Effective: September 1, 2021
Heartland Fiber, Inc. (“HFI”) takes your privacy seriously. We value the trust you place in us when you use our products, services, and mobile applications, or interact with us through our websites or social media accounts. In order to provide you the best service at the best value, we must collect certain information about you. This Privacy Policy describes the privacy and security policies for information collected by HFI. The commitments in this Privacy Policy reflect our business objectives for providing you superior service while offering you information to make choices about how your information is used.
By accepting and agreeing to the use of HFI products or services, or by using HFI products or services, you agree to this Privacy Policy. This Privacy Policy may be updated from time to time. You should review this Privacy Policy periodically for updates. Your continued use of HFI products or services after this Privacy Policy is updated reflects your acceptance of any new, additional, or modified terms.
WHEN THE PRIVACY POLICY APPLIES
The Privacy Policy applies to the information we collect when you subscribe to, access, or use HFI products, services, websites, and mobile applications.
Depending upon the HFI products and services you access, use, or to which you subscribe, parts of this Privacy Policy may not apply to you. Sometimes you may access products or services that we do not own or control. You should be aware of the privacy practices of these third parties, because this Privacy Policy does not extend to the parties that collect information outside of our control and does not cover information that may be collected by third parties.
HOW WE COLLECT INFORMATION
In order to provide you with our products and services and to keep you informed, we collect a variety of information about you when you interact with us or use our products, services, websites, and applications. For example, in order to provide timely and effective customer service, we keep track of when you called, what the issue was, and what is the best way to get in contact with you. We collect information you provide to us when you establish a customer or user account and when you contact us or otherwise communicate with us. We collect information about your use of our services, products, and devices, websites and applications in order to deliver any of our services or otherwise permit access to one of our products. The information we collect will depend upon the services to which you subscribe, access, or interact. We limit the use and sharing of such information as described in this Privacy Policy and as required by law.
The collection of information, including IP addresses and the referring websites, is required in order for us to provide service and for users to communicate with each other and with websites on the Internet. You may be able to prohibit the collection of certain information through your device’s settings, but it may limit certain functions and features of our service.
We may collect information from third parties for purposes related to delivering our products and services to you. This includes information to verify information you have provided and from credit reporting agencies to determine your creditworthiness, credit score, and credit usage. We may receive information from content providers and other platform providers. We may also obtain additional information from outside sources, such as research consultants and marketing firms. We may collect commercially available demographic information about you or your community available from third parties. We may also collect commercially available interest data.
HOW AND WHEN WE USE INFORMATION
Our primary goal is to provide you with the best experience and service possible. We also use the information we collect to communicate with you, make improvements to our products and services, investigate theft and other illegal activities, and personalize your experience. We may also use the information we collect to measure and analyze how our customers are using our products, services, websites, and applications. This information helps us provide you with the best experience possible.
We also use the information we collect to communicate with you. For example, we use information from your account to send you billing information. We may use the information to remind you of a service appointment, to follow up with you after a service request, and to send you important service-related notices and announcements.
We may use the information we collect to create business and marketing reports to provide insights into what products and services our customers are using, how long they are using our products and services, how some of our services are accessed, and what additional products and services may be of interest to our customers. We use these reports for our own internal purposes, such as improving our products and services and other research and analytics. We may also share these reports with third parties.
We may place “cookies” in your browser that contain information about you or your account when you set up a personalized service or customize your settings and preferences on our websites or mobile applications. Cookies enable us to help diagnose problems with our services, control the display of ads, track usage patterns, gather demographic information, analyze trends, conduct research, and otherwise administer the services. We do not store sensitive information such as your password, e-mail address, or credit card number in cookies.
Your browser or device may include “Do Not Track” functionality. Our information collection and disclosure practices, and the choices that we provide, will continue to operate as described in this Privacy Policy, whether or not a Do Not Track signal is received.
