Effective date: July 30, 2019

Last updated: November 4, 2020

Velocity respects your right to privacy. This Privacy Notice explains who we are, how we collect, share and use personal information about you, and how you can exercise your privacy rights. This Privacy Notice only applies to personal information that we collect through our website at https://velocitycloud.com (“Website”).

Velocity complies with the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield Framework as set forth by the U.S. Department of Commerce regarding the collection, use, and retention of personal information transferred from the European Union to the United States (the “Privacy Shield Principles”). Velocity has certified to the Department of Commerce that it adheres to the Privacy Shield Principles. If there is any conflict between the terms in this privacy policy and the Privacy Shield Principles, the Privacy Shield Principles shall govern.   To learn more about the Privacy Shield program, and to view our certification, please visit https://www.privacyshield.gov/

The Velocity entities that adhere to the Privacy Shield Principles are:

• Velocity Technology Solutions, Inc
• Velocity Technology Solutions V, Inc
• Velocity Technology Solutions III, Inc.
• Velocity Technology Solutions IV, Inc.
• Mercury Technology Group, Inc

In compliance with the Privacy Shield Principles, Velocity commits to resolve complaints about our collection or use of your personal information. EU individuals with inquiries or complaints regarding our Privacy Shield policy should first contact privacy@velocitycloud.com.

Velocity has further committed to refer unresolved Privacy Shield complaints to JAMS, an alternative dispute resolution provider located in the United States. If you do not receive timely acknowledgment of your complaint from us, or if we have not addressed your complaint to your satisfaction, please visit https://www.jamsadr.com/eu-us-privacy-shield for more information or to file a complaint.  The services of JAMS are provided at no cost to you.    

If you have any questions or concerns about our use of your personal information, then please contact us using the contact details provided at the bottom of this Privacy Notice.

Quick links

We recommend that you read this Privacy Notice in full to ensure you are fully informed. However, if you only want to access a particular section of this Privacy Notice, then you can click on the relevant link below to jump to that section.

What does Velocity do?

Velocity is a managed cloud provider, headquartered in Charlotte, NC, USA, with offices throughout the world. Our cloud services may be marketed to you directly through our marketing automation platform.

For more information about Velocity, please see the “About Us” section of our Website at https://velocitycloud.com/about-us.

What personal information does Velocity collect and why?

The personal information that we may collect about you broadly falls into the following categories:

• Information that you provide voluntarily

         Certain parts of our Website may ask you to provide personal information voluntarily: for example, we may ask you to provide your contact details in order to register an account with us, to subscribe to marketing communications from us, and/or to submit inquiries to us. The personal information that you are asked to provide, and the reasons why you are asked to provide it, will be made clear to you at the point we ask you to provide your personal information.

         Those include:

• Forms you fill out on the Website;
• Content of your electric correspondence with us;
• Reporting a problem or requesting support for the Website.
• Any other information you voluntarily send to us.
• Information that we collect automatically

           When you visit our Website, we may collect certain information automatically from your device. In some countries, including countries in the European Economic Area, this information may be considered personal information under applicable data protection laws.

           Specifically, the information we collect automatically may include information like our IP address, device type, unique device identification numbers, browser-type, broad geographic location (e.g. country or city-level location) and other technical information. We may also collect information about how your device has interacted with our Website, including the pages accessed and links clicked.

Collecting this information enables us to better understand the visitors who come to our Website, where they come from, and what content on our Website is of interest to them. We use this information for our internal analytics purposes and to improve the quality and relevance of our Website to our visitors.

         Some of this information may be collected using cookies and similar tracking technology, as explained further under the heading “Cookies and similar tracking technology” below.

• Information that we obtain from third party sources

           From time to time, we may receive personal information about you from third-party sources (including our technology and event partners), but only where we have checked that these third-parties either have your consent or are otherwise legally permitted or required to disclose your personal information to us.    

           The types of information we collect from third parties include your name, company, software you run and geographic location and we use the information we receive from these third parties to communicate marketing messages to you as well as maintain and improve the accuracy of the records we hold about you.

In general, we will use the personal information we collect from you only for the purposes described in this Privacy Notice or for purposes that we explain to you at the time we collect your personal information.   However, we may also use your personal information for other purposes that are not incompatible with the purposes we have disclosed to you (such as archiving purposes in the public interest, scientific or historical research purposes, or statistical purposes) if and where this is permitted by applicable data protection laws.

