Effective Date: February 28 , 2024
This Privacy Statement applies to all websites owned and operated by Impactgene, Inc (“Impactgene “), including Impactgene (together with its affiliated companies), and any other websites, pages, features, or content we own or operate, and to your use of the Impactgene mobile app and any related Services. Our Privacy Statement is designed to help you better understand how we collect, use, store, process, and transfer your information when using our Services.
Please carefully review this Privacy Statement and our Terms of Service. Unless otherwise defined in this Privacy Statement, terms used in this Privacy Statement have the same meanings as terms defined in our Terms of Service. By using our Services, you acknowledge all of the policies and procedures described in the foregoing documents. If you do not agree with or you are not comfortable with any aspect of this Privacy Statement or our Terms of Service, you should immediately discontinue use of our Services.
I. Key Definitions
1. Aggregate Information: information that has been combined with that of other users and analyzed or evaluated as a whole, such that no specific individual may be reasonably identified.
2. De-identified Information: information that has been stripped of your Registration Information (e.g., your name and contact information) and other identifying data such that you cannot reasonably be identified as an individual, also known as pseudonymized information.
3. Individual-level Information: information about a single individual’s genotypes, diseases or other traits/characteristics, but which is not necessarily tied to Registration Information.
4. Personal Information: information that can be used to identify you, either alone or in combination with other information. Impactgene collects and stores the following types of Personal Information:
a. Registration Information: information you provide about yourself when registering for and/or purchasing our Services (e.g. name, email, address, user ID and password, and payment information).
b. Genetic Information: information regarding your genotypes (i.e. the As, Ts, Cs, and Gs at particular locations in your genome), generated through processing of your saliva by Impactgene or by its contractors, successors, or assignees; or otherwise processed by and/or contributed to Impactgene.
c. Self-Reported Information: information you provide directly to us, either through the Services or through a third party, including your disease conditions, other health-related information, personal traits, ethnicity, family history, and other information that you enter into surveys, forms, or features while signed in to your Impactgene account.
d. Sensitive Information: information about your health, Genetic Information, and certain Self-Reported Information such as racial and ethnic origin, sexual orientation, and political affiliation.
e. User Content: information, data, text, software, music, audio, photographs, graphics, video, messages, or other materials – other than Genetic Information and Self-Reported Information-generated by users of Impactgene Services and transmitted, whether publicly or privately, to or through Impactgene.
f. Inferences and Derived Data: information, data, assumptions, or conclusions that are derived directly or indirectly from another source of Personal Information. For example, we may use statistical techniques to infer additional genetic information based on genetic information generated directly through the processing of your saliva sample.
g. Web-Behavior Information: information on how you use our Services collected through log files, cookies, web beacons, and similar technologies, (e.g., device information (device identifiers), IP address, browser type, domains, page views).
II. Information we collect
1. Information you provide directly to us or through a third party
a. Registration Information. When you purchase our Services or create a Impactgene account, we collect Personal Information, which may include your name, date of birth, billing and shipping address, payment information (e.g., credit card) and contact information (e.g. email, phone number and license number).
We highly value your privacy and are committed to maintaining the confidentiality of your personal information, including any credit-related details. As part of our commitment, we want to assure you that your credit information will not be transferred, shared, or disclosed to any third party.
b.Charges are due immediately and payment will be processed immediately. Charges are final and non-refundable, unless otherwise determined through investigation by IMPACTGENE . Upon completion of transaction IMPACTGENE will send you a receipt by email.
c. Self-Reported Information. You have the option to provide us with additional information about yourself through surveys, forms, features and applications. For example, you may provide us with information about your personal, ethnicity, disease conditions, other health-related information, and family history information. Before you disclose information about a family member, you should make sure you have permission from the family member to do so.
d. User Content. Some of our Services allow you to create and post or upload content, such as data, text, software, music, audio, photographs, graphics, video, messages, or other materials that you create or provide to us through either a public or private transmission (“User Content”). For example, User Content includes any discussions, posts, or messages you send on our Forums.
e. Blogs and Forums. Our website offers publicly accessible blogs. Additionally, Impactgene customers may participate in our online Forums. You should be aware that any information you provide or post in these areas may be read, collected, and used by others who access them. To request that we remove or de-identify your Personal Information from our blog or Forums, contact us at [email protected]. Please note that whenever you post something publicly, it may sometimes be impossible to remove all instances of the posted information, for example, if someone has taken a screenshot of your posting. Please exercise caution before choosing to share Personal Information publicly on our blogs, Forums or in any other posting. You may be required to register with a third party application to post a comment. To learn how the third party application uses your information, please review the third party’s terms of use and privacy statement.
