Habitable Privacy Policy

Habitable (formerly known as Healthy Building Network) provides this Privacy Policy to inform you of our policies and procedures regarding the collection, use and disclosure of personal information we receive from users of (i) the website located at https://habitablefuture.org, including any services, features and content accessible or downloadable from such website, and (ii) any other Habitable application, service or product licensed, downloaded or otherwise accessed by such users through third party websites or sources (collectively, the “Service”). Habitable is committed to protecting your privacy, including the privacy of any personal information that you may provide to us through use of the Service. Specific rights apply to data subjects in the European Union as set forth in the Section entitled Data Subjects in the EU.

Acceptance and Consent:

By registering with Habitable or using the Service, you agree to the terms and conditions of this Privacy Policy, and you consent to the collection, use and disclosure of your personal information and other non-personally identifying information by Habitable in accordance with the terms and conditions of this Privacy Policy. If you do not agree to the terms and conditions of this Privacy Policy or the Terms of Use, please do not provide us with any information and do not use the Service.

As used in this Privacy Policy, the term “using” (and its corollaries) means and includes, with respect to information, subjecting the information to statistical or other analysis and using or handling information in any way, including, but not limited to, collecting, storing, evaluating, modifying, deleting, using, combining, disclosing and transferring information within our organization or among our affiliates within the United States or internationally.

Changes to the Privacy Policy:

Habitable reserves the right, at its sole discretion, to change or modify this Privacy Policy at any time by posting the changed or modified version of the Privacy Policy on the Service. Any such changes or modifications will be effective immediately upon posting. We encourage you to review this Privacy Policy from time to time. Your continued use of the Service after any changes or modifications to the Privacy Policy are posted will be considered your acceptance of such changes.

Information Collection and Use:

Our primary goals in collecting and using information are to provide and improve the Service, to administer and assist you in administering your account on the Service, and to enable you and other users of the Service to have an enjoyable, enhanced, user-friendly and tailored experience with the Service.

Personal Information and Non-Identifying Information

Habitable may collect personally identifiable and other non-identifying information from you by various means. Personally identifiable information is information about you that can be used to contact or identify you (“Personal Information”), including, but not limited to, your name, phone number, credit card or other billing information, email address and home and business postal addresses. Non-identifying information is information that is not, on its own, Personal Information, such as your zip code or certain individual preferences (“Non-Identifying Information”), but that may be considered part of your Personal Information if combined with other identifiers in a way that enables you to be identified or contacted (for example, your zip code when combined with your street address). In this Privacy Policy, we refer to all information collected from or about you, including Personal Information and Non-Identifying Information, as “Your Information.”

When you register for an account, whether on Habitable’s website or through a Habitable application or other portion of the Service, we may require and/or request that you provide certain information, including both Personal Information and Non-Identifying Information. For example, we request that you provide your name, email address, LinkedIn Profile, Organization Name, Organization Type, Position and Clients (in the case of consultants).

We may also request and collect Personal Information and Non-Identifying Information about you when you administer or personalize your account after registration or otherwise interact with the Service and its functionality. For example, we may collect Your Information both when you enter promotions on or in connection with the Service as well as in connection with your transactions (such as, but not limited to, donations or the purchase of products) through the Service. Such transaction-related information may include payment information, such as information regarding your account with an online payment service provider. We may also collect Your Information from third party websites or other sources from which you download or access Habitable applications, services or products that also make up part of the Service.

We use your Personal Information (in some cases, in conjunction with Non-Identifying Information) mainly to provide the Service and various portions thereof, such as by completing your transactions and administering your inquiries. We may combine your Personal Information with Non-Identifying Information and aggregate it with information collected from other users of the Service to attempt to provide you with a better experience, to improve the quality and value of the Service and to analyze and evaluate how the Service is used. We may also use the combined information without aggregating it to serve you specifically, for instance, by delivering products to you according to your preferences or restrictions. We may also use your Personal Information to contact you with communications such as Habitable newsletters, marketing or promotional materials and other information that may be of interest to you, unless we are required by law to obtain you express consent to such communications; you will also be able to unsubscribe from such communications at any time by clicking the unsubscribe button or contacting us at support@habitablefuture.org.

We may share aggregated information that includes your Personal Information, Non-Identifying Information and Log Data (as described below) with third parties for industry analysis and demographic profiling and to deliver targeted advertising about other products and services.

We may employ third party companies and individuals to facilitate the Service, to provide the Service on our behalf, to perform tasks (such as, but not limited to, maintenance services, database management, web analytics and improvement of the Service) or to assist us in analyzing how the Service is used. These third parties have access to Your Information only to perform these tasks on our behalf and are obligated not to disclose or use Your Information for any other purpose. We may also provide your Information to our business partners or other trusted entities for the purpose of providing you with information on goods or services we believe will be of interest to you, provided you may contact us at support@habitablefuture.org to request that we not disclose your information for this purpose.

