Monlert Alpha

Privacy Policy

Last updated: 2nd July 2023

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 with respect to your data. We promise we never sell your data: never have, never will.

This policy is split into sections:

Introduction

This policy applies to our handling of information about site visitors, prospective customers, and customers and authorized users (in relation to their procurement of the services and management of their relationship with Monlert). We refer collectively to these categories of individuals as "you" throughout this policy.

However, this policy does not cover information about a customer's end users that Monlert receives from a customer, or otherwise processes on a customer's behalf, in connection with the services provided by Monlert to the customer pursuant to an applicable services agreement (including the content of messages of customer end users ("End User Communications")). Monlert processes End User Communications under the instructions of the relevant customer, which is the "data controller" or "business" (or occupies a similar role as defined in applicable privacy laws), as described in the applicable services agreement between such customer and Monlert. Monlert's obligations as a "data processor" or "service provider" with respect to such information are defined in such services agreement and applicable data protection addendum and are not made part of this policy.

If you are a customer's end user and you have questions about how your information is collected and processed through the services, please contact the organization who has provided your information to us for more information.

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 to Monlert, we ask for identifying information such as your name, email address, mobile phone number and your company name. That's so you can personalize your new account, and we can send you product updates and other essential information. We may also send you optional surveys from time to time to help us understand how you use our products and to make improvements. With your consent, we will send you our newsletter and other updates.

We also give you the option to add a profile photo that displays in our product.

We'll never sell your personal information to third parties, and we won't use your name or company in marketing statements without your permission either.

Billing information

If you sign up for a paid Monlert service, you will be asked to provide your payment information, billing address and a billing contact email address. Credit card information is submitted directly to our payment processor and doesn't hit Monlert's servers. We store a record of the payment transaction, including the last 4 digits of the credit card number, for purposes of account history, invoicing, and billing support. We store your billing address so we can charge you for service, calculate any sales tax due, send you invoices, and detect fraudulent credit card transactions.

Product interactions

We store on our servers the content that you upload or maintain in your Monlert account. This is so you can use our product as intended, for example, to create a monitor and receive alerts. We keep this content as long as your account is active. If you delete your account, we'll delete the content within 14 days.

General geolocation data

We may log account access by full IP address for security and fraud prevention purposes, and we keep this data for as long as your account is active.

Website interactions

We collect information about your browsing activity for analytics and statistical purposes such as conversion rate testing and experimenting with new product designs and features. This includes, for example, your browser and operating system versions, your IP address, which web pages you visited and how long they took to load, and which website referred you to us. If you have an account and are signed in, these web analytics data may get tied to your IP address and user account until your account is no longer active.

Anti-bot assessments

We use CAPTCHA at some points in our application to mitigate brute force logins and as a means of spam protection. We have a legitimate interest in protecting our application and the broader Internet community from credential stuffing attacks and spam. On certain forms in our application, the CAPTCHA service evaluates various information (e.g., IP address, how long the visitor has been on the page, mouse movements) to try to detect if the activity is from an automated program instead of a human. The CAPTCHA service then provides Monlert with the spam score results; we do not have access to the evaluated information.

Advertising and Cookies

Monlert may run contextual adverts (ads) on various third-party platforms. Users who click on one of our ads will be sent to the Monlert website. Where permissible under law, we may load an ad-company script on their browsers that sets a third-party cookie and sends information to the ad network to enable evaluation of the effectiveness of our ads, e.g., which ad they clicked and which keyword triggered the ad, and whether they performed certain actions such as clicking a button or submitting a form.

We also use persistent first-party cookies to keep you logged in to the Monlert application, store certain preferences, and perform A/B testing.

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 and accept or block individual cookies in your browser settings, although our app won't work and other aspects of our service may not function properly if you turn cookies off.

Voluntary correspondence

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

We also store information you may volunteer, for example, written responses to surveys.

When we access or disclose your information

To provide products or services you've requested.