f. Social media features and widgets. Our Services include Social Media Features, such as the Facebook “Like” or “Share” button and widgets (“Features”). These Features may collect your IP address, which page you are visiting on our site, and may set a cookie to enable the Feature to function properly. They may also allow third party social media services to provide us information about you, including your name, email address, and other contact information. The information we receive is dependent upon your privacy settings with the third party social media service. Features are either hosted by a third party or hosted directly on our site. Your interactions with these Features are governed by the privacy statements of the third party companies providing them. You should always review and, if necessary, adjust your privacy settings on third party websites and services before linking or connecting them to our website or Service.
g. Third party services (e.g., social media). If you use a third party site, such as Facebook or Twitter, in connection with our Services to communicate with another person (e.g., to make or post referrals or to request that we communicate with another person), then in addition to that person’s name and contact information, we may also collect other information (e.g., your profile picture, network, gender, username, user ID, age range, language, country, friends lists or followers) depending on your privacy settings on the third party site. We do not control the third party site’s information practices, so please review the third party’s privacy statement and your settings on the third party’s site carefully.
h. Third party sign in. You may create a Impactgene account and/or sign in to our Services using an account you created with a third party service, such as Google. If you provide authorization to Impactgene, we will collect and use the information you share with us via that third party service (such as your email address, name, and date of birth as specified in your third party service account) in accordance with this Privacy Statement. You are responsible for managing your credentials for your third party service account, and for maintaining the security of your third party service account. Impactgene does not have access to the credentials for your third party service account. If you choose to use third party sign in and you lose access to your credentials for your third party service account, you may not be able to access your Impactgene account. You may manage authorization for third party sign in through your Impactgene Account Settings or through your third party service account.
i. Referral information and sharing. When you refer a person to Impactgene or choose to share your Impactgene results with another person, we will ask for that person’s email address. We will use their email address solely, as applicable, to make the referral or to communicate your sharing request to them, and we will let your contact know that you requested the communication. By participating in a referral program or by choosing to share information with another person, you confirm that the person has given you consent for Impactgene to communicate (e.g., via email) with him or her. The person you referred may contact us at Impactgene to request that we remove this information from our database.
j. Gifts. If you provide us with Personal Information about others, if others give us your information, or if you authorize another individual to share or send your Personal Information to our third party service provider(s) for the purpose of ordering the Service or other personalized gift(s), we will only use that information for the purpose for which it was provided to us. These purposes may include, for example, where you provide us with a friend’s shipping address when placing an order or where you authorize a family member to order personalized merchandise based on your ancestry report results. Once a gift recipient registers for our Services and agrees to our Privacy Statement, our Terms of Service, and if applicable, certain Consent Documents, his or her Personal Information will be used in manners consistent with this Privacy Statement, and will not be shared with the purchaser, unless they independently choose to share their own Personal Information through the Services with the purchaser. Information shared directly with our third party service provider(s) for personalized gifts are subject to such third party’s terms of service and privacy policies.
k. Customer service. When you contact Customer Care or correspond with us about our Service, we collect information to: track and respond to your inquiry; investigate any breach of our Terms of Service, Privacy Statement or applicable laws or regulations; and analyze and improve our Services.
2. Information related to our genetic testing services
a. Saliva sample and biobanking. To use our genetic testing services, you must purchase, or receive as a gift, a Impactgene Personal Genetic Service testing kit, create an online account and register your kit, and ship your saliva sample to us or our third party laboratory. Your DNA will be extracted from your saliva sample for analysis. Your saliva sample and DNA are destroyed after the laboratory completes its work, subject to laboratory legal and regulatory requirements.
b. Genetic Information. Information regarding your genotype (e.g. the As, Ts, Cs, and Gs at particular locations in your genome), your Genetic Information, is generated when we analyze and process your saliva sample, or when you otherwise contribute or access your Genetic Information through our Services. Genetic Information includes the Impactgene results reported to you as part of our Services, and may be used for other purposes, as outlined in Section III below.
3. Web-Behavior Information collected through tracking technology (e.g. from cookies and similar technologies)
We and our third party service providers use cookies and similar technologies (such as web beacons, tags, scripts and device identifiers) to:
a. help us recognize you when you use our Services;
b. customize and improve your experience;
c. provide security;
d. analyze usage of our Services (such as to analyze your interactions with the results, reports, and other features of the Service);
e. gather demographic information about our user base;
f. offer our Services to you;
g. monitor the success of marketing programs; and
h. serve targeted advertising on our site and on other sites around the Internet.
