Principles

This privacy statement describes how Fyde Innovations(will be addressed as we/us in the following context) collect your personal data and the methods and purposes of processing personal data. We take your privacy very seriously – this is a promise.

We are committed to maintaining your trust in us by adhering to the following principles to protect your personal information:

• the principle of consistent authority and responsibility
• the principle of clear purpose
• the principle of choice of consent
• the principle of minimum necessary
• the principle of ensuring the security
• the principle of subject participation

At the same time, we are committed to protecting your personal information with appropriate security measures in accordance with proven industry security standards.

We provide a variety of products. The products mentioned in this statement include services, websites, software, applications, servers and hardware equipment produced by us. Please read the product-specific details in this privacy statement, which provides the necessary information you need to understand concerning your privacy. This statement applies to the interaction between us and you, the following products and our other products mentioned in this statement.

Personal data we collect

For the following purposes, including effective operations and providing you with the best product experience, we will collect the data you provide, the interaction data between you and us and product usage data. You directly provide some of this data, for example, when you create a FydeOS account, post on the FydeOS Community, enable preference synchronisation-related features in FydeOS and purchase the FydeOS for You subscription for your device. We collect other data through your interaction with the product or service, your usage and experience of the product and related communications.

For the purposes described below, we will rely on various legal reasons and permissions (sometimes referred to as “legal basis”) to process your data. These bases include obtaining your consent, balancing legitimate interests, signing and executing contracts and fulfilling legal obligations.

We may also obtain data from third parties. We protect data obtained from third parties in accordance with the practices described in this statement and any other restrictions imposed by the data source. These third-party sources change over time and may include:

• Communication services: Telegram, Discord, LinkedIn or other social networks (provided that you allow us to access your data on third-party services or networks).
• Partners: we work with these partners to provide co-branding services or participate in joint marketing activities.
• Publicly available sources, such as open government databases.

You always have choices when it comes to the technology you use and the data you share. When you are asked to provide personal data, you can decline. Many of our products require personal data to operate and provide you with a service. If you choose not to provide the data necessary to operate and provide you with a product or feature, consequently, you will not be able to use that product or feature. However, this does not prevent you from using essential functions that do not require such information.

The data we collect depends on the context of your interactions with us, your choices (including your privacy settings), the products and features you use, your location, and applicable law.

Comprehensive list of the data we collect

• Name and contact data. Your surname, first name, nickname, profile picture, email address, mobile phone number, and other similar contact data you provide in the FydeOS account sign-up form.
• Credentials: encrypted passwords and similar security information used for authentication and account access.
• Demographic statistics. Data about you, such as your gender, country/region, and preferred language. It’s the optional questions we ask you on the FydeOS account dashboard.
• Payment data: Necessary data to process payments, such as your payment method (such as Alipay or PayPal account), the identification number of the device or account corresponding to the payment item and the security code associated with your payment instrument.
• Subscription and licensing data: information about your subscriptions, licenses, and other entitlements.
• Anonymous interactions data: information about the usage of our products. In some cases, such as search queries, this is data you provide to use the products. In other cases, such as error reports, this is data we generate. Other examples of anonymous interaction data include:
  • Anonymous device and usage data. Data about your device and the product and features you use, including information about your hardware, how our products perform and your setting options. For example:
    • The manufacturer, model and related descriptive information of the device you use.
    • The version number and configuration information of our software products you use.
  • Your choice of how you wish to utilise our software product (when available), such as your choice of “account type”.
  • Your choice of whether to participate in the “FydeOS improvement plan” or subscribe to our newsletter.
• The time-related information of our software products you use, such as when your account was created and when you last logged in and logged out.
• Anonymous data about your device, your device configuration, and nearby networks. For example, data about the variant of FydeOS/openFyde and other software installed on your device. In addition, IP address, device identifiers and regional and language settings.
• Anonymous data about the performance of the products and any problems you experience, including error reports. Error reports (sometimes called “crashdumps”) can include details of the software or hardware related to an error, contents of files opened when an error occurred, and data about other software on your device.
• Data you provide when you contact us for help or provide feedback, such as the products you use and other details that help us provide support. For example, contact or authentication data, the content of your chats and other communications with us, data about the condition of your device, and the products you use related to your help inquiry. Chat sessions with our representatives may be monitored and recorded when you contact us, such as for technical support tickets in our Help Desk system.
• Interactions with third-party bots and skills available through our products, such as the use of FydeOS AI.
• Preferences synchronisation data. When you are using FydeOS and turn on the “Sync” related functions(where possible) according to your specific settings, the following information will be collected:
• The browser extensions and various applications you installed from the FydeOS Store.
• Your settings for our products, such as browser-related setting options and operating system-related setting options.
• Data created by you when you use our products and wish to synchronise to the cloud server, such as browser bookmarks, browsing history, download content records, reading lists and open tabs. You can customise what to sync and what not to sync; when a particular item is turned off from synchronising, such data will not be collected.

