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FreshBooks.com - Privacy Policy
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Several new clarifications made.
Several clarifications added throughout, including the removal of some sections.
Sections updated: "Our Disclosure of Your Information" and "Other Information Collectors".
Contact email updated.
The section "What Information Do We Collect?" has been updated concerning Local Storage Objects; "Correcting and Updating Your Personal Information" and "TRUSTe Privacy Seal" have been amended.
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PRIVACY POLICY

Last Updated: September 28Th, 2016

	This is the Privacy Policy of the FreshBooks website: https://www.freshbooks.com (the "Site"), operated by 2NDSITE Inc. (together with our affiliates and subsidiaries, "FreshBooks", "we", "us", "our" and terms of similar meaning) and our related products and services. It describes the information that we collect from you as part of the normal operation of our Site, and how we use and disclose this information. 

	By accepting the Privacy Policy in registration or by visiting and using the Site, you expressly consent to our collection, use and disclosure of your personal information in accordance with this Privacy Policy. This Privacy Policy is incorporated into and subject to our Terms of Use. 

	In this Privacy Policy, we use the following terms to describe different types of visitors to our Site. Our customers are called "Subscribers" and our Subscribers’ customers are called "Customers". We use the word "staff" to describe persons to whom Subscribers give "staff" access on the Site. Together with registered users of our forum or other interactive areas of the Site, these people are collectively described in this Privacy Policy as "Users" of our Site. 

HOW WE USE YOUR INFORMATION

	We use personal information in the file we maintain about you, and other information we obtain from your current and past activities on the Site, to provide to you the services offered by the Site; resolve service and billing disputes; troubleshoot problems; bill any amounts due from you; measure consumer interest in our products and services, inform you about online and offline offers, products, services, events and updates; deliver information to you that, in some cases, is relevant to your interests, such as product news; customize your experience; detect and protect us against error, fraud and other criminal activity; enforce our Terms of Use; provide you with system or administrative messages, and as otherwise described to you at the time of collection. On occasion we use email address or other contact information to contact our Users to ask them for their input on our services, to forward to them media opportunities, and even to invite them to dinner. 

	We may also use personal information about you to improve our marketing and promotional efforts, to analyze Site usage, to improve our content and product offerings, and to customize the Site's content, layout, and services. These uses improve the Site and better tailor it to meet your needs, so as to provide you with a smooth, efficient, safe and customized experience while using the Site. 

	If you wish to subscribe to our newsletters, we will use your name and email address to send the newsletter to you. Out of respect for your privacy, we provide you a way to unsubscribe in the email. If you wish to no longer receive our newsletters you may update the settings in your account, follow the instructions located in the email, or you may contact us at privacy@freshbooks.com. 

WHAT INFORMATION DO WE COLLECT?

	Our primary purpose in collecting personal information from you is to provide you with a safe, smooth, efficient, and customized experience. This allows us to provide services and features that most likely meet your needs, and to customize our service to make your experience safer and easier. We only collect personal information about you that we consider necessary for achieving this purpose. 

	In general, you can browse the Site without telling us who you are or revealing any personal information about yourself. Once you become a User, we require you to provide various contact and identity information, billing information, and other personal information as indicated on the relevant forms on the Site (which vary, depending on what kind of User you are), and you are no longer anonymous to us. Where possible, on these forms we indicate which fields are required and which fields are optional. 

	In addition, as you use the Site, you can from time to time enter or send to us personal information. For example, if you are a Subscriber, you can enter your own timesheet and other billing information, and if you are a Customer you can enter information about payment of any invoice submitted by a Subscriber. As you use the Site you can also from time to time enter personal information about third parties. For example, if you are a Subscriber, you can enter personal information about your Customers or your staff. 

	You always have the option to not provide information by choosing not to become a User or by not using the particular feature of the Site for which the information is being collected. 

	If you are a Subscriber, we collect your credit card information for billing purposes. And if you are a Customer who wishes to pay amounts to a Subscriber on a recurring basis, we collect and store your credit card information for payment purposes. 

