Privacy

Last Updated: March 7, 2024

Uplinq, Inc. ("Uplinq", "we", "us", or "our") is dedicated to safeguarding the privacy and security of our customers' information. This Privacy Policy outlines our practices regarding the collection, use, disclosure, and safeguarding of personal and financial information through our website, mobile application, and any related services (collectively, the "Services"). We also describe certain rights you have over your business and personal information. Our policy is designed to comply with the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), the Virginia Consumer Data Protection Act (VCDPA),  and other pertinent state laws across the United States.

Please read this Privacy Policy carefully. By using our Services (as defined below), you acknowledge that you have read, understand and agree to be legally bound by this Privacy Policy and other policies incorporated herein by reference.

Uplinq reserves the right to modify this Privacy Policy at any time, in our sole discretion. We may notify you of such modifications to this Privacy Policy by providing notice via one of the following methods: (i) by sending an email to the email account used by you to access our Services, (ii) by updating the ‘last updated’ date listed above, or (iii) by posting a notice in the Uplinq web application. Unless otherwise stated, any modifications to the Privacy Policy will be effective immediately upon posting the updated Privacy Policy to our website. By continuing to use our Services you confirm that you agree to the modified Privacy Policy. If you do not agree with the changes to this Privacy Policy, you must immediately stop using our Services and close your account within 30 days of the change.

1.0.     People and Organizations We Collect Information From

We collect information about the following types of businesses and individuals:
Businesses Who Enter Into A Service Agreement With Uplinq
Individuals Associated With Businesses Who Enter Into A Service Agreement With Uplinq
Visitors To Uplinq’s Website or Web Application, Or Anyone Contacting Uplinq Support
Prospective Employees Of Uplinq

2.0.     How This Privacy Applies To Our Services

Uplinq offers certain cloud-based professional bookkeeping, tax preparation and tax advisory services to businesses and individuals through its web set located at www.uplinq.com, and via a web application. We refer to our web application and the services we provide collectively as the “Services”. This Privacy Policy applies to both our Services and any other interactions you may have with Uplinq.

This Privacy Policy applies to our Services and other interactions you may have with Uplinq, including, but not limited to, visiting our website or web pages, visiting us in person, customer service inquiries, or attendance at any Uplinq sponsored event. By using our Services, or otherwise interacting with Uplinq, you agree to the collection and use of your personal information in accordance with this Privacy Policy. Personal information is any information or data relating to you that may be used to identify you, either directly or indirectly, or to contact you.

When using Uplinq’s Services, you may encounter links to other websites, products, or services that are not owned or controlled by Uplinq. You may also decide to share certain access to information or services with third-parties such as accountant or business professionals.  If you choose to interact with these third-parties, please be aware that any processing of your information by these third-parties is governed by their own privacy policies and terms. We recommend that you carefully review their privacy policies and terms because Uplinq neither controls nor is responsible for such third-party services or policies.

Some of our Services are made available to you by our affiliates. Personal information supplied by you through our Services to our affiliates will be governed by this Privacy Policy.

Our Services are not intended for use by children and should only be accessed by individuals who are at least 18 years old and are using our Services for business purposes. If we learn that we have inadvertently collected personal information of persons under the age of 18 years old, we shall immediately take steps to delete the information as soon as possible. If you learn that a child has provided us with personal information in violation of this Privacy Policy, then you may alert us at privacy@uplinq.com.

3.0.     Information We Collect About You And How We Use It

3.1 Information About Uplinq Customers

We collect business and personal information about Uplinq customers in order to provide you with our Services.  We also may collect personal information from other sources, including business partners or referral partners. Generally, we use this information to provide and customize our Services for you.

Information Type:  Information you provide us about you and your business, like your name, company name, email address, and phone number.
Use of Information: To set up your account and provide you with the use of our Services (e.g., to confirm your identity, to contact you about our service, to invoice you); to communicate with you via email, chat, phone, SMS, or virtual meeting; to market products or provide you with helpful information regarding the subject matter of our Services; to comply with any legal or regulatory requirements related to our Services.

Information Type:  Information relating to third-parties (such as clients or employees) that we process at your direction.
Use of Information: To provide you with our Services and/or give account access to others within your business.

Information Type:  Information about products or services you purchased, obtained, or considered.
Use of Information: To charge you for our Services.

Information Type:  Payment and billing information that you provide us, or our third-party payment processor, such as your credit or debit card number.
Use of Information: To provide you with the use of our platform or Services; to help us in making our platform and Services easier to use; to personalize your use of our platform or Services; to advertise and market new or existing products or features to you.

