Last Updated: 09/01/2020

The Synergy Company™ (herein “Synergy”, “we”, “us” or “our”) is committed to protecting and respecting your privacy and personal information. We believe in providing transparency around our privacy practices, including how we collect, use, and share personal information, and your related privacy rights. As a result, we have laid out the personal information we collect from you when you purchase our products, use our services (including interacting with our website www.thesynergycompany.com, herein “Website”), and make contact or interact with us in any other way.

This Privacy Notice describes what we do with your personal information, your choices and rights, and how to contact us with any questions. Please read it carefully so you can make an informed decision about your use of our services and Website.

Contents

1. Scope of This Privacy Notice
2. How We Collect Personal Information
3. Categories of Personal Information We Collect
4. What We Use Personal Information for
5. Legal Basis for Collecting and Using Your Personal Information
6. Collection of Personal Information From Minors
7. Marketing and Preferences
8. Sharing and Sale of Your Information
9. Protection of Personal Information
10. How Long We keep Your Personal Information for
11. Consent to Processing in the United States and Internationally
12. Cookies Notice
13. Your Privacy Rights
14. Changes to Our Privacy Notice
15. Questions and Contacts

1. Scope of This Privacy Notice

This Privacy Notice applies to anyone who interacts with us in any way in relation to our products and services (for example, providing us personal information through our Website’s online forms when purchasing a product, or when sending us information by email). This Privacy Notice provides details about the personal information we collect about you, how we use it as a personal information “controller” (i.e., a company that determines the purposes of and means for data collection, use, and sharing), and how we protect and safeguard your personal information. This Privacy Notice also provides information about your rights as an individual, in relation to this personal information that we collect from you. These rights may commonly be referred to as your “Consumer Rights” under the California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”).

We may also provide you with further legal information and/or privacy notices as necessary, depending on the way we interact with you and the services we provide to you. These may also apply to you, for example, when you consent to them or where they apply to the performance of a contractual arrangement with us.

2. How We Collect Personal Information

We may collect personal information about you from various sources and channels, including when you use or interact with our services. This typically includes through your contact with us by phone, physical mail, email, and through interactions with our website, including any online web forms or chat messages you complete and submit to us. Other interactions may include signing up for newsletters or other marketing materials, and through your contact and interaction with us on social media, blogs, surveys, and/or product feedback communications.

We may also occasionally collect personal information from third party service providers where we have legal basis to do so, for example obtaining credit reporting background check results in relation to our business-to-business relationships with you if you are a sole trader.

In connection with our Website, we may also set cookies on your web browser or use other tracking technologies when you interact with websites, applications, or advertisements in our network. This allows us to collect certain website usage data and online identifiers. However, such data may be aggregated or anonymized, and while it is not used to identify you as an individual, it may be used for analytics, marketing, and improvement of our products and services. For more information refer to our “Cookies Notice” in section 12 below.

3. Categories of Personal Information

We Collect We may collect various categories of personal information from you, detailed below. We may collect, and may have collected during the previous 12 months:

• Contact information, such as your name, address, email address, and phone numbers;
• Marketing and contact consents and preferences, such as consent to receive marketing and/or newsletters, product updates and promotions by email;
• Any personal information you send to us in emails, attachments, and other communications that you send us or otherwise contribute (such as product feedback communications or use of our Website chat functionality);
• Financial details, such as details about your credit or payment card or payment account (including PayPal account), including details of account numbers, payment details, billing addresses, or contact information associated with an account (e.g. email address associated with a PayPal account);
• Relevant personal information for regulatory, contractual, or other legal reasons when you are purchasing our products, using our products or services, or in relation to employment. For example, in the event of any adverse physical reaction when using our products, we request further information and relevant details if required by the Food and Drug Administration (“FDA”) or other relevant third parties;
• Background check results, which may include credit reporting personal information in relation to our business-to-business relationships with you if you are a sole trader;
• Professional or employment-related information for job applicants, which may include, for example, your job search criteria and preferences, employment and educational history, qualifications and skills, reference information, background check information, compensation or compensation expectations, ability to work in the United States or other countries, languages spoken, and other information contained in your resume.

Some of these personal information categories we collect may be defined as “sensitive” under differing laws and regulations and require special protections. Such sensitive personal information you provide us with will only be collected where we have a legal basis to do so, such as with your consent or to fulfil a legal obligation, and will be protected appropriately as described in the below section 9 “Protection of Personal Information”.