We will disclose any information about you to government or law enforcement officials or private parties as we, in our sole discretion, believe necessary or appropriate to respond to claims and legal process (including but not limited to subpoenas), to protect the property and rights of Habitable or any third party, to protect the safety of the public or any person, or to prevent or stop activity we may consider to be, or to pose a risk of being, illegal, unethical or legally actionable.

Log Data and Cookies

When you browse certain portions of the Service, we may automatically collect and record standard user information and clickstream data about your visit (through the use of cookies and otherwise) as part of our analysis of the use of the Service and its structure and performance using tools such as Google Analytics. For example, when you or another user visits or requests a web page from our server, we may record the IP address of the user’s machine, the time, date and URL of the request and information about the browser being used, and other information regarding the visit, such as the pages visited on the Service, the time spent on each page, and any search terms used (collectively, “Log Data”). This information may be linked to personal information and can be used to personally identify you, as well as be aggregated and used to monitor and analyze use of the Service and to enable us to analyze traffic and trends, administer and improve the Service, identify and keep track of errors and bugs, and gather broad demographic information to become more familiar with where visits to the Service originate, how often the Service is visited and what parts of the Service are visited most often. We may also share such information with third party service providers assisting us with the foregoing. We also use this information to verify that visitors to the Service meet the criteria required to process their requests. We treat Log Data as Personal Information and use it in association with other Personal Information, as well as aggregate, analyze and evaluate such information for the same purposes as stated above regarding other Non-Identifying Information.

A cookie is a small data file that we transfer to your computer’s hard disk. Like many websites, we also use “cookie” technology to collect additional website usage data, to improve the Service and in some cases to enable you to more easily log in to your account. We do not use cookies to collect personally identifiable information. Habitable may use both session cookies and persistent cookies to better understand how you interact with the Service, to monitor aggregate usage by our users and web traffic routing on the Service, and to improve the Service and our other products and services. A session cookie enables certain features of the Service and our service and is deleted from your computer when you disconnect from or leave the Service. A persistent cookie remains after you close your browser and may be used by your browser on subsequent visits to the Service. Persistent cookies can be removed by following your web browser help file directions. Most Internet browsers automatically accept cookies. You can instruct your browser, by editing its options, to stop accepting cookies or to prompt you before accepting a cookie from the websites you visit. If your browser is set to refuse all cookies, however, some features of the Service may not function properly. We do not respond to do not track signals.

Controlling Your Information:

Please be aware that by sending messages or posting any material to the Service that includes Your Information, you may be allowing such information to be collected and used by others. You can terminate your account at any time by contacting us, which will result in removal of your account profile from view but may not result in removal of other information you provide in portions of the Service. Habitable may (but is not obligated to) keep information about you that is on its system following your termination. EU Data Subjects (as defined below) may have additional rights as set forth below.

Data Subjects in the EU

For persons located in the European Economic Area (“EU Data Subjects”), we will process your personal information in accordance with the Regulations (EU) 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 April 2016, known as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

You should read the relevant laws and guidance from the regulatory authorities for a full explanation of your rights under the GDPR, but the following briefly summarizes some of these rights and how we handle them:

For EU Data Subjects, we rely on the following legal bases to process your personal information:

  1. Performance of a contract: The use of your personal information may be necessary to perform the contract that you have with us or provide the products and service you ordered from us.
  2. Legitimate interests: We may use your information for our legitimate interests, such as to provide you with the best suitable content of the Service, emails and newsletters, to improve and promote our products and services and the content on our Service, and for administrative, fraud detection and legal purposes.
  3. Consent: We may rely on your consent to use your personal information for certain purposes, including direct marketing purposes (such as email marketing). You may withdraw your consent at any time by contacting us at the addresses at the end of this Policy. Withdrawal will not affect the lawfulness of processing before the withdrawal.

Retention:

We apply a general rule of keeping personal information only for as long as required to fulfill the purposes for which it was collected. However, in some circumstances, we may retain personal information for other periods of time, for instance where we are required to do so in accordance with legal, tax and accounting requirements, or if required to do so by a legal process, legal authority, or other governmental entity having authority to make the request, for so long as required. In specific circumstances, we may also retain your personal information for longer periods of time corresponding to a statute of limitation, so that we have an accurate record of your dealings with us in the event of any complaints or challenges.

