CarBeast Privacy Policy

Updated in August, 2021

CarBeast (also referred to as "we," "our," "us") is in the business of providing vehicle maintenance & service information for individuals, and is for use only in the United States and Canada.

1. What Information Do We Gather?

2. What Do We Do With the Personal Information We Collect?

3. Who Can Use the Information We Collect and How?

4. How Do We Protect the Personal Information We Collect?

5. What Are Your Rights Regarding Your Personal Data?

6. How Do You Opt-out of Personal Information Sharing with Our Business Partners?

7. How Do You Correct and Update Your Personal Data?

8. What is Our Privacy Policy If You Are an Underage Child?

9. What Happens When You follow a Link to a Third-Party Web Site?

10. What Happens When We Update Our Privacy Policy?

11. What If You Have Questions?

1. What Information Do We Gather?

When you visit our website and web applications, https://carbeast.com ("Site"), we collect only the information and personal data you agree to provide to us that is necessary to identify your needs and to provide you with better service. By your use of our Site, registration or subscription as a user, we may obtain personal data including, but not limited to:

Name
Contact information including email address and cell phone number
Internet Protocol ("IP") address and other potentially persistent identifiers
Other information relevant to our Site visitor surveys and offers
If you become a registered or subscribed user, and/or if you conduct transactions through our Site, we will collect information about the transactions in which you engage while on our Site and other potential activities on our Site. This information may include, without limitation, areas of our Site that you visit, transaction type, content that you view, download or submit, transaction amount, payment, and billing information, as well as the nature, quantity and price of the goods or services you exchange.

Some of this personal data, including name and contact information, will be collected only if you voluntarily provide it during our user registration and/or subscription process. We may also track information such as the domain name and the name of the web page from which you entered our Site, and how much time you spend on each of our Site web pages. We collect information that is combined with other web visitors' information, such as how many times visitors click on each web page and the methods by which our Site was found.

We may collect IP addresses and website usage information from you when you visit our Site by use of "cookies." An IP address is a number that is assigned to your computer when you are using your browser on the Internet. A cookie is a small file that is stored on the hard drive of your computer ready for future access when you return to our Site. We use cookies to deliver web content specific to you and to keep track of your online activity. Cookies cannot pass viruses, harm your computer or pass on private information such as an email address without the computer user's intervention. Cookies contain session identification numbers that allow our systems to recall previous sessions for authentication efforts and assemble information from our gathered data. You can configure your computer's browser to alert you when a site is attempting to send you a cookie and allow you to accept or refuse the cookie. However, we do require use of reCAPTCHA technology (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReCAPTCHA) to ensure you are a human individual. More information on cookies can be found on http://www.allaboutcookies.org. Alternatively, you can access further information by going to the help menu within your Internet browser.

We use cookies to give you the best experience on our Site. If you continue without changing your cookie settings, we assume that you consent to our use of cookies on your device. You can change your cookie settings at any time but if you change such settings, you may lose some functionality on our Site.

2. What Do We Do With the Personal Information We Collect?

You may be requested to provide personal data in certain fields on our Site that enable you to use certain features of our Site. The personal data we collect is used only for the purpose we state at the time of collection or for purposes described below. For example, our uses may include, but are not limited to, the following:

