Privacy Policy

  1. INTRODUCTION

This Privacy Policy (“Privacy Policy”) describes how MySquard Inc. and its affiliates will gather, use, and maintain your Personal Information on the MySquard Platform. It will also explain your legal rights with respect to that information.

By using the MySquard Platform, you confirm that you have read and understand this Privacy Policy, and our Terms and Conditions (together referred to herein as the “Agreement”). The Agreement governs the use of the MySquard Platform. MySquard will collect, use, and maintain information consistent with the Agreement.

  1. INFORMATION COLLECTION

2.1 Information you provide to MySquard

MySquard collects certain personally identifiable information about you, including information that can identify, relate to, describe, be associated with you, or is reasonably capable of being associated with you (“Personal Information”). Examples of Personal Information that MySquard collects include but are not limited to:

Contact Information. This may include your first and last name, postal address, telephone number, and email address.

Billing Data, including your payment instrument number (such as a credit or debit card number), expiration date, and security code as necessary to process your payments.

Identity Information. If you are a Service Provider, we may collect Personal Information, such as your date of birth and address, national identification number if applicable, together with the result of basic criminal record checks as provided by you, or by our Third-Party Agents (as defined below), as applicable and to the extent permitted by law in your jurisdiction, as well as such information as may be needed to validate your identity.

Financial Information. To help Service Providers set up a payment account and help Clients make payments to Service Providers and pay fees to MySquard, we may collect financial information, including credit card numbers, bank routing numbers, tax information, taxpayer identification number, and other payment information, as applicable. We use Financial Information in order to operate the MySquard Platform and to ensure that Service Providers are paid by Clients. We do this as necessary for our legitimate interests in providing our platform and services and to fulfill our contracts with Users. To keep your financial data secure, we have contracted with a third party to maintain and process your payment information.

Promotional Information. Certain offerings of the MySquard Platform, such as newsletters, surveys, contests, and the like are optional and so you are not required to enter them or to give us your data in connection with them. Where you do consent to take advantage of MySquard Platform offerings, we will use your data to (as applicable) send you newsletters and other communications that are tailored based on information we have about you, or to operate and manage the survey, contest, or similar offering in connection with our legitimate interest in promoting our business and the MySquard Platform. To opt out of receiving marketing communications from us, please see Section 6, Your Rights and Choices.

Content Information. You also may choose to send MySquard Personal Information in an email or chat message containing inquiries about the MySquard Platform and we use this information in order to help us respond to your inquiry. We also collect content within any messages you exchange with other Users through the MySquard Platform (such as through our chat functionality).

We require that you furnish certain information when you register an account with us in order to provide services through the MySquard Platform. For example, if you are a client, we collect your first and last name, email address, and your zip or postal code in order to create and administer your MySquard account. We also collect additional information in order to facilitate your booking requests, such as information about the Service you are seeking, the time, date, and location of the Service, and Billing Data. If you are a Service Provider, we collect your first and last name, email address, mobile phone number,  zip or postal code, business information, and licenses if applicable in order to create and administer your MySquard account and facilitate communications between you and your Clients through the MySquard Platform. We also collect information about your Services, rates, and skills, as well as Identity Information and Financial Information.

Third-Party Information. If you registered through a co-branded version of our MySquard Platform through one of our Partners, they may provide us with basic information such as your name, address, email, and purchase history related to your Service needs. We may receive additional information about you, such as demographic data, Financial Information, or fraud detection information, from Third-Party Agents (as defined below) and combine it with other information that we have about you, to the extent permitted by law, in order to comply with our legal obligations and for the legitimate interest in improving the MySquard Platform. MySquard may work with Third-Party Agents to perform identity checks and criminal background checks on Service Providers, if applicable and permitted by local law, in order to advance our legitimate interests in ensuring the safety of our Users and maintaining the integrity of the MySquard Platform.

Your account information: Your full name, email address, postal code, password, and other information you may provide with your accounts, such as your gender, mobile phone number, and website. Your profile picture will be publicly displayed as part of your account profile. You may optionally provide us with this information through third-party sign-in services such as Facebook and Google Plus. In such cases, we fetch and store whatever information is made available to us by you through these sign-in services.

