Privacy Policy – Simulation Bureau

Simulation Bureau and your Privacy

Last modified: January 31, 2023

Welcome to the Simulation Bureau! Simulation Bureau, LLC (“Simulation Bureau”, “Sim Bureau”, “The Bureau”, “we”, “us” and/or “our”) provides online resources, and simulation modeling services. This Privacy Policy describes the information that we collect from you (“you”, “your”, or “User”) when you visit our websites(s) (simulationbureau.com, and various language versions of these websites) (the “Site”), or take advantage of others tools we might make available (collectively, the “Service”), how we use that information, and under what circumstances we disclose it. It will also give you more information about how to manage the personal information that you provide to us. This Privacy Policy should be read in conjunction with any specific agreements you may have with the Simulation Bureau (the “Agreements”). All terms not specifically defined herein shall have the same meaning as set forth in said Agreements.

At the Simulation Bureau your privacy is important to us and we promise to respect it. The Simulation Bureau will never sell, barter, or trade any information about your visit to our website. We therefore conduct our business in compliance with applicable laws on data privacy protection and data security.

As you navigate through this website, we will collect various information related to your time on the website, including some personal information if you have voluntarily supplied it. We may also collect information when you are in contact with us about the products/services we provide (whether it is by telephone, email via the forms on our website, through applications or platforms we use, through our social media platforms or even face to face). We use the information we collect only in compliance with this Privacy Policy.

Details of the type of information and how it is used and protected by us can be found below. If you do not agree with the data practices described in this Privacy Policy, you should not use this website.

If for some reason you believe our website has not adhered to these principles, please notify us by email at [email protected] and we’ll fix the problem promptly.

This Privacy Policy governs our data collection, processing and usage practices. It also describes your choices regarding use, access and correction of your personal information.

We periodically update this Privacy Policy. We will post any Privacy Policy changes on this page and, if the changes are significant, we will provide a more prominent notice by sending you an email notification.

While we will notify you of any material changes to this Privacy Policy, we encourage you to review this Privacy Policy periodically. We will also keep prior versions of this Privacy Policy in an archive for your review.

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy or our treatment of the information you provide us, please write to us by email at [email protected].

Contents:

Information we collect
How we use information we collect
How we share information we collect
International transfer of information
Cookie Policy and similar technologies
How to access & control your personal data

1. Information we collect

When you visit our website

You are free to explore this website without providing any personal information about yourself. When you visit this website, we may request that you provide personal information about yourself, and we collect navigational information. Failure to provide the information may impact on our ability to deliver some or all of our services.

Personal information

Any personal information collected from you will as far as possible be restricted to contact or user information. Personal information therefore refers to any information that you voluntarily submit to us and that identifies you personally, including contact information, such as your name, email address, company name, address, phone number, and other information about yourself or your business that is relevant to our business relationship with you and may include details of any Personal information can also include information about any transactions, both free and paid, that you enter into on the websites, and information about you that is available on the internet, such as from Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Google, or publicly available information that we acquire from service providers or information from customer surveys and feedback forms in respect of any of the products or services you may have purchased from us.

Personal information also includes navigational information or payment information where such information can directly or indirectly identify an individual. Navigational information refers to information about your computer and your visits to this website such as your IP address, geographical location, browser type, referral source, length of visit and pages viewed. Please see the “Navigation information” section below. Payment information includes how we collect and process payment information from you, including credit cards numbers and billing information, using third party PCI-compliant service providers. Given the nature of the products and services we sell it is extremely unlikely that we will require to collect any sensitive data about you. Sensitive data is personal information which includes your racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, or trade union membership, genetic or biometric data, or information concerning your health or mental wellbeing or sexual orientation. Where we do require to process such sensitive data to provide services to you, we will notify you in advance and will request your express consent in writing to process such sensitive data.

Automatically collected Information

When you use our websites and services, we automatically collect information about your computer hardware and software. This information can include your IP address, browser type, domain names, internet service provider (ISP), the files viewed on our site (e.g., HTML pages, graphics, etc.), operating system, clickstream data, access times and referring website addresses. This information is used by us for the operation of this website, to maintain quality of this website, and to provide general statistics regarding use of this website.

Information we collect from third parties

We may receive or collect information about you from third parties and store it on our servers with other information we may have already received or collected from you. These third parties and the information collected may include publicly available information provided on third party platforms, such as information available on your different social media websites, and information provided by our partners.