To process transactions. We use personal data such as name, cell phone number, email address etc. to engage in interactions with you, including to contact you about your transactions at our Site.
To process payments. The payment service processors we use may obtain financial/credit card and payment information to process your order and may need to share some of this information with delivery services, credit card clearing houses, and other third-parties to complete transactions.
To provide support or other services. We may use your personal data to provide you with support or other services that you have ordered or requested. We may also use your personal information to respond directly to your requests for information, including registrations for newsletters, webinars, or other specific requests, or pass your contact information to the appropriate distributors or resellers for further follow-up related to your interests.
To provide information based on your needs and respond to your requests. We may use your personal data to provide you with notices of new product releases and service developments.
To provide online forums and social networks. Some services available on our Site or other websites may permit you to participate in interactive discussions, post comments or content to a forum, or otherwise engage in networking activities. Some of these services are moderated; all may be accessed for technical reasons (for example, for improvements or fixes). We do not control the content that users post to the forums. You should carefully consider whether you wish to submit personal information to these forums, and tailor any content you submit appropriately and in accordance with the relevant terms of use. You should also review any additional terms and conditions that may govern your use of these services.
To administer products. We may contact you if you purchase products to confirm certain information about your order (for example, whether you experienced problems in receiving the items). We may also use this information to confirm compliance with licensing and other terms of use.
To select content, improve quality, and facilitate use of our Site. We may use your personal data, including the information gathered as a result of site navigation, electronic protocols and cookies (including third-party cookies), to help create and personalize our Site content, improve quality, track for marketing responsiveness, evaluate web page response rates, conduct usability testing, and facilitate your use of our Site (for example, to facilitate navigation and login processes, avoid duplicate data entry, enhance security, track items purchased, and preserve relevant information between sessions).
To serve personalized advertising to you. We do not share your personal data with advertisers without your consent. We allow advertisers to choose the characteristics of users who see their advertisements, and we may use any non-personally-identifiable data attributes that we have collected to select the appropriate audiences for those advertisements. When you use our Site, there is a possibility that an advertiser or other entity may place a cookie in your browser and that your attributes may meet the criteria for the advertiser or other entity.
To assess usage of our products and services. We may track your usage of our products and services to determine your level of usage, and those usage statistics may be made available to our content licensors. We may also track your usage in order to identify any misuse of our Site.
To communicate with you about events. We may communicate with you about events we host or co-sponsor by us or one of our business associates. This may include information about the event content, logistics, payment, updates, and additional related information. The information you provide when registering for or participating in an event managed or co-sponsored by parties, other than or in addition to us, may be shared with those parties, and the treatment of such information is further subject to the privacy policies of those parties. We and our event co-sponsors may contact you after the event about the event, subsequent iterations of the event, and related events. Please note that event organizers, co-sponsors, exhibitors, and other third-parties may directly request your personal information at their event booths or presentations. Providing your information to them is optional, and you should review their privacy policies to address your particular needs and concerns about how they will treat your personal information.
To update you on relevant benefits, programs, and opportunities. We may contact you regarding our relevant benefits, programs, and opportunities available to you.
To engage with third-parties. We may share your personal data with third-parties in connection with services that these individuals or entities perform for or with us. These third-parties are restricted from using this data in any way other than to provide services for us or for the collaboration in which they are contractually engaged with us (for example, hosting a database or engaging in data processing on our behalf, or mailing you information that you may request). We carefully select these third-parties, and they are obligated to keep your data secure. From time to time, we may also share your information with third-parties whom we think will provide content, products, or services of interest to you.
To protect our content and services. We may use your personal data to prevent potentially illegal activities and to enforce our terms and conditions. We use a variety of technological systems to detect and address anomalous activity and to screen content to prevent abuse, such as spam. Our efforts may occasionally result in a temporary or permanent suspension or termination of some functions for some users. By using our Site, you acknowledge and agree that we may access, retain and disclose the personal data we collect and maintain about you if required by law or in a good faith belief that such access, retention, or disclosure is reasonably necessary to: (a) comply with legal process (such as a subpoena or court order) or law; (b) enforce our End-User License Agreement (EULA), this Privacy Policy, or other contracts with you, including investigation of potential violations thereof; (c) respond to claims that any content violates the rights of third-parties; (d) respond to your requests for customer service; and/or (e) protect the rights, property or personal safety, of our agents and affiliates, our users and/or the public. This includes exchanging information with other companies and organizations for fraud protection, compliance with applicable law, spam/malware prevention, and similar purposes.
To get feedback or input from you. In order to deliver products and services of most interest to our Site visitors, from time to time, we may ask volunteers, our Site visitors and/or members of the public to provide us input and feedback (for example through surveys, usability studies, focus groups).
To protect our information assets as well as your own personal data. Our information security protocols protect the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of our information assets by following a risk management approach based on policies, standards, guidelines, and procedures to meet security objectives while supporting business and operational goals. In order to enable such security protocols we use, we may need to use your information as obtained at our Site.
To assist in Business Transfers. As we continue to develop our business, we may buy, merge, or partner with other companies. In such transactions (including when contemplating such transactions), your information may be among the transferred assets. If a portion or all of our assets are sold or transferred to a third-party, your personal data (including your email address) would likely be one of the transferred business assets. If such transfer is subject to additional mandatory restrictions under applicable laws, we will comply with such restrictions.

