Privacy Policy Declaration

Engineers Edge Privacy Policy Declaration

Engineers Edge Privacy Policy

All personal, business and/or tracking information collected by Engineers Edge is confidential and WILL NOT be shared with any third-party without your permission.

Who We Are

Engineers Edge, LLC provides online engineering, design an manufacturing knowledge resources and tools as well as technicalconsulting and training.

This privacy policy applies to all visitors and customers using or accessing any of the websites that we produced and maintain for the services that we provide, including engineersedge.com, engineeringmotion.com, pdhstorm.com and industrialbuzz.com.

Engineers Edge, LLC is a registered corporation in Georgia, USA. Our mailing address is:

Engineers Edge, LLC
510 N. Crosslane Rd.
Monroe, GA 30656
USA

For any privacy-related questions, you can reach us at webmaster@engineersedge.com.

Who We Share Your Data With:

We use third-party services (data processors) across our sites. The extent to which your data is shared with these providers depends on your use of our services, and we list the specific third-parties in use (with links to their privacy policies) in the sections below.

Each third-party provider has been vetted to ensure that privacy policies and practices meet or exceed the same levels of compliance and standards that we follow. Where appropriate and available, we hold additional signed Data Privacy Agreements with these companies as an additional layer of accountability in order to help ensure your data is safe and secure.

We disclose potentially personally-identifying and personally-identifying information only to our employees, contractors and affiliated organizations that (i) need to know that information in order to process it on our behalf or to provide services, and (ii) that have agreed, in writing, not to disclose it to others. Some of those employees, contractors and affiliated organizations may be located outside of your home country; by using our websites and services, you consent to the transfer of such information to them. We will not rent or sell potentially personally-identifying and personally-identifying information to anyone.

We may be required to disclose an individual’s personal information in response to a lawful request by public authorities, including to meet national security or law enforcement requirements.

If we ever were to engage in any onward transfers of your data with third parties for a purpose other than which it was originally collected or subsequently authorized, we would provide you with an opt-out choice to limit the use and disclosure of your personal data.

What matters:

Engineers Edge will NOT spam you - ever. Engineers Edge will NOT sell your data or contact information. Most of what is written here is required by our advertising partners - which help pay the bills and keep Engineers Edge resources online.

Cookies

A cookie is a string of information that a website stores on a visitor’s computer, and that the visitor’s browser provides to the website each time the visitor returns. We use cookies across our sites to help identify and track visitors, their usage of our services, and their website access preferences. We describe the specific cookies used in the sections below. Visitors who do not wish to have cookies placed on their computers should set their browsers to refuse cookies before using our websites, with the drawback that certain features may not function properly without the aid of cookies.

What Personal Data We Collect And Why We Collect It

Registered Users

If you create an account on one of our sites, you will be prompted to select a Username and provide your Email Address.
When choosing a Username, we strongly advise you not use or include your real name. Usernames cannot be changed.
Your Username and Email Address are stored in the website’s database. Your Email Address is used to send you an email with a link to set your password or to send you an email with a link to reset your password in the event you forget your password.
Once an account is created, you must contact us to have it deleted.
Accounts have a numeric User ID assigned to them when they are created. The User ID cannot be changed.
An anonymized string created from your email address (also called a hash) is provided to the Gravatar service to see if a Profile picture of you is available for display.
You may optionally complete your Profile by providing your First Name, Last Name, Website (URL) and/or Biographical info. These additional details are also saved in the website’s database. You may edit these details, and your Email Address, in your Profile at any time.
You may also choose how your name is displayed (your Display Name) to visitors to the site (e.g. in comments you create) in your Profile.
Your Username, First Name, Last Name and Email Address are accessible by employees on the site.
If you attempt to log in to our site, we will set a temporary cookie to determine if your browser accepts cookies at all. This cookie contains no personal data and is discarded when you close your browser.
If you have an account and you log in to a site, we will set up several cookies to save your login information and some of your screen options. The logged-in cookies last for two days, and the screen options cookies last for a year.
If you select “Remember Me” these cookies will persist for two weeks. If you log out of your account, the login cookies will be removed. It is important that you log out if you are using a public computer.
For users that register on one of our sites, we also store the data they provide in their profile indefinitely. All registered users can see, change or delete most of that data at any time except their login name/nickname.

Publishing Content (Comments, Pages, Posts, Forums)

Your Profile Picture (Gravatar), Display Name, Website (URL) (if any) and Biographical Info (if any) may be visible to visitors to the website (e.g. if you leave a comment, forum post, or contribute an article/post).
If you author an article/post, your Username, User ID, Profile Picture (Gravatar), Display Name, Website (URL) (if any) and Biographical Info (if any) are provided to any visitor using the website’s REST API interface.
If you upload media (e.g. images) to the website (in forums, posts, or comments), you should avoid uploading images with EXIF GPS location data included. Visitors to the website can download and extract any location data included in images on the website.
If you edit or publish an article/post, an additional cookie will be saved in your browser. This cookie includes no personal data and simply indicates the post ID of the article you just edited. It expires after 1 day.
When visitors leave comments on one of our sites we collect the data shown in the comments form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection.
Comments may require manual approval by one of our employees or site owners.
If you leave a comment on a site you may opt-in to saving your name, email address and website in cookies so we can recognize you as a commenter. These cookies will persist for one year.