Information about children

Our Service is targeted primarily for use by adults. We do not currently market to or create special areas for use by children. Accordingly, we do not knowingly collect age identifying information, nor do we knowingly collect any personal information from children under the age of 16 years. In the event that we discover that a child under the age of 16 has provided personally identifiable information to us we will immediately delete the child’s personally identifiable information from our files to the extent technologically possible. If you believe that we have collected information about a child under 16, please contact us at [email protected] so that we may delete the information from our files to the extent technologically possible.

2. How we use information we collect

We never sell personal information

We will never sell your personal information to any third party.

Use of personal information

In addition to the uses identified elsewhere in this Privacy Policy, we may use your personal information to:

Improve your browsing experience by personalizing the website and to improve simulationbureau.com
Send information or Simulation Bureau content to you which we think may be of interest to you by post, email, or other means and send you marketing communications relating to our business.
Promote use of our products and services to you and share promotional and information content with you in accordance with your communication preferences.
Establish, exercise or defend any complaints made by or against you or any claims or litigation process raised by either of us against the other including in respect of us resorting to debt recovery or enforcing our terms of business.
Send information to you regarding changes to our customer Terms of Service, Privacy Policy (including the Cookie Policy), or other legal agreements.
Meet legal requirements including complying with court orders, valid discovery requests and other appropriate legal requests.

We use the information collected through simulationbureau.com by our customers for the following purposes:

To provide simulationbureau.com (which may include the detection, prevention and resolution of security and technical issues);
To respond to customer support requests;
To otherwise to fulfil the obligations under our customer Terms of Service.

Legal basis for processing personal information (EEA visitors only)

If you are a visitor/customer located in the European Economic Area (“EEA”), Simulation Bureau, LLC is the data controller of your personal information.

Our legal basis for collecting and using the personal information described above will depend on the personal information concerned and the specific context in which we collect it. However, we will normally collect personal information from you only where we have your consent to do so, where we need the personal information to perform a contract with you, or where the processing is in our legitimate interests and not overridden by your data protection interests or fundamental rights and freedoms. In some cases, we may also have a legal obligation to collect personal information from you.

If we ask you to provide personal information to comply with a legal requirement or to perform a contract with you, we will make this clear at the relevant time and advise you whether the provision of your personal information is mandatory or not (as well as of the possible consequences if you do not provide your personal information). Similarly, if we collect and use your personal information in reliance on our legitimate interests (or those of any third party), we will make clear to you at the relevant time what those legitimate interests are. Typically, our legitimate interests include improving, maintaining, providing and enhancing our technical products and services; ensuring the security of such services and carrying out marketing activities.

Use of navigational information

We use navigational information to operate and improve the website. We may also use navigational information alone or in combination with personal information to provide you with personalized information about us.

Customer testimonials and comments

We may post customer testimonials and comments on our websites, which may contain personal information. We obtain each customer’s consent via email prior to posting the customer’s name and testimonial.

Security of your personal information

We use a variety of security technologies and procedures to help protect your personal information from unauthorized access, use or disclosure. We secure the personal information you provide on computer servers in a controlled, secure environment, protected from unauthorized access, use or disclosure. All personal information is protected using appropriate physical, technical and organizational measures taking into account the nature of risk involved in processing and the types of information processed.

Social media features

Our website(s) may include social media features, such as the Facebook Like button and widgets, such as sharing buttons or interactive mini-programs that run on our sites. These features may collect your IP address, which page you are visiting on our sites, and may set a cookie to enable the feature to function properly. Social media features and widgets are either hosted by a third party or hosted directly on our website(s). This Privacy Policy does not apply to these features. Any information, communications or materials submitted via social media platforms are done at your own risk and without any expectation of privacy. Your interactions with these features and the social media platforms are governed by the Privacy Policy and other policies of the companies providing them as we cannot control the actions of other users of these platforms or the actions of the platforms themselves.

External websites

Our website(s) provide links to other websites. We do not control, and are not responsible for, the content or practices of these other websites. Our provision of such links does not constitute our endorsement of these other websites, their content, their owners, or their practices. This Privacy Policy does not apply to these other websites, which are subject to any privacy and other policies they may have.

Public forums

We may offer publicly accessible blogs and message boards. Please keep in mind that if you directly disclose any information through our public message boards, blogs, or forums, this information may be collected and used by others. We will correct or delete any information you have posted on the website(s) if you so request, as described in “Opting out and unsubscribing” below.