Data and online identifiers we collect through our Website (e.g., through cookies and other tracking technologies) may include IP addresses, preferences, web pages visited prior to coming to our Website, information about browser, network or device (such as browser type and version, operating system, internet service provider, preference settings, unique device IDs and language and other regional settings), and information about how you interact with our Websites (such as pages visited, timestamps, clicks, scrolling, browsing times and load times). For more information refer to our “Cookies Notice” in section 12 below.

4. What We Use Personal Information for

We use the personal information we obtain about you, and may share it with our service providers or other third parties where we have legal basis to do so, for us to:

• Communicate with you, including by sending you updates related to transaction or shipping status, responses to questions or communications you send to us (e.g., via our Website’s online chat functionality, or as a response to communications you have with our Customer Service team), and other relevant service or product-related announcements;
• Perform our services, including order fulfilment, maintaining accounts and contracts, providing customer service, fulfilling transactions, or verifying information;
• Manage our affiliate, distributor, and customer relationships;
• Perform marketing, including providing relevant details and informational updates related to our products, or advertising our products and services online. This could include “remarketing” or “retargeting”, whereby users of our Website may be marketed to on other third-party websites through use of Marketing Cookies – see “Cookies Policy” section 12 below for further information. In addition to third-party cookies, remarketing may also involve our use of personal information (such as name and email address) collected from you in prior interactions, which may then be used to provide you with relevant updates, marketing, or other information related to your prior interactions with our products and services;
• Administer promotions such as offering product discounts, contests, or other incentives;
• Undertake research and trend analysis activities to verify, maintain, or improve the quality and types of products and services being provided, including to handle and respond to complaints or questions, analyze your interactions with our products and services, or act on feedback you provide through surveys, product feedback, emails, etc.;
• Evaluate job applications and business proposals (e.g., agreements or requests proposed by affiliates and distributors, or prospective affiliates and distributors);
• Audit our transactions and interactions, for purposes where we have legal grounds to do so, such as security or for regulatory compliance;
• Detect, remediate, and, if applicable, prosecute any physical security or information security-related or criminal incidents, including protecting against any illegal activity such as fraud to ensure the security and integrity of our services;
• Enforce our legal rights and obligations (including performance of identity verification to respond to certain requests for information), company policies, and establish, make, or defend legal claims;
• Act in the public interest, in line with any laws that apply;
• Perform background checks including obtaining and reviewing credit reports for our business-to-business transactions and contracts;
• Comply with applicable legal and regulatory requirements, such as reporting to the Food and Drug Administration (“FDA”), and complying with other applicable regulations and industry standards, contracts, and law enforcement requests.

5. Legal Basis for Collecting and Using Your Personal Information

We process your personal information when we have a legal basis to do so. This could include:

You have consented to the use of your personal information in a particular way. When you consent, you can have the right to revoke your consent, however this does not necessarily mean it is possible or that we are obligated to cancel or reverse any previous actions taken based on any consent previously provided. Details of how to exercise your legal rights are set out in section 13 below - “Your Privacy Rights”;

• We need your personal information to provide you with services and products, or to respond to your inquiries. In other words, so we can perform our contract or fulfil our obligations as part of any transaction with you or take steps at your request before entering into a contract or transaction;
• We have a legal obligation to collect and/or use your personal information, such as to comply with regulatory requirements or to comply with a court order or law enforcement request.

Taking into account applicable laws as well as your individual interests, rights, and freedoms, we may also collect or use personal information for a number of legitimate business interests. These legitimate interests may include:

• To manage our relationship with you and any service providers who provide products or services for us. This may include to provide shipping, to check that you have received a service, to validate payment for invoices, and to provide marketing to you;
• For research and analysis so that we can monitor and improve our products, services and Websites based on sales trends, Website usage data, and similar;
• To enforce or apply our policy terms and conditions or other contracts, or to protect our (or our customers’ or other people’s) rights, property, or safety;
• To exercise our rights, to defend ourselves from legal or other claims and to keep to laws and regulations that apply to us and the third parties we work with; and
• To take part in, or be the subject of, any sale, purchase, re-structuring, merger or takeover of all or part of our business.