Information from Third Parties: We may collect, process, and store your user ID associated with any social media account (such as your Facebook and Google account) that you use to sign in to the Services or connect with or use the Services. When you sign in to your account with your social media account information, or otherwise, connect to your social media account with the Services, you consent to our collection, storage, and use, in accordance with this Privacy Policy, of the information that you make available to us through the social media interface. This could include, without limitation, any information that you have made public through your social media account, information that the social media service shares with us, or information that is disclosed during the sign-in process. Please see your social media provider’s privacy policy and help center for more information about how they share information when you choose to connect your account.

  1. INFORMATION MySquard COLLECTS AUTOMATICALLY

We automatically collect certain information when you use the MySquard Platform. The categories of information we automatically collect and have collected, including in the last 12 months, are as follows:

Service Use Data, including data about features you use, pages you visit, emails and advertisements you view, portions of the MySquard Platform that you view and interact with, the time of day you browse, and your referring and exiting pages.

Device Data, including data about the type of device or browser you use, your device’s operating system, your internet service provider, your device’s regional and language settings, and device identifiers such as IP address and Ad Id. When you visit and interact with the MySquard Platform, MySquard may collect certain information automatically through cookies or other technologies, including, but not limited to, the type of computer or mobile device you use, your mobile device’s unique device ID, the IP address of your computer or mobile device, your operating system, the type(s) of internet browser(s) you use, and information about the way you use the MySquard Platform (“Device Information”). We may use Device Information to monitor the geographic regions from which Users navigate the MySquard Platform, and for security and fraud prevention purposes. Use of any IP-masking technologies or similar technologies (like the TOR network) may render portions of the MySquard Platform unavailable and are forbidden on the MySquard Platform.

Location Data, including imprecise location data (such as location derived from an IP address or data that indicates a city or postal code level), and, with your consent, precise location data (such as latitude/longitude data). When you visit the MySquard Platform via a native mobile application, we use, with your consent when required under applicable law, GPS technology (or other similar technology) to determine your current location in order to determine the city you are located in and display a relevant location map. We will not share your current location obtained in this manner with other Users.

Cookies and similar technologies are described in our Cookie Policy, which sets out the different categories of cookies and similar technologies that the MySquard Platform uses and why we use them.

  1. MySquard’S USE OF INFORMATION

We collect and use the information for business and commercial purposes in accordance with the practices described in this Privacy Policy. Our business purposes for collecting and using information include:

  • To operate and make available the MySquard Platform. We use your data to connect you with other Users to enable the posting of, selection for, completion of, and payment for Services, in order to fulfill our contracts with Users;
  • For billing and fraud prevention, on the basis of our legitimate interests in ensuring a safe and secure environment in which Clients and Service Providers can meet and conduct business, and in order to comply with our legal obligations;
  • To conduct identification and criminal background checks, if applicable and to the extent permitted by local law, on Users, in order to advance our legitimate interests as well as for the substantial public interest of ensuring the safety of our Users both online and offline, preventing or detecting unlawful acts, protecting the public against dishonesty, and maintaining the integrity of the MySquard Platform given that Service Providers often interact directly with Clients and may enter their homes;
  • To analyze MySquard Platform usage as necessary for our legitimate interest in improving the MySquard Platform to grow our business;
  • To contact you and deliver (via email, SMS, push notifications, or otherwise) transactional information, administrative notices, marketing notifications, offers and communications relevant to your use of the MySquard Platform, with your consent when required under applicable law, as necessary for our legitimate interests in proper communication and engagement with our Users, and in promoting our business;
  • To provide you with customer support in order to fulfill our contracts with Users;
  • For internal market research for our legitimate interest in improving the MySquard Platform to grow our business;
  • For troubleshooting problems for our legitimate interests in ensuring a safe and secure environment in which Users can meet;
  • To assist Users in the resolution of complaints and disputes between them, as necessary for our legitimate interests in facilitating good relations among Users;
  • To enforce our Terms and Conditions and our legitimate interests in ensuring our Agreement is complied with; and
  • As otherwise set forth in the Agreement.

Interest-Based Advertising. Ads are a standard part of user experience on the Internet, and MySquard believes that targeted advertising enhances this experience. MySquard and affiliate third parties may use cookies and other technologies to place ads where they believe interested Users will see them. In addition to banner ads, MySquard may advertise products, companies, and events that we think might interest you through the email address and/or phone number you provide. We may incorporate Tracking Technologies on the MySquard Platform (including our website and emails) as well as into our ads displayed on other websites and services. Some of these Tracking Technologies may track your activities across time and services for purposes of associating the different devices you use, and deliver relevant ads and/or other content to you (“Interest-Based Advertising”).