Who does Velocity share my personal information with?

We may disclose your personal information to the following categories of recipients:

to our group companies, third party service providers and partners who provide data processing services to us (for example, to support the delivery of, provide functionality on, or help to enhance the security of our Website), or who otherwise process personal information for purposes that are described in this Privacy Notice or notified to you when we collect your personal information. Velocity may share your personal information with third-party service providers that perform services on Velocity’s behalf. Velocity does not authorize these third parties to use or disclose the personal information except as necessary to perform services on Velocity’s behalf or to comply with legal requirements. Velocity maintains contracts with service providers restricting their access, use, and disclosure of Personal Data in compliance with the Privacy Shield Principles and requiring the providers to appropriately safeguard the privacy and security of your personal information. Velocity may be liable if these service providers fail to meet those obligations and Velocity is responsible for the event giving rise to the damage.

If Velocity is aware that a third party that receives your personal information subject to this Privacy Notice processes your personal information in a way that is inconsistent with the Privacy Shield Principles or is no longer capable of processing such personal information consistent with the Privacy Shield Principles, Velocity will take reasonable and appropriate steps to prevent or stop and remediate such processing.

• A list of our current partners is available here: https://velocitycloud.com/about-us/partnerships; 
• to any competent law enforcement body, regulatory, government agency, court or other third party where we believe disclosure is necessary (i) as a matter of applicable law or regulation, (ii) to exercise, establish or defend our legal rights, or (iii) to protect your vital interests or those of any other person;
• to a potential buyer (and its agents and advisers) in connection with any proposed purchase, merger or acquisition of any part of our business, provided that we inform the buyer it must use your personal information only for the purposes disclosed in this Privacy Notice; or
• to any other person with your consent to the disclosure.

Legal basis for processing personal information (European Economic Area (EEA) visitors only)

If you are a visitor from the EEA, our legal basis for collecting and using the personal information described above will depend on the personal information concerned and the specific context in which we collect it.  

However, we will normally collect personal information from you only where we have your consent to do so, where we need the personal information to perform a contract with you, or where the processing is in our legitimate interests and not overridden by your data protection interests or fundamental rights and freedoms. In some cases, we may also have a legal obligation to collect personal information from you or may otherwise need the personal information to protect your vital interests or those of another person (e.g., your executive team, functional or technical team).

If we ask you to provide personal information to comply with a legal requirement or to perform a contact with you, we will make this clear at the relevant time and advise you whether the provision of your personal information is mandatory or not (as well as of the possible consequences if you do not provide your personal information).

Similarly, if we collect and use your personal information in reliance on our legitimate interests (or those of any third party), we will make clear to you at the relevant time what those legitimate interests are.

If you have questions about or need further information concerning the legal basis on which we collect and use your personal information, please contact us using the contact details provided under the “How to contact us” heading below.

Cookies and similar tracking technology

We use cookies and similar tracking technology (collectively, “Cookies”) to collect and use personal information about you, including to serve interest-based marketing.

What are cookies?

Cookies are small text files which a website may store on your computer or device when you visit that website. The cookie allows websites to recognize your browser the next time you visit the website. Web beacons and similar tools connect to web sites to signal that a particular web page has been read. We use the term “cookies” in this policy to describe all cookies, web beacons and other tools used to recognize your browser when you visit our website.

Certain cookies can contain personal information – for example, if you click to “remember me” when logging in, we will place a cookie in your browser that contains information that allows us to keep you logged in. Most cookies won’t collect information that identifies you and will instead collect more general information such as how users arrive at and use our websites, or a user’s general location.

What kinds of cookies does Velocity use?

