Effective date: August 14, 2018
We at Benchling know you care about how your personal information is used and shared, and we take your privacy seriously. Please read the following to learn more about our Privacy Policy. By using or accessing the Services in any manner, you acknowledge that you accept the practices and policies outlined in this Privacy Policy, and you hereby consent that we will collect, use, and share your information in the following ways.
If you are a resident of the European Union ("EU"), United Kingdom, Lichtenstein, Norway, or Iceland, you may have additional rights under the EU General Data Protection Regulation (the "GDPR") with respect to your Personal Data. Please refer to our EU Addendum to Privacy Policy for more details.
Remember that your use of Benchling's Services is at all times subject to the Terms of Use, which incorporates this Privacy Policy. Any terms we use in this Policy without defining them have the definitions given to them in the Terms of Use.
This Privacy Policy covers our treatment of personally identifiable information ("Personal Information") that we gather when you are accessing or using our Services, but not to the practices of companies we don't own or control, or people that we don't manage. We gather various types of Personal Information from our users, as explained in more detail below, and we use this Personal Information internally in connection with our Services, including to personalize, provide, and improve our services, to allow you to set up a user account and profile, to contact you and allow other users to contact you, to fulfill your requests for certain products and services, and to analyze how you use the Services. In certain cases, we may also share some Personal Information with third parties, but only as described below.
As noted in the Terms of Use, we do not knowingly collect or solicit personal information from anyone under the age of 16. If you are under 16, please do not attempt to register for the Services or send any personal information about yourself to us. If we learn that we have collected personal information from a child under age 16, we will delete that information as quickly as possible. If you believe that a child under 16 may have provided us personal information, please contact us at privacy@benchling.com.
We're constantly trying to improve our Services, so we may need to change this Privacy Policy from time to time as well, but we will alert you to changes by placing a notice on the Benchling website, by sending you an email, and/or by some other means. Please note that if you've opted not to receive legal notice emails from us (or you haven't provided us with your email address), those legal notices will still govern your use of the Services, and you are still responsible for reading and understanding them. If you use the Services after any changes to the Privacy Policy have been posted, that means you agree to all of the changes. Use of information we collect now is subject to the Privacy Policy in effect at the time such information is used.
We receive and store any information you knowingly provide to us. For example, through the registration process and/or through your account settings, we may collect Personal Information such as your name, email address, phone number, and company / institution name. If you provide your third-party account credentials to us or otherwise sign in to the Services through a third party site or service, you understand some content and/or information in those accounts ("Third Party Account Information") may be transmitted into your account with us, and that Third Party Account Information transmitted to our Services is covered by this Privacy Policy; for example, your email address if you sign in with Google. Certain information may be required to register with us or to take advantage of some of our features.
We may communicate with you if you've provided us the means to do so. For example, if you've given us your email address, we may send you promotional email offers on behalf of other businesses, or email you about your use of the Services. Also, we may receive a confirmation when you open an email from us. This confirmation helps us make our communications with you more interesting and improve our services. If you do not want to receive communications from us, please indicate your preference by emailing support@benchling.com.
Whenever you interact with our Services, we automatically receive and record information on our server logs from your browser or device, which may include your IP address, geolocation data, device identification, "cookie" information, the type of browser and/or device you're using to access our Services, and the page or feature you requested. "Cookies" are identifiers we transfer to your browser or device that allow us to recognize your browser or device and tell us how and when pages and features in our Services are visited and by how many people. You may be able to change the preferences on your browser or device to prevent or limit your device's acceptance of cookies, but this may prevent you from taking advantage of some of our features.
If you click on a link to a third party website or service, a third party may also transmit cookies to you. This Privacy Policy does not cover the use of cookies by any third parties, and we aren't responsible for their privacy policies and practices. Please be aware that cookies placed by third parties may continue to track your activities online even after you have left our Services, and those third parties may not honor "Do Not Track" requests you have set using your browser or device.
We may use this data to customize content for you that we think you might like, based on your usage patterns. We may also use it to improve the Services — for example, this data can tell us how often users use a particular feature of the Services, and we can use that knowledge to make the Services interesting to as many users as possible.
Through cookies we place on your browser or device, we may collect information about your online activity after you leave our Services. Just like any other usage information we collect, this information allows us to improve the Services and customize your online experience, and otherwise as described in this Privacy Policy. Your browser may offer you a "Do Not Track" option, which allows you to signal to operators of websites and web applications and services (including behavioral advertising services) that you do not wish such operators to track certain of your online activities over time and across different websites. Our Services do not support Do Not Track requests at this time, which means that we collect information about your online activity both while you are using the Services and after you leave our Services.
