Privacy Policy

Virtual Nature (“us”, “we”, or “our”), operates the Virtual Nature website (the “Service”), is committed to protecting and respecting your privacy in connection with your use of our website www.virtualnature.com, (the “Website(s)”) and other products, services and features thereof (the Website and such other products, services and features are collectively referred to herein as the “Product” or “Products”, which may be updated from time-to-time at the sole discretion of Virtual Nature). This privacy policy (“Privacy Policy”) and any other documents referred to herein set forth the basis on which any personal data we collect from you, or that you provide to us, in connection with the Products will be processed by us. Please read the following carefully to understand our practices regarding your personal data and how we will collect, use and disclose your personal data.

DATA WE MAY COLLECT

We may collect and process the following data about you:

• Personal data including, for example, your name, e-mail address, password, and in certain instances, data about your usage of the Products and data collected by tracking technologies as further described in Tracking technologies section below that may identify you as an individual or allow online contact with you as an individual.

• Device information such as operating system version, device type, and system performance data.

• Data collected via tracking technologies, as fully described in Tracking technologies section.

CONFIDENTIALITY AND SECURITY

The security of your personal data is important to us. We follow generally accepted standards to protect the personal data submitted to us, both during transmission and once it is received. If you have any questions about the security of your personal data, you can contact us. Except as described under the “Disclosure of Your Data” section below, we do not provide your personal data to any third party without your specific consent, as defined by applicable law.

NEWSLETTERS OR OTHER ELECTRONIC COMMUNICATIONS

If you sign up to receive promotional materials from us via email we will use the data you give us to provide the communications you have requested. If you inform us that you wish to cancel email promotional materials by selecting “unsubscribe” at the bottom of such communication, we will remove you from our mailing list.

TRACKING TECHNOLOGIES

Virtual Nature and our analytics partners use technologies such as cookies, beacons, tags, and scripts to enable a service to recognize your device so you don’t have to provide the same data several times during one task, to recognize that you may have already given a username and password so you don’t need to do it for every web page requested, and to measure how people are using the Products.

We use local storage, such as HTML5, to store content data and preferences. Third parties with whom we partner to provide certain features on the Products also use HTML5 to collect and store data. Various browsers may offer their own management tools for removing HTML5.

We partner with third parties, such as Facebook and Google, to manage our advertising of the Products on other sites or platforms as well as across your other devices based on your past visits to our Website. Our third party partners may use technologies such as cookies to gather data about your activities within the Products to deliver such advertising to you, such as retargeting ads. We are not always able to respond to do-not-track signals. Please note that this does not opt you out of being served ads. You may continue to receive generic ads on these third party platforms. You may also opt out of receiving ads across devices by adjusting your ad preference in your Google account.

We use third party trackers to let us know when users have visited the Products by “clicking-through” our sponsored advertising or content hosted on third party platforms. The Products use Google Analytics code to gather statistical data. Google Analytics sets cookies to help us accurately estimate the number of visitors to the Products and the volumes of usage of the Products. This is done to ensure that the Products are available when you want them and are fast. For more data on how Google Analytics processes this data, visit www.google.com/analytics.

We will acquire consent from you in order to use such trackers to the extent required by applicable law.

LOG FILES

As true of most websites, we gather certain data and automatically and store it in log files. This data may include Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, browser type, internet service provider (ISP), referring/exit pages, operating system, date/time stamp, and/or clickstream data.

If you receive the HTML-formatted version of our email newsletter, your opening of the newsletter is notified to us and saved. Your clicks on links in the newsletter are also saved. These and the open statistics are used in aggregate form to give us an indication of the popularity of the content and to help us make decisions about future content and formatting.

WHERE WE STORE YOUR PERSONAL DATA

All data you provide to us through the Products is stored on secure servers located in the European area. Any payment transactions (provided by the service) will be encrypted using SSL technology; all payment data is stored with our payment processor and is never stored on Virtual Nature’s servers. Where we have given you (or where you have chosen) a password which enables you to access certain parts of the Products, you are responsible for keeping this password confidential. We ask you not to share a password with anyone, and suggest that your change your password frequently.

Unfortunately, the transmission of data via the Internet is not completely secure. Although we will do our best to protect your personal data, we cannot guarantee the security of your data transmitted to the Products; any transmission is at your own risk. Once we have received your data, we will use strict procedures and security features to try to prevent unauthorized access.

