Privacy Policy

December 2021 Version

Privacy Policy

Date Posted and Effective Date: December 14, 2021

Last Modified: December 14, 2021

AuditNet® LLC (“AuditNet”, “we,” “us,” or “our”) owns and operates the www.AuditNet.org website ("Site") and provides an array of products and services (collectively, our “Services”). We want you to feel comfortable using the Site, so we have created this Privacy Policy to inform you of what information we may collect from or about you in connection with the Site and how we may use and disclose that information. It also describes your choices regarding use, access, deletion, and correction of your personal information.

IF YOU ARE A CALIFORNIA RESIDENT, this Privacy Policy also informs you about the personal information we collect from or about you in other contexts, including personal information collected online or offline in connection with our Services and your interactions with us. California residents can learn more about the personal information we collect from or about you, including how we may use and share it, as well as your rights under California law, in the Privacy Policy’s Supplemental Notice for California Residents found here (which is incorporated in and a part of this Privacy Policy).

Please take a moment to review the terms of this Privacy Policy. By using the Site or our Services, you agree to accept the terms of this Privacy Policy. If you do not agree to the terms of this Privacy Policy, please do not use the Site or Services.

I. Personal Information

A. Active Collection and Use:

In order to access the Site, services and the information available on the Site, you may be required to register with the Site and provide some personal information, such as your name and email address or other contact information. If you provide us with personal information, we will retain and may use that information to contact or respond to you. We also may retain or use your information for the period of time needed to pursue legitimate business interests. Legitimate business interests may include customizing the services we provide to you and to ensure compliance with AuditNet policies and applicable laws, ensuring you are satisfied with AuditNet’s services, authentication confirmation for secure handling of your accounts, etc. We may share your personal information with our partners that provide similar products or services so they may promote such products and services for sale in conjunction with AuditNet’s products and services. If you do not want us to share your personal information with these companies, contact us at info@AuditNet.org. Our Site and Services collect, store and process this personal information on servers in the United States of America.
When you provide us with personal information about your contacts, we will only use this information for the specific reason for which it is provided. If you believe that one of your contacts has provided us with your personal information and you would like to request that it be removed from our database, please contact us at info@AuditNet.org.

We may use information collected via the Site to improve the content of our Site and Services, to customize the Site and Services to your preferences, to communicate information to you (if you have requested it), for our marketing and research purposes, to ensure you are no longer contacted in the event you unsubscribe from marketing campaigns, to market future available software and Services of relevant interest to you, and for any other purpose specified.

B. Aggregate Information and Passive Information Collection:

From time to time, we may collect general, non-personal, statistical information about the use of the Site, such as how many visitors visit a specific page on the Site, how long they stay on that page, and which hyperlinks, if any, they “click” on. We collect this information through the use of technologies such as “cookies” and “IP addresses,” which are discussed in greater detail below. Our system may also automatically collect operational information about the technology you use, such as your browser, type of computer, operating systems, internet service providers and the domain name of the websites from which you linked to our Site. We collect this information in order to determine which areas of the Site are most popular and to enhance the Site for visitors. We may use this information for security purposes, to detect and to block security breaches and to provide you with a safe online environment. We may also share this information with our partners.

C. IP Addresses:

An IP address is a number that's automatically assigned to your computer whenever you're surfing the web. Web servers, the computers that “serve up” web pages automatically identify your computer by its IP address. AuditNet collects IP addresses for purposes of system administration, to report aggregate information to third parties and to track the use of the Site. When visitors request pages from the Site, our servers log the visitors' IP addresses. It is not our practice to link IP addresses to anything personally identifiable, which means that a visitor's session will be logged. However, we reserve the right to use IP addresses to identify a visitor when we feel it is necessary to enforce compliance with the Site's policies or to protect AuditNet, the Site, its visitors, or others.

D. Cookies, Beacons and Successor Technologies:

We partner with a third party to display advertising on our Site or to manage our advertising on other sites. Our third party partner may use cookies or similar technologies in order to provide you advertising based upon your browsing activities and interests. If you wish to opt out of interest-based advertising click here or if located in the European Union click here. Please note you will continue to receive generic ads.

In addition, AuditNet and our partners use cookies and similar technologies to analyze trends, administer the website, track users’ movements around the Site, and to gather demographic information about our user base as a whole.

Cookies are pieces of information that a website transfers to an individual's hard drive for record-keeping purposes. Cookies make web-surfing easier for you by saving your preferences while you're at the Site. The use of cookies is an industry standard--you'll find them at most websites. By showing how and when visitors use the Site, cookies help us see which areas are popular and which are not. Information such as the total number of visitors and pages viewed is most easily tracked with cookies. We may use the information from cookies to make improvements and updates to the Site and to tailor our services to our visitors' needs. For example, the Site allows visitors to increase the font size of the text contained on the Sites to make it easier to read. Cookies enable the Site to automatically use your preferred font size the next time you visit the Site. You have the option of disabling cookies using your browser preferences. Most browsers are initially set up to accept cookies. You can reset your browser to refuse all cookies or indicate when a cookie is being sent. However, please be aware that some features of the Site may not function properly or may be slower if you refuse cookies. To manage Flash cookies, please click here.