Information Type:  Information regarding how you access our Services (including your network connection, IP address, and details about how you interact with our website or web application.
Use of Information: To provide you with access to our website and web application, to improve our website and web application, and to provide you with our Services; to debug, identify and repair errors that may impact the functionality of our website and web application; to monitor potential security problems, protect against malicious viruses, and to prevent certain fraudulent or illegal activity; to personalize the platform for your use; to advertise and market products or features to you, or to provide you with helpful information regarding the Services we provide; to comply with any legal or regulatory requirements related to our Services.

Information Type:  Customer support information (such as questions and issues) and general feedback that you choose to provide (for example, reviews).c
Use of Information: To provide you with customer support when using our Services; to communicate with you via email, chat, phone, SMS, or virtual meeting; to debug, identify and repair errors that may impact the functionality of our website and web application; to share with existing or prospective customer who may be interested in your experience while using our Services.

Information Type:  Audio and video information (such as recordings that we make of sales demonstrations and other meeting with existing and potential customers).
Use of Information: To provide us with important information about the needs of you and your business so that we may recommend the correct Services; to provide you with customer support when using our Services; to train our employees and improve the quality of our Services; to debug, identify and repair errors that may impact the functionality of our website and web application.

Information Type:  Information, such as firmographic (data about an organization) or demographic information, we receive from other third-parties, including referral, promotional, and joint marketing partners and business partners who provide services that are complementary to our Services.
Use of Information: To provide you with our Services; to provide you with access to our website and web application, to improve our website and web application, and to provide you with our Services; to personalize our web application and platform for you; to advertise and market products or features to you, or to provide you with helpful information regarding the Services we provide.

Information Type:  If you connect our Services directly to your business or personal bank or credit card account, merchant processors, loan and/or payroll provider, and authorize us to receive information directly from your business bank account, we receive your bank institution information (such as bank name and institution ID), business or personal bank account information (for example, balances and last four digit of the account number), and transaction information (such as amount, vendor name, date, and category).
Use of Information: To provide you with our Services; to provide you with real-time access to your important business financial data; to auto-reconcile certain accounts for bookkeeping and accounting purposes.

Information Type: When using Uplinq to provide tax services, we may collect more specific information you provide us about you and your business, including: personal characteristics (such as spousal and dependents, age, date of birth, gender, marital status, nationality), government-issued identification (such as your social security number, driver’s license number, taxpayer identification numbers).professional and employment information (such as your occupation, employer identification number, corporate-held credit and debit card numbers, employment records and compensation information).financial transactions (such as your bank account information, loans, investments, contributions, payments).
Use of Information: To create and manage your tax services account; to provide you with tax services as part of our Services, including, in some cases setting up tax payments to the IRS and state revenue departments; to prevent fraud and monitor risk; to comply with any legal or regulatory requirements related to our Services; to provide tax documentation and file tax returns.

Information Type:  Copies of government-issued identification about you or your business.
Use of Information: To verify your identity (when necessary) and to protect you against identity theft and fraud; to verify your identity when you contact us; to comply with any legal or regulatory requirements related to our Services.

3.1 Information About Visitors and Prospective Customers

Uplinq collects certain information about visitors to its website and web application as well as prospective customers who attend a product demonstration.

Information Type: Information about you that you provide us about yourself, like your name, address, email address, and phone number.
Use of Information: To communicate with you via email, chat, phone, SMS, or virtual meeting; to advertise and market products or features to you, or to provide you with helpful information regarding the Services we provide; to comply with any legal or regulatory requirements related to our Services.

Information Type: Information regarding how you access our Services (including your network connection, IP address, and details about how you interact with our website or web application.
Use of Information: To provide you with access to our website and web application, to improve our website and web application, and to provide you with our Services; to debug, identify and repair errors that may impact the functionality of our website and web application; to provide you use of, and to improve, our websites and related Services (e.g., identifying ways to make our websites easier to use or navigate); to personalize your experience using our websites (e.g., by changing the layout of our webpages); to monitor potential security problems, protect against malicious viruses, and to prevent certain fraudulent or illegal activity; to advertise and market products or features to you, or to provide you with helpful information regarding the Services we provide; to comply with any legal or regulatory requirements related to our Services.

Information Type: Information about products or services you purchased, obtained, or considered.
Use of Information: To provide you with the use of our platform or Services; to help us in making our platform and Services easier to use; to personalize your use of our platform or Services; to advertise and market new or existing products or features to you.

