Privacy Policy

Effective: 2023-02-08

For any privacy inquiries, including exercising your rights as a data subject described in section 13, please contact us at privacy@pollenmusicgroup.com.

1. Introduction

Pollen Music Group and its affiliates respect your privacy and are committed to protecting it. We provide this privacy statement to inform you of our policy and practices and of the choices you can make about the way your information is collected and used.

This privacy policy outlines the processing of information provided or collected on the sites and applications where this policy is posted in addition to the processing of information that may be collected offline within our physical properties such as our offices, testing facilities or recording studios. Where you use our services, or your personal data is processed in connection with such services, we will be the data controller of such information. Pollen Music Group is located at 1583 Sanchez St, San Francisco, CA 94131.

This privacy policy is written in accordance with applicable law in the places where we operate. These laws include the Data Protection Act 1998, Regulation 2016/679 of the European Parliament, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the Philippines Data Privacy Act, the Australian Privacy Act and any other laws that apply to personal data in respect of which we are subject. 

In some cases, we may provide additional data privacy notices specific to certain applications, scenarios, or regions. Those terms are to be read in conjunction with this policy. 

Some third-party sites or applications may not be covered by this policy and be covered by the third party’s own policy, this policy will not be readily available in that scenario. Pollen is not responsible for information entered into third party sites that this policy does not cover.

2. Scope of Privacy Statement

This privacy statement explains and describes:

• When This Privacy Statement Applies

• Our Use of Cookies

• What Personal Data Do We Collect?

• Legal Basis for Usage of Personal Data

• Use of Information

• Disclosure of Your information

• Retention of Your data

• Collection of Anonymous Information

• Information Security

• International Transfers

• Your Rights

• Feedback, including comments, questions and complaints

• Changes to the privacy statement

3. When This Privacy Statement Applies

This privacy statement applies:

• to your use of any of our services;

• where you apply to us for a job or work placement;

• your supply of services to us where this involves any personal data; and/or

• as a result of your relationship with one or more of our data processors.

In addition, this policy may apply to information collected from third parties. In this case, this policy will be clearly accessible within the third party interface.

4. Our Use of Cookies

A cookie is a small piece of text based information that is generated by our web server and is stored within the memory of your computer or stored on your hard disk, which can be later retrieved by your web browser and communicated to the web server that issued it. We use cookies to enhance your interaction and convenience with our website and do not use cookies to record any personal information.

Cookies only store information about a current or prior web session on our servers or information that you have asked to be stored for convenience, such as “Remember Me” information. Any statistical data is aggregated and used by us and our web monitoring service provider to improve our services and at no time do we personally identify you as the source of that data.

You may refuse to accept cookies by activating the setting on your web browser which allows your web browser to refuse cookies. However, if you select this setting you may be unable to access certain parts of our website and this may have a detrimental effect on your experience and the web based services that we can offer you. Unless you have adjusted your web browser settings to refuse cookies, our systems will automatically issue you with a cookie when you visit our website and you are deemed to have consented to our use of this cookie. The purpose for which the cookie is used is for identification of a specific session on our website e.g. when a user is logged on to the website to identify what permissions they have and what items are in their shopping cart. Session based cookies are deleted and destroyed at the end of the session. Any other cookie based information may be stored and recovered by your web browser. You may delete the cookies stored on your computer at any time.

4.1 What Cookies Do We Use?

When interacting with our web site or our other network connected applications we may store cookies on your device. We use cookies provided by some third party providers like Google Analytics, Google Ads, and our host Squarespace. Based on your choices in our cookie consent banner the following cookies may be saved locally in your web browser:

Necessary

Necessary cookies are required to enable the basic features of our websites, such as providing secure log-in or adjusting your consent preferences. These cookies do not store any personally identifiable data.

Analytics

Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with our websites. These cookies help provide information on metrics such as the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc. Currently all our cookies come from third parties and generally enable us to monitor website traffic and performance.