If you reject cookies, you may still use our site, but your ability to use some features or areas of our site may be limited. For more information, including the types of cookies
We may receive reports based on the use of these technologies from third party service providers as de-identified, Individual-level Information or as Aggregate Information (as described in Section IV.3).
Google Analytics. Google Analytics is used to perform many of the tasks listed above. We use the User-ID feature of Google Analytics to combine behavioral information across devices and sessions (including authenticated and unauthenticated sessions). We have enabled the following Google Analytics Advertising features: Remarketing, Google Display Network Impression Reporting, Google Analytics Demographics and Interest Reporting, and DoubleClick Campaign Manager integration. We do not merge information collected through any Google advertising product with individual-level information collected elsewhere by our Service.
4. Other Types of Information
We continuously work to enhance our Services with new products, applications and features that may result in the collection of new and different types of information. We will update our Privacy Statement and/or obtain your prior consent to new processing, as needed.
III. How we use your information
Impactgene will use and share your Personal Information with third parties only in the ways that are described in this Privacy Statement.
1. To provide you with Services and to analyze and improve our Services
We use the information described above in Section 2 to operate, provide, analyze and improve our Services. These activities may include, among other things, using your information in a manner consistent with this Privacy Statement to:
a. open your account, enable purchases and process payments, communicate with you, and implement your requests (e.g., referrals);
b. enable and enhance your use of our website and mobile application(s), including authenticating your visits, providing personalized content and information, and tracking your usage of our Services;
c. contact you about your account, and any relevant information about our Services (e.g. policy changes, security updates or issues, etc.);
d. enforce our Terms of Service and other agreements;
e. monitor, detect, investigate and prevent prohibited or illegal behaviors on our Services, to combat spam and other security risks; and
f. perform research & development activities, which may include, for example, conducting data analysis in order to develop new or improve existing products and services, and performing quality control activities.
2. To process, analyze and deliver your genetic testing results
As described above, to receive results through the Personal Genetic Service, you must create a Impactgene account, register your kit, and submit your saliva sample to be genotyped by us or our contracted laboratory. Once genotyped, we further analyze your Genetic Information to provide you with our health and/or ancestry reports, depending on the Service purchased. Impactgene continuously works to improve our Services based on our research and product development, and genetic associations identified in scientific literature. If you are eligible to receive additional reports or updates in the future, you may be notified of or may directly access these updates.
3. To allow you to share your Personal Information with others
Impactgene gives you the ability to share information, including Personal Information, through the Services. You have the option to share directly with individuals with Impactgene accounts through (i) our Forums, (ii) relative finding features (e.g., “DNA Relatives”), and (iii) other sharing features and tools. You may also have the ability to share information directly with individuals who have not participated in our Service via a unique, shareable URL or through a social media platform (such information is “User Content”). Some sharing features, including receiving sharing invitations, may require that you opt-out, however you will always be required to take a positive action, such as opting in, to share Sensitive Information.
You should be thoughtful about your sharing choices. Once you have chosen to share any Personal Information, the individuals with whom you share this information, may also use or share your Personal Information, including any Sensitive Information you choose to share.
4. To provide customer support
When you contact Customer Care, we may use or request Personal Information, including Sensitive Information, as necessary to answer your questions, resolve disputes, and/or investigate and troubleshoot problems or complaints. In some instances, we may be required to process one customer’s Personal Information to resolve another customer’s dispute or request. For example, if a customer reports behavior that violates our Terms of Service, we will separately process both customers’ Personal Information and respond separately to each individual as appropriate. We will not share your Personal Information with another customer without your consent.
5. To conduct surveys or polls, and obtain testimonials
We value your feedback and may send you surveys, polls, or requests for testimonials to improve and optimize our Services. You are in control of the information you would like to share with us.
6. To provide you with marketing communications
By creating a Impactgene account, you are agreeing that we may send you product and promotional emails or notifications about our Services, and offers on new products, services, promotions or contests. You may also opt-in to receiving similar notifications on the website or mobile application(s). You can unsubscribe from receiving these marketing communications at any time. To unsubscribe, click the email footer “unsubscribe” link.