Site pages may contain electronic images known as web beacons--also referred to as single-pixel gifs--that permit AuditNet to count users who have visited those pages and for other related website statistics (e.g., recording the popularity of certain website content and verifying system and server integrity). Web beacons are used to compile aggregated statistics concerning the use of the Site. Web beacons collect only a limited set of information including a cookie number, the time and date of a page view, and a description of the page on which the web beacon resides. Web beacons/pixels may also be used by advertising partners to infer the presence of a common user across multiple devices or browsers--also known as cross device tracking--in order to provide personalized advertising on devices inferred from browsing patterns.

In addition to the foregoing, we use Google Analytics Demographics and Interest Reporting (implemented based on Display Advertising), which will track certain personal information of yours. Information collected about you is limited to age, gender and affinity categories. If you would like to opt out of the collection of such information you may do so by clicking here. Further, Google has a browser plugin (for Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera) that prevents your data from being collected and used by Google Analytics. You can download the plugin by clicking here.

E. User Data Supplementation:

We may receive information about you from other sources, including publicly available databases or social media sites, and combine this data with information we already have about you. This helps us to update, expand and analyze our records, identify new customers, and provide products and services that may be of interest to you.

Examples of the types of personal information that may be obtained from public sources or purchased from third parties and combined with information we already have about you (for the purpose of creating more tailored advertising and products), may include:

· Purchased marketing data about our customers from third parties

· Data and other information available publicly on social media sites

F. Do Not Track Signals:

At this time we do not have the ability to comply with any setting within your web browser that would send “do not track” signals.

II. Disclosure of Personal Information

A. Personally Identifiable Information:

Except for the limited situations discussed in this Privacy Policy (including the Supplemental Notice for California Residents found here), we will not share your personally identifiable information with any third parties. We may sometimes use third parties to perform certain services for us, such as general administration, cloud providers, hosting the Site, sending postal mail and providing data analysis. We may also provide personally identifiable information to those businesses when that information is necessary for them to respond to your requests or otherwise perform their duties. These third party service providers are authorized to use your personal information only as necessary to provide these services to us.

B. Legal Notice:

In certain situations, AuditNet may be required to disclose personal data in response to lawful requests by public authorities, including to meet national security or law enforcement requirements.

We may also disclose your personal information as required by law, such as to comply with a subpoena or other legal process, when we believe in good faith that disclosure is necessary to protect our rights, protect your safety or the safety of others, investigate fraud, or respond to a government request. If AuditNet is involved in a merger, acquisition, or sale of all or a portion of its assets, you will be notified via email and/or a prominent notice on our website, of any change in ownership, uses of your personal information, and choices you may have regarding your personal information. We may also disclose your personal information to any other third party with your prior consent.

As AuditNet develops, we may buy other businesses or their assets or sell our business assets. Customer information is generally one of the business assets involved in such transactions. Thus, in the event that AuditNet or all of its assets are acquired, or in cases of liquidation, dissolution, reorganization or other transfer of the business, customer information, including any visitor information collected through the Site, may be one of the transferred assets.

Finally, AuditNet reserves the right to disclose visitor information in special cases when we have reason to believe that disclosing this information is necessary to identify, contact or bring legal action against someone who may be causing injury to or interference with (either intentionally or unintentionally) AuditNet rights or property, other visitors, or anyone else that could be harmed by such activities. AuditNet also reserves the right to disclose visitor information when we believe in good faith that the law requires it.

C. Aggregate Information:

We may group information into aggregate visitor data in order to describe the use of the Site to our existing or potential business partners or other third parties, or in response to a government request.

III. Links to Other Sites

Please be aware that when you are on the Site, you could be directed to other sites that are beyond our control. There may be links to other sites from the Site's pages that take you outside our Site. These other sites may send their own cookies or other tracking technologies to visitors to collect data or solicit personal information. The privacy policies of these other sites may be significantly different from this Privacy Policy. We are not responsible for the privacy practices of these other sites and cannot guarantee the security of any of your personal information collected there.

IV. Security:

Protecting the security of your personal information is very important to us. When you transmit personal information from your computer to our servers, your information is protected by both a “firewall” (a combination of computer hardware and software that helps keep unauthorized visitors from accessing information within our computer network) and industry standard SSL (secure socket layer) encryption. Once we receive your transmission, we will take reasonable precautions to ensure its security on our systems. While we utilize all of our security and data protection preventative measures, the internet is inherently insecure. As a result, while AuditNet strives to protect your personal information and privacy, we cannot guarantee or warrant the security of any information you disclose or transmit to us online.

