Privacy Policy

Last updated: 2024 August 29th

This privacy policy (“Privacy Policy”) explains how Instrumental, Inc. and our affiliates (“Instrumental,” “us,” or “we”) collects, uses, and shares personal information during your use or interaction with our services, including our website at instrumental.com (“Website”), our Manufacturing AI and Data Platform (“Platform”), and our events, sales, and marketing activities (collectively, the “Services”). It also explains how we collect, use, and share personal information if you apply for a job with us.

If you have any questions or concerns about this Privacy Policy or our use of your personal information, then please contact us at privacy@instrumental.com.

1. Information You Provide

We collect information that you provide to us when you use or interact with our Services or apply for a job with us. The amount and type of personal information that Instrumental collects depends on the nature of the interaction.

Your Communications with Us. We may collect information such as your name, email address, phone number, job title, and company name when you request information about our Services, register for our newsletter, request customer or technical support, or otherwise communicate with us.

Account. We collect your name and email address in order to create your account on the Platform. We may also collect other information, such as your job title and company.

Interactive Features. We collect information that you submit or make available through our interactive features, such as information you choose to provide via the comments feature of the Platform or the comments section of our Website and social media pages.

Surveys. We may contact you to participate in surveys. If you decide to participate, you may be asked to provide certain information, which may include personal information.

Conferences, Trade Shows, and Other Events. We may collect personal information if you register for or attend one of our conferences, trade shows, or other events, such as your name, company name, email, phone number, and marketing preferences.

Job Applications. We may post job openings and opportunities on the Website. If you reply to one of these postings by submitting your application, we will collect your name, email address, phone number, CV, and cover letter. We use this information to assess your qualifications and suitability for the job. We may also collect information such as your social media links and demographic information if you choose to provide this information to us. We may also collect work eligibility information that is required under applicable law or that need we need to move forward for certain positions.

2. Information We Collect Automatically

Like many businesses, we (or our service providers) may automatically collect certain information relating to your use of the Services. Some of this information is collected using cookies, pixel tags, local storage, and similar technologies. For more information about these technologies, please see the section below titled “Cookies and Similar Technologies”.

Website Visitors. We automatically collect certain information if you visit or interact with our Website. This may include device or browser information, such as IP address, browser or device type, cookie identifiers, language preferences, and other unique identifiers. It may also include information regarding your use of the Website, such as the pages visited, the date and time of your visit, the links you click, the types of content you interact with, the frequency and duration of your activities, and other information about how you interact with the Website. We collect this information to better understand how visitors are using the Website and determine your general location, for example, to monitor traffic, improve navigation, fix bugs, and for marketing purposes.

Usage Data. If you create an account using the Platform, we also automatically collect certain information relating to your use and interaction with the Platform as a logged-in user (“Usage Data”). This may include, for example, IP address, date/time stamps associated with your usage, searches and other actions you take, what portions of the Platform you use, links clicked, information about your computer or device, non-sensitive text entered, mouse movements, and other data and metadata regarding your use of the Platform.

3. Information We Collect From Third Parties

From time to time, we may also obtain information about you from third party sources, such as websites and public sources, marketing and business partners, and security and fraud detection firms. This may include, for example, your name, contact information, location information, job title, and information about your company and sector. We use this information to maintain and improve the Services and for our marketing purposes. We may also obtain information about job applicants from third party sources, such as background and screening checks, information from referees, and other information about your education and professional experience that you choose to make publicly available on social media sites.

4. How We Use Your Information

We use your personal information to provide the Services, communicate with you, manage your account, send you marketing and offers, or for other business and recruitment purposes. In particular, Instrumental may use your personal information in order to:

  • Register and manage your account.
  • Send you service-related information, including technical notices, updates, security alerts, and other administrative messages.
  • Ensure the security of the Services, including to monitor and verify access, combat fraud, spam, malware, and other security risks.
  • Perform debugging, error reporting, and other activities to maintain the quality of the Services.
  • Carry out marketing activities, including to send you marketing and other promotional communications (in accordance with your marketing preferences) and assess the effectiveness of our marketing campaigns.
  • Personalize, target, and deliver advertising for our products and services on third party websites, apps, and other online services.
  • Analyze data, including metrics related to your use of the Services to help us understand your needs and improve our products and services.
  • Communicate with you about one of our events, including webinars and videos.
  • Assess your suitability for a role with us, verify the information you provide to us, and process your job application.
  • Comply with our legal and regulatory obligations.
  • Other legitimate business purposes, such as collecting customer feedback, identifying usage trends, defending our legal rights, and improving our products and services.