IV. Information we share with third parties
1. General service providers.
We share the information described above in Section 2 with our third party service providers, as necessary for them to provide their services to us and help us perform our contract with you. Service providers are third parties (other companies or individuals) that help us to provide, analyze and improve our Services. While Impactgene directly conducts the majority of data processing activities required to provide our Services to you, we engage some third party service providers to assist in supporting our Services, including in the following areas:
a. Order fulfillment and shipping. Our payment processor processes certain Registration Information, such as your billing address and credit card information, as necessary to enable you to purchase a Impactgene kit from the Impactgene.com online store. Our distribution centers ship your kit(s) to you, and in some cases help return your kit safely to us or to our third party laboratory so your sample can be processed.
b. Our law-certified genotyping lab. To use our genetic testing services, you must purchase, or receive as a gift, a Impactgene Personal Genetic Service testing kit, and ship your saliva sample to us or our third party laboratory. Once delivered, receiving personnel at the laboratory remove and discard kit packaging, which in some cases may contain “sender information” (e.g., name, address), before testing personnel receive the samples for processing. Receiving personnel do not perform testing, and testing personnel handle saliva samples that are only identified by a unique barcode. For samples processed by our third party genotyping laboratory, when the laboratory has completed their analysis, they securely send the resulting Genetic Information to us identified by your unique barcode.
c. Customer Care support. Our Customer Care team uses a number of tools to help organize and manage the requests we receive. These tools help to ensure we provide timely, high quality support.
d. Cloud storage, IT, and Security. Our cloud storage providers provide secure storage for information in Impactgene databases, ensure that our infrastructure can support continued use of our Services by Impactgene customers, and protect data in the event of a natural disaster or other disruption to our Service. Our IT and security service providers assist with intrusion detection and prevention measures to stop any potential attacks against our networks. We have these third party experts perform regular penetration tests and periodically audit Impactgene’s security controls.
e. Marketing and analytics. When you use our Services, including our website or mobile app(s), our third party service providers may collect Web-Behavior Information about your visit, such as the links you clicked on, the duration of your visit, and the URLs you visited. This information can help us improve site navigability and assess our Marketing campaigns.
NOTE: Our service providers act on Impactgene’s behalf. We implement procedures and maintain contractual terms with each service provider to protect the confidentiality and security of your information. However, we cannot guarantee the confidentiality and security of your information due to the inherent risks associated with storing and transmitting data electronically.
2. “Targeted advertising” service providers
We permit third party advertising networks and providers to collect Web-Behavior Information regarding the use of our Services to help us to deliver targeted online advertisements (“ads”) to you. They use cookies and similar technologies, to gather information about your browser’s or device’s visits and usage patterns on our Services and on other websites over time, which helps to better personalize ads to match your interests, and to measure the effectiveness of ad campaigns. We and our third party service providers will not use your Sensitive Information, such as Genetic Information and Self-Reported Information, for targeted marketing without asking for and receiving your explicit consent.
3. Aggregate information
We may share Aggregate Information, which is information that has been stripped of your name and contact information and combined with information of others so that you cannot reasonably be identified as an individual, with third parties. This Information is different from “Individual-level” information and is not Personal Information because it does not identify any particular individual or disclose any particular individual’s data. For example, Aggregate Information may include a statement that “30% of our female users share a particular genetic trait,” without providing any data or testing results specific to any individual user. In contrast, Individual-level Genetic Information or Self-Reported Information consists of data about a single individual’s genotypes, diseases or other traits/characteristics information and could reveal whether a specific user has a particular genetic trait, or consist of all of the Genetic Information about that user. Impactgene will ask for your consent to share Individual-level Genetic Information or Self-Reported Information with any third party, other than our service providers as necessary for us to provide the Services to you.
4. Information we share with commonly owned entities
We may share some or all of your Personal Information with other companies under common ownership or control of Impactgene, which may include our subsidiaries, our corporate parent, or any other subsidiaries owned by our corporate parent in order to provide you better service and improve user experience. Generally, sharing such information is necessary for us to perform on our contract with you. We may provide additional notice and ask for your prior consent if we wish to share your Personal Information with our commonly owned entities in a materially different way than discussed in this Privacy Statement.
5. As required by law
Under certain circumstances your Personal Information may be subject to processing pursuant to laws, regulations, judicial or other government subpoenas, warrants, or orders. For example, we may be required to disclose Personal Information in coordination with regulatory authorities in response to lawful requests by public authorities, including to meet national security or law enforcement requirements. Impactgene will preserve and disclose any and all information to law enforcement agencies or others if required to do so by law or in the good faith belief that such preservation or disclosure is reasonably necessary to: (a) comply with legal or regulatory process (such as a judicial proceeding, court order, or government inquiry) or obligations that Impactgene may owe pursuant to ethical and other professional rules, laws, and regulations; (b) enforce the Impactgene Terms of Service and other policies; (c) respond to claims that any content violates the rights of third parties; or (d) protect the rights, property, or personal safety of Impactgene, its employees, its users, its clients, and the public.