Advertisement

Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with customized advertisements based on the pages you visited previously and to analyze the effectiveness of the ad campaigns. Some advertisement cookies may be saved on your system from Youtube.

Ignoring strictly necessary cookies, the cookies we use are as follows:

5. What Personal Data Do We Collect?

‘Personal data’ is any information that can be used to identify you or that we can link to you.

Where you use our services, we will collect personal data you voluntarily provide to us, including when you:

• Communicate with us via email or other channels;

• Sign up for or request that we send you newsletters, alerts, or other materials;

• Sign up for a webinar or event;

• Apply to work with us;

• Participate as a data subject in our private or commercial research, or other projects; and

• Respond to our communications or requests for information.

In accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and other applicable laws, we would like to inform you about the personal data that we collect and process. We may collect the following personal data:

Registration information: When you register for studies or appointments, create accounts, or sign documents, we may collect your first and last name, date of birth, address, phone number, education, occupation, household income, race and ethnicity, and technical preferences and capabilities (e.g. computer literacy, voice assistant usage, etc). We may also ask you if you wear glasses or have a hearing impairment.

Employment Information: When you apply to work with us you may need to provide personal information such as education, employment history, racial background, and state of health. 

Information from communication channels: If you send us information one-to-one or within a limited group via email, SMS, or other communication channels, we may collect this information where permitted by applicable law.

Information from third parties: We may collect information from third parties such as your employer, regulatory authorities, recruitment agencies, credit reporting agencies, and information or service providers.

Information from other sources: We may collect information from social media platforms about your interaction with our content. This information will be governed by the privacy settings, policies, and procedures of the applicable social media platform.

Visit information: We may collect details of your visits to our online services, including traffic volume, logs (IP address, location, technical information, identifiers), and resources accessed.

Biometric data: We may collect biometric data such as facial images, iris patterns, voice recordings or fingerprint data, which allows for unique identification of a person. However, unless otherwise specified, Pollen and our data processors do not process biometric data to uniquely identify a person. Biometric data may be used in machine learning as training or validation data.

We will handle any unsolicited information in accordance with law, including destroying or de-identifying such information where we are required to do so.

6. Legal Basis for Usage of Personal Data

Where we intend to use your personal data, we rely on the following legal grounds:

Performance of a contract: We may need to collect and use your personal data to enter into a contract with you or to perform a contract that you have with us. For example, where you place an order for our transcription services and where we respond to your requests and provide you with services in accordance with our terms and conditions or other applicable terms of business agreed with you or with your employing organization.

Legitimate interests: Where we consider use of your information as being (a) non-detrimental to you, (b) within your reasonable expectations, and (c) necessary for our own, or a third party’s legitimate purpose, we may use your personal data, which may include:

• for our own direct marketing or continued communication;

• the prevention of fraud;

• our own internal administrative purposes;

• personalisation of the service(s) we provide to you;

• ensuring network and information security, including preventing unauthorized access to electronic communications networks and stopping damage to computer and electronic communication systems;

• reporting possible criminal acts or threats to public security to a competent authority.

Compliance with a legal obligation: We may be required to process your information due to legal requirements, including employment laws, tax laws and other regulatory provisions applicable to us as a provider of digital, audio and video transcription specialist offering a range of transcription and recording services.

Consent: You may be asked to provide your consent in connection with certain services that we offer, for example in respect of any processing of your personal data for our marketing purposes where you or your employing organization is not our client, or in respect of certain special categories of personal data such as your health or racial background for which we are legally obliged to gain your consent due to the sensitive nature of such information and the circumstances in which it is gathered or transferred. Where we are reliant upon your consent, you may withdraw this at any time by contacting us in accordance with section 13 below.