5. How We Share Your Information

Instrumental may share your personal information with third parties for the purposes of operating our business and maintaining and improving our Services. In particular, we may share your personal information with the following categories of recipients:

  • Our group companies who support data processing services necessary to provide you with our Services or who otherwise process personal information for purposes described in this Privacy Policy.
  • Third-party business partners, service providers, sponsors, and authorized third-party agents that provide services to us (for example, sending our newsletter, hosting and sponsoring events, and providing customer support and marketing communications).
  • Any buyer (and their agents and advisers) in connection with, or during negotiations of, any merger, sale of company assets, consolidation or restructuring, financing, or acquisition of all or a portion of our business by or to another company.
  • Any competent law enforcement body, regulator or government agency, court or other third party as necessary to comply with legal process, to protect the rights, property, or safety of Instrumental, its business partners, you, or others, or as otherwise required by applicable law.
  • Any other person if we otherwise notify you and you consent to such sharing.

We may also share information with other third parties so long as the information has been aggregated and/or anonymized so that it can no longer be used to identify you.

Selling or sharing is defined by selling, renting, releasing, disclosing, disseminating, making available, transferring, or otherwise communicating orally, in writing, or by electronic or other means, a consumer’s personal information by the business to another business or a third party for monetary or other valuable consideration.

6. Data Retention

We will only retain your personal information for as long as necessary to fulfill the purposes for which it was collected. We will retain and use your personal information as necessary to provide the Services, comply with our business requirements as well as legal, accounting or reporting obligations, resolve disputes, protect our assets, and enforce our agreements. To determine the appropriate retention period, we consider the nature and sensitivity of the information, the potential risk of harm from unauthorized use or disclosure, the purposes for which we process the information, and any applicable legal requirements.

Category of Personal Data

Examples of Personal Data We Collect

Categories of Third Parties With Whom We Share this Personal Data:

Data Retention

Profile or Contact Data

First and last name

Email

Phone number

Business mailing address

Service Providers

Advertising Partners

Analytics Partners

Business Partners

Parties You Authorize, Access or Authenticate

Indefinite

Online Identifiers

Unique identifiers such as username, passwords and hashed emails

Service Providers

Parties You Authorize, Access or Authenticate

Indefinite

Device/IP/Location

IP address

Type of device/operating system/browser used to access the Services

Analytics Partners

Parties You Authorize, Access or Authenticate

Indefinite

Web Analytics

Web page interactions

Referring webpage/source through which you accessed the Services

Non-identifiable request IDs

Statistics associated with the interaction between device or browser and the

Services

Analytics Partners

Indefinite

7. Data Transfers

Your information may be transferred to, and processed in, countries other than the country in which you reside and those countries’ laws may be different to the laws of your country. In particular, Instrumental is headquartered in the United States and the Services are provided in the United States and other counties where our group companies and third-party business partners and service providers are located. We take appropriate steps to ensure that your personal information is protected in accordance with applicable laws and this Privacy Policy. This includes, for example, implementing standard contractual clauses adopted by the European Commission and UK authorities between our group companies and with our service providers, and implementing additional safeguards where necessary.

8. Security

We have implemented technical and organizational measures to protect the personal information that we collect and process about you. These measures have been designed to provide an appropriate level of security according to the risk of processing, taking into account the nature of the information and technology available. The safety and security of your information also depends on you. Where we have given you (or where you have chosen) a password for access to the Services, you are responsible for keeping this password confidential. Please do not share your password with anyone. Although we take reasonable security measures to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee the security of your personal information transmitted over the Internet.

We have a team dedicated to keeping your information secure and testing for vulnerabilities. We continue to work to keep your information safe with a broad security approach including encryption of files at rest and transit, multi-factor authentication, static code analysis and ongoing security assessments. We deploy automated technologies to detect abusive behavior and content that may harm our Services, you, or other users.

9. Cookies and Similar Technologies

We use cookies and similar tracking technologies, including to ensure the proper functioning of the Services, store your preferences, measure traffic and usage trends, optimize and improve the Services, and deliver advertisements that may be of interest to you. A cookie is a small file containing a string of information that is sent to your computer or device. You can control or reset your cookies and similar technologies through your web browser, which allows you to customize your cookie preferences and refuse all cookies or to indicate when a cookie is being sent. Please note that some features of the Services may not work properly if cookies are disabled.