Location of Personal Information/Transfers to the United States:

We will transfer, store, and process information that we collect about you, as described in this Policy, in the United States, which may not provide the same level of protection for your personal information as your home country. In addition, we may further transfer your information outside the United States for the purposes described in this Policy. By submitting any personal information or by using the Service, and without limitation to any other rights or obligations we have, you consent to such transfer to, and processing in, the United States and these other countries, and acknowledge that your information may be subject to access by law enforcement and other government entities, including courts and tribunals, in accordance with laws applicable in those jurisdictions.

Email Communications:

Habitable may also use email links located in various portions of the Service to allow you to contact us with questions or comments you may have. We welcome these email communications and make efforts to respond to them where appropriate. Once Habitable receives an email communication from you, we may send you future email communications relating to Habitable products or services. If you choose to not receive such future email communications at any time, you may “opt-out” by contacting us as indicated below or by following the “opt-out” procedure set forth in each email communication, as applicable.

You may decide to provide us with another party’s email address to allow us to contact and invite that party to visit or join the Service or so that Habitable may facilitate your communication with such other party through methods of communication enabled by the Service (such as when you upload an address book). Such email addresses will be stored in the address book you create and will be used only for the purpose of sending email communications to the addressee.

Security:

Habitable is very concerned with safeguarding your information. We employ reasonable administrative, physical and electronic measures designed to protect your information from unauthorized access or against loss, misuse or alteration by third parties. Your account is also protected with certain user credentials, such as a valid username and password. You are responsible for taking all reasonable steps to ensure that no unauthorized person has access to your Account, username, or password. It is your sole responsibility to authorize, monitor, and control access to and use of your user name, password, and account by third parties.

Although we make good faith efforts to store the information collected on the Service in a secure operating environment that is not available to the public, we cannot guarantee the absolute security of that information during its transmission or its storage on our systems. Further, while we make every effort to ensure the integrity and security of our network and systems, we cannot guarantee that our security measures will prevent third-party “hackers” from illegally obtaining access to this information. We do not warrant or represent that your Account will be protected against loss, misuse, or alteration by third parties.

We will make any legally required disclosures of any breach of the security, confidentiality, or integrity of your unencrypted electronically stored “personal data” (as defined in applicable state statutes on security breach notification) to you via email or conspicuous posting on the Service in the most expedient time possible and without unreasonable delay, insofar as consistent with (i) the legitimate needs of law enforcement or (ii) any measures necessary to determine the scope of the breach and restore the reasonable integrity of the data system.

Information Transfers:

Habitable reserves the right to transfer, and you hereby consent to the transfer of, any information (including without limitation Your Information) collected by or provided to Habitable, in connection with a change or transfer of Habitable’s ownership or a merger, acquisition, reorganization or sale of assets or in the event of bankruptcy.

Third Party Links:

The Service may contain links to third party websites (“Linked Sites”). Some of the Linked Sites may contain products, services, trademarks or other intellectual property that we own, while others may not. We provide the links to Linked Sites only as a convenience to you. You acknowledge and agree that we are not responsible for the privacy practices of such Linked Sites, and this Privacy Policy does not apply to such Linked Sites. Consequently, the operators of Linked Sites may collect different kinds of information about you, and may use and disclose that information in different ways than we would if it were collected on the Service. We encourage you to review the privacy policies on the Linked Sites. HABITABLE DISCLAIMS ALL RESPONSIBILITY OR LIABILITY FOR THE ACTIONS OF, PRIVACY PRACTICES OF, OR INFORMATION CONTAINED ON, COLLECTED VIA OR USED BY LINKED SITES.

Opt-In and Opt-Out Policy:

We will not share your Personal Information in ways other than as described in this Privacy Policy unless you specifically elect to make your Personal Information available to third parties by selecting to “opt-in” in various places on the Service. Your “opt-in” elections will not, however, require us to share your Personal Information with any third parties. Further, you may “opt-out” of any prior elections and of receiving certain types of communications at any time by contacting Habitable at support@habitablefuture.org.

Our Policy Regarding Children:

The Service is not directed to children under the age of 13. We do not knowingly collect or solicit personally identifiable information from children under 13 or allow them to register for an account on the Service. If you are under 13, please do not attempt to register for an account on the Service or send any information about yourself to Habitable. If we become aware that a child under 13 has provided us with Personal Information, we will delete such information from our files. If you are a resident of the EU, we do not knowingly collect information from children under the age of 16.

Notice of Privacy Rights to California Residents:

Section 1798.83 of the California Civil Code permits California residents to request from a business, with whom the California resident has an established business relationship, information related to the personal information disclosed by Habitable to third parties for direct marketing purposes, and the names and addresses of the third parties with whom the business has shared such information during the immediately preceding calendar year. You may make one request each year by emailing us at support@habitablefuture.org.

Contacting Us:

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, please contact us at legal@habitablefuture.org.

Last revised: March 21, 2024.