IBACOS, INC. PRIVACY POLICY
(Updated March 5, 2024)
IBACOS, INC., a Pennsylvania business corporation (“IBACOS”) is committed to protecting the privacy of the North Carolina Connected Communities (NC3) study participants and the users and visitors of our website. This Privacy Policy applies to information we collect about you in the study as well as your use of our website.
1. What information is collected?
By participating in the NC3 study as described on this website, we will collect information about you and your home, including name, address, phone number, email address; household demographics, home ownership or rental status, and building and equipment characteristics (building age, equipment installed on premise); utility data; operation of home equipment specific to this study; thermostat device settings and changes such as temperature settings; and survey results of your experiences and use of equipment in the home.
When you access our website, our enrollment/registration form asks you to provide certain personal information, including your name, email address, home address, and telephone number. We collect this personal information when you provide it to us.
In addition, each time you access our website, we may collect other information about you and your visit, including the pages you view, the links you click, and other actions taken in connection with our website and services. Additionally, we collect certain standard information that your browser sends to every website you visit, such as your Internet Protocol address, browser type and language, access dates and times, referring website addresses, etc.
In order to offer and provide a customized and personal service, our websites and applications may use cookies and similar technologies to store and help track information about you. Cookies are simply small pieces of data that are sent to your browser from a web server and stored on your computer’s hard drive. We use cookies to help remind us who you are and to help you navigate our sites during your visits. Cookies also can tell us where visitors go on a website and allow us to save preferences for you so you won’t have to re-enter them each time you visit. The use of cookies is relatively standard. You may refuse to accept browser cookies by activating the appropriate setting on your browser. However, if you select this setting, you may be unable to access certain parts of our Website. Unless you have adjusted your browser setting so that it will refuse cookies, our system will issue cookies when you direct your browser to our website.
By participating in the NC3 study and / or visiting this website, you consent to the use of cookies and similar technologies in accordance with this Privacy Policy.
2. How do we use the information we collect?
We use the personal information that you provide to us to contact you about enrollment in our research study and to send you updates, notifications, newsletters, and/or other correspondence related to our research study and your participation therein. To find out more about our research study and how your information will be used, please reference our frequently asked questions page here. We also use the information that we collect from our users to personalize user experience, improve our website and services, and manage and trach usage of our website. We may also use information collected through our website for research regarding the effectiveness of the website.
3. Disclosure of Your Information.
We may disclose personal information that we collect or you provide as described in this Privacy Policy to (i) our partners in the completion of the research study, which are listed here, (ii) our subsidiaries and affiliates, (iii) our contractors, service providers, and other third parties we use to support our business, (iv) a buyer or other successor in the event of a merger, divestiture, restructuring, reorganization, dissolution, or other sale or transfer of some or all of our assets, whether as a going concern or as part of bankruptcy, liquidation, or similar proceeding, in which personal information held by us about our website users is among the assets transferred, and (v) comply with any court order, law, or legal process, including to respond to any government or regulatory request, (vi) protect the legal rights of IBACOS and our users, or when we believe it is needed for fraud protection and credit risk reduction.
4. Unsolicited Email.
We will not send you any unsolicited emails except for information about the research study, your account, and promotional emails regarding our products and services. If at any time you want to opt-out of receiving communications from IBACOS, please contact us at the e-mail address in Paragraph 11, below. We will need your email address in order to ensure we handle your request correctly. We do not sell, lease, or rent our email lists to third parties.
5. Use of Third-Party Service Providers.
As mentioned in Paragraph 3, above, we may use third parties to provide services to us, including database storage and backups, research and surveys, and marketing communications. We may share your information, including personal information, with these third parties as necessary and appropriate to for those third parties to perform those functions and provide those services to us and to you.
6. Security.
Our website and data storage systems have security measures in place to protect the loss, misuse, and alteration of the information under our control. We will make our best efforts to store information collected by IBACOS and our partners in a secure operating environment that is not available to the public, but we cannot guarantee complete security, and therefore IBACOS cannot and does not ensure or warrant the security of your personal information. Unauthorized entry or use, hardware or software failure, and other factors could compromise the security of your information at any time. If you have any reason to believe that your information is being compromised or is no longer secure, you should notify us immediately.