How we use personal data

We use the data we collect to provide you with rich and interactive experiences. In particular, we use data to:

• Provide our services, which include updating, securing, and troubleshooting, as well as providing support. It also includes sharing data when required to provide the service or carry out the requested transactions.
• Improve and develop our products.
• Personalise our products and services to provide you with a better experience.

We also use the data to operate our business, including analysing our performance, meeting our legal obligations, developing our workforce, and researching. In carrying out these purposes, we combine data we collect from different contexts (for example, from your use of our various products and services). For example, you can unlock the “Patron” badge in the FydeOS Community by linking the device ID of a “FydeOS for You” device with an active paid subscription to obtain ticketed technical support services. However, we have built-in technological and procedural safeguards designed to prevent certain data combinations where required by law. For example, where required by law, we store data we collect from you when you are unauthenticated (not signed in) separately from any account information that directly identifies you, such as your name, email address, or phone number.

Purposes of collecting and processing your data

• Provide our products. We use data to operate our products and provide rich, interactive experiences. For example, suppose you register for a FydeOS account; we must store your identity and credential information in the database so that you can complete the sign-in next time. Or for example, if you use the FydeOS Community, we will store the content you wrote when you finish editing and click the Post button. Additionally, as communications are a feature of various products, we use data to contact you. For example, we may contact you via FydeOS Community private message, direct email or other methods to notify you when your subscription is about to end or discuss your subscription. We also communicate with you to secure our products, for example, by letting you know when product updates are available.
• Product improvement. We use data to continually improve our products, including adding new features or capabilities. For example, we use error reports to improve security features, discover potential system problems and improve the experience of using products.
• Product activation. We use data, such as device type, variant of FydeOS, IP address geolocation, unique device ID, network information and subscription identifiers to activate products or services that require activation.
• Product development. We use data to develop new products. For example, we use anonymous data to better understand our customers’ computing and productivity needs which can shape the development of new products and services.
• Customer support. We use data to troubleshoot and diagnose product problems, repair customers’ devices, and provide other customer care and support services, including helping us provide, improve, and secure the quality of our products, services, training, and investigating security incidents.
• Safety and update. We use the data we collect to develop product updates and security patches. For example, we may use information about your device’s capabilities, such as available memory, to provide you with a software update or security patch. Updates and patches are intended to maximise your experience with our products, help you protect the privacy and security of your data, provide new features, and evaluate whether your device is ready to process such updates.
• Promotional communications. We use the data we collect to deliver promotional communications, should you wish to receive them. You can sign up for email subscriptions and choose whether you want to receive promotional communications from us by email. You can always opt out and unsubscribe at any time. For information about managing your contact data, email subscriptions, and promotional communications, please refer to the “How to access and control your personal data” section of this privacy statement.
• Reporting and business operations. We use data to analyse our operations and perform business intelligence. This enables us to make informed decisions and report on the performance of our business.
• Protecting rights and property. We use data to detect and prevent fraud, resolve disputes, enforce agreements, and protect our property. For example, we use data to confirm the validity of software licenses to reduce piracy and illegal reverse engineering. We may use automated processes to detect and prevent activities that violate our rights and the rights of others, such as fraud.
• Legal compliance. We process data to comply with the law. For example, we use the age of our customers to assist us in meeting our obligations to protect children’s privacy. We also process contact information and credentials to help customers exercise their data protection rights.
• Research. With appropriate technical and organisational measures to safeguard individuals’ rights and freedoms, we use data to conduct research for public interest and scientific purposes.