Retention of personal information

How long we keep information we collect about you depends on the type of information, and this is described in further detail below. In working out how long we retain personal data we look the type of personal data involved, the purpose of processing, how sensitive or confidential the data is and any legal and commercial considerations including all legal obligations we have. By way of example by law we are required to keep accounting records for six years after end of the year in which the last transaction occurred. This means that we will be required to keep some basic customer details for that purpose even although our relationship with you may be at an end. However, it should be noted that the requirement is basic customer details and therefore it is not legitimate to also keep information such as your preferences for that period of time.

After such time, we will either delete or anonymize your information or, if this is not possible, then we will securely store your information and isolate it from any further use until deletion is possible.

We retain personal information that you provide to us where we have an ongoing legitimate business need to do so (for example, as long as is required in order to contact you about Simulation Bureau products, services, or as needed to comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes and enforce our agreements).

When we have no ongoing legitimate business need to process your personal information, we securely delete the information or anonymize it or, if this is not possible, then we will securely store your personal information and isolate it from any further processing until deletion is possible. We will delete this information from the servers at an earlier date if you so request, as described in “To unsubscribe from our communications” below.

If you have elected to receive marketing communications from us, we retain information about your marketing preferences for a reasonable period of time from the date you last expressed interest in our content, products, or services, such as when you last opened an email from us or ceased using your Simulation Bureau products or services. We retain information derived from cookies and other tracking technologies for a reasonable period of time from the date such information was created.

3. How we share information we collect

We may share or disclose your personal information to the following types of third parties for the purposes described in this Policy:

Service providers

We sometimes employ other companies and people to provide services to visitors to our websites, our customers, and users of simulationbureau.com and may need to share your information with them to provide information, products or services to you. Examples may include analyzing data or performing statistical analysis, providing marketing assistance, processing credit card payments, customer journey tracking and providing customer service or support. In all cases where we share your information with such agents, we explicitly require the agent to acknowledge and adhere to our privacy and customer data handling policies and to use personal information only for provision of the services to us and in a manner which is consistent with this policy.

Simulation Bureau partners

In addition, we may share data with trusted partners to contact you based on your request to receive such communications, help us perform statistical analysis, or provide customer support. Such third parties are prohibited from using your personal information except for these purposes, and they are required to maintain the confidentiality of your information.

Corporate events

If we (or our assets) are acquired by another company, whether by merger, acquisition, bankruptcy or otherwise, that company would receive all information gathered by Simulation Bureau on this website. In this event, you will be notified via email and/or a prominent notice on our website, of any change in ownership, uses of your personal information, and choices you may have regarding your personal information.

Compelled disclosure

We reserve the right to use or disclose your personal information if required by law or if we reasonably believe that use or disclosure is necessary to protect our rights, protect your safety or the safety of others, investigate fraud, or comply with a law, court order, or legal process.

4. International transfer of information

International transfers within Simulation Bureau entities

This Privacy Policy shall apply even if we transfer personal information to other countries. We have taken the appropriate safeguards as required by data protection legislation to require that your personal information will remain protected.

When we share information about you within and among Simulation Bureau’s affiliated entities, we make use of standard contractual data protection clauses, which have been approved by the European Commission. Where we use cloud-based services or third-party providers of such services and in either or both circumstances the data is processed outside of the EEA if you are an EU based individual that will be regarded as an overseas transfer. Before instigating an overseas transfer, we will ensure that the recipient country and/or processor has security standards at least equivalent to EU standards and in particular one of the following permitted safeguards applies:

The country in question is deemed to have adequate safeguards in place as determined by the European Commission; or
There is a contract or code of conduct in place which has been approved by the European Commission which gives your personal information the same protection it would have had if it was retained within the EEA; or
If the overseas transfer is to the United States, then the transferee is a signatory to the EU-US privacy Shield as all Privacy Shield signatories are obliged to give your personal information the same degree of protection it would have had if it was retained within the EEA.

If none of these safeguards exist, then we may seek your explicit consent for an overseas transfer. In line with your rights as an individual you are free to withdraw this consent at any time.

5. Cookie Policy and similar technologies

Cookies

The Simulation Bureau and its partners use cookies or similar technologies (such as web beacons) to analyze trends, administer the website, track users’ movements around the website, and to gather information about our user base as a whole. Find out more about how we use cookies on our websites and how to manage your cookie preferences below.

Third party tracking technologies

The use of cookies and web beacons by any tracking utility company is not covered by our Privacy Policy or Cookie Policy.

This Cookie Policy explains how The Simulation Bureau and our affiliates use cookies and similar technologies to recognize you when you visit our websites. It explains what these technologies are and why we use them, as well as your rights to control our use of them.

What are cookies?

A cookie is a small file containing a string of characters that is sent to your computer when you visit a website. When you visit the site again, the cookie allows that site to recognize your browser. Cookies may store user preferences and other information.