Sometimes we may also request that you provide us with relevant personal information for contractual or legal reasons related to our services, or to enable us to provide our products and services. If you do not provide personal information when requested, this may impact your ability to purchase our products or use our services if that information is necessary to provide you with that product or service.

6. Collection of Personal Information From Minors

Our Websites and our services are not designed or intended to attract children under 13 years of age, and we are committed to complying with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (“COPPA”). Should we ever need to collect information about children under the age of 13, this will be done only with legal basis such as consent from the child’s parent or legal guardian. We do not collect any personal information directly from any person if we know that such a person is a child under the age of 13. By accessing our Websites, you represent that you are 13 years of age or older. If you believe we have collected Personal Information from a child under the age of 13 without consent, please contact us at privacy@synergy-co.com.

7. Marketing and Preferences

We or our service providers on our behalf may use your personal information to send you marketing through various channels (such as by mail, phone, online, social media, email, or text), however, we only use or share your personal information to send you marketing material if we have your permission (“consent”) or a legitimate interest as described above in the “Legal Basis for Collecting and Using Your Personal Information”, section 5. If you don’t want to receive direct marketing from us, depending on your jurisdiction you may have the right to opt out, withdraw your consent, or object. For example, you may opt out by clicking on the unsubscribe links that appear in emails we send or contacting us at privacy@synergy-co.com to update your contact and marketing preferences and consents. Please also see further details on choices you have relating to cookies in the “Cookies Policy”, section 12, and details of other privacy rights you have in section 13 below, “Your Privacy Rights”.

8. Sharing and Sale of Your Information

We may disclose personal information to service providers and other third parties. Over the last twelve months we may have disclosed to such third parties any of the categories of personal information outlined in the above section 3, “Categories of Personal Information We Collect”, wherever we have legal basis for such sharing. However, we endeavor to share only the minimum relevant personal information that is required to fulfil the business purpose for sharing such personal information.

We may disclose, and over the previous twelve months may have disclosed, personal information to the following categories of third parties:

• Service providers who perform business functions and services on our behalf. This includes service providers who support in the provision, auditing, analytics, management, security of our information technology systems and Website, our marketing and payment processing service providers and partners, and customer service-related service providers (such as those supporting with the hosting and provision of the “Chat” feature of our Website). We also share personal information with service providers for the purposes of fraud detection and prevention.
• To distributors or affiliates of our products and services, for example to address inquiries from an affiliate or distributor.
• Regulatory authorities, government authorities, courts, or other third parties wherever legally required of us or if we reasonably believe that such action is necessary and can be taken legally to protect the safety, rights or property of Synergy, our employees, our customers, our service providers, any other third parties including distributors or affiliates, or the general public.

While we do not sell personal information in exchange for monetary consideration, we do share, and over the preceding twelve months may have shared, personal information for other benefits that could be deemed a “Sale,” as defined by the California Consumer Privacy Act in the California Civil Code 1798.140 section (t)(1). This includes sharing of identifiers, commercial information, and internet or other electronic network activity usage data with advertising partners and networks, and website analytics companies. You have the right to direct us to not sell your personal information. Please see Section 13 “Your Privacy Rights” for further details on how to exercise this right.

9. Protection of Personal Information

We use reasonable administrative, technical, and physical safeguards to protect your personal information, taking care of its integrity and availability and avoiding its damage, loss, alteration, destruction, or unauthorized use. Personal information collected about you will be handled only by authorized personnel and in compliance with applicable laws and regulations to ensure it is appropriately safeguarded and not inappropriately disclosed.

Ordering through our Website is secure. Our Website has Extended Validation SSL certification, which provides the highest level of assurance that all communication between our order page and your computer browser is securely encrypted. Your credit card payment and accompanying information is submitted by you, in this secure mode, and is encrypted for your privacy. No unauthorized parties may view your personal information while it is in transit to us over the internet.

However, no safeguards can be guaranteed 100% effective in securing all personal information all the time, and across all the environments in which personal information is collected and stored. This includes both internally at Synergy, and at our service providers and other third parties. If you have reason to believe that your or others’ personal information is no longer secured appropriately, please immediately notify us at privacy@synergy-co.com.