  1. INFORMATION SHARING

We only share the Information we collect about you as described in this Privacy Policy or as described at the time of collection or sharing, including as follows:

Third-Party Agents. We share information, including Identity Information, with entities that process the information on our behalf for our business purposes. We contractually prohibit our Third-Party Agents from retaining, using, or disclosing information about you for any purposes other than performing the services for us, although we may permit them to use information that does not identify you (including information that has been aggregated or de-identified) for any purpose except as prohibited by applicable law.

To operate the MySquard Platform, including processing your transactions, we may share your Personal Information with our agents, representatives, vendors, and service providers (“Third Party Agents”) so they can provide us with support services as follows:

  • Email origination;
  • Identity checks and criminal background checks to the extent permitted by applicable law;
  • Fraud prevention and detection. Our fraud detection providers also use information relating to you and your use of and activity on the MySquard Platform to provide fraud detection services to their other clients;
  • Receipt, invoice, or support services;
  • Customer relationship management services;
  • Data analytics;
  • Marketing and advertising;
  • Website hosting;
  • Communications services;
  • Technical support;
  • Financial transaction fulfillment (in which we are currently supported by Stripe, who processes your Personal Information in accordance with its own privacy policy) and related chargeback and collection services; and
  • To otherwise help us provide the MySquard Platform.

Partners. Some MySquard content is “sponsored by” or “presented by” other companies. If you connect to the MySquard Platform through a co-branded version of our MySquard Platform or otherwise participate in one of our partner programs, we may share information about your use of the MySquard Platform with that Partner in order to offer the integrated platform and to evaluate the partner program. We may also share your Personal Information with our partners in order to receive additional information about you, or in order to create offers that may be of interest to you. Please check such a Partner’s agreement before revealing information about yourself. If you don’t want these Partners to have your Personal Information, you can choose to not participate.

Promotions. When you voluntarily enter a sweepstake, contest, or other promotion, we share information as set out in the official rules that govern the promotion as well as for administrative purposes and as required by law (e.g., on a winners’ list). By entering a promotion, you agree to the official rules that govern that promotion, and may, except where prohibited by applicable law, allow the sponsor and/or other entities to use your name, voice, and/or likeness in advertising or marketing materials. We may occasionally contact you, if you want us to, with information about special events, activities, promotions, contests, submission opportunities, and programs. You always have the ability, in your Account, to ask MySquard not to contact you with this type of information. Please see Section 6, Your Rights and Choices, for more information.

Other Users. MySquard facilitates contact between Clients and Service Providers and reserves the right to share one User’s contact information (e.g., name, phone number, email, or postal address) with other Users, or with the recipient User’s legal or other authorized representative, in order to: (1) facilitate or communicate the resolution of an investigation or dispute related to or arising from an interaction between two or more Users of the MySquard Platform; or (2) facilitate the performance of a Service. This exchange of information is essential to the operation of the MySquard Platform.

Legal Obligations. MySquard and our Third-Party Agents may disclose your Personal Information or User Generated Content to courts, law enforcement, governmental or public authorities, tax authorities, or authorized third parties, if and to the extent required or permitted to do so by law or where disclosure is reasonably necessary to (i) comply with MySquard’s legal or regulatory obligations; (ii) respond to a court order, warrant or subpoena; (iii) respond to a valid legal request relating to an investigation into alleged criminal or illegal activity; or (iv) respond to or address any other activity that may expose us to legal or regulatory liability.

In jurisdictions where MySquard is, according to applicable law, required to collect or remit information about Users’ permits, licenses, tax, or social security registrations, MySquard and our Third-Party Agents may disclose information, including but not limited to, User contact details, identification information, transaction dates and amounts, license and permit status, and tax identification number(s) to applicable governmental authorities.

MySquard reserves the right to disclose Personal Information from both private and public areas of the MySquard Platform in the absence of a court order, warrant, or subpoena, to the extent permitted by applicable law, if we are given reason to believe, in our sole discretion, that someone is causing injury to or interfering with the rights of Users, the general public, MySquard or its partners, parents or affiliates.

It is our policy to provide notice to Users before producing their information in response to law enforcement requests unless (i) we are prohibited or otherwise constrained by law or court order from doing so, (ii) we have reason to believe the User’s account has been compromised such that the notice would go to the wrong person, or notice would otherwise be counterproductive or would create a risk to safety, or (iii) it is an emergency request and prior notice would be impractical (in which case we may provide notice after the fact).