YOUR DATA RIGHTS

As you may know, a recent European Union law called the General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”) give certain rights to applicable individuals in relation to their personal data. Accordingly, we have implemented transparency to help such users, including residents of the EU, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom exercise those rights. As required under applicable law, the rights afforded to you are:

A right of access: you have the right to obtain (i) confirmation as to whether personal data concerning you are processed or not and, if processed, to obtain (ii) access to such data and a copy thereof. We may charge you a small fee for this service.

A right to rectification: you have the right to obtain the rectification of any inaccurate personal data concerning you. You also have the right to have incomplete personal data completed, including by means of providing a supplementary statement.

A right to erasure: in some cases, you have the right to obtain the erasure of personal data concerning you. Upon request, Virtual Nature will permanently and irrevocably anonymize your data such that it can never be reconstructed to identify you as an individual. However, this is not an absolute right and Virtual Nature may have legal or legitimate grounds for keeping such data.

A right to restriction of processing: in some cases, you have the right to obtain restriction of the processing of your personal data.

A right to data portability: you have the right to receive the personal data concerning you which you have provided to Virtual Nature, in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format, and you have the right to transmit those data to another controller without hindrance from Virtual Nature. This right only applies when the processing of your personal data is based on your consent or on a contract and such processing is carried out by automated means.

A right to object to processing: you have the right to object at any time, on grounds relating to your particular situation, to processing of personal data concerning you when such processing is based on the legitimate interest of Virtual Nature. Virtual Nature may, however, invoke compelling legitimate grounds for continued processing. When your personal data is processed for direct marketing purposes, you have the right to object at any time to the processing of such data. You may, in particular, exercise that right by clicking on the “unsubscribe” link provided at the bottom of any messages received, or by managing your privacy preferences by logging in to your Virtual Nature account.

You may access your personal data to modify or update at any time via emailing us. We will respond to your request in a reasonable timeframe in accordance with applicable law.

CCPA Privacy Policy (Do Not Sell My Personal Information)

Under the CCPA, among other rights, California consumers have the right to:

Request that a business that collects a consumer’s personal data disclose the categories and specific pieces of personal data that a business has collected about consumers.

Request that a business delete any personal data about the consumer that a business has collected.

Request that a business that sells a consumer’s personal data, not sell the consumer’s personal data.

If you make a request, we have one month to respond to you. If you would like to exercise any of these rights, please contact us.

USES MADE OF THE DATA

We use information held about you in the following ways:

  • To provide you with the Products.
  • To answer your questions or requests for information or handle your complaints.
  • To ensure that content provided by the Products is presented in the most effective manner for you and for your computer or other device.
  • To provide you with promotional communications, such as email, to the extent that you have provided consent to receive such communications under applicable law.
  • To carry out our obligations arising from any agreements entered into between you and us.
  • To allow you to participate in interactive features of the Products, when you choose to do so.
  • To notify you about updates or changes to Product features and content.
  • To understand your broad, non-specific geographic location to help us identify groups of users by general geographic market (such as zip code, state or country).
  • To account for applicable sales taxes based on zip codes provided to our payment processors for purchases made through the Website.
  • To serve our advertisements to you through third party platforms, such as Facebook or Google, on other sites and apps or across your devices, to the extent that you have provided consent for such uses under applicable law.
  • We may also ask you to complete surveys that we use for research purposes, although you do not have to respond to them.
  • To manage your payments and orders.
  • If you are an existing customer, we will only contact you by electronic means (e-mail or in-Product communication) with information about products and services similar to those which were the subject of a previous sale to you, except if you opt-out to such communications.

LEGAL BASES OF PERSONAL DATA PROCESSING

In accordance with GDPR, Virtual Nature provides the following information regarding its Article 6 legal bases for personal data processing:

The performance of the contract between you and Virtual Nature for the data processing relating to your use of Virtual Nature’s Products (including your orders and payments);

Virtual Nature’s legitimate interest, more specifically:

  • Our business interest in providing you with emails for timely introductory materials and information about your Virtual Nature account, our Product features and updates, and offers to upgrade your free account to a subscription account.
  • Our financial interest in providing you with promotional offers and/or discounts with respect to paid subscriptions and special offerings.
  • Our business interest in offering you particularized or adapted content based on your usage of the Products.
  • Our business interest in collecting data regarding your general usage activities for the purpose of improving our Virtual Nature user experience.
  • Our business interest in requesting that you partake in Product surveys in order to better understand your needs and expectations.
  • Our financial interest in providing you the opportunity to purchase Virtual Nature subscriptions for the benefit of a third party through the Virtual Nature “gifting” program.
  • Our business interest in providing you with customer service communications regarding your account, questions about our content offerings, or any other matters directed to customer service staff, in order to have clear and easy communication with you and to respond to all your requests.
  • Our business interest in collecting data related to unplanned downtime or errors in the Products.
  • Our business interest in complying with our legal obligations, such as maintaining accurate financial records.