Information Type: Audio and video information (such as recordings that we make of sales demonstrations and other meeting with existing and potential customers).
Use of Information: To provide us with important information about the needs of you and your business so that we may recommend the correct Services; to provide you with customer support when using our Services; to train our employees and improve the quality of our Services; to debug, identify and repair errors that may impact the functionality of our website and web application.

3.2 Your Use of The Personal Information of Others

In using our Services, you may provide us with the personal information of others (for example, the names and addresses of your clients, employees, or business associates). In these circumstances, we are only a “service provider” of such information.As your service provider, we process (collect, use, disclose, etc.) such information as directedby you for the purpose of providing you our Services. For example, we do not use your customers’ or employees’ information to independently market or advertise to them unless they are also using our Services directly.You are responsible for the personal information of others that you disclose to us via our Services and for ensuring that your instructions regarding the processing of such information complies with applicable data protection laws.

4.0.     Your Rights Over Your Information

Depending on your use of our Services and where you reside, you may have the right to request access to, correct, amend, delete, or object to certain uses of certain personal information (for example, by unsubscribing from direct marketing emails).We make an effort to assist you in exercising these rights via our Services.  You may easily access, update, and correct your information via our web application. If you are unable to do so, you may contact your bookkeeper, customer service, or contact us at privacy@uplinq.com. We may require you to verify your identity before we can assist you.Please note that we only control information that we collect for our purposes. We do not control information that is provided by third-parties. If you are an individual who wishes to exercise your rights over information that one of our customers, or another third-party, may be storing our processing for their own purposes by using our application, then you must contact that customer or third-party directly. Under these circumstances, we are only a service provider acting at their direction, and we cannot decide how to process their information.

5.0.     Your California Privacy Rights

If you are a California resident, you may exercise the following rights with respect to personal information (as defined by the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 (California Civil Code §§ 1798.100 to 1798.199) and its implementing regulations, as amended or superseded from time to time (“CCPA”)) that we collect as a business under California law.

A. Right to know and access personal information

You may submit a verifiable request to be informed about the (1) categories of personal information collected, sold, or disclosed by us, (2) purposes for which categories of personal information are collected or sold by us, (3) categories of sources from which we collect personal information, (4) categories of third parties with whom we disclosed or sold personal information, and (5) specific pieces of personal information that we collected about you during the prior twelve months.

B. Right to request deletion of personal information

Subject to certain exceptions, you may submit a verifiable request that we delete the personal information about you that we collected from you.

C. Right to request correction of personal information

You may submit a verifiable request that we correct inaccurate personal information that we maintain about you.

D. Verification

Requests for access to, correction, or deletion of personal Information are subject to our ability to reasonably verify your identity in light of the information requested and pursuant to relevant CCPA requirements, limitations, and regulations. To verify your access, correction or deletion request, please provide us with your name, mailing address, email address, phone number, and the last 4-digits of an account or credit card number in your request and we will reach out to you. To verify your identity based on information previously provided to Uplinq, we may request additional information.

E. Right to opt-out of the sale or sharing of personal information

In some circumstances, you may the right to opt-out of the sale or sharing (for cross-context behavioral advertising purposes) of your personal information. You may email privacy@uplinq.com to opt out of the sale or sharing (for cross-context behavioral advertising purposes) of your personal information.

F. Right to equal service and price

You have the right not to receive discriminatory treatment by a business for the exercise of your CCPA privacy rights, subject to certain limitations.

G. Submit requests

If you are a California resident and would like to exercise your rights under the CCPA, please send your request by email to privacy@uplinq.com with "Your California Privacy Rights" in the subject field of your email, call us at (623) 252-3101, or send your request by mail to our address listed in the “How you can reach us” section below.

H. Authorizing an agent

If you are acting as an authorized agent to make a request to know, delete, or opt out on behalf of a California resident, please send a message to the email in our “How you can reach us section” and attach a written authorization signed by the resident.

I. Do not track

There is no accepted standard on how to respond to Do Not Track signals, and we do not respond to such signals.

J. Opt-Out preference signals

You may also opt out of the sale or sharing (for cross-context behavioral advertising purposes) of your personal information by turning on the Global Privacy Control (GPC) in participating browser systems. You will need to turn the GPC on for each browser you use. To learn more about the GPC, visit the Global Privacy Control website.