We do not rent or sell your Personal Information in personally identifiable form to anyone, except as expressly provided below. We may share your Personal Information with third parties as described in this section:
We may de-identify your Personal Information so that you are not identified as an individual, and provide that information to our partners. We may also provide aggregate usage information to our partners (or allow partners to collect that information from you), who may use such information to understand how often and in what ways people use our Services, so that they, too, can provide you with an optimal online experience. However, we never disclose aggregate usage or de-identified information to a partner (or allow a partner to collect such information) in a manner that would identify you as an individual person.
We may deliver a file to you through the Services (known as a "web beacon") from third party ad networks. Web beacons allow third party ad networks to provide anonymized, aggregated auditing, research and reporting for us. Web beacons also enable ad networks to serve targeted advertisements to you when you visit other websites. Because your web browser must request these advertisements and web beacons from the ad network's servers, these companies can view, edit, or set their own cookies, just as if you had requested a web page from their site. Our Services currently do not allow third parties to conduct web beacon tracking and serve targeted advertisements to you through our Services when you visit our websites, but you also need to opt out of web beacon tracking conducted by third parties through our Services by adjusting the Do Not Track settings on your browser. Please note that we don't control whether or how these third parties comply with Do Not Track requests.
We employ other companies and people to perform tasks on our behalf and need to share your information with them to provide products or services to you; for example, we may use cloud infrastructure provider to host and operate the Services. Unless we tell you differently, our agents do not have any right to use the Personal Information we share with them beyond what is necessary to assist us.
Certain user profile information, including your name, location, and any video or image content that such user has uploaded to the Services, may be displayed to other users to facilitate user interaction within the Services or address your request for our services. Please remember that any content you upload to your public user profile, along with any Personal Information or content that you voluntarily disclose online in a manner other users can view (on discussion boards, in messages and chat areas, etc.) becomes publicly available, and can be collected and used by anyone.
We may choose to buy or sell assets, and may share and/or transfer customer information in connection with the evaluation of and entry into such transactions. Also, if we (or our assets) are acquired, or if we go out of business, enter bankruptcy, or go through some other change of control, Personal Information could be one of the assets transferred to or acquired by a third party.
We reserve the right to access, read, preserve, and disclose any information that we reasonably believe is necessary to comply with law or court order; enforce or apply our Terms of Use and other agreements; or protect the rights, property, or safety of Benchling, our employees, our users, or others.
Your account is protected by a password for your privacy and security. If you access your account via a third party site or service, you may have additional or different sign-on protections via that third party site or service. You must prevent unauthorized access to your account and Personal Information by selecting and protecting your password and/or other sign-on mechanism appropriately and limiting access to your computer or device and browser by signing off after you have finished accessing your account.
We endeavor to protect the privacy of your account and other Personal Information we hold in our records, but unfortunately, we cannot guarantee complete security. Unauthorized entry or use, hardware or software failure, and other factors, may compromise the security of user information at any time.
Through your account settings, you may access, and, in some cases, edit or delete the following information you've provided to us:
THE INFORMATION YOU CAN VIEW, UPDATE, AND DELETE MAY CHANGE AS THE SERVICES CHANGE. IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS ABOUT VIEWING OR UPDATING INFORMATION WE HAVE ON FILE ABOUT YOU, PLEASE CONTACT US AT PRIVACY@BENCHLING.COM.
UNDER CALIFORNIA CIVIL CODE SECTIONS 1798.83-1798.84, CALIFORNIA RESIDENTS ARE ENTITLED TO CONTACT US TO PREVENT DISCLOSURE OF PERSONAL INFORMATION TO THIRD PARTIES FOR SUCH THIRD PARTIES' DIRECT MARKETING PURPOSES; IN ORDER TO SUBMIT SUCH A REQUEST, PLEASE CONTACT US AT PRIVACY@BENCHLING.COM.
You can opt-out of certain Behavioral Advertising activities by doing one or more of the following. Please note that you will need to opt-out of each browser and device for which you desire to apply these opt-out features.
Service Provider Opt Out: You can opt-out directly from some Advertising Service Providers and providers of Tracking Tools by using their opt-out tools. Some of these service providers, and links to their opt-out tools, are:
Web Browser Controls: You can prevent the use of certain Tracking Tools, such as cookies, on a device-by-device basis using the controls in your web browser. These controls can be found in the Tools > Internet Options (or similar) menu for your browser, or as otherwise directed by your browser's support feature. Through your web browser, you may be able to:
Please note the following with respect to opting out of Behavioral Advertising:
You can always opt not to disclose information to us, but keep in mind some information may be needed to register with us or to take advantage of some of our features.
You may be able to add, update, or delete information as explained above. When you update information, however, we may maintain a copy of the unrevised information in our records. You may request deletion of your account by emailing support@benchling.com. Some information may remain in our records after your deletion of such information from your account. We may use any aggregated data derived from or incorporating your Personal Information after you update or delete it, but not in a manner that would identify you personally.
If you have any questions or concerns regarding our privacy policies, please send us a detailed message to privacy@benchling.com, and we will try to resolve your concerns.