR article 6 (1) (c).

Sharing Information

How We Share Information:
We never sell our users' private personal data.
We share information about you in the limited circumstances spelled out below and with appropriate safeguards on your privacy:

• Supplier

  We may share information about you with supplier and independent contractors as necessary to provide our Services to you. This includes suppliers that help us provide our Services to you (like payment processors, email delivery services, customer support services and marketing services). We require suppliers to sign a data processing agreement with us in order to ensure that they do not use your personal data other than when required to provide services to us and that their processing of personal data is compliant with our legal obligations.

• Legal Requests

  We may disclose information about you in response to a subpoena, court order, or other governmental request.

• To Protect Rights, Property, and Others

  We may disclose information about you when we believe, in good faith, that disclosure is reasonably necessary to protect the property or rights of Hance AS, third parties, or the public at large.

• Business Transfers

  In connection with any merger, sale of company assets, or acquisition of all or a portion of our business by another company, or in the unlikely event that Hance AS goes out of business or enters bankruptcy, user information would likely be one of the assets that is transferred or acquired by a third party. If any of these events were to happen, this Privacy Policy would continue to apply to your information and the party receiving your information may continue to use your information, but only consistent with this Privacy Policy.

• With Your Consent

  We may share and disclose information with your consent or at your direction. For example, we may share your information with third parties with which you authorize us to do so.

• Aggregated or De-Identified Information

  We may share information that has been aggregated or reasonably de-identified, so that the information could not reasonably be used to identify you. For instance, we may publish aggregate statistics about the use of our Services and we may share a hashed version of your email address to facilitate customized ad campaigns on other platforms.

How Long We Keep Information

We generally discard information about you when we no longer need the information for the purposes for which we collect and use it–which are described in the section above on How and Why We Use Information–and we are not legally required to continue to keep it.
As example, when you close your account we remove all references to your account from our database and shared services at the time of closure, but we may keep references to your data in backups for up to 30 days, and certain personal data may also be retained due to legal obligations related book-keeping obligations.

Security

While no online service is 100% secure, we work very hard to protect information about you against unauthorized access, use, alteration, or destruction, and take reasonable measures to do so, such as monitoring our Services for potential vulnerabilities and attacks. Additionally, we secure data and encrypt data at rest, including storing credentials as salted bcrypt hashes.

International Data Transfers

Some of our suppliers are located and process personal data outside of the European Economic Area. We ensure that additional safeguards are implemented with respect to these suppliers to ensure an adequate level data protection as required by the GDPR. This typically means that the supplier needs to sign the European Commission’s Standard Contractual Clauses prior to any processing of personal data can take place.

Your rights

If you are located in certain countries, including those that fall under the scope of the European General Data Protection Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (AKA the “GDPR”), data protection laws give you rights with respect to your personal data, subject to any exemptions provided by the law, including the rights to:

• Request access to your personal data;

• Request correction or deletion of your personal data;

• Object to our use and processing of your personal data;

• Request that we limit our use and processing of your personal data; and

• Request portability of your personal data.

You can usually access, correct, or delete your personal data using your account settings and tools that we offer, but if you aren’t able to do that, or you would like to contact us about one of the other rights, scroll up to How you Can Reach Us to, well, find out how to reach us.

Privacy Policy Changes

Although most changes are likely to be minor, Hance AS may change its Privacy Policy from time to time. Hance AS encourages visitors to frequently check this page for any changes to its Privacy Policy. If we make changes, we will notify you by revising the change log below, and, in some cases, we may provide additional notice (such as adding a statement to our homepage or sending you a notification through email or news section). Your further use of the Services after a change to our Privacy Policy will be subject to the updated policy.
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Last updated: 6th of April 2024