We use some third-party subprocessors to help run our application and provide the Services to you. These are listed below (we have GDPR-compliant data processing agreements with them all):

We also use third-party processors for other business functions such as managing newsletter subscriptions, sending customer surveys and analytical data collection. These are listed below:

We may disclose your information at your direction if you integrate a third-party service into your use of our application. For example, we may allow you, at your option, to connect your Slack account to your Monlert account so that you can use Slack to receive alerts.

No humans at Monlert look at your content except for limited purposes with your express permission, for example, if an error occurs that stops an automated process from working and requires manual intervention to fix. These are rare cases, and when they happen, we look for root cause solutions as much as possible to avoid them recurring. We may also access your data if required in order to respond to legal process (see "When required under applicable law" below).

To exclude you from seeing our ads. Where permissible by law and if you have a Monlert account, we may disclose a one-way hash of your email address with ad companies to exclude you from seeing our ads.

To help you troubleshoot or squash a software bug, with your permission. If at any point we need to access your content to help you with a support case, we will ask for your consent before proceeding.

To investigate, prevent, or take action regarding abuse or misuse. Accessing a customer's account when investigating potential abuse is a measure of last resort. We want to protect the privacy and safety of both our customers and the people reporting issues to us, and we do our best to balance those responsibilities throughout the process. If we discover you are using our products for an inappropriate purpose, we will take action as necessary, including notifying appropriate authorities where warranted.

Aggregated and de-identified data. We may aggregate and/or de-identify information collected through the services. We may use de-identified or aggregated data for any purpose, including marketing or analytics.

When required under applicable law. Monlert is based in the UK, but uses third-party processors that are located around the world including in the EU and USA.

Finally, if Monlert is acquired by or merges with another company we'll notify you well before any of your personal information is transferred or becomes subject to a different privacy policy.

Your rights with respect to your information

At Monlert, we strive to apply the same data rights to all customers, regardless of their location. Some of these rights include:

Many of these rights can be exercised by signing in and updating your account information. Please note that certain information may be exempt from such requests under applicable law. For example, we need to retain certain information in order to provide our services to you.

In some cases, we also need to take reasonable steps to verify your identity before responding to a request, which may include, at a minimum, depending on the sensitivity of the information you are requesting and the type of request you are making, verifying your name and email address. If we are unable to verify you, we may be unable to respond to your requests.

If you have questions about exercising these rights or need assistance, please contact us by sending an email to support@monlert.com. If an authorized agent is corresponding on your behalf, we will need written consent with a signature from the account holder before proceeding.

Depending on applicable law, you may have the right to appeal our decision to deny your request, if applicable. You also have the right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority. If you are in the EU or UK, you can contact your data protection authority to file a complaint or learn more about local privacy laws.

How we secure your data

We follow industry standard best practices including, but not limited to:

What happens when you delete content in your account

In our application we give you the option to delete content. Most content is permanently deleted immediately, and we are not able to retrieve it for you. However, there are a few cases where we retain the data in a hidden state for 7 days, after which it will be permanently deleted.

If you choose to cancel your account, your content will become immediately inaccessible, but kept in a hidden state for 14 days, after which it will be permanently deleted. This applies both for cases when an account owner directly cancels and for auto-canceled accounts.

Copies of your content may be held in backups of our application database for up to 30 days after its permanent deletion. Altogether, any content deleted in your account should be purged from all of our systems and logs within 90 days.

Data retention

We keep your information for the time necessary for the purposes for which it is processed. The length of time for which we retain information depends on the purposes for which we collected and use it and your choices, after which time we may delete and/or aggregate it. We may also retain and use this information as necessary to comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes, and enforce our agreements. Through this policy, we have provided specific retention periods for certain types of information.

Location of site and data

Monlert is based in the UK, but uses third party data storage infrastructure around the world, including in the UK & USA. This means that any information you provide to us may be transferred to and stored in a country other than your own. By using our websites or Services and/or providing us with your personal information, you consent to this transfer.

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 refresh the date at the top of this page, and may take appropriate steps to notify users.

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 support@monlert.com and we'll be happy to try to answer them.

Our privacy policy is adapted from the Basecamp open-source policies / CC BY 4.0.