	Some of our pages utilize framing techniques to serve content to from our partners while preserving the look and feel of our site. Please be aware that you are providing your personal information to these third parties and not to www.freshbooks.com. 

	We also automatically track certain information about you based upon your behaviour on our Site and store it through log files. We use this information to do internal research on our users' demographics, interests, and behaviour to better understand, protect and serve you and our community. This information may include the URL that you just came from, which URL you next go, your computer browser information, and your IP address. We may provide Customers' IP addresses to payment intermediaries in the course of the payment process. 

	Technologies such as: cookies, beacons, tags and scripts are used by FreshBooks and our partners (e.g., advertising, marketing and analytics), affiliates, or other service providers. These technologies are used in analyzing trends, administering the site, tracking users’ movements around the site and to gather demographic information about our user base as a whole. We may receive reports based on the use of these technologies by these companies on an individual as well as aggregated basis. 

	We use cookies to remember users’ settings, store login addresses, authenticate users, run website experiments, and store analytics data. Users can control the use of cookies at the individual browser level. If you reject cookies, you may still use our site, but your ability to use some features or areas of our site may be limited. 

	We use Local Storage Objects (LSOs) such as HTML5 to store [content information and preferences.] Third parties with whom we partner to provide certain features on our site or to display advertising based upon your Web browsing activity use LSOs such as HTML 5 or Flash to collect and store information. Various browsers may offer their own management tools for removing HTML5 LSOs. To manage Flash LSOs please click here. 

	We partner with a third party to either display advertising on our Web site or to manage our advertising on other sites. Our third party partner may use technologies such as cookies to gather information about your activities on this site and other sites in order to provide you advertising based upon your browsing activities and interests. If you wish to not have this information used for the purpose of serving you interest-based ads, you may opt-out by clicking here. Please note this does not opt you out of being served ads. You will continue to receive generic ads. 

OUR DISCLOSURE OF YOUR INFORMATION

	We will share your personal information with third parties only in the ways that are described in this privacy policy, including as follows:  

	Subscribers and Customers, Etc. In the normal operation of the Site Subscriber timesheets (including information entered by "staff" members) and invoices are disclosed to the applicable Customers, and Customer information is disclosed to the applicable Subscriber. In general, information you enter on the Site is available to the other persons – whether they are Customers, Subscribers, staff members or others – to whom you give access to your account or to whom you give access to the information through the normal operation of the Site. 

	Payment Information. We use credit card and other personally identifiable information (such as PayPal email addresses) you submit to us on the Site, and other information that we collect, as required, to process payments you make through the Site through our payment processor intermediaries. We do not store credit card or other payment method information unless the Subscriber or their Customers choose to enter credit card information for use in the FreshBooks recurring profiles module; in all other cases our payment processors have the sole and complete responsibility for the storage of credit card and payment information. We may also share personally identifiable information with our payment processor intermediaries for risk management and fraud prevention. 

	Related third party products and services. From time to time, we may offer you opportunities to receive related products and services that integrate with, or complement, the services we offer via the Site. For example, you may have the opportunity to request financial products or services, including loans, from third parties. We will only share your information with such third parties if you choose to request their products or services (or to be assessed for eligibility to receive such products or services). If you do choose to request such products or services, we will provide your information to the relevant third party on your behalf, as required to provide the products or services you have requested. We do not control the use, storage, retention, processing, or disclosure of your information by such third parties, and this Privacy Policy will not apply to them. Your relationship with these third parties will generally be subject to their separate terms and conditions as well as privacy policies or statements, and we recommend that you carefully review these documents before requesting their products or services.  

	Anonymized Aggregated Data. We aggregate and anonymize sales information including (but not limited to) industry type, number of invoices sent, average invoice size, method of sending invoices, percentage paid online, sales amounts and average sale per customer, and disclose such information in a non-personally identifiable manner to Subscribers. However, in these situations, we do not disclose any information that could be used to identify you personally. 