Reasons we may share personal data

We share your personal data with your consent or as necessary to complete any transaction or provide any product you have requested or authorised. Examples include:

• Suppose you use our products provided by an organisation you are affiliated with, such as an employer or school, or use an email address provided by such organisation to access our products; in this case, we share certain data, such as interaction data and diagnostic data, to enable your organisation to manage the products. 
• When you provide payment information to make a purchase, we will share your data with banks and other entities that process payment transactions or provide other financial services, and for fraud prevention and credit risk reduction.

In addition, we will share personal data among our controlled affiliates and subsidiaries with your separate consent. We also share personal data with vendors or agents working on our behalf for the purposes described in this statement. For example, companies we’ve hired to provide customer service support or assist in protecting and securing our systems and services may need access to personal data to provide those functions. In such cases, these companies must abide by our data privacy and security requirements and are not allowed to use personal data they receive from us for any other purpose. 

We will not transfer your personal information to any company, organisation or individual except for the following event:

• Transfer with obtaining explicit consent: we will transfer your personal information to other parties after obtaining your explicit consent.
• In the event of a merger, acquisition or bankruptcy or liquidation involving the transfer of personal information, we will require the new company or organisation holding your personal information to continue to be bound by this personal information protection policy before we ask that company or organisation to seek your authorised consent again.

Finally, we will retain, access, transfer, disclose, and preserve personal data when we have a good faith belief that doing so is necessary to do any of the following:

• Comply with applicable law or respond to valid legal processes from law enforcement or other government agencies.
• Protect our customers, for example, to help prevent the loss of life or serious injury to anyone.
• Operate and maintain the security of our products, including preventing or stopping an attack on our computer systems or networks.
• Protect our rights or property, including enforcing the terms governing the use of the services. However, suppose we receive information indicating that someone is using our services to traffic in our stolen intellectual or physical property. In that case, we will not inspect a customer’s private content ourselves; instead, we may refer the matter to law enforcement.

Please note that some of our products include links to or otherwise enable you to access products of third parties whose privacy practices differ from ours. If you provide personal data to any of those products, your data is governed by their privacy policies.

How to access and control your personal data

You can make choices about the collection and use of your data by us. You can control the personal data we have obtained and exercise your data protection rights, by using various tools we provide. How you can access or control your personal data will also depend on which products you use. For example, you can:

• Choose whether you wish to receive promotional and product update emails from us.
• Log in to FydeOS Community to adjust the frequency and delivery method of digesting emails of community content.
• Modify personal data through the FydeOS Account Dashboard, including deleting your account.
• Exporting all the data that we have on you in a flat file.

You can request access, review, copy, delete and update your personal data. You can change the scope of your authorised consent or cancel your FydeOS account by:

• Sign in to the FydeOS Account Dashboard at https://account.fydeos.io to access, edit or delete your personal information and payment information associated with your FydeOS account, change your password, add security information or delete your account.
• Sign in to the FydeOS Community at https://community.fydeos.io to modify your data in the FydeOS Community (such as your posts, comments, and private messages) in the Settings Dashboard of the FydeOS Community, as well as configure the method and frequency of how the FydeOS Community should contact you.

You may have these rights under applicable laws, including the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the UK Data Protection Act 2018, but we offer them regardless of your location. In some cases, your ability to access or control your personal data will be limited, as required or permitted by applicable law. If your organisation, such as your employer, school, or service provider, provides you with access to and is administering your use of our products, contact your organisation to learn more about how to access and control your personal data.

