Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy explains how information about you is collected, processed, transferred, used and disclosed by How Startup Legal (“Company”, “we”, “us” or “our”) when you visit our website at https://www.howstartuplegal.com (“Website”), and more generally, use any of our services (“Services”, which include the Website), This information may include “personal information” (which for the purposes of this policy shall include personal data or the equivalent term under applicable law).

We may change this Privacy Policy from time to time. If we make changes, where practical we will provide you with notice (such as adding a statement to our homepage or sending you a notification). We encourage you to review the Privacy Policy whenever you access our Website or otherwise interact with us to stay informed about our information practices and the ways you can help protect your privacy.

Collection of Information

Information You Provide to Us. We collect information you provide directly to us. We will collect information when you request or respond to a quote, prepare or accept a work order, request user support, complete a survey, or otherwise communicate with us or through the Services. The types of personal information we may collect from you include your basic user information and contact information such as your name, address, telephone number, fax number, email address, payment or credit card information, your skill or trade, photograph, feedback, and any other personal information you choose to provide. We may also collect other information about your business such as business financial information (including, but not limited to pricing, invoice, costs, and budget information), user data, business information (including, but not limited to, industry, number of facilities, business location, maintenance information and maintenance schedule, number of technicians, and taxpayer identification number). We also collect information from you when you make an inquiry from us.

If you make an enquiry or otherwise contact us, you will need to provide us certain contact information for us to be able to respond to you.

You must ensure that the information provided to us (including but not necessarily limited to your comments and other information posted when using our Website) does not contain any information prohibited by law, such as information that goes against the Vietnamese government or incites/prejudices riots, security, public order, humiliation, slander, or untruthful information.

Information We Collect Automatically When You Use the Website. When you access or use our Services, we automatically collect personal information about you, including:

Log Information: We may collect system log information about your use of the Services, including the type of browser you use, access times, pages viewed, your IP address and the page you visited before navigating to our Website.
Device Information: We may collect information about the computer or mobile device you use to access our Services, including the hardware model, operating system and version, unique device identifiers (such as, IP address, IMEI number, the address of the device's wireless network interface, or mobile phone number used by the device) and mobile network information.
Information Collected by Cookies and Other Tracking Technologies: We and our service providers use various technologies to collect information, including cookies and web beacons. Cookies are small data files stored on your hard drive or in device memory that help us improve our Services and your experience, see which areas and features of our Services are popular and count visits. Web beacons are electronic images that may be used in our Services or emails and help deliver cookies, count visits and understand usage and campaign effectiveness. For more information about cookies, and how to disable them, please see “Your Choices” below.

Information We Collect From Other Sources

If you are a service professional, we may also obtain personal information from other public sources and combine that with information we collect through our Services where we believe that it is necessary to help manage our relationship with you for a legitimate business interest. In addition, we may collect personal information about you from third parties, including but not limited to background check firms, insurance brokers and agents, and publicly available sources.

Entities engaging a service professional through the platform will be able to rate and comment on the service professional. That information will be added to the service professional’s profile and will be available for viewing on the platform.

Use of Information

We may use personal information we collect about you for the following purposes:

Provide, maintain and improve our Services;
Provide and deliver the services users request, such as, but not limited to, the service provider directory and service provider ratings;
Process transactions and send you related information, including confirmations and invoices;
Send you technical notices, updates, security alerts and support and administrative messages;
Respond to your comments, questions and requests and provide user service and support;
If you have requested, or if we are otherwise permitted by law to do so, we may communicate with you about products, services, offers, promotions, training opportunities and events offered by the Company and others, and provide news and information we think will be of interest to you in order to enhance your experience or legitimate business interest;
Monitor, evaluate and analyze trends, data, transactions, usage and activities in connection with our Services and make recommendations and provide guidance based on the foregoing;
Detect, investigate and prevent fraudulent transactions and other illegal activities and protect the rights and property of the Company and others;
Personalize and improve the Services and provide advertisements, content or features that match user profiles or interests;
Assess user satisfaction;
Link or combine with information we get from others to help understand your needs and provide you with better service;
Carry out any other purpose for which the information was collected;
If we are obliged to disclose information by reason of any applicable law, regulation or court order and/or to protect our interests and legal rights; and
For any other purpose for yours or our legitimate interest.