7. Use of Information

We use your information in order to provide you with, and improve, our services. Other third parties may access your information when performing services on behalf of Pollen as data processors. Consistent with applicable law we may use your information in the following ways:

• To process orders, deal with any enquiry and/or to send you information about our products and offers from time to time;

• To use your credit card details which are taken through a secure process for processing by your card provider, our card processor and our bank;

• To respond to your enquiries;

• To carry out our obligations arising from any contracts entered into between you and us;

• To facilitate our internal business operations, including to fulfill our legal or regulatory requirements;

• To maintain and develop our relationship with you;

• For our business purposes, including data analysis, submitting invoices, detecting, preventing, and responding to actual or potential fraud, illegal activities, or intellectual property infringement;

• To maintain and update our records including our database of contacts;

• To evaluate, recruit, and hire personnel;

• To measure the popularity and effectiveness of services such as newsletters and seminar invitations, in order to improve what we offer to you and other recipients;

• To ensure that content from our online services is presented in the most effective and secure manner for you and the device on which you are accessing our services, and to troubleshoot, and improve such online services;

• To allow you to use or access interactive features or secure areas of our online services, when you choose to do so;

• For research, planning, service development, security or risk management;

• As we believe reasonably necessary or appropriate to: comply with our legal obligations; respond to legal process or requests for information issued by government authorities or other third parties; or protector your, our, or others’ rights;

We may not be able to do some or all of these things without your personal data.

8. Disclosure of Your Information

We may, in providing our services and operating our business, allow access to your personal data to the different entities within our group for our internal administrative purposes such as billing, promoting our events and services, and providing you or your organization with services, provided in all instances that such processing is consistent with this privacy statement and applicable law.

We may exchange your personal data with third-party service providers contracted to us where any of the following apply:

• You have consented to us sharing your personal data in this way.

• We deem reasonably necessary to provide you with the services that you have required at any particular time.

• Such sharing is provided for under contract, including our terms and conditions for any particular service that we may provide to you.

• Such sharing is to law enforcement bodies or other government authority.

• We need to enforce or apply our terms and conditions to which you have agreed (or other terms that have been agreed to apply to our relationship with you or your employing organization).

• It is necessary to protect the rights and interests, property, or our safety or the safety of our clients or others.

• It is relevant in the circumstances to disclose the information to parties with whom we have co-promotional arrangements (such as jointly sponsored events, external venues, or caterers).

• Our agents or contractors who assist us in providing our services require such information, for example in fulfilling requests for information, receiving and sending communications, updating marketing lists, analyzing data, providing support services or in other tasks from time to time. Our agents and contractors will only use your information to the extent necessary to perform their functions.

• We use third party service providers to provide services that involve data processing, for example archival, web-hosting, analytics providers in connection with the operation of our online services, event hosting, information technology providers, auditing, reference checking, professional advisory (including legal, accounting, financial and business consulting), mailing vendor, delivery, technology, website, research, banking, payment, client contact, data processing, insurance, forensic, litigation support, marketing and security services.

• All, or most, of our assets are merged with or acquired by a third party, or we expand or re-organise our business, in which case your personal data may form part of the transferred or merged assets.

• We are under a legal, regulatory or professional obligation to do so (for example, in order to comply with a Court Order).

Any third parties that we may share your data with are obliged to keep your details securely, and to use them only to fulfill the service they provide you on our behalf. When such third parties no longer need your personal data to fulfill this service, they will dispose of such details in line with our policy unless they are themselves under a legal obligation to retain the information. If we wish to pass your sensitive personal data onto a third party we will only do so once we have obtained your consent, unless we are legally required to do otherwise.

We own the database rights in the information collected via our online services. We do not sell, rent, or otherwise share information that reasonably identifies you or your organization with unaffiliated entities for their independent use except as expressly described in this privacy statement or with your express prior permission.

We may share information that does not reasonably identify you or your organization as permitted by applicable law.

9. Retention of Your Data

We retain the information we collect no longer than is reasonably necessary to fulfill the purposes that such data was originally collected in accordance with our internal data retention policies or to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations.