6.0.     Who We Share Your Data With

We generally restrict access to your information to authorized employees and contractors of Uplinq. However, we may also share your personal information, including all the information we collect in the “Information We Collect About You And How We Use It” section with the following third-parties:A.  Service ProvidersUplinq uses a variety of service providers to efficiently operate its business and provide you with the Services. In doing so, we may share you information with the following service providers:

Service Provider                           Type of Service                                            Location
Amazon Web Services               Cloud Hosting                                              United States
1Password                                      Secure Credential Storage                      United States
Airtable                                            CRM                                                                United States
Auth0                                                Identify Provider                                          United States
Datadog                                          Engineering System Monitoring             United States
Google                                            Administrative and Communications    United States
Plaid                                                 Banking Data Provider                                United States
Postmark                                         Email Service                                                 United States
RingCentral                                   Client Communications                              United States
Slack                                                Internal Communications                          United States
Stripe                                               Payment Processing                                    United States
Zapier                                              Business Integrations                                  United States

We may also share all of the categories of your personal information described in the “Information We Collect About You And How We Use It” section with the following categories of third parties for certain other business purposes:Other Service Providers, Partners, Contractors or Vendors: for analytics and reporting, marketing and advertising, auditing, communicating with you, managing our customer database, providing you with professional services, managing our recruitment process and conducting background checks (for prospective employees).Successor Entities: if we merge with or are acquired by another company, are involved in a bankruptcy, or if the ownership or control of all or part of our Services or their assets changes, information about you may be transferred to such entities.Law Enforcement, Government Agencies, and Professional Advisors: to prevent or investigate suspected fraud, threats to physical safety, illegal activity, or violations of a contract or our policies, or to comply with a law or regulation, or if we are otherwise legally required to do so, such as in response to a court order or legal process, or to establish, protect, or exercise our legal rights or to defend against legal claims or demands.We also share certain categories of  personal information with third parties to provide personalized online advertising and with third parties for their direct marketing purposes. Under the CCPA, some of this information sharing may be broadly considered a “sale” of Personal Information. Except for this type of sharing, we do not sell your Personal Information. We share identifiers (such as name, email address, IP address and online identifiers), commercial information, internet or other electronic network activity information, and inferences drawn from personal information with third-parties for these purposes. If you are a California resident, you can opt out of the sale of your personal information as described above.

7.0.     Where Your Data Resides

Our Services are Uplinq’s team, which is located in Scottsdale, Arizona. However, we also operate from other locations around the United States. Our Services are hosted in the United States and individuals located within the United States are permitted to use our Services. If you circumvent Uplinq’s measures restricting the use of our Services to the United States, and you choose to use our Services from the European Union or other regions of the world with laws governing data collection and use that may differ from U.S. law, then please note that you are transferring your personal information outside of those regions to the United States for storage and processing.

8.0.     Data Retention Policy

Following any termination or non-renewal of services, any data that contained in the Uplinq web application will remain available. You can download, or export, that data from the Uplinq application into a .csv file. Once your services have been terminated, Uplinq will no longer be responsible to provide any support or information production related to the terminated Services. Uplinq, at its sole discretion, may agree to provide such support or information production if you agree to us for our  professional time at our then-current standard hourly rates. We do not guarantee the availability of any documents or information after such termination. You agree that it is your responsibility to retain and protect your records for possible future use, including potential examination by any government or regulatory agencies. A customer can request that their data be deleted from our system by sending an email to help@uplinq.com along with information about their account. Customer data will be deleted within 30 days of verifying account ownership. However, Uplinq may be required to retain your personal data for a specified period of time beyond the time when you stop using our Services to regulatory requirements imposed by United States federal or state governments.

9.0.     How We Protect Your Information

Uplinq maintains security safeguards and procedures to protect both your business and personal information.  These safeguards and procedures are designed to ensure its confidentiality, integrity and availability. While we strive to protect your information on our Services, we cannot guarantee absolute security of your personal information.Uplinq provides services using networks only part of which are within our control. In addition, you may be using third-party applications that access your information and data. We are not responsible for any delay, loss, interception, or alteration of Customer Data or other Confidential Information on a network or infrastructure outside of our control.

10.0.     How We Use Cookies and Other Tracking Technologies

We use cookies and similar tacking technologies on our website and when providing our Services. For more information about how we use these technologies, and an explanation of how you can opt out of certain types of cookies, please see the Uplinq Cookie Policy.

11.0.     How To Contact Uplinq

If you wish to contact Uplinq regarding this Privacy Policy you may email us at privacy@uplinq.com.

You may also call us at (623) 252-3101.
You may send written correspondence to regarding this policy to:
Uplinq, Inc. Attn: Privacy
7014 E Camelback Rd.Scottsdale AZ 85251