DISCLOSURE OF YOUR DATA

We may disclose your personal data to any member of our group, which means our subsidiaries, our ultimate holding company and its subsidiaries.

We may also disclose your personal data to third parties as follows:

  • In some circumstances, based on your specific requests, we may need to disclose your personal data to a third party so that it can provide a service you have requested from such party, or fulfill a request for data from such party.
  • In some circumstances, we may disclose the personal data that you have provided to Virtual Nature to a third party that offers and/or provides goods or services complementary to our own for the purpose of enhancing our users’ experiences by offering you integrated or complementary functionality, complementary services or bundled pricing options.
  • If Virtual Nature’s service providers (like hosting, IT maintenance, market analytics, and payment service providers) require this data to provide services to Virtual Nature. Virtual Nature requires each of its service providers to agree to maintain the confidentiality and security of your personal data.
  • In the event that we sell or buy any business or assets, in which case we may disclose your personal data to the prospective seller or buyer of such business or assets.
  • If Virtual Nature or substantially all of our assets are acquired by a third party, in which case personal data held by us about our customers will be one of the transferred assets.
  • If we are under a duty to disclose or share your personal data in order to comply with any legal obligation such as to comply with a subpoena, bankruptcy proceedings, similar legal process, or in order to enforce or apply our agreements with you; or to protect the rights, property, or safety of Virtual Nature, our customers, or others. This includes exchanging data with other companies and organizations for the purposes of fraud protection and credit risk reduction.
  • With third parties, such as Facebook, in order to serve Virtual Nature advertisements on such third party platforms, to the extent that you have consented to such practices under applicable law.

DATA RETENTION

The retention periods applied by Virtual Nature comply with applicable legislation in effect on the date hereof, namely:

  • For data relating to your account: such data will not be retained beyond your request that your account be deleted.
  • For transactional data relating to your purchases: such data is kept for the entire period of the contractual relationship, then in accordance with legal obligations and applicable statute of limitation periods. Please note that this data does not include Payment Card information, which is processed by our third-party payment processors, and not Virtual Nature.
  • For data collected based on your consent to receive our marketing communications: we will use such data until you withdraw consent or applicable law requires that such data is no longer used.
  • When your data are collected in the context of requests/queries: such data are kept for the period necessary to process and reply to such requests or queries.
  • When cookies or other trackers are placed on your terminal, they are kept for a period of 12 months.

Other data will be kept as long as necessary for the purposes pursued and in compliance with our legal obligations, including the applicable statute of limitations.

LINKS TO THIRD PARTY SITES

The Products may, from time to time, contain links to and from the Products of our partner networks, advertisers and affiliates. If you follow a link to any of these external websites, please note that these websites have their own privacy policies and that we do not accept any responsibility or liability for these websites or their policies. Please check these policies before you submit any personal data to these external websites.

SOCIAL MEDIA WIDGETS

Our Products include social media features, such as the Facebook Like button, and widgets, such as the “Share This” button, or interactive mini-programs. These features may collect your Internet protocol address, which page you are visiting on or Products, and may set a cookie to enable the feature to function properly. Social media features and widgets are hosted by a third party or hosted directly on our Products. Your interactions with these features are governed by the privacy statement of the company providing it.

EMBEDDED CONTENT FROM OTHER WEBSITES

Articles or pages on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website. This complies for example the embedded Vimeo section of the service including registration, log in, payments or other actions made in that embedded section.

These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.

USE OF VIRTUAL NATURE BY MINORS

You must be 18 years of age, or the age of majority in your province, territory or country, to sign up as a registered user of the Products. Individuals under the age of 18, or the applicable age of majority, may utilize the Products only with the involvement and consent of a parent or legal guardian, under such person’s account.

DATA POSTED ON FORUMS

Virtual Nature users may have the ability to post content to one or more Virtual Nature forums. All such users may request and obtain removal of such posted content by contacting Virtual Nature and specifically identifying the content to be removed. Please be advised that any such removal does not ensure complete or comprehensive removal of all traces of the content posted on the Virtual Nature forum(s).

CHANGES TO OUR PRIVACY POLICY

We may update this Privacy Policy to reflect changes to our data practices. We encourage you to periodically review this page for the latest data on our privacy practices.

Last update: 31/10/2020