Analytics. We use analytics tools to collect information about your use of the Services. Some of the third-party tools we use include:

  • Google Analytics. We use Google Analytics to enable us to better understand your use of our Services. Like many services, Google Analytics uses first-party cookies to track user interactions, which is used to compile usage reports. The reports disclose trends without identifying individual users. You can find more information about how Google collects and uses this data at www.google.com/policies/privacy/partners/ and can opt-out from Google supported analytics by visiting https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.
  • Amplitude. Amplitude is an analytics service that collects certain information about users, such as device type, location data (e.g., country), preferred language, and session ID, on the Platform. It also collects information about events such as how long you are logged in. Amplitude helps us understand how you use our Platform so that we can improve and optimize the Platform. You can find out more information about Amplitude about the data it collects at https://amplitude.com/privacy.
  • Hotjar. Hotjar is another analytics service that helps us to better understand your needs and optimize the Website. Hotjar collects certain information about your device and how you are using the Services, including IP address, device screen size, device type, browser information, geographic location (country only), how much time you are spending on a page, which links you choose to click, and other information about your interactions with the Website. This information allows us to better understand our users’ needs and optimize the Website and your experience. You can find more information about Hotjar at https://www.hotjar.com/legal/policies/privacy/ and can opt out from being recorded by Hotjar by visiting www.hotjar.com/legal/compliance/opt-out.

Advertising and Remarketing. We partner with third party advertising services and social media platforms to advertise on the Website and third party websites (including Google and LinkedIn). This could mean that we advertise to previous visitors who haven’t completed a task on our Website, for example using the contact form to make an inquiry. This could be in the form of an advertisement on the Google search results page or on LinkedIn, a site in the Google Display Network, or another third-party site. Third-party vendors, including Google and LinkedIn, use cookies to serve ads based on someone’s past visits. You can set preferences for how Google and/or LinkedIn advertises to you using the Google Ad Preferences page or the LinkedIn Ads settings page. You can opt-out of interest-based advertising entirely by cookie settings or permanently using a browser plugin.

Do Not Track. Some internet browsers incorporate a “Do Not Track” feature that signals to websites you visit that you do not want to have your online activity tracked. Given that there is not a uniform way that browsers communicate the “Do Not Track” signal, we do not currently respond to “Do Not Track” signals.

10. Your Privacy Rights

You may have certain rights and choices with respect to your personal information. Please note that your rights will depend on where you are located and applicable privacy and data protection laws. These may include, for example, the right to access your personal information, request correction or deletion of your information, object or opt-out to our processing of your information, request the restriction of the processing of your information, and/or request portability of your information. Depending on your location and applicable law, you may have the right to appeal the denial of any of these rights.

You can exercise your rights by emailing us at privacy@instrumental.com.

We will respond to all requests in accordance with applicable data protection laws. Please note that we may ask you to verify your request. If you are an authorized agent making a request on another’s behalf, we may also ask you to provide confirmation that you have the proper authority to make the request on that person’s behalf, or we may ask the person to verify their identity with us directly. In addition to the rights described above, you can opt out from receiving marketing communications from us at any time by clicking on the “unsubscribe” link in the email or by contacting us using the methods described below.

If you are located in the European Economic Area or United Kingdom, and you are not satisfied with how we have collected and processed your personal information, you may also complain to a data protection authority. Contact details for data protection authorities in the European Economic Area are available here and contact details for the UK information Commissioner’s Office are available here.

11. Additional Information For Europe

If you are located in the European Economic Area or United Kingdom, we need a legal basis to process your personal information. There are several alternative bases that we may rely on, depending on the purpose for processing your personal information. We will normally process your personal information because we need to perform a contract with you, the processing is in our legitimate interests, or we have your consent to do so.

  • Performance of a contract. We generally process your personal information as necessary to enter into a contract with you or perform our contractual obligations, for example to provide our
    Services or provide information that you have specifically asked for.
  • Legitimate Interests. We may rely on legitimate interests where those interests do not outweigh your fundamental rights, for example to promote our Services, ensure the security of our Services, and improve our products and services.
  • Consent. In certain cases, we may obtain your consent to process your personal information, for example in relation to certain marketing activities or situations where we are required to obtain your consent by law.
  • Legal obligations. In some cases, we may have a legal obligation to collect and process your personal information, for example to respond to lawful requests and orders.

12. Additional Information For California And Other U.S. States

This section contains additional information for individuals residing in California and other U.S. states.

Depending on your state of residence and the way in which you interact with us, some U.S. state privacy laws require specific disclosures regarding the personal information we collect about you and provide certain rights regarding your personal information. In particular, these state privacy laws include the California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”), the Virginia Consumer Data Protection Act (“VCDPA”), and the Colorado Privacy Act (“CPA”).