Merger or Acquisition. MySquard reserves the right to share information in connection with, or during negotiations of, any proposed or actual merger, purchase, sale, or any other type of acquisition or business combination of all or any portion of our assets, or transfer of all or a portion of our business to another business.

Public Areas. Your profile on the MySquard Platform consists of information about you and your business and may include information such as photographs, your years in business, skills and expertise, hourly pay rates, feedback/rating information, and other information, including your username (“Profile”). The information in your User Profile may be visible to all Users and the general public. If you choose to post a Service via the MySquard Platform, the contents of such listing will be viewable to all users of the MySquard Platform.

  1. YOUR RIGHTS AND CHOICES

You may opt-out of receiving promotional communications from us, including promotional communications related to the MySquard Platform, and request the removal of your Personal Information from our databases, or deactivate your account, by logging on to the Site or App and clicking on the “Account” tab, or by contacting us.

Account Settings. During registration, you choose whether to receive marketing correspondence from MySquard. This information remains on your Profile where you can, at any point, easily edit it. After logging on, click on the “Account” tab, then select “Notifications” to make your preferred selections.

Push Notifications. You have the option to receive updates and relevant offers via push notifications in your app. These notifications can be configured in the settings of your mobile device at any time.

Corrections to Profile. You have the right to access, update, and correct inaccuracies in your MySquard Profile at any time by logging in and clicking on the “Account” tab. There, you can view, update, and correct your Account information. You may also be required to seek approval from MySquard to make certain corrections to your profile. So that we may protect the integrity of the MySquard Platform, there are certain pieces of information, such as your age, that you cannot alter yourself. For example, since children under the age of majority in their jurisdiction of residence are not allowed to register as Users, we need to take reasonable measures to preserve the accuracy of our users’ ages. You may contact us at info@mysquard.com if there is a need to make a correction to such data. Please see Section 10, Children’s Privacy, for more details.

Promotional Communications. You can opt-out of receiving promotional communications from MySquard via the Account tab in your Profile. In addition, you can opt-out of email marketing by clicking on the unsubscribe link in any message. You can opt-out of promotional communications from MySquard sent via text message at any time by following the instructions provided in those messages to text the word “STOP”. Please note that your opt-out is limited to the phone number used and will not affect subsequent subscriptions. If you opt-out of only certain communications, other subscription communications may continue. Even if you opt-out of receiving promotional communications, MySquard will continue to send you non-promotional communications, such as those about your account, Services, transactions, servicing, or MySquard’s ongoing business relationship with you. 

  1. MySquard’S INFORMATION RETENTION POLICY

We retain personal data for as long as you are a User in order to meet our contractual obligations to you, and for such a longer period as may be in our legitimate interests and to comply with our legal obligations. We may also retain data from which you cannot directly be identified, for example where stored against a randomly-generated identifier so we know the data relates to a single User, but we cannot tell who that User is. We use this kind of data for research purposes and to help us develop and improve our services, and we take appropriate measures to ensure you cannot be re-identified from this data.

  1. MySquard’S SECURITY OF COLLECTED INFORMATION

Your MySquard account is password-protected so that only you and authorized MySquard staff to have access to your account information. In order to maintain this protection, do not give your password to anyone. Also, if you share a computer, you should sign out of your MySquard account and close the browser window before someone else logs on. This will help protect your information entered on public terminals from disclosure to third parties.

MySquard implements and maintains reasonable administrative, physical, and technical security safeguards to help protect information about you from loss, theft, misuse, and unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration, and destruction. MySquard has staff dedicated to maintaining this Privacy Policy and other privacy initiatives, periodically reviewing security, and making sure that every MySquard employee is aware of our security practices. Nevertheless, transmission via the internet is not completely secure and we cannot guarantee the security of information about you.

  1. NOTIFICATION OF CHANGES

MySquard’s Privacy Policy is periodically reviewed and enhanced as necessary. This Privacy Policy might change as MySquard updates and expands the MySquard Platform. MySquard will endeavor to notify you of any material changes by email. MySquard also encourages you to review this Privacy Policy periodically.

  1. CHILDREN’S PRIVACY

This service is intended for a general audience and is not directed at children under 13 years of age. In certain jurisdictions, this minimum age may be higher. Please check the Jurisdiction-specific Provisions below for more information.