	Forum. If you post on our forum or blog your username and other information you include is displayed in your postings or comments, and is therefore available to the public. All of your activities in the public areas of the forum will be identifiable to your User ID, and other people can see your published content. If you disclose personal information in any posting in our forum or blog and wish to have it removed, please contact us at the support contact information listed below, and posted on the Site. 

	Our blog commenting system is also managed by a third party application that may require you to register to post a comment. You will need to contact or login into the third party application if you want the personal information that was posted to the comments section removed. To learn how the third party commenting application uses your information, please review their privacy policy. 

	Subsidiaries and Affiliates; Service Providers. We may from time to time use the services of affiliates, subsidiaries and unrelated service providers in the operation of the Site, and may disclose personal information to them in the course of our use of their services. For example, we may use the services of third-party hosting companies to host the operation of the Site. This may involve the hosting of data, including personal information, on servers operated by those hosting companies. We take care to use only service providers that we believe are reputable and able to live up to our and your expectations, including about the handling of confidential information. These companies are authorized to use your personal information only as necessary to provide these services to us. 

	Legal Requests and Business Transitions; Emergencies. FreshBooks may disclose your personal information (a) to any governmental authority as part of an investigation to determine our compliance with any applicable law, rule, or regulation (including privacy laws, rules, and regulations), (b) in response to a court order, subpoena, discovery request, or other lawful judicial or administrative proceeding, (c) as otherwise required under any applicable law, rule, or regulation, and (d) in good faith, to protect or defend the rights or property of FreshBooks and other users and (e) if FreshBooks is involved in a merger, acquisition, or sale of all or a portion of its assets, you will be notified via email and/or a prominent notice on our Web site of any change in ownership or uses of your personal information, as well as any choices you may have regarding your personal information. 

YOUR USE OF OTHER PERSONS’ INFORMATION

	In order to facilitate the services provided by the Site, the Site allows you in certain circumstances to give other Users limited access to the personal information of other persons. For example, if you are a Subscriber, you may use the Site to give access to a staff member to the personal information of your Customers. By entering into our Terms of Use, you agree that, with respect to the personal information of other persons that you collect, use and disclose on the Site, you have all necessary consents and rights to collect, use and disclose that information as described in this Privacy Policy from time to time, and you agree that the indemnity you give to us in the Terms of Use applies to any non-compliance by you with the foregoing. 

	If you choose to use our referral service to tell a friend about our site, we will ask you for your friend’s name and email address. We will automatically send your friend a one-time email inviting him or her to visit the site. FreshBooks stores this information for the sole purpose of sending this one-time email and tracking the success of our referral program. Your friend may contact us at privacy@freshbooks.com to request that we remove this information from our database. 

SECURITY

	FreshBooks strives to protect your personal information. For security of transactions, we use the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocol, which encrypts any information, such as credit card number and billing information, you send to us electronically. The encryption process protects your information, by scrambling it before it is sent to us from your computer. Once FreshBooks receives your transmission, we make commercially reasonable efforts to ensure its security on our system. Unfortunately, no data transmission over the Internet can be guaranteed to be 100% secure. As a result, while we strive to protect your personal information, we cannot warrant the security of any information you transmit to us. More information about security is available on the Site and in our Terms of Use. 

OTHER INFORMATION COLLECTORS

	Except as otherwise expressly included in this Privacy Policy, this document only addresses the use and disclosure of information we collect from you. To the extent that you disclose your information to other parties through the Site, whether they are Subscribers or Customers or otherwise, different rules may apply to their use, collection and disclosure of the personal information you disclose to them. Since we do not control the information use, collection or disclosure policies of third parties, you are subject to their privacy policies. We encourage you to ask questions before you disclose your personal information to others. 

	Your use of automated bank account feeds enabled by the Yodlee, Inc. ("Yodlee") data gathering service (the "Yodlee Service") from within FreshBooks is subject to the Yodlee terms, which are available here, and by using the Yodlee Service from within FreshBooks you consent to our and Yodlee’s use, collection and disclosure of your information as described in those Yodlee terms. 

CORRECTING AND UPDATING YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION

	To review, delete and update your personal information to ensure it is accurate, you may login into your account to make the changes, or you may contact us at privacy@freshbooks.com. We will respond to your request within a reasonable timeframe. 