10. Collection of Anonymous Information

We sometimes collect anonymous information from visits to our site to help us provide better customer service. For example, we measure visitor activity on our Site, but we do so in ways that keeps the information anonymous as more particularly set out in Section 4. We use the information that we collect to measure the number of visitors to the different areas of our Site, and to help us make our Site more useful to visitors. This includes analyzing these logs periodically to measure the traffic through our servers, the number of pages visited and the level of demand for pages and topics of interest. None of the information constituted in such logs will include or constitute personal data and such logs may be preserved indefinitely and used at any time and in any way to prevent security breaches and to ensure the integrity of the data on our servers.

11. Information Security

The security of the information you provide is of the utmost importance to us. We employ many processes and procedures to help keep your data safe and protect it from unauthorized access, disclosure, use and modification. Our security measures are routinely reviewed to ensure we are following best practices as technology changes. However, please be aware that even the best security practices are not perfect or impenetrable.

12. International Transfers

Pollen is headquartered in the United States, however, we operate globally. Your personal data is likely to be transferred, stored and processed on servers in the United States owned either by us or one or more of our data processors. To perform these transfers safely, we may implement Standard Contractual Clauses (SCCs), or Data Protection Agreements (DPAs) where applicable by law, obtain your consent for transfer, or other lawful means of transferring personal information.

13. Your Rights

Under applicable data protection legislation, we have a duty of care to ensure that your personal data is stored securely and accurately. In addition, as a data subject, you have rights available to you for managing the use of your personal data at Pollen.

To exercise any and all rights above please contact us at privacy@pollenmusicgroup.com.

Your rights may include:

• Accessing, correcting, updating, and deleting personal data that we and our data processors hold about you;

• Choosing whether to receive our newsletter, promotions, research opportunities and other communications that we think may be of interest to you;

• Where consent is the sole legal basis for processing your information, withdrawing your consent;

• Objecting to or requesting the restriction of our use of your personal data;

• Lodging a complaint with a supervisory authority.

• If you are a citizen of the UK you can use this tool to lodge a complaint with our supervisory authority (ICO).

• If you are a citizen of the EU you may lodge a complaint with your local supervisory authority.

In response to data access requests, we will provide you with the following information (proof of identity is required):

• Identity and the contact details of the person or organization that has determined how and why to process your data.

• The purpose of the processing as well as the legal basis for processing.

• If the processing is based on our legitimate interests or a third party, information about those interests.

• The categories of personal data collected, stored and processed.

• Recipient(s) or categories of recipients that the data is/will be disclosed to.

• How long the data will be stored.

• The source of personal data if it wasn’t collected directly from you.

• Any details and information of automated decision making, such as profiling, and any meaningful information about the logic involved, as well as the significance and expected consequences of such processing.

14. Changes to the privacy statement

Please note this privacy statement will change from time to time. We expect most such changes to be minor, but there may be changes that are more significant.

Regardless, we will post those changes on this page and, if the changes are significant, we will also provide a more prominent notice.

15. General Disclaimers

In regards to you use of our websites and other network enabled services (Sites) the following disclaimers are made:

• Neither we nor any of our affiliates, directors, employees or other representatives will be liable for losses arising out of or in connection with the use of our Sites to the extent permissible by law.

• We are only providing our Sites and their contents on a “as is” basis and we make no (and expressly disclaim all) representations and/or warranties of any kind with respect to our Sites or their contents including without limitation warranties of merchantability and/or fitness for a particular purpose. In addition, we do not represent or warrant that the information accessible from or via our Sites are accurate, complete or current.

• The limitations of liability in relation to our Sites apply to all damages of any kind, including, without limitation, compensatory, direct, indirect or consequential damages, loss of data, income, production or profit, loss of or damage to property and claims of third parties.

• The limitations of liability in relation to our Sites do not limit our liability to the extent that it cannot be limited and/or excluded by applicable law.

• You are liable for any telephone charges and any charges made by your internet service provider as a result of your use of the internet service.