We do not knowingly gather personal information (as defined by the U.S. Children’s Privacy Protection Act, or “COPPA”) in a manner not permitted by COPPA. If you are a parent or guardian and you believe that we have collected information from your child in a manner not permitted by law, please let us know by contacting us. We will remove the data.

We do not knowingly collect or “sell” the Personal Information of minors under 18 years old who are California residents.

  1. ADDITIONAL DISCLOSURES FOR CALIFORNIA RESIDENTS

These additional disclosures for California residents apply only to individuals who reside in California. The California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 (“CCPA”) provides additional rights to know, delete, and opt-out, and requires businesses to collect or disclose Personal Information to provide notice of rights California residents have and can exercise.

11.1 California Notice of Collection. We have collected Personal Information corresponding to the following categories enumerated in the CCPA, including within the last 12 months.

  • Identifiers, including name, address, email address, account name, Social Security Number, IP address – and an ID number assigned to your account.
  • Customer records, phone number, billing address, credit or debit card information, employment or education information.
  • Demographic information, such as your age or gender. This category includes pieces of Personal Information that also qualify as protected classification characteristics under other pre-existing California or federal laws.
  • Analytics and Advertising, including purchases and engagement with the MySquard Platform.
  • Internet activity, including history of visiting and interacting with our Service, browser type, browser language and other information collected automatically.
  • Geolocation data, including location enabled services such as Wi-Fi and GPS.
  • Inferences, including information about your interests and preferences.

For more information on what we collect, including the sources we receive information from, review Section 2, Information Collection. We collect and use these categories of personal information for the business purposes described in Section 3, MySquard’s Use of Information, including to provide and manage the MySquard Platform.

MySquard does not generally sell information as the term “sell” is traditionally understood. However, to the extent “sale” under the CCPA is interpreted to include advertising technology activities such as those disclosed in Section 3, MySquard’s Use of Information, as a “sale,” we will comply with applicable law as to such activity.

MySquard discloses the following categories of information for commercial purposes:

  • Commercial Information;
  • Demographic Data;
  • Location Data;
  • Identifiers;
  • Inferences; and
  • Internet activity.

We use and partner with different types of entities to assist with our daily operations and manage the MySquard Platform. Please review Section 5, Information Sharing, for more detail about the parties with which we share Personal Information.

Right to Know and Delete. If you are a California resident, you have the right to know certain information about our data practices in the preceding 12 months. In particular, you have the right to request the following from us:

  • The categories of Personal Information we have collected about you;
  • The categories of sources from which the Personal Information was collected;
  • The categories of Personal Information about you we disclosed for a business purpose or sold;
  • The categories of third parties to whom the Personal Information was disclosed for a business purpose or sold;
  • The business or commercial purpose for collecting or selling the Personal Information; and
  • The specific pieces of Personal Information we have collected about you

In addition, you have the right to delete the Personal Information we have collected from you. However, this is not an absolute right and MySquard may have legal grounds for keeping such data.

To exercise any of these rights, please submit a request at info@mysquard.com. In the request, please specify which right you are seeking to exercise and the scope of the request. We will confirm receipt of your request within 10 days. We may require specific information from you to help us verify your identity and process your request. If we are unable to verify your identity, we may deny your requests to know or delete it.

Right to Opt-Out. To the extent MySquard sells your Personal Information as of the term “sell” is defined under the CCPA, you have the right to opt-out of the sale of your Personal Information by us to third parties at any time.

Authorized Agent. You can designate an authorized agent to submit requests on your behalf. However, we will require written proof of the agent’s permission to do so and verify your identity directly.

Right to Non-Discrimination. You have the right to non-discriminatory treatment by us, should you exercise any of your rights.

Shine the Light. Customers who are residents of California may request: a list of the categories of Personal Information disclosed by us to third parties during the immediately preceding calendar year for those third parties own direct marketing purposes, and (ii) a list of the categories of third parties to whom we disclose such information. To exercise a request, please contact us at info@mysquard.com or 2501 Good Hope Rd SE Washington DC 20020. Requests must include “California Shine the Light Request” in the first line of the description and include your name, street address, city, state, and ZIP code. We may require additional information from you to allow us to verify your identity and are only required to respond to requests once during any calendar year. Please note that MySquard is not required to respond to requests made by means other than through the provided email address or mail address.