Cookies provide a convenience feature to save you time, or tell the web server that you have returned to a specific page. When you return to the same website, the information you previously provided can be retrieved, so you can easily use the customized features.

Cookies set by the website owner (in this case, Simulation Bureau) are called “first party cookies”. Cookies set by parties other than the website owner are called “third party cookies”. Third party cookies enable third party features or functionality to be provided on or through the website (e.g., like interactive content and analytics). The parties that set these third-party cookies can recognize your computer both when it visits the website in question and also when it visits certain other websites.

Why do we use cookies?

We use first party and third-party cookies for several reasons. Some cookies are required for technical reasons in order for our websites to operate, and we refer to these as “essential” or “strictly necessary” cookies. Other cookies also enable us to track and target the interests of our users to enhance the experience on our website. This data is used to deliver customized content and promotions within the Simulation Bureau websites to customers whose behavior indicates that they are interested in a particular subject area. Third parties serve cookies through our websites for advertising, analytics and other purposes.

What types of cookies do we use and how do we use them?

The specific types of first- and third-party cookies served through our websites and the purposes they perform.

Essential website cookies: These cookies are strictly necessary to provide you with services available through our websites.

Performance and functionality cookies: These cookies are used to enhance the performance and functionality of our website, but are non-essential to their use. However, without these cookies, certain functionality may become unavailable.

Analytics and customization cookies: These cookies collect information that is used either in aggregate form to help us understand how our websites are being used or how effective our marketing campaigns are, or to help us customize our websites for you.

Advertising cookies: These cookies are used to make advertising messages more relevant to you. They perform functions like preventing the same ad from continuously reappearing, ensuring that ads are properly displayed for advertisers, and in some cases selecting advertisements that are based on your interests.

Social networking cookies: These cookies are used to enable you to share pages and content that you find interesting on our websites, through third-party social networking and other websites. These cookies may also be used for advertising purposes too.

We routinely use the following cookies:

Google Analytics

Google Analytics collects information about how visitors use our site. We use the information to compile reports and to help us improve the site. The cookies collect information in an anonymous form, including the number of visitors to the site, where visitors have come to the site from and the pages visited. See the Google Analytics Privacy Policy.

How can I control cookies?

You have the right to decide whether to accept or reject cookies. You can exercise your cookie preferences by clicking on the appropriate opt-out links.

You can set or amend your web browser controls to accept or refuse cookies. If you choose to reject cookies, you may still use our website though your access to some functionality and areas of our website may be restricted. As the means by which you can refuse cookies through your web browser controls vary from browser-to-browser, you should visit your browser’s help menu for more information.

Essential website cookies: Because these cookies are strictly necessary to deliver the websites to you, you cannot refuse them. You can block or delete them by changing your browser settings however, as described above this may affect your ability to access the full functionality of the website(s).

What about other tracking technologies, like web beacons?

Cookies are not the only way to recognize or track visitors to a website. We employ a software technology called clear gifs (a.k.a. web beacons/web bugs), that help us better manage the websites by informing us what content is effective. We use clear gifs or pixels in our HTML-based emails to let us know which emails have been opened by recipients. This allows us to gauge the effectiveness of certain communications and the effectiveness of our marketing campaigns. We tie the information gathered by clear gifs in emails to our customers’ Personal Information.

How do I disable cookies?

Here you can find information about disabling cookie storage on the most popular browsers:

6. How to access & control your personal data

Reviewing, correcting and removing your personal information

You have the following data protection rights:

You can request access, correction, updates or deletion of your personal information.
You can object to processing of your personal information, ask us to restrict processing of your personal information or request portability of your personal information.
If we have collected and process your personal information with your consent, then you can withdraw your consent at any time. Withdrawing your consent will not affect the lawfulness of any processing we conducted prior to your withdrawal, nor will it affect processing of your personal information conducted in reliance on lawful processing grounds other than consent.
You have the right to complain to a data protection authority about our collection and use of your personal information. Contact details for data protection authorities in the EEA, Switzerland and certain non-European countries (including the US and Canada) are available here.

To exercise any of these rights, please contact us at [email protected]. We will respond to your request to change, correct, or delete your information within a reasonable timeframe and notify you of the action we have taken.

To unsubscribe from our communications

You may unsubscribe from our marketing communications by clicking on the “unsubscribe” or “subscription preferences” link located on the bottom of our emails, updating your communication preferences, or by emailing us at [email protected]. Customers cannot opt out of receiving transactional emails related to their account with us.