Notice at Collection. In our capacity as a business or controller under U.S. law, we have collected the following categories of personal information in the past 12 months:

  • Identifiers, such as name, email address, IP address, and other online identifiers.
  • Commercial information, such as your professional email address, telephone number, etc.
  • Internet or other electronic network activity information, such as IP address, browsing history, interaction with our Services, page loads, clicks, etc.
  • Geolocation data, such as your city, state, country, etc.
  • Professional/employment information, such as job title, current employer, and (if you apply for a job with us) other information about your professional experience and previous employment.
  • Sensitive personal information as defined under state privacy laws, such as your account log in combined with the log-in password or credentials and (if you apply for a job with us) information you provide to us during the recruitment process such as social security, driver’s license, state identification card, passport number, health information and related accommodations, citizenship/immigration status, and demographic information (such as racial or ethnic origin).
  • Other personal information, such as information you provide to use when you register for webinars or videos, when you contact us for customer support, when you attend one of our events, or when you apply for a job with us.

For the sources of personal information, please see the sections above titled “Information You Provide”, “Information We Collect Automatically”, and “Information We Collect From Third Parties”. For the business or commercial purposes for which we collect personal information, please see the section above titled “How We Use Your Information”. For an explanation of how long we retain personal information, please see the section above titled “Data Retention”.

Your Privacy Rights. Depending your state of residence and applicable law, you may have the following rights:

  • The right to know what personal information Instrumental has collected about you.
  • The right to correct your personal information.
  • The right to delete personal information collected from you (with some exceptions).
  • The right to opt-out of the sale or sharing of your personal information.
  • The right to opt-out of the processing of your information for targeted advertising.
  • The right to opt-out of profiling in furtherance of decisions that produce legal or processing of personal information for the purposes of targeted advertising.
  • The right to appeal the denial of any of these rights.

To exercise any of the rights listed above, or appeal denial of a request, please contact us at privacy@instrumental.com.

We will respond to all requests in accordance with applicable U.S. state laws. Please note that we may ask you to verify your request. If you are an authorized agent making a request on another’s behalf, we may also ask you to provide confirmation that you have the proper authority to make the request on that person’s behalf, or we may ask the person to verify their identity with us directly. If we refuse to take action on a request, we will provide instructions on how you may appeal the decision.

Instrumental does not use or disclose sensitive personal information for purposes other than those purposes under the CCPA. Additionally, we will not deny goods or services, charge you a different price, or provide a different level or quality of goods or services because you have exercised your rights under the CCPA.

Sales & Sharing of Personal Information. As described above, we may use cookies and similar technologies to collect personal information from you, including online identifiers, internet/network information, and geolocation data, and share this information with third party advertising and analytics providers. In some U.S. states, including California, sharing digital activity in this manner may be considered a “sale” or “sharing” of personal information. To the extent these practices qualify as “sale” or “sharing” under applicable state law, or you wish to opt out from targeted advertising, you can access further information about your choices in relation to these practices here.

Instrumental does not have actual knowledge that it “sells” or “shares” personal information of consumers under 16 years of age.

Shine the Light. Under California law, California residents have the right to request information from companies conducting business in California about the third parties to which the company has disclosed their personal information for direct marketing purposes. We do not disclose personal information obtained through our Services to third parties for their direct marketing purposes. Accordingly, we have no obligations under California Civil Code § 1798.83.

13. Children’s Privacy

Instrumental does not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13 years old (or the applicable age of consent). If you believe that we may have collected personal information from someone under the applicable age of consent, please let us know by emailing privacy@instrumental.com and we will take appropriate measures to investigate and address the issue.

14. Links To Other Sites

Our Services may contain links to other sites or services that are not operated by us. If you click on any third party links, you will be directed to that third party’s site. We strongly advise you to review the privacy policy and terms and conditions of every third-party site that you visit. We have no control over, and assume no responsibility for the content, privacy policies, or practices of any third-party sites or services.

15.Privacy Policy Changes

Instrumental may change this Privacy Policy from time to time in response to changing legal, regulatory, technical, or business requirements. We encourage you to frequently check this page for any changes as Instrumental will post the most current version on our website. When we update this Privacy Policy, we will take appropriate measures to notify you as required by applicable data protection laws. Your continued use of the Services after any changes to this Privacy Policy will constitute your acceptance of such changes. If a revision meaningfully reduces your rights, we will notify you.

16. How to Contact Us

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, please contact us via email at privacy@instrumental.com. You can also write to us as 777 California Avenue, Suite 150, Palo Alto, California, 94304, United States.

If you are located in the European Economic Area or United Kingdom, Instrumental, Inc. is the controller of your personal information.