To the extent that we collect any demographic information about you, we may use this information in our market research, but we will do so only after we "anonymize" or "pseudonymize" the data (that is, remove information that would confirm your identity). We will not use your personal data, however, to send commercial or marketing messages to you unless we have a legal basis for doing so, such as your consent or a contract with us for which, in either case, you have the ability to opt out of by clicking on appropriate links in the messages sent to you.

We collect such data that is provided to our systems automatically. Our Site does not collect other personal data when you browse and request pages from our servers unless you voluntarily provide such information to us. This means that we will not know your name, your email address, or any other personal data just because you browse our Site unless you:

access our Site from a link in an email that we have sent to you;
have created a profile and you either log-in to your account or your web-enabled mobile device.

In these cases we will know who you are based on the information you may have previously supplied to us. When you request a page from our Site, our servers log the information provided in the HTTP request header including the IP address, the time of the request, the URL of your request and other information that is provided in the HTTP header. We collect the HTTP request header information in order to make our Site functions correctly and provides you with the functionality that you expect to see. We also use this information to personalize content presented to you, better understand how visitors use our Site and how we can better modify it, improve and enhance its contents and functionality, in order to provide a better experience and meet your needs.

3. Who Can Use the Information We Collect and How?

We may provide your personal data to third-parties, or third-parties may collect personal data from you on our behalf if we have contracted with them to provide some part of the information or service that you request or for payment service processing. Other than those who act on our behalf and except as explained in this Privacy Policy, personal data you provide at our Site will not be transferred to unrelated third-parties, unless we have a legal basis to do so. However, note that personal data provided to our Site is subject to disclosure pursuant to judicial or other government subpoenas, warrants or orders. We will only provide this information after approximately two weeks following receipt of a valid subpoena or other legal process in a civil case.

4. How Do We Protect the Personal Information We Collect?

Security of Personal Data

We are committed to protecting the security of your personal data. Depending on the circumstances, we may hold your information in hard copy and/or electronic form. For each medium, we use technologies and procedures to protect personal data. We review our strategies and update as necessary to meet our business needs, changes in technology, and regulatory requirements. We take our security obligations seriously and so should you. While we are responsible for maintaining the security of our Site, you must also access and use our Site in a manner that is responsible and secure. We have implemented policies, procedures, and training to address data protection, confidentiality, and security, and we update and review the appropriateness of these measures on a regular basis.

Storage and Transfer of Personal Data

Personal data we collect may be stored and processed in the United States or in any other country where we, our affiliates, our contractors, or our third-party service providers, maintain facilities. We take steps to ensure that the data we collect under this Privacy Policy is processed pursuant to the terms thereof and appropriate requirements.

We also collaborate with third-parties such as cloud hosting services and suppliers located around the world to serve your needs and the needs of our business and workforce. In some cases, we may need to disclose or transfer your personal data to such third-parties. When we do so, we take steps to ensure that personal data is processed, secured, and transferred appropriately.

Retention of Personal Data

We retain personal data for as long as necessary to provide the services and fulfill the transactions you have requested, or for other business purposes such as complying with legal obligations, resolving disputes, and enforcing our agreements. We are required by law to keep some types of information for certain periods of time (e.g., statute of limitations). If your personal data is no longer necessary for the legal or business purposes for which it is processed, we will generally destroy or anonymize that information.

5. What Are Your Rights Regarding Your Personal Data?

We respect your right to access and control your personal data. You have choices about the data we collect. When you are asked to provide personal data that is not necessary for the purposes of providing you with our products and services, you may decline. However, if you choose not to provide, or delete from your account, data that is necessary to provide a product or a service, you may not have access to certain features, products or services at our Site.

Access to personal data: In some jurisdictions, you have the right to request access to your personal data. In these cases, we will comply, subject to any relevant legal requirements and exemptions, including identity verification procedures. Before providing data to you, we will ask for proof of identity and sufficient information about your interaction with us so that we can locate any relevant data. You should make a request (at https://carbeast.com/privacy_matters) for the information when logged into your account, and we will further verify your identity by email. We may also charge you a fee for providing you with a copy of your data (except where this is not permissible under local law).