Products provided by your organisation

Notice to end users

If you use our products with an account provided by an organisation you are affiliated with, such as your work or school account, that organisation can:

• Control and administer our product and product account, including controlling privacy-related settings of the product or product account.
• Access and process your data, including the interaction data, diagnostic data, and the contents of your communications and files associated with our product and product accounts.

Suppose you lose access to your work or school account (in case of a change of employment or school, for example). In that case, you may lose access to products and the content associated with those products, including those you acquired on your own behalf, if you used your work or school account to sign in to such products.

Many of our products are intended for organisations, such as schools and businesses. If your organisation provides you with access to our products, your use of our products is subject to your organisation’s policies, if any. You should direct your privacy inquiries to your organisation’s administrator, including any requests to exercise your data protection rights. When you use any social feature in our products(the FydeOS Community, for example), other users in your network may see some of your activity. We are not responsible for the privacy or security practices of our customers, which may differ from those outlined in this privacy statement.

When you use our product provided by your organisation, our processing of your personal data in connection with that product is governed by a contract between us and your organisation. We process your personal data to provide the product to your organisation and you, and in some cases, for our legitimate business operations. As mentioned above, if you have questions about our processing of your personal data in connection with providing products to your organisation, please contact your organisation.

For our products provided by your K-12 school, we will:

• not collect or use student personal data beyond that needed for authorised educational or school purposes;
• not sell or rent student personal data;
• not use or share student personal data for advertising or similar commercial purposes, such as behavioural targeting of advertisements to students;
• not build a personal profile of a student, other than for supporting authorised educational or school purposes or as authorised by the parent, guardian, or student of appropriate age; and
• require that our vendors with whom student personal data is shared to deliver the educational service, if any, are obligated to implement these same commitments for student personal data.

Notes on our specific products and services

FydeOS account

With a FydeOS account, you can sign in to most of our products that require an online user profile to operate, as well as selected partners. Personal data associated with your FydeOS account includes credentials, name and contact data, payment data, device and usage data and information about how you use our products. Signing in to your FydeOS account enables personalisation and consistent experiences across different FydeOS devices, permits you to use cloud data storage, and enables other features. There are two types of FydeOS accounts:

• When you create your own FydeOS account tied to your personal email address or mobile phone number, we refer to that account as a personal FydeOS account.

• When you or your organisation (such as an employer or your school) create your FydeOS account tied to your email address provided by that organisation, we refer to that account as a work or school account.

  Personal FydeOS account

  The data associated with your personal FydeOS account, and how that data is used, depending on how you use the account.

  Creating your FydeOS account. When you create a personal FydeOS account, you will be asked to provide certain personal data, and we will assign a unique ID number to identify your account and associated information. While some products, such as those involving payment, require a real name, you can sign in and use other FydeOS products without providing your real name. Some data you provide, such as your display name, email address, and phone number, can be used to help others find and connect with you within FydeOS products. For example, people who know your FydeOS Community nickname can find your posts and replies by searching for your nickname. Note that if you use a work or school email address to create a personal FydeOS account, your employer or school may gain access to your data. In some cases, you will need to change the email address to a personal email address in order to continue accessing consumer-oriented products.

  Signing in to FydeOS account. When you sign in using your FydeOS account in the browser, we create a record of your sign-in, which includes the date and time, information about the product you signed in to, your sign-in name, the unique number assigned to your account, a unique identifier assigned to your device, your IP address, and your operating system and browser version. When you use a FydeOS account to log in to your FydeOS device, a similar process is happening in our servers as if you were signing in using your FydeOS account in the browser; however, the login process is subject to additional security checks that are happening locally within the FydeOS device.

  Signing in to our other products. If you choose to use your FydeOS account to log in to a FydeOS device for the first time, you will be asked to sign in to your FydeOS account through a browser session first; your FydeOS device will then create an account for you locally on the device matching your FydeOS account credentials. After logging in to your FydeOS device, FydeOS will automatically sign you into products that use a FydeOS account when you access those products on that device. When you are signed in, some products will display your name or username and your profile photo (if you have added one to your profile) as part of your use of our products.