ACCOUNT DELETION

	FreshBooks is a complex business network that connects millions of users. FreshBooks manages a business eco system that brings together contractors, companies and customers. This network relies on the exchange and sharing of information that is important to others in your network. Tracked hours, sent invoices, paid invoices, contractor invoices are all vital to other people that work with you. These are the official history of work done and moneys paid. 

	The complexity and connected nature of the system requires that this history exists in perpetuity to accommodate proper function and accounting for the other systems that you have connected to via contracting hours, invoices, estimates. FreshBooks cannot guarantee the deletion of all your information. 

	When a customer chooses to close an account we will remove your information from our marketing and billing systems. This will ensure that there are not further mailings or billings directed towards the canceled user. 

	As we continue to refine FreshBooks we will establish a method for the complete removal of all user information from the system without breaking accepted accounting principles for other connected FreshBooks accounts. This document will evolve as these new methods are defined and tested for permanent account deletion. Users wishing to be notified when this development is complete can indicate their wishes via help@freshbooks.com or 1.866.303.6061. 

DATA RETENTION

	We will retain your information for as long as your account is active or as needed to provide you services. We will retain and use your information as necessary to comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes, and enforce our agreements. 

ADDITIONAL POLICY INFORMATION

	Invitations: You have the opportunity to invite others to work with you through your FreshBooks account. To do that, FreshBooks asks you to import or to manually enter your contacts’ email addresses. As you direct, we then send them an invitation on your behalf or other notices reflecting changes you make to their status in your account. 

	If you click on a link to a third-party site, you will leave the FreshBooks site and go to the site you selected. If you elect to use a third-party product or service in conjunction with FreshBooks, you yourself enter into a license agreement with the third party for use of their product or service and their use of your data. Because we cannot control the activities of third parties, we cannot accept responsibility for any use of your personal information by such third parties, and we cannot guarantee that they will adhere to the same privacy practices as FreshBooks. We encourage you to review the privacy policies of any other service provider from whom you request services. If you visit a third party website that is linked to a FreshBooks site, you should read that site’s privacy policy before providing any personal information. 

	With your consent we may post your testimonial along with your name. If you want your testimonial removed please contact us at privacy@freshbooks.com. 

	Our Web site includes Social Media Features, such as the Facebook and Twitter buttons and Widgets, such as the Share this button or interactive mini-programs that run on our site. These Features may collect your IP address, which page you are visiting on our site, and may set a cookie to enable the Feature to function properly. Social Media Features and Widgets are either hosted by a third party or hosted directly on our Site. Your interactions with these Features are governed by the privacy policy of the company providing it. 

TRUSTE PRIVACY SEAL

	FreshBooks has received TRUSTe’s Privacy Seal signifying that this Privacy Statement and our practices have been reviewed for compliance with the TRUSTe program. The TRUSTe program covers only information that is collected through this Web site: www.freshbooks.com, and does not cover information that may be submitted by a Subscribers’ Customers & staff or collected through software downloaded from the site or our mobile application. In order to view our relationship with TRUSTe please visit the validation page visible by clicking on the TRUSTe seal. 

	If you have questions or complaints regarding our privacy policy or practices, please contact us at privacy@freshbooks.com. If you have an unresolved privacy or data use concern that we have not addressed satisfactorily, please contact TRUSTe at https://feedback-form.truste.com/watchdog/request. 

NOTIFICATION OF PRIVACY STATEMENT CHANGES

	We may update this privacy statement to reflect changes to our information practices. If we make any material changes we will notify you by email (sent to the email address specified in your account) or by means of a notice on this Site prior to the change becoming effective. We encourage you to periodically review this page for the latest information on our privacy practices. 

QUESTIONS?

	It is our goal to make our privacy practices easy to understand. If you have questions, concerns or if you would like more detailed information, please email our privacy officer at: 

	FreshBooks
 privacy@freshbooks.com
 1655 Dupont St. Suite 250
 Toronto, ON
 M6P 3T1 Canada

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