6. Business transactions
In the event that Impactgene goes through a business transition such as a merger, acquisition by another company, or sale of all or a portion of its assets your Personal Information will likely be among the assets transferred. In such a case, your information would remain subject to the promises made in any pre-existing Privacy Statement.
V. Your choices
1. Access to your account
We provide access to your Impactgene data within your Impactgene account. You can access and download data processed by Impactgene within your Impactgene Account Settings and within applicable Reports, Tools, and features. If you lose access to your Impactgene account or account email address, please contact Customer Care for assistance. If you lose access to your Impactgene account, in certain circumstances, we may require that you submit additional information sufficient to verify your identity before providing access or otherwise releasing information to you. If you choose not to submit the required documentation, or the information provided is not sufficient for the purposes sought, Impactgene will not be able to sufficiently verify your identity in order to complete your request.
You may access, correct or update most of your Registration Information on your own within your Impactgene Account Settings.
2. Marketing communications
As noted in Section III.8. you may be asked to opt-in to receive product and promotional emails or notifications when creating your Impactgene account or when using our Services. You may view or update your notification preferences for marketing communications by visiting your Impactgene Account Settings, opting out at the browser or device level, or by contacting our Privacy Administrator at Impactgene. You can also click the “unsubscribe” button at the bottom of promotional email communications, as applicable.
3. Sharing outside of the Impactgene Services
You may decide to share your Personal Information with friends and/or family members, doctors or other health care professionals, and/or other individuals outside of our Services, including through third party services such as social networks and third party apps that connect to our website and mobile apps through our application programming interface (“API”). These third parties may use your Personal Information differently than we do under this Privacy Statement. Please make such choices carefully and review the privacy statements of all other third parties involved in the transaction. Impactgene does not endorse or sponsor any API applications, and does not affirm the accuracy or validity of any interpretations made by third party API applications.
In general, it can be difficult to contain or retrieve Personal Information once it has been shared or disclosed. Impactgene will have no responsibility or liability for any consequences that may result because you have released or shared Personal Information with others.
VI. Security measures
Impactgene takes seriously the trust you place in us. Impactgene implements physical, technical, and administrative measures to prevent unauthorized access to or disclosure of your information, to maintain data accuracy, to ensure the appropriate use of information, and otherwise safeguard your Personal Information. Our team regularly reviews and improves our security practices to help ensure the integrity of our systems and your information.
Your Responsibility. Please recognize that protecting your Personal Information is also your responsibility. We ask you to be responsible for safeguarding your password, and other authentication information you use to access our Services. You should not disclose your authentication information to any third party and should immediately notify Impactgene of any unauthorized use of your password. Impactgene cannot secure Personal Information that you release on your own or that you request us to release.
Your information collected through the Service may be stored and processed in the United States or any other country in which Impactgene or its subsidiaries, affiliates or service providers maintain facilities and, therefore, your information may be subject to the laws of those other jurisdictions which may be different from the laws of your country of residence.
VII. Linked websites
Impactgene provides links to third party websites operated by organizations not affiliated with Impactgene. Impactgene does not disclose your information to organizations operating such linked third party websites. Impactgene does not review or endorse, and is not responsible for the privacy practices of these organizations. We encourage you to read the privacy statements of each and every website that you visit. This Privacy Statement applies solely to information collected by Impactgene and our service providers on our behalf.
VIII. Changes to this Privacy Statement
Impactgene modifies this Privacy Statement from time to time. We recommend revisiting this page periodically to stay aware of any changes to this Privacy Statement. If we modify this Privacy Statement, we’ll make it available through our website. Whenever material changes to this Privacy Statement are made, we will provide you with notice before the modifications are effective, such as by posting a notice on our website or sending a message to the email address associated with your account.
By continuing to access or use the Services after changes to this Privacy Statement becomes effective, you agree to be bound by the revised Privacy Statement. If any changes are unacceptable to you, you may stop using our Services and delete your account at any time.
We also may provide additional “just-in-time” disclosures or additional information about the data collection, use and sharing practices of specific Services. Such notices may supplement or clarify our privacy practices or may provide you with additional choices about how Impactgene processes your Personal Information.
IX. Contact Information
If you have questions about this Privacy Statement, or wish to submit a complaint, request or inquiry, please send a letter to: https://Impactgene.com/contact-us/