10. How long We keep Your Personal Information

Whenever we collect, use, or store your personal data, we’ll keep it for as long as is necessary for the purpose for which it was collected, unless there are or are anticipated to be legal, regulatory compliance, or legitimate business interests for retaining the personal information for a longer period of time (e.g. to continue to provide relevant product marketing to you, or to maintain records of sales with you to determine future relevant product interests).

Once we determine that personal information is no longer needed to be retained, it will either be deleted completely or anonymized. For example, your data can be aggregated with other data so that it can be used in a non-identifiable way for statistical and trend analysis or business planning.

11. Consent to Processing in the United States and Internationally

To provide our services, we deal with a range of third parties including service providers who may be physically located or have technology infrastructure located in the United States of America or other countries around the world. We and these third parties may also rely on global information systems and technologies that transfer data and personal information to other countries. In order to provide you with our products and services (including the functionality available through our Website), and to allow us to process your personal information in line with the purposes set out in this Privacy and Cookies Notice, there may be times where the personal information you provide us with is sent to countries outside those from which you reside or from which you are providing your personal information. This includes information being sent to or from the United States of America and other countries.

By using and accessing our Websites and services, individuals residing or located in or outside of the United States of America agree and consent to the transfer and processing of personal information in the United States of America and other countries. We are committed to protecting the privacy and security of your personal information whenever it is subject to such transfers. We take appropriate steps to make sure that, if we transfer your personal information to another country, appropriate legal basis and security is in place, in line with data protection laws where required. This protection may be set out under a contract with the organization who receives that personal information, or another legal mechanism may be in place that allows us to transfer the personal information.

12. Cookies Notice

This Cookies Notice applies when using our Website.

What is a cookie and how are they used on our Website?

A cookie is a small piece of data that a website – when visited by a user – asks your browser to store on your device to remember preferences and other information, for example previous website or page visits from that device and browser, username or login prompts, or other online behaviors. We use industry standard cookies and other tracking technologies (such as Google Analytics) to track your behavior online, assist you in navigation and using intended website functionality (e.g., retaining items in a shopping cart), analytics purposes to gather - and enable your ability to provide - feedback to improve our products and services, or to provide marketing if you visit other websites within our network of marketing service providers.

What choices do you have regarding cookies?

Cookies set by us on our Website are called “first-party” cookies, used to help evaluate and enable performance and functionality of our products and services, including our Website. We also use “third-party” cookies, which are cookies from a website domain other than our Websites. These are used for our website analytics, site functionality, and marketing efforts by sharing usage and device-related data with relevant third parties.

The first time you visit our Website and depending on your jurisdiction, you may be displayed a banner providing you with information about the use of cookies on our Website, and options for how to opt in or opt out of certain cookies when you visit. This opting in or opting out can be done using our cookie consent center, which is accessed through the cookie banner you are presented. For example, you can exercise an opting in or out of certain categories of non-essential cookies (e.g., “Marketing Cookies” as described below), by turning the toggle on or off for these in the cookie consent center. You may update your cookie preferences at any time by accessing our cookie consent center here. You may also opt out of third-party use of cookies and device identifiers in some instances with the relevant third-party directly (see links to our third-party marketing service provider websites below). Alternatively, you may be able to opt out of a third-party service provider's use of cookies by visiting the Network Advertising Initiative opt-out page or control the use of device identifiers by using your specific device and/or web browser’s settings to block or clear certain cookies, however note that if you block certain cookies some parts of our Website may not work correctly.

Google Analytics

In addition to the cookies detailed below, we use Google Analytics to better understand your use of our Website and Services. Google Analytics collects information such as how often users visit our Website, what pages are visited, and what other sites may have been used prior to visiting. Google uses the data collected to track and examine websites usage, to prepare reports on its activities and share them with other Google services, and to contextualize and personalize the ads of its own advertising network. More information about how Google Analytics collects and processes data can be found here.

Google’s ability to use and share information collected by Google Analytics about your visits to the Websites is restricted by the Google Analytics Terms of Use and the Google Privacy Policy. You can also opt out of and manage your preferences for Google’s use of personalized advertising and related cookies by visiting Google’s Ad Settings, and Google Analytics also offers an opt-out mechanism for the web available here.

What types of cookies are on our Website and why?

We use the following types of cookies for the following purposes:

Strictly Necessary Cookies: These cookies are essential for you to browse our Website and use its intended functionality, including accessing secure areas of the Website or moving items to the shopping cart before making a purchase. These cookies cannot be opted in or out of.

