Your privacy is important to Auto~Star Compusystems Inc. (referred to as “Auto~Star”, “we” or “us” in this policy). Auto-Star is responsible for personal information we hold or control. Please read the following carefully to understand our views and practices regarding the information we collect on the website www.auto-star.com (the “Website”), or you give us by communication or interaction with us by phone, e mail or otherwise, or which is shared with us by third parties that we work with (such as resellers). This privacy policy should be read in conjunction with our Website terms and conditions (www.auto-star.com/terms-cond.htm).

What is Personal Information?

“Personal Information” means information about an identifiable individual, excluding Contact Information, and includes things such as gender, age, ethnicity, financial and credit information, health information, consumer preference information, customer profiles, ID numbers and any other data assigned to an individual.

“Business Contact Information” means information to enable an individual at a place of business to be contacted and includes the name, position name or title, business telephone number, business address, business e‑mail or business fax number of the individual and other similar business information.

How do we use your Personal Information?

Webpage viewings

Whenever you request a page, your IP address, browser and version, time zone setting, operating system, the site you came from, and information about your visit, including the full Uniform Resource Locators (URL) clickstream to, through and from our Website (including date and time), products you viewed or searched for, page response times, download errors, length of visits to certain pages, page interaction information (such as scrolling, clicks, and mouse-overs), and methods used to browse away from the page.  This information is used to administer our Website and for internal operations, including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, and research, and for statistical purposes to help improve this Website and provide accurate statistics to Auto~Star in the form of aggregated data.

Cookies

Cookies on this Website are used to provide interactivity and ease-of-use to repeat customers, and to help us improve Website performance.  A cookie is a small text file that is stored on your computer to help us make your visit to our Website more user‑friendly.  Cookies are only used for proper directing of click-through activity and statistical tracking.  You may refuse cookies by turning them off in your web browser, however please note that the Website, like most other sites, may not function as well with the cookies disabled.

Registered Users

If you are a registered user of the areas of our Website that require a user account, whether as a customer, reseller or otherwise, we will use your Personal Information, including any password and user names you supply, to provide the requested services to you.

Providing products and services

We use Personal Information that you give to us or which is shared with us by third parties we work with (such as our resellers) in order to provide you with the information, products, services, and support that are requested or obtained by you, to carry out our contractual obligations with you or the third parties, or to provide you marketing material about our products or services.

Marketing

E‑mail addresses collected by Auto~Star, such as if you download one of our brochures available on the Website, will only be used for our own tracking and marketing purposes with express consent provided at the time that the e‑mail addresses are collected.  You will not receive any marketing mailings that you did not consent to receive.  If you wish to opt-out of receiving certain marketing materials from Auto~Star, you may do so by using the unsubscribe mechanism included in the e-mail.

Contests and Special Offers

When a contest/special offer or other promotion is run on the Website, you may be asked to supply some Personal Information such as your name, e‑mail address or phone number.  This information will be used as set out in the posted rules or terms of the contest/special offer.

Non-identifying information and aggregated data

Non‑identifying information we collect automatically from visitors to the Website or generate from Personal Information by stripping it of information potentially identifying individuals and manipulating or combining to provide generalized, anonymous information, may be analyzed, aggregated, and used to provide an overview of the demographics of our visitors for the purpose of improving the Website, our products and performance.

Authorized by law

We may also use Personal Information as required or authorized by law.

Sometimes we have to share your Personal Information with others

We may share your Personal Information with selected third parties including:

• resellers of our products and services for the purposes of providing products and services to you or fulfilling the purpose for which the Personal Information was collected. For example, if you are a customer of one of our resellers we may pass your Personal Information to your reseller in order for the reseller to provide you with technical or other support.  Once in the reseller’s possession, the Personal Information will be subject to their privacy policies and security policies; and
• suppliers and service providers who provide services to us (such as back‑up or subcontracted services) for the performance of any contract we enter into with them. Whenever we engage a third-party supplier or service provider to do work for us, we confirm that its privacy and security standards meet our requirements and comply with applicable law, and we use contractual arrangements to protect Personal Information.

We may disclose your Personal Information to third parties:

• In the event that we sell or buy any business or assets, in which case we may disclose your Personal Information to the prospective seller or buyer of such business or assets, as permitted by law.
• If Auto~Star or substantially all of its assets are acquired by a third party, in which case Personal Information held by it will be one of the transferred assets, as permitted by law.
• In order to cooperate with legitimate governmental requests, subpoenas or court orders, to protect Auto~Star’s systems and customers, or to ensure the integrity and operation of Auto~Star’s business and systems, Auto~Star may disclose information it considers necessary or appropriate, including, without limitation, user profile information (i.e. name, e‑mail address, etc.), IP addressing and traffic information, usage history, and posted content and Personal Information.
• As required or authorized by law.