  Work or school account

  The data associated with a work or school account and how it will be used is generally similar to the use and collection of data associated with a personal FydeOS account. If you sign in to our products with a work or school account, please note that:

  • The owner of the domain associated with your email address may control and administer your account, and access and process your data, including the contents of your communications and files, including data stored in products provided to you by your organisation and products you acquire by yourself.
  • Your use of the products is subject to your organisation’s policies, if any. You should consider both your organisation’s policies and whether you are comfortable enabling your organisation to access your data before you choose to use your work or school account to sign in to products you acquire for yourself.
  • If you lose access to your work or school account (if you change employer, for example), you may lose access to products, including content associated with those products, you acquired on your own behalf if you used your work or school account to sign in to such products.
  • We are not responsible for the privacy or security practices of your organisation, which may differ from those of ours.
  • If your organisation administers your use of FydeOS products, please direct your privacy inquiries to your administrator, including any requests to exercise your data subject rights. See also the Notice to end users section of this privacy statement.

Enterprise and developer products

Enterprise and developer products are products we designed primarily for use by organisations and developers. They include:

• Cloud services and components used by FydeOS Enterprise Solutions, such as enterprise policy management service, enterprise remote desktop service, enterprise data visualisation and business intelligence services, etc.
• The openFyde open-source project is maintained by us, including the required dependent software packages and code bases.

In the event of a conflict between this privacy statement and the terms of any agreement between a customer and our enterprise and developer products, the terms of those agreements will control. You can also learn more about our enterprise and developer products’ features and settings, including choices that impact your privacy or your end users’ privacy, in the product documentation.

When a customer tries, purchases, uses, or subscribes to our enterprise and developer products, or obtains support for or professional services with such products, we receive data from you and generate data to provide the service (including improving, securing, and updating the service), conduct our legitimate business operations, and communicate with the customer. For example:

• When a customer engages with one of our sales representatives through the “Chat with us” feature, we collect the customer’s name and contact data, along with information about the customer’s organisation, to support that engagement.
• When a customer interacts with one of our support professionals, we collect device and usage data or error reports to diagnose and resolve problems.
• When a customer pays for our enterprise and developer products, we collect contact and payment data to process the payment.
• When we send communications to a customer, we use data to personalise the content of the communication.
• When a customer engages with us for professional services(FydeOS OEM and customisation consulting, for example), we collect the name and contact data of the customer’s designated point of contact and use the information provided by the customer to perform the services that the customer has requested.
• The enterprise and developer products enable you to purchase, subscribe to, or use other products and online services from us or third parties with different privacy practices. Those other products and online services are governed by their respective privacy statements and policies.

Other important privacy information

Editions of our products and services

Our mission is to offer products and services that cater to a global audience. To accomplish this, we have developed two separate editions of our offerings accessible through https://fydeos.com and https://fydeos.io, respectively. Beginning on 1st August 2023, changes will be implemented in the way we store and process your personal data. For those who use our products and services provided through https://fydeos.io, these offerings will be administered by our UK-based legal entity, Fyde Innovations Ltd. It’s important to note that these services fall under the jurisdiction of the United Kingdom.

Security of personal data

We are committed to protecting the security of your personal data. We use a variety of security technologies and procedures to help protect your personal data from unauthorised access, use, or disclosure. For example, we store the personal data you provide on computer systems that have limited access and are in controlled facilities. When we transmit highly confidential data (such as passwords) over the internet, we protect it through the use of encryption. We comply with applicable data protection laws, including applicable security breach notification laws.

Collection of data from children

Although local laws and customs define children differently, we consider anyone under the age of 14 to be a child.

When our product collects age, and there is an age in your jurisdiction under which parental consent or authorisation is required to use the product, the product will either block users under that age or will ask them to provide consent or authorisation from a parent or guardian before they can use it. We will not knowingly ask children under that age to provide more data than the product requires.

Once parental consent or authorisation is granted, the child’s account is treated much like any other account. The child can access communication services and freely communicate and share data with other users of all ages.