Users are required to sign-in to specific secured areas of the Site and services using a user ID and password. These authenticate the user and are designed to safeguard against unauthorized access and use of a user's account. The user ID and password are used on a secure web page and encrypted when transmitted over the internet.

The safety and security of your information also depends on you. If you have access to password-protected features, never share your password with anyone else, notify us promptly if you believe your password security has been breached, and remember to log off of this site before you leave your computer. Similarly, any personally identifiable information or personally sensitive data that you disclose through online forums hosted on the Site, may be collected and used by others. We recommend caution when giving out personal information to others in these public online forums.

If at any point you suspect or become aware of a security incident (i.e. your password is stolen or you receive suspicious communication from someone holding themselves out to be an Auditnet employee or from a fake website claiming to be affiliated with AuditNet), please forward the communication to us or report the incident by email to info@AuditNet.org, or in writing to AuditNet at AuditNet LLC, Attn: Legal, 2900 University Blvd., Ames, Iowa 50010, as soon as possible.

V. Privacy Policy for Children:

We do not knowingly collect information from children under the age of 13 on the Site. If you are under the age of 13, please do not provide any personal information to us. If we become aware that we have collected personal information from a child under the age of 13, we will make commercially reasonable efforts to delete such information from our database.

VI. Changes to These Terms:

The terms of this Privacy Policy may change from time to time. We will notify you of any material changes to this Privacy Policy by posting a notice, on the homepage of the Site for a reasonable period of time prior to the changes becoming effective, that this Privacy Policy has been updated, and by changing the “Last Modified” date at the top of this Privacy Policy. We encourage you to check this page periodically for any changes. Your continued use of the Site following the posting of changes to these terms will mean you accept those changes.

VII. Access and Review of Your Personal Information:

When using our Site and Services, we make a good faith effort to provide you with access to your personal information and either correct this data if it is inaccurate or delete inaccurate data at your request if it is not otherwise required to be retained by law or for legitimate business purposes.

Upon request, AuditNet will provide you with information about whether we hold, or process on behalf of a third party, any of your personal information. To request this information please contact us at info@AuditNet.org.

You may access, correct, or request deletion of your personal information by contacting us at info@AuditNet.org. Your personal information is retained for only as long as is necessary for the purpose for which it was collected. In certain circumstances we may be required by law to retain your personal information or may need to retain your personal information in order to continue providing a service.

We will respond to these requests within a reasonable timeframe.

Users must identify themselves and the information requested to be accessed, corrected or removed prior to processing such requests, and we may decline to process such requests that are deemed unreasonable or inappropriate. In any case, the information access and data corrections are performed free of charge, except if doing so would require a disproportionate effort. Due to the methods that we maintain certain services, once your information is corrected or deleted; residual copies may take a period of time before they are deleted from our active systems and may remain in our backup systems.

IF YOU ARE A CALIFORNIA RESIDENT, you can learn more about your rights under California law, including how to exercise these rights, in the Supplemental Notice for California Residents found here.

VIII. International Privacy Principles

AuditNet is a global business. Personal information may be stored and processed in any country where AuditNet has operations or where AuditNet engages service providers. In particular, AuditNet collects and transfers to the United States personal information pursuant to the following legal bases (i) with your consent, (ii) to perform a contract with you, or (iii) to fulfill a compelling legitimate interest of AuditNet in a manner that does not outweigh your rights and freedoms.

AuditNet may transfer, access, or store personal information about you outside of the European Economic Area (“EEA”), Switzerland, United Kingdom, or another country that requires legal protections for international data transfer. Those countries (including the United States) may have data protection rules that are different from those of your country and may not have received a finding of “adequacy” from the European Union under Article 41 of the GDPR. For such transfers, AuditNet will ensure that an adequate level of protection is provided for the information by using one or more of the following approaches:

AuditNet may transfer personal information to countries that have privacy laws that have been recognized by the country from which the data are transferred as providing similar protections for the data.
AuditNet may enter into written agreements, such as standard contractual clauses, with recipients that require them to provide the same level of protection for the data.

AuditNet may rely on other transfer mechanisms approved by authorities in the country from which the data are transferred.

IX. Email or Newsletter Preferences

You may also be provided an option to choose to subscribe to an email list. If you subscribe to our electronic mailing list and later decide to opt-out, simply follow the instructions that are included in each email.

X. Questions:

At any time, if you believe that AuditNet has willingly violated the above Policy, please let us know by sending an email to info@AuditNet.org. AuditNet values your trust and will take the appropriate measures to ensure that the Site and services we provide to you are secure.

Any questions that you may have regarding this Privacy Policy should be directed to info@AuditNet.org, or alternatively, please write us at AuditNet LLC, Attn: Legal, 2900 University Blvd., Ames, Iowa 50010, United States.