We share information with others when it is necessary to provide you with the products and services you request. We also share information with others when you direct us to do so, such as other users on your account, when required by law or to respond to legal process, or to protect our property or rights or the safety of our employees, our customers, or other individuals. We may disclose any information about a customer’s account and use of a service or feature to the primary account owner after appropriate authentication. The primary account owner may also authorize other users to access information on the account, which may include information about the primary account owner’s use of the relevant service.
We may disclose your information to third party service providers who perform business activities and functions on our behalf to support our interactions with you. These third-party service providers are authorized to use your personal information only as necessary to provide these services on our behalf.
We may disclose information that personally identifies you to comply with valid legal process, including subpoenas, court orders, or search warrants. In some instances where there is a valid legal request or an order for disclosure of information about you, we may notify you of such request or order and then it may be up to you to object or take specific action to prevent any disclosures pursuant to those requests or orders. We may be required by law to disclose information about you, including information that personally identifies you, your use of our services, and the content of your communications, to governmental entities upon receipt of valid legal process. These disclosures may be made with or without your consent and with or without notice, in compliance with the law, including the terms of process.
We may also disclose personally identifiable information about you, without your consent, to protect our customers, employees, or property in emergency situations, to enforce our rights in court or elsewhere or directly with you, for violations of service terms, and as otherwise required by law.
If we enter into a merger, acquisition, or sale of all or a portion of our assets, we may transfer information about you, including information that personally identifies you, as part of the transaction.
COOKIES
Cookies are small text files that can be used by websites to make a user’s experience more efficient. There are some cookies that we have to include in order for certain webpages to function. For this reason, they do not require your consent. In particular, we use authentication cookies and technical cookies required for certain IT systems. For all other types of cookies, we need your permission. Some cookies are placed by third party services that appear on pages you browse to with our services. We may use first party cookies, controlled by HFI, such as store visitor preferences or analytics cookies. Some of our pages, as well as other locations you browse, may use third party cookies. To view third party content, you may have to accept their specific terms and conditions, including cookie policies, over which HFI has no control.
You can manage and delete cookies. For detailed control over site-specific cookies, check the privacy and cookie settings in your preferred browser. By blocking cookies, some services and functionalities may not work properly or at all.
PROTECTING YOUR INFORMATION
We take our responsibility to secure the information we collect and maintain seriously. We use reasonable security, including technical, physical, and administrative controls, to secure the information we collect and maintain. However, we cannot guarantee that these practices will prevent every unauthorized attempt to access, use, or disclose information.
We do not knowingly collect personal data of children under 16.
HOW TO CONTACT US WITH QUESTIONS
Questions about HFI’s privacy protections and practices should be sent to heartlandfiber@outlook.com.
You can review the personal information associated with your account by contacting us to request, correct, or delete any personal information that you have provided to us. Where we process your data on the basis that you have consented to such processing, you have the right to withdraw your consent at any time. We may not accommodate a request to change or delete information if we believe the change or deletion would violate any law or legal requirement or cause the information to be incorrect.
HFI is based in the State of Illinois in the United States. If you live outside of Illinois, such as in California, Maine, or Nevada, or outside the United States, such as in the European Economic Area, your location may have different data protection laws than those in Illinois. HFI does not knowingly offer services to customers physically located outside Illinois and your use of HFI services in other locations is governed by Illinois. If you use our services outside of Illinois or the United States, you understand and consent to the transfer of your personal information to, and the collection, processing, and storage of your personal information in Illinois and the United States. The laws in Illinois and the U.S. regarding personal information may be different than the laws of other jurisdictions.
MOBILE APPLICATIONS
When you use mobile applications, we may also automatically collect information about the devices you use to access the application or our services and the content you view. The information we may automatically collect depends on how you access the services and content. HFI may collect and process information provided directly by you when you install a mobile application or use an account to use the application. The information may be used to provide you the services you request, improve or enhance the services, enforce your rights or HFI’s rights, or fulfill any other lawful purpose authorized by you or required through legal process.