7. Your State Privacy Rights
Colorado, Connecticut, Virginia, and Utah each provide their state residents with rights to:
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Confirm whether we process their personal information.
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Access and delete certain personal information.
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Data portability.
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Opt-out of personal data processing for targeted advertising and sales.
Colorado, Connecticut, and Virginia also provide their state residents with rights to:
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Correct inaccuracies in their personal information, taking into account the information's nature processing purpose.
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Opt-out of profiling in furtherance of decisions that produce legal or similarly significant effects.
To exercise any of these rights please contact IBACOS at the addresses set forth, below.
a. Specific Notice to California Residents
California Civil Code Section 1798.83, known as the “Shine the Light” act, permits customers who are California residents and who have provided us with “personal information” (as that term is defined in Section 1798.83) to request certain information about the disclosure of that information to third parties for their direct marketing purposes. If you are a California resident with questions regarding this, please contact us via phone, e-mail, or mail as set forth in Paragraph 11, below. The California Consumer Privacy Act (the “CCPA”) grants California residents certain rights with respect to disclosure, access, and deletion of personal information collected by a covered business. If you are a California resident with questions about your rights and personal information under CCPA, please contact us and we will cooperate to address your requests.
b. Specific Notice to Nevada Residents
Except as provided in this Privacy Policy, we do not sell, rent, or otherwise share your data to any third-party for a business or commercial purpose. Pursuant to Section 603A of the Nevada Revised Statutes, residents of Nevada may, at any time, submit a request to an operator of a website in Nevada directing the operator not to make any sale of any personal information the operator has collected or will collect about the consumer. If you are a Nevada resident and want to opt-out of the sale of any personal information at any future time, please submit a request to us at the e-mail or mailing address set forth below. In your request, please specify that you want to “Opt-Out of Sale of Personal Information in Nevada.” However, please know we do not currently sell data triggering that statute's opt-out requirements.
8. Privacy of Minors
We do not intentionally or knowingly collect or solicit personally identifiable information from children under 13. If you are a child under 13, please do not attempt to use the website or send any personal information about yourself to IBACOS. If we learn that we have inadvertently collected personal information from a child under 13, that personal information will be promptly deleted. If you believe that a child under 13 has provided personal information to IBACOS, please contact us immediately at the e-mail address set forth in Paragraph 11, below, so that we may delete any necessary information.
9. Legal Compliance
Nothing in this Policy is intended to conflict with any rights, duties or obligations established by laws or regulations that apply to you or your personal information and/or non-personal information, including laws and regulations regarding the protection of data, privacy and notice of data breaches. If any provision of this Privacy Policy conflicts with or is unenforceable pursuant to any law or regulation applicable to you and/or to your personal or non-personal information, then the applicable law or regulation will prevail, and we will comply with such law or regulation. State and/or federal law may require us to notify you (in certain circumstances defined by law or regulation) if your personal information has been compromised, and we will comply with our legal obligations in applicable jurisdictions.
10. Acceptance of this Policy and Changes to Our Privacy Policy
Please read this policy carefully to understand our policies and practices regarding your information and how we will collect and use it. If you use our website, you accept this Privacy Policy. We reserve the right to modify this Privacy Policy at any time by posting such change here. We encourage you to refer back to this page and review this Privacy Policy often for the latest information and the effective date of any modifications. You are responsible for periodically visiting our website and this Privacy Policy to check for any changes. If we decide to change this Privacy Policy, we will post a new policy and change the effective date of the Privacy Policy. Your continued use of our website after any such modifications are made constitutes your acknowledgement of, and agreement with, the Privacy Policy, as modified. If you do not agree with the terms of this Privacy Policy—as it stands now or as it may be amended from time to time—do not continue to use this website.
Questions or Concerns.
If you have questions about this Privacy Policy, want to report a known or suspected privacy or security breach, or want to submit privacy- or security-related questions or complaints, please contact us by:
Phone:
412.765.3664
Email:
Regular Mail:
2214 Liberty Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15222