Correction and deletion: In some jurisdictions, you have the right to correct or amend your personal data if it is inaccurate or requires updating. You may also have the right to request deletion of your personal data. You should make a request (at https://carbeast.com/privacy_matters) for such changes when logged into your account, and we will further verify your identity by email. Please note that such a request could be refused because your personal data is required to provide you with the products or services you requested (for example, to deliver a product or send a notification to your email address, or for other appropriate reasons). If you delete data that is necessary to provide specific features, products or services at our Site, then you may not have access to those specific features, products or services.

Marketing preferences: If you have provided us with your contact information, we may, subject to any applicable Spam Act or similar regulation, contact you via email, postal mail or phone about our products, services and events that may be of interest to you, including newsletters.

E-mail communications you receive from us will generally provide an unsubscribe link allowing you to opt-out of receiving future email or to change your contact preferences. E-mail communications may also include a link to directly update and manage your marketing preferences. Please remember that even if you opt out of receiving marketing emails, we may still send you important or required service information related to your account.

We may use third-party analytics vendors to evaluate and provide us with information about the use of our services and viewing of our content. Some of the information you see on our Site may be customized based on automated predictions about your interests, which predictions are generated from your visits over time and across different websites. This information allows us to create content of greater interest to you and can also be used to serve advertisements based on your past visits to our Site. Note that you can learn about opting out of a third-party vendor's use of cookies, by visiting the Network Advertising Initiative opt-out page (http://www.networkadvertising.org/choices/). For more information about targeted network advertising, visit: http://www.networkadvertising.org/understanding-online-advertising.

You may opt-out of third-party targeted advertising or analytics in two ways: 1) By directly notifying a network advertising service provider via its opt-out tools (for example, see above), or 2) using your browser’s Do Not Track (DNT) settings to indicate that you do not wish to receive targeted advertising based on your overall Internet usage. For more information about DNT and how it works, please visit the Future of Privacy Forum’s website: https://fpf.org/.

We make a good faith reasonable effort to honor your DNT browser settings to opt out of receiving targeted third-party advertising based on your overall Internet usage. Note that various browsers frequently update technology or change their settings and business practices without advance notice, and we may not have the latest information on how to honor your preferences. If you exercise either opt-out option – the cookie opt-out or the browser opt-out – you may continue to receive advertising, but such advertising may not relate to your specific interests, previous purchases, or search history.

However, you cannot opt-out of our contextual analytics and advertising, which is based on your usage of only our services. We may continue to serve you contextual advertising. We will also continue to monitor your usage, search, or transaction history to provide us with analytics on how well our services, features, and activities are functioning and used. We will also use this information in an aggregated or anonymized form (meaning that no one individual person can be identified).

You can also opt out of our marketing emails at any time by using appropriate opt-out links provided in such emails. Also, you may make a request (at https://carbeast.com/privacy_matters) to opt out when logged into your account, and we will further verify your identity by email.

7. How Do You Correct and Update Your Personal Data?

You should keep all personal data that we hold accurate, complete and up-to-date. While we will use our best efforts to do so, we encourage you to tell us if you change your contact details. If you believe that the information we hold about you is incorrect, incomplete or out-of-date, please make the necessary updates to your user information in your account. You can change or correct your other personal data at any time by updating your user information in your account and/or we will facilitate your request (at https://carbeast.com/privacy_matters) for such changes when your request is made while you are logged into your account and we will further verify your identity by email.

8. What is Our Privacy Policy If You Are an Underage Child?

We understand the importance of protecting the privacy of all individuals, especially the very young. Our services are intended for audiences over the age of 18 who are in the United States or Canada. Our Site and its services are not directed to children, and you may not use our services if you are under the age of 13. You must also be old enough to consent to the processing of your personal data (and in some cases, we may allow your parent or guardian to do so on your behalf). You must be at least 16 years of age to use any Site forums. Subscribing to our services is restricted to adults who are either 18 years of age or older or as otherwise legally defined.

9. What Happens When You follow a Link to a Third-Party Web Site?

If you click on a link on our Site and go to another site, you will be subject to that website’s privacy policy. We encourage you to read the posted privacy policy statement at any website before submitting any personal data at all.