Performance Cookies: These cookies allow us to count visits and traffic sources so we can measure and improve the performance of our Website. They help us to know which pages are the most and least popular and see how visitors move around the Website. All information these cookies collect is aggregated and therefore anonymous. If you do not allow these cookies, we will not know when you have visited our site.

Functional Cookies: These cookies enable the website to provide enhanced functionality. They may be set by us or by third-party service providers whose services we have added to our pages (for example, adding Customer Service Chat support to our site, or allowing you to provide feedback on products and services).

Marketing Cookies: These cookies may be set on our Website by our advertising and marketing service providers. They may be used by those companies to build a profile of your interests and show you relevant adverts on other sites. They are based on uniquely identifying your browser and internet device. This recognition is used to serve relevant adverts, links, or other information about our products and services to users visiting other websites after having previously visited our Website or interacted with our products and services. If you consent to these cookies, you may experience targeted advertising.

13. Your Privacy Rights

Depending on the jurisdiction you reside in, you may have certain rights in relation to the personal information we have collected about you. These rights are not absolute and do not always apply in all cases, for example U.S. residents may not be entitled to certain rights which may only apply to residents of certain states. We will let you know in our correspondence with you whether and how we will be able to meet your request relating to your rights, and will never discriminate against or provide discriminatory treatment to any individuals exercising their privacy rights under applicable regulations (for example, providing a different level or quality of goods or services). If we are not able to meet your privacy rights request, we will explain why, and provide details of any further action you may take. For example, we may explain how to appeal against a decision or contact a relevant data protection supervisory authority.

Your privacy rights are detailed below:

• If you are a California resident, you have the right to direct us to not sell your personal information.
  • While we do not sell personal information in exchange for monetary consideration, we do share, and over the preceding twelve months may have shared, personal information for other benefits that could be deemed a “Sale,” as defined by the California Consumer Privacy Act in the California Civil Code 1798.140 section (t)(1). This includes sharing of identifiers , commercial information , and internet or other electronic network activity usage data with advertising partners and networks, and website analytics companies.
  • With respect to our use of third party marketing cookies, you can always customize your settings at any time. See Section 12 “Cookies Notice” for further information on how to do this.
• Right of Access/Right to Know: You may have the right to make a request for details of your personal information and a copy of that personal information. Depending on your residency (e.g. California), this may also include rights to know:
  • The categories and specific pieces of Personal Information that we have collected about you;
  • The categories of sources from which the Personal Information is collected;
  • The business or commercial purpose for collecting or sharing your Personal Information;
  • The categories of third parties with whom we share your Personal Information;
  • The categories of personal information that we have “sold” about you, as well as the categories of third parties to whom we sold the information.
• Right to Rectification: You may have the right to have inaccurate information about you corrected or removed.
• Right to Deletion: You may have the right to have certain personal information about you deleted from our records.
• Right to Restriction of Processing: You may have the right to ask us to use your personal information for certain restricted or specified purposes only.
• Right to Object to Processing: You may have the right to object to us collecting, using, sharing, or storing (collectively “processing”) your personal information in certain cases.
• Right to Portability: You may have the right to ask us to transfer your personal information to another company or individual in a computer-readable format.
• Right to Withdraw Consent: You may have the right to withdraw any permission (or “consent”) you have given us to handle your personal information.
• Right in relation to Automated Decision Making: You may have the right to not be subject to automated decision making, or the right to have a manual review of the decision, as well as be informed of information regarding the logic used to make any automated decisions.

To make a request related to the above privacy rights, please click here. Our Privacy Office will advise on any required next steps.

Alternatively, the Privacy Office can be contacted by toll free phone number for California-based individuals exercising their rights under the CCPA - please call us on +1 (800) 723-0277.

14. Questions and Contacts

We hope this Privacy Notice has been helpful in explaining the way we handle your personal information and your rights to control it. For any questions or comments in relation to this privacy notice and our privacy practices generally, please contact our Privacy Office who will be pleased to help you by email at privacy@synergy-co.com.

15. Changes to Our Privacy Notice

We will review and may make updates to our privacy practices from time to time. If we review and/or make any material changes to our privacy practices, we will update this privacy notice and change the effective date at the top of this page.