Generally, our cookies perform one of four functions:

• Strictly Necessary Cookies
  • Some cookies are essential for the operation of our website. For example, some cookies allow us to identify customers and ensure they can access our customer pages. If a customer opts to disable these cookies, the user may not be able to use all of the functionality of our customer pages.
• Performance Cookies
  • We utilize other cookies to analyze how our websites are used and to monitor website performance. For example, we use cookies to identify which pages are used most often, how users navigate through our website, and to detect and resolve errors that may occur during browsing. This information may be used to revise our website design to fix errors or provide a better browsing experience.
• Functionality Cookies
  • We use functionality cookies to save user preferences and login information. For example, cookies allow us to recognize you when you access the site and recall your preferences, so you do not have to re-enter them every time you use our site.
• Targeting/Advertising Cookies
  • We may use cookies to understand when users visit us as a result of advertising and marketing activities such as clicking on links in our emails. We do not use cookies for behavioral or targeted advertising and we do not share information related to our marketing activities with third parties for their marketing purposes.

International data transfers

Your personal information may be transferred to, and processed in, countries other than the country in which you are resident. These countries may have data protection laws that are different to the laws of your country.

Specifically, our Website servers are located in the US, and our group companies and third-party service providers and partners operate around the world. This means that when we collect your personal information, we may process it in any of these countries.

However, we have taken appropriate safeguards to require that your personal information will remain protected in accordance with this Privacy Notice. These include implementing the European Commission’s Standard Contractual Clauses for transfers of personal information between our group companies, which require all group companies to protect personal information they process from the EEA in accordance with European Union data protection law.

Our Standard Contractual Clauses can be provided on request. We have implemented similar appropriate safeguards with our third-party service providers and partners and further details can be provided upon request.

Data retention

We retain personal information we collect from you where we have an ongoing legitimate business need to do so (for example, to provide you with a service you have requested or to comply with applicable legal, tax or accounting requirements).

When we have no ongoing legitimate business need to process your personal information, we will either delete or anonymise it or, if this is not possible (for example, because your personal information has been stored in backup archives), then we will securely store your personal information and isolate it from any further processing until deletion is possible.

Automated decision-making

In some instances, our use of your personal information may result in automated decisions being taken (including profiling) that legally affect you or similarly significantly affect you.

Automated decisions mean that a decision concerning you is made automatically on the basis of a computer determination (using software algorithms), without our human review. For example, we use automated decisions to send you certain marketing collateral. We have implemented measures to safeguard the rights and interests of individuals whose personal information is subject to automated decision-making, including our marketing, business development and sales team.

When we make an automated decision about you, you have the right to contest the decision, to express your point of view, and to require a human review of the decision. You can exercise this right by contact us using the contact details provided under the “How to contact us” heading below.

Your data protection rights

You have the following data protection rights:

• If you wish to access, correct, update or request deletion of your personal information, you can do so at any time by contacting us using the contact details provided under the “How to contact us” heading below.
• In addition, if you are a resident of the European Union, you can object to processing of your personal information, ask us to restrict processing of your personal information or request portability of your personal information. Again, you can exercise these rights by contacting us using the contact details provided under the “How to contact us” heading below.
• You have the right to opt-out of marketing communications we send you at any time. You can exercise this right by clicking on the “unsubscribe” link in the marketing e-mails we send you. To opt-out of other forms of marketing (such as telemarketing), please contact us using the contact details provided under the “How to contact us” heading below.
• Similarly, if we have collected and process your personal information with your consent, then you can withdraw your consent at any time. Withdrawing your consent will not affect the lawfulness of any processing we conducted prior to your withdrawal, nor will it affect processing of your personal information conducted in reliance on lawful processing grounds other than consent.
• You have the right to complain to a data protection authority about our collection and use of your personal information.   For more information, please contact your local data protection authority. (Contact details for data protection authorities in the European Economic Area, Switzerland and certain non-European countries (including the US and Canada) are available here.)
• Velocity is subject to the investigatory and enforcement powers of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC)
• You can, under certain conditions, invoke binding arbitration in connection with your rights hereunder 

We respond to all requests we receive from individuals wishing to exercise their data protection rights in accordance with applicable data protection laws.

Updates to this Privacy Notice

We may update this Privacy Notice from time to time in response to changing legal, technical or business developments. When we update our Privacy Notice, we will take appropriate measures to inform you, consistent with the significance of the changes we make. We will obtain your consent to any material Privacy Notice changes if and where this is required by applicable data protection laws.

You can see when this Privacy Notice was last updated by checking the “last updated” date displayed at the top of this Privacy Notice.

How to contact us

If you have any questions or concerns about our use of your personal information, please contact us at privacy@velocitycloud.com.