Privacy Policy

Last updated: May 30, 2022

The privacy of your data — and it is your data, not ours! — is a big deal to us. In this policy, we lay out: what data we collect and why; how your data is handled; and your rights to your data. We promise we never sell your data: never have, never will.

What we collect and why

Our guiding principle is to collect only what we need. Here’s what that means in practice:

Identity & access

When you sign up for our product, we only ask for your email address. That’s just so you can create your account, log in to it later, and we can send you updates or other essential information.

Billing information

Our payment process is conducted by our online reseller and payment processor Paddle (Paddle.com). When you pay for our product, the billing information you provide (such as credit card and billing address) is handled by Paddle. That’s so they can charge you for Service, calculate taxes due, and send you invoices. See the Paddle Privacy Policy for details.

Website interactions

When you browse our marketing pages or applications, your browser automatically shares certain information such as which operating system and browser version you are using. We track that information, along with the pages you are visiting, page load timing, and which website referred you for statistical purposes like conversion rates and to test new designs. We sometimes track specific link clicks to help inform some design decisions. These web analytics data are tied to your IP address and user account if applicable and you are signed into our Services. Other web analytics we utilize are described further in the Cookies and Do Not Track section.

Cookies and Do Not Track

We do use persistent first-party cookies to store certain preferences, make it easier for you to use our applications, and support some in-house analytics.

We partner with Google for some marketing activities. If you are coming to us from a Google ad, Google will send a cookie to your browser to determine whether you visited UsefulFormulas.com because of a particular advertisement you viewed. This enables us to evaluate the effectiveness of these ads.

A cookie is a piece of text stored by your browser. It may help remember login information and site preferences. It might also collect information such as your browser type, operating system, web pages visited, duration of visit, content viewed, and other click-stream data. You can adjust cookie retention settings in your own browser. To learn more about cookies, including how to view which cookies have been set and how to manage and delete them, please visit: www.allaboutcookies.org.

Voluntary correspondence

When you write to us with a question or to ask for help, we keep that correspondence, including the email address, so that we have a history of past correspondences to reference if you reach out in the future.

Information we do not collect

We don’t collect any characteristics of protected classifications including age, race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, or physical and mental abilities or disabilities. You may provide these data voluntarily, such as if you include a pronoun preference in your email signature when writing into our Support team. We also do not collect any biometric data.

When we access or share your information

Our default practice is to not access your information. The only times we’ll ever access or share your info are:

To provide products or services you’ve requested. We do use some third-party services to run our applications and only to the extent necessary process some or all of your personal information via these third parties. We choose the services of trusted companies, here are the examples:

Google Analytics (Privacy Policy) - website and user analytics
Paddle (Privacy Policy) - billing information, payment process, invoicing
Google Firebase (Privacy Policy) - database, website hosting, user authentication

When required under applicable law.

Your rights with respect to your information

At UsefulFormulas.com, we apply the same data rights to all customers, regardless of their location. Currently some of the most privacy-forward regulations in place are the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”) and California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”) in the US. We recognize all of the rights granted in these regulations, except as limited by applicable law. These rights include:

Right to Know. You have the right to know what personal information is collected, used, shared or sold. We outline both the categories and specific bits of data we collect, as well as how they are used, in this privacy policy.
Right of Access. This includes your right to access the personal information we gather about you, and your right to obtain information about the sharing, storage, security and processing of that information.
Right to Correction. You have the right to request correction of your personal information.
Right to Erasure / “To be Forgotten”. This is your right to request, subject to certain limitations under applicable law, that your personal information be erased from our possession and, by extension, all of our service providers. Fulfillment of some data deletion requests may prevent you from using our services because our applications may then no longer work. In such cases, a data deletion request may result in closing your account.
Right to Complain. You have the right to make a complaint regarding our handling of your personal information with the appropriate supervisory authority.
Right to Restrict Processing. This is your right to request restriction of how and why your personal information is used or processed, including opting out of sale of personal information. (Again: we never have and never will sell your personal data.)
Right to Object. You have the right, in certain situations, to object to how or why your personal information is processed.
Right to Portability. You have the right to receive the personal information we have about you and the right to transmit it to another party.
Right to not be subject to Automated Decision-Making. You have the right to object and prevent any decision that could have a legal, or similarly significant, effect on you from being made solely based on automated processes. This right is limited, however, if the decision is necessary for performance of any contract between you and us, is allowed by applicable law, or is based on your explicit consent.
Right to Non-Discrimination. This right stems from the CCPA. We do not and will not charge you a different amount to use our products, offer you different discounts, or give you a lower level of customer service because you have exercised your data privacy rights. However, the exercise of certain rights (such as the right “to be forgotten”) may, by virtue of your exercising those rights, prevent you from using our Services.

If you have questions about exercising these rights or need assistance, please contact us at contact@usefulformulas.com.

How we secure your data

All data is encrypted via SSL/TLS when transmitted from our servers to your browser.

Data retention

We will retain your information for as long as necessary for the purposes set out in this Privacy Policy.

We will also retain and use this information to the extent necessary to comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes, enforce our legal agreements and protect our legal rights.

At any time, you can choose to delete your account. All your data will be permanently deleted when you delete your account. To delete your account, contact us at contact@usefulformulas.com.

Changes & questions

We may update this policy as needed to comply with relevant regulations and reflect any new practices. Whenever we make a significant change to our policies, we will also let you know in email or announce them on our website.

Have any questions, comments, or concerns about this privacy policy, your data, or your rights with respect to your information? Please get in touch by emailing us at contact@usefulformulas.com.

Adapted from the Basecamp open-source policies / CC BY 4.0