Sharing of Information

We use your personal information for the purposes set out above and where we are satisfied that:

our use of your personal information is necessary to perform a contract or take steps to enter into a contract with you;
our use of your personal information is necessary to comply with a relevant legal or regulatory obligation that we have; or
our use of your personal information is necessary to support “legitimate interests” that we have as a business (for example, to carry out analytics across our datasets), provided it is conducted at all times in a way that is proportionate, and that respects your privacy rights.

We may share your personal information as follows

With service providers that provide us with services for the purpose of operating the Website as well as providing ancillary services and solutions. These include, among others, hosting services, billing and payment vendors, CRM systems, forum hosting, community management services, data and cybersecurity services, web analytics and performance tools, translation tools, IT SaaS services, session recording, communication systems, mailing systems, data optimization and marketing services, data enrichment services, legal and financial advisors or technical consultants. Consistent with applicable legal requirements, we take commercially reasonable steps to require third parties to adequately safeguard your personal information and only process it in accordance with our instructions;
With vendors, consultants, third-party payment processors, and other service providers who need access to such information to carry out work on our behalf or who help us to provide the Services to you;
With other users of the Services that you choose to connect with through the Services;
To any law enforcement, courts, government or regulatory bodies, or otherwise in response to a request for information if we believe disclosure is in accordance with, or required by, any applicable law, regulation, court order or legal process;
If we believe your actions are inconsistent with our user agreements or policies, or to protect the rights, property and safety of the Company, or others;
In connection with, or during negotiations of, any merger, sale of company assets, financing or acquisition of all or a portion of our business by another company;
Our advisors, which includes our accountants, auditors, lawyers, other professional advisors and business contacts: for the purpose of assisting us to better manage, support or develop our business and comply with our legal and regulatory obligations;
To any other party for your or our legitimate interest; and
Otherwise as permitted or required by applicable laws and regulations.

We may share business name, contact information, ratings, number of work orders performed through the Company, and other information in a service provider’s profile, with our enterprise users in connection with making recommendations to those enterprise users.

We may also share aggregated or anonymised information without restriction, including for analytics, business intelligence and benchmarking purposes.

The website or app may contain links to and from the websites of other third parties. If you access other sites using the links provided, please be aware they may have their own privacy policy, and we do not accept any responsibility or liability for these statements or for any personal information which may be collected through these websites. Please check these statements before you submit any personal information to these websites.

Analytics Services Provided by Others

We may allow others to provide analytics services on our behalf across the Internet and in applications. These entities may use cookies, web beacons, device identifiers and other technologies to collect information about your use of the Services and other websites and applications, including your IP address, web browser, mobile network information, pages viewed, time spent on pages or in apps, links clicked and conversion information. This information may be used by the Company and others to, among other things, analyse and track data, determine the popularity of certain content, and better understand your online activity.

Retention of Information

Your personal information collected, used, processed, stored, transferred and disclosed in accordance with this Privacy Policy may be retained and may continue to be used by the Company, our partners, agents, service providers and any other person mentioned in this Privacy Policy until: (i) the relevant purposes for the use of your information described in this Privacy Policy are no longer applicable; and (ii) we are no longer required by applicable laws, regulations, contractual obligations or legitimate business purposes to retain your personal information and the retention of your personal information is not required for the establishment, exercise or defense of any legal claim.

Security

We store your personal information on computer databases and/or in hard copy (depending on the type of information), and take reasonable technical and organisational measures (including by implementing physical and electronic security measures) to help protect information about you from loss, theft, misuse and unauthorised access, disclosure, alteration and destruction.