Consent

By visiting the Website or by giving us Personal Information, you are accepting and consenting to the practices described in this policy.  Without limiting the foregoing, we may on occasion ask you to consent when we collect, use, or disclose your Personal Information in specific circumstances, in which case we may ask for your consent in writing although in some circumstances we may accept your oral consent.  Sometimes your consent will be implied through your conduct with us if the purpose of the collection, use or disclosure is obvious and you voluntarily provide the information.  In addition, we may collect, use and disclose Personal Information without your consent when we are required or authorized by law to do so.

What can you do if you want to limit the use to which we put your Personal Information?

Individuals have the right to withdraw their consent to the collection, use, or disclosure of Personal Information at any time, except where that withdrawal would frustrate the performance of a legal obligation by Auto~Star.  Upon reasonable written notice given to Auto~Star, such Personal Information held by Auto~Star that is identifiable to that individual will be removed from our records and a notice of the impact of that removal will be provided to the individual.  Notwithstanding the foregoing, if you withdraw consent Auto~Star nonetheless reserves the right to retain, collect, use and disclose Personal Information without your consent where we are permitted by law to do so.

Where do we store and share Personal Information?

Auto~Star is a Medicine Hat, Alberta-based company whose servers are located in Medicine Hat, Alberta and whose back‑up servers are with third party service provider facilities located worldwide.

In the event that we share your Personal Information with a third-party service provider, reseller or customer as described in this policy, your Personal Information may be processed and stored in the country where the third party is located.

Personal Information may be subject to disclosure under the laws of jurisdictions where the Personal Information is stored or handled and it may be accessible to law enforcement and national security authorities of those jurisdictions.

For information about Auto~Star’s use of affiliates and service providers outside Canada to process personal information, please contact us at the address provided below.

The security of your Personal Information is important to us

Auto~Star takes commercially reasonable steps to ensure that Personal Information is kept safe from loss, unauthorized access, modification or disclosure.  Among the steps we take in order to protect your information are:

• premises security;
• restricted file or database access to personal information;
• having retention periods for the data in our possession
• deploying technological safeguards like security software and firewalls to prevent hacking or unauthorized computer access; and
• limiting collection of personal data to information needed to fulfill legitimate identified purposes
• removing personal data that we obtain that does not have a business purpose
• ensuring all personal information is securely deleted before disposing of computers
• internal password and security policies.
• training our employees about privacy policies, including who to refer an information request to

Except where we are required by law to disclose Personal Information, we will use contractual arrangements to protect Personal Information disclosed to third parties.

How long do we keep your Personal Information?

Personal Information will be retained in accordance with this policy only for as long as may be necessary or relevant for the identified purpose of collection, or as may be required or permitted by law.

You can request access to, or correct, your Personal Information, or challenge compliance

You have a right to access the Personal Information which we have about you and to request that Personal Information which you believe to be inaccurate be corrected.  When asked, we will explain where, and how, this information was obtained when that information is available. 

If you wish to access your Personal Information you should contact our Privacy Officer at the address set out below who will be pleased to assist you.  Upon receiving a written access and/or correction request and any handling fee that may be required by Auto~Star to the extent permitted by applicable law, and where the identity of the requestor can be confirmed, Personal Information held by Auto~Star that is identifiable to the requestor, as well as information on all use and disclosures of that Personal Information, will be released to the requestor within 30 days, except where denial of that release is required or permitted by law, and if necessary Auto~Star will correct the Personal Information of the requestor.  If we deny your request for access to, or refuse a request to correct Personal Information, we will explain why.  We will tell you about your avenues of recourse related to any applicable industry associations, regulatory bodies, or the office of the privacy commissioner.  We will modify our actions if a complaint is substantiated, and take steps to minimize the likelihood that the issue will recur.

European visitors

The data controller is Auto~Star Compusystems Inc. of 636 11 AVE SW, Medicine Hat, AB T1A 1E1, Canada.

Our nominated representative is our Privacy Officer who can be reached by e‑mail at privacy-officer@auto-star.com].

The data that we collect from you may be transferred to, and stored at, a destination outside the European Economic Area (“EEA”).  It may also be processed by staff operating outside the EEA who work for us or for one of our service providers or resellers.  Such staff may be engaged in, among other things, the provision of support services.  By submitting your personal data, you agree to this transfer, storing or processing.  We will take all steps reasonably necessary to ensure that your data is treated securely and in accordance with this privacy policy.

Changes to this privacy policy

We reserve the right to modify or supplement this policy at any time.  We will post any changes on the Website, and our Privacy Officer will provide them on request at the address set out below.  The effective date of changes to this policy will be noted above so that you can be fully informed about our privacy policies and practices.  Please check back frequently to see any updates or changes to this policy.

Questions? Concerns?

If you have any questions or concerns about this policy or about our collection, use and disclosure of your Personal Information, please contact Auto~Star’s Privacy Officer, as follows:

• by telephone: (888) 460-6963
• by facsimile: (415) 366-8255
• by email: privacy-officer@auto-star.com
• by mail: 636 11 AVE SW, Medicine Hat, AB T1A 1E1, Canada

Auto-Star will provide copies of our privacy policies upon request and will take commercially reasonable steps to provide these policies in a desired format.