Parents or guardians can change or revoke the consent choices previously made; also review, edit, or request the deletion of the personal data of the children for whom they provided consent or authorisation. As the organiser of a family group, the parent or guardian can manage a child’s information and settings and view and delete a child’s data.

Cookies

When you use some of our web services, we store small data files called Cookies on your computer or mobile device. Cookies usually contain identifiers, site names, and some numbers and characters. We use this information to determine whether registered users have logged in, improve service/product quality and optimise the user experience. If you do not want your personal information to be stored in a cookie, you can configure your browser and choose to turn off the cookie function. You can manage or delete cookies according to your preferences. You can clear all cookies saved on your computer, and most web browsers have a feature to block cookies.

Where we store and process personal data

For users of our products and services available via https://fydeos.io, the personal data we collect is primarily stored and processed in the United Kingdom (UK), along with certain countries within the European Union (EU). We lease data centres in London (UK), Frankfurt (EU), and Dublin (EU). Typically, your data’s primary storage location is the region closest to you, often with a backup in a data centre located in a different region. These storage locations are strategically chosen to ensure efficient operation, enhanced performance, and data redundancy, which provides protection in the event of an outage or other technical issue.

Due to the global nature of our resources and servers, your personal information might, upon your explicit consent, be transferred to, or accessed from, jurisdictions outside the country where you use our product or service. Such jurisdictions may have different or even no relevant data protection laws. However, in such scenarios, we ensure that your personal data receives equivalent protection as in the UK, consistent with the standards set by the UK Data Protection Act 2018 and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Our retention of personal data

We hold on to your personal data for as long as it’s necessary to deliver the products and carry out the transactions you’ve requested, or for other valid reasons such as legal compliance, dispute resolution, and enforcement of our agreements. The retention periods can significantly differ, depending on various factors, including the data type, our interactions with you, and your use of our products. Here are some of the factors we consider when deciding on appropriate retention periods:

1. User expectations: if you provide, create, or maintain data with the expectation that we will keep it until you choose to remove it, we respect that expectation. For instance, if you create a post or a reply on FydeOS Community, we aim to keep that data until you actively decide to delete it.
2. Sensitivity of data: if the personal data is sensitive in nature, we generally adopt a shorter retention period.
3. User consent: if you have given your consent for a longer retention period, we will keep your data according to your consent.
4. Legal, contractual, or similar obligations: we comply with all applicable laws and regulations regarding data retention and deletion. For example, if there are mandatory data retention laws in your jurisdiction, or if we receive a government order to preserve data related to an investigation, we will adhere to these requirements. Conversely, if the law requires us to remove illegal content, we will promptly comply.

In all cases, our goal is to keep your personal data only for the time required, not a moment longer.

Changes to this privacy statement

We revise this privacy statement as needed to enhance transparency or in response to factors such as:

1. Feedback from our users, regulatory bodies, industry partners, or other stakeholders.
2. Modifications in our products and services.
3. Changes in our data processing activities or policies.

Whenever we make changes to this statement, we will update the “last updated” date at the beginning of the statement. In the event of significant alterations, such as a change to the purposes of processing personal data that doesn’t align with the original collection purpose, we will inform you either by prominently posting a notice about these changes before they become effective or by directly sending you a notification.

We strongly recommend that you periodically review this privacy statement to stay informed about how we safeguard your personal data.

How to contact us

Should you have any questions or concerns about these guidelines, feel free to reach out to us via email at [email protected]. We strive to address your queries promptly and will endeavour to respond to your reasonable requests within 15 days. To ensure your security, we will ask you to confirm your identity before processing your request.

As a rule, we do not charge a fee for reasonable requests. However, we may apply a nominal fee for requests repeatedly made and exceeding reasonable boundaries. We reserve the right to deny requests that are unjustifiably repetitive, necessitate excessive technical measures (for instance, those requiring the development of new systems or substantial changes to current practices), risk infringing upon others’ legal rights, or are excessively impractical (such as requests involving data backup stored on tapes).

For technical or support-related queries, we invite you to visit the FydeOS Community or join our public conversations on Discord, Telegram, and Reddit.