To the extent required by law, we take reasonable steps to destroy, or de-identify or redact personal information in a secure manner when we no longer need it, for the purposes for which it was collected (as set out in this privacy policy) and retention is no longer necessary for legal or business purposes.

We cannot guarantee that our website or the app will function faultless and without any interruptions. We shall not be liable for damages that may result from the use of electronic means of communication, including, but not limited to, damages resulting from the failure or delay in delivery of electronic communications, interception or manipulation of electronic communications by third parties or by computer programs used for electronic communications and transmission of viruses.

Your Choices

You may have some or all of the following rights in respect of your personal information:

Access Request: To access and obtain a copy of your personal information in our control or possession, and information about how and on what basis this personal information is processed by us.
Restricting Processing: To request that we restrict processing of your personal information where: (i) the accuracy of the personal information is contested, (ii) the processing is unlawful but you object to your personal information being erased, (iii) where it is no longer needed for the purposes for which it was collected, but we still need it to establish, exercise or defend legal claims, or (iv) you have exercised the right to object, and verification of overriding grounds is pending. You may also have the right to challenge processing which we have justified on the basis of a legitimate interest.
Portability: To ask us to provide your personal information to you in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format, or you can ask to have it 'ported' directly to another data controller, but in each case only where, the processing is based on your consent or on the performance of a contract with you; and the processing is carried out by automated means.
Erasure: In limited circumstances, you may request that we erase your personal information, for example, where it is no longer necessary in relation to the purposes for which it was collected or processed.
Cookies: Most web browsers are set to accept cookies by default. If you prefer, you can usually choose to set your browser to remove or reject browser cookies. Removing or rejecting browser cookies does not necessarily affect third party flash cookies used in connection with our Services. To delete or disable flash cookies please contact us at richard@howstartuplegal.com for more information. Please note that if you choose to remove or reject cookies, this could affect the availability and functionality of our Services. Cookies are primarily used to enhance your online experience and are not used to track the navigational habits of identified visitors, unless we obtain your permission to do so. If you visit our sites to read or download information, much of the information we do collect is statistical only (e.g., the domain from which you access the Internet, the date and time you access our site, and the Internet address of the website from which you linked directly to our site) and not personally identifiable. We use this information about the number of visitors and their use of the sites in aggregate form to make our sites more useful and attractive to you. Some of the cookies we use are used to collect information about how visitors use our site. We use the information to compile reports and to help us improve the site. These cookies collect information in an anonymous form, including numbers of visitors to the site, the pages visited and where visitors have come to the site from.
Direct Marketing and Promotional Communications: From time to time, we would like to send you information either via SMS, telephone, push notifications/alerts, post or email that we think may be of interest to you (including in relation to our products and services, and the products and services of our selected partners, subsidiaries and affiliates), but we can only do so when you opt in with your preferences. You may opt out of receiving direct marketing and promotional communications from us by following the instructions in those communications or by emailing to richard@howstartuplegal.com. If you opt out of these communications, we may still send you non-promotional communications, such as those about your account or our ongoing business relations, unless you have also withdrawn your consent more generally to our collection, use and/or disclosure of your personal information.
Mobile Push Notifications/Alerts: We may send promotional and non-promotional push notifications or alerts to your mobile device if you have opted in to receive them. You can deactivate these promotional messages at any time by changing the notification settings on your mobile device.

To make any requests as outlined above or if you have any questions about this Privacy Policy or for more information, please contact us at: richard@howstartuplegal.com. You also have the right to lodge a complaint with your local supervisory authority, in respect of our collection, use or disclosure of your personal information.

Please note, we will not ask for a fee to exercise any of your rights in relation to your personal information, unless your request for access to information is unfounded, respective or excessive, in which case we will charge a reasonable amount in the circumstances.