10. What Happens When We Update Our Privacy Policy?

We may on occasion update our Privacy Policy. Your acceptance of any changes to this Privacy Policy is indicated by your continued use of our Site. If we make any material changes to our Privacy Policy, we will post a notice about the change at a prominent location on our Site. We encourage you to periodically review our Site and this Privacy Policy for any changes.

11. What If You Have Questions?

If you have questions or concerns regarding this Privacy Policy, you should first contact us by using our form at https://carbeast.com/privacy_matters

Our Cookie Policy

Our Site, like many others, uses small files called cookies to help us customize your experience. Find out more about cookies and how you can control them.

This section contains information on cookies used on our Site, how to specifically switch off advertising cookies, and you can learn more about cookies at https://allaboutcookies.org and/or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_cookie (although we are not responsible for information provided at these websites).

What are cookies?

Cookies are small text files that are stored by the browser (for example, Chrome, Edge or Safari) on your computer or mobile device. They allow websites to store things including your user preferences. You may think of cookies as providing a ‘memory’ for the website, so that it can recognize you when you come back and respond appropriately.

How do we use cookies?

On our Site, you may encounter the following types of cookie: Site performance, Sessions, Analytics, Geotargetting, Registration, Advertising, Third-party Advertising, and Other Third-Party.

Site performance cookies

This type of cookie remembers your preferences for our Site, so you do not have to re-set them each time you visit.

Sessions cookies

When you visit our Site and are logged in, we set session cookies store the authentication token and state. We also set a session cookie to prevent spam and/or abuse. Session cookies persist until the browser or its tab being used is closed.

Analytics cookies

When you visit our Site, our software generates an analytics cookie. Such cookies may tell us whether or not you have visited our Site before. Your browser will tell us if you have these cookies and, if you do not, we generate new ones. This allows us to track how many individual users we have, and how often they visit our Site.

Unless you are signed in to our Site, we cannot use these cookies to identify individuals. We use them to gather statistics, for example, the number of visits to a page. If you are logged in, we will also know the details you gave to us for this, such as your username and email address.

Geotargetting cookies

These cookies are used by software to figure out the country you are in using the information supplied by your browser when you click on a web page. This cookie is entirely anonymous, and we only use it to help target our content (such as whether you see a country-specific home page) and advertising.

Registration cookies

When you register with us, we generate cookies that let us know whether you are signed in or not. Our servers use these cookies to ascertain the account with which you are signed in, and if you are allowed access to a particular service. It also allows us to associate any comments you post with your username. If you have not selected "keep me signed in", your cookies get deleted when you either close your browser or shut down your computer. While you are signed into our Site, we combine information from your registration cookies with analytics cookies, which we could use to identify which pages you have seen.

Advertising cookies

These cookies allow us to know whether or not you have seen a particular advertisement or a type of advertisement, and how long it is since you have seen it. We also use cookies to help us use targeted advertising. We may use cookies set by a different organization so we can more accurately target advertising to you. These cookies are anonymous – they store information about what you are looking at on our Site, but not about who you are.

Third-party Advertising cookies

Some content you see on our Site is provided by other organizations. Some of these organizations use their own anonymous cookies to track how many people have seen a particular advertisement, or to track how many people have seen it more than once. The organizations that generate these cookies have their own privacy policies, and we have no access to read or write these cookies. These organizations may use their cookies to anonymously target advertising to you on other websites, based on your visit to our Site.

Other Third-party cookies

On some pages of our Site, other organizations may also set their own cookies. They do this to track the success of their application, or to customize their application for you. Because of how cookies work, our Site cannot access these cookies, nor can the other organization access the data in cookies we use on our Site.

How do I turn cookies off?

It is usually possible to stop your browser from accepting cookies, or to stop it accepting cookies from a particular website. However, we cannot tell if you are signed in without using cookies, so you would not be able to access some features that would be otherwise available to you.

All modern browsers allow you to change your cookie settings. You can usually find these settings in the preferences or options menu of your browser. To understand these settings, you can use the help option in your browser for more details.

You can also visit the trade body representing these advertising platforms for more information: Network Advertising Initiative at https://www.networkadvertising.org/.