Email/Chat/Contact Forms

We use our own developed script to process all website generated email and communication with our customers.
Customers that email us, or use any of the contact forms on our websites, will have their email address, IP address, web browserdata and any data provided in the contact form or body of the email is not stored online however maybe retained in offline databases.

Embedded Content From Other Websites

Embeds are pieces from other websites that are shown from time to time on our websites. They behave in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website and may use cookies or capture information. Typically embedded content is from websites that share videos, images, or other content. These services may collect your IP Address, your User Agent, store and retrieve cookies on your browser, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including correlating your interaction with the content with your account with that service, if you are logged in to that service.

Analytics

We use Google Analytics and Analog Stats for tracking visitors and aggregating information about the traffic to our websites. The Google Analytics privacy policy can be found here: https://policies.google.com/privacy.

Marketing Campaigns

We rarelyuse email marketing to communicate with customers and potential customers from time to time. All email lists and campaigns are “opt-in” meaning we will not send you these sorts of emails unless you indicated that you wish to receive them during signup or other interactions on our website.
We may send you “system” emails, such as password reset requests or payment notifications/receipts even if you have not opted-in to email marketing lists.
All marketing emails sent by us will include an unsubscribe link in the footer of the email. Emails sent to you may also include standard tracking, including open and click activities.
We may utilize social media and web advertising campaigns. These service providers use cookies on our sites and/or pixel tracking to serve ads across the different platforms.

Paying Customers

For payment transactions for all services and products we use PayPal and Stripe.
To comply with accounting and legal requirements, we keep data on financial transactions in the systems above for up to 10 years.

Hosting and API Services

All web servers and hosting are managed by our team on the Liquid web platform located in different regions around the world. This includes website hosting, backups, web database, file storage, APIs, and log files.

What Rights You Have Over Your Data

If you are a registered user or have left comments on our site you can request to see or download the data we have about you.

Typically for visitors that have left comments, the data will be their email address, any IP addresses assigned to them at the time of leaving the comments and the user agent strings of the browsers they used. The rest of the data is public as published by the visitors.

For registered users or paying customers, this will also include profile information and download, payment, and support ticket histories.

You can also request “to be forgotten” and we will erase any personally identifiable data we have about you. Of course, this excludes data we need for administrative or security purposes or if we are required by law to retain some of the data.

An individual who seeks access, or who seeks to correct, amend, or delete inaccurate data, should direct his/her query to webmaster@engineersedge.com We will respond within a reasonable timeframe, not to exceed one week

How We Protect Your Data
The security and reliability of our service is our number one priority. We invest heavily in the training of our staff and our infrastructure to ensure that best practices are followed in everything that we do.

In addition, we have an extensive internal review and Quality Assurance process in place specifically to prevent potential security vulnerabilities in our plugins and services.

Every Engineers Edge employee and contractor goes through background checks and an onboarding process that includes a trial period where access to customer data is provided only when working directly under the supervision of another staff member.

All staff only have access to systems that are directly required to complete the functions of their job. We use dual and triple factor authentication for all critical systems and communications services, and automatically log all staff activity using an internal logging tool.

We only use third-party services, that are fully vetted and adhere to the highest levels of privacy and security practices.

What Data Breach Procedures We Have In Place
Should any event occur where customer data has been lost, stolen, or potentially compromised, our policy is to alert our customers via email no later than 48 hours of our team becoming aware of the event. We will also report such incident to any required data protection authority. We will work closely with any customers affected to determine next steps such as any end-user notifications, needed patches, and how to avoid any similar event in the future.

Advertising Networks
Engineers Edge utilizes third party advertising organizations to serve contextual and other targeted advertisements on Engineers Edge. These adverting organizations may use details about your visit to Engineers Edge networks to deliver targeted advertisements about goods and services of interest to you.

Google is utilized to deliver targeted advertisements on Engineers Edge. Google does use their own cookies to serve ads. The Google organization uses cookies by DART to serve ads to you while you visit Engineers Edge and other sites on the Internet. You may opt out of the use of the DART cookie by visiting the Google ad and content network privacy policy.

Contact Us Form
If you have any questions about this privacy statement or the practices of the Engineers Edge web site, please contact us by following the following link: webmaster

Privacy Policy Changes
Although most changes are likely to be minor, Engineers Edge may change its Privacy Policy from time to time, and in Engineers Edge's sole discretion.

Changelog
May 30, 2018 – Updated language of the policy to be more user-friendly, specifically outlining requirements in preparation for meeting the EU GDPR.