Privacy Policy

1. Introduction

Refine Editing is committed to protecting your privacy. This privacy policy tells you how Refine Editing uses your personal data when you visit our website, interact with us, and contract our services, as well as any personal data we collect offline. It also tells you about your privacy rights and how the law protects you.

We collect data to provide more streamlined site experience, and improve our services according to your editorial needs. We also collect data that is necessary to render our services and complete our contracts.

At this time, we do not send you marketing emails of any kind, such as newsletter, blog posting alerts, and so on. You will be notified in the event of any future updates to our privacy policy on this front and have the option to opt out of said emails.

It is important that you read this privacy policy, so that you are fully aware of how and why we are using your data. By using this website, you are accepting and consenting to the practices described in this privacy policy. If you do not agree to the terms of this privacy policy, please do not use this website.

We understand the trust you place in us when you provide us with your name, email address, and any other personally identifiable information. We won’t abuse that trust.

If you have any questions or would like to exercise your privacy rights, please contact us at info@refineediting.com or submit a request via our contact form. For our complete contact information, see the section titled “How to contact us” below.

 

2. Who is website is intended for

This website is not intended for children and we do not knowingly collect data relating to children. By providing us with your data, you warrant to us that you are over 18 years of age. You must be at least 18 years old to use this website. Additionally, you must be at least 18 years of age to contract any of our services or have a parent or legal guardian contract our services on your behalf.

 

3. What data we collect and why

Personal data, or personal information, means any information about an individual from which that person can be identified. It does not include data where the identity has been removed (anonymous data).

We collect a variety of information about our wonderful clients (you!) and visitors to the Refine Editing website. This data is for internal use only unless otherwise stated in the specific exceptions in the below (see section 7 for more information) and we do not sell or trade your information with third parties. This personal data falls into these categories:

Communication data. This includes any communication that you send to us whether that be through the contact form on our website, email, text, social media, or any other communication that you send us. We process this data for the purposes of communicating with you, for record keeping and for the establishment, pursuance, or defense of legal claims.

User data. This includes data about how you use our website. We process this data to operate our website and ensure relevant content is provided to you, to ensure the security of our website, to maintain back-ups of our website and/or databases and to enable publication and administration of our website, other online services and business.

Technical data. This includes data about your use of our website and online services such as your internet protocol (IP) address, details about your browser, length of visit to pages on our website, page views and navigation paths, details about the number of times you use our website, time zone settings and other technology on the devices you use to access our website. The source of this data is from our analytics tracking system. We process this data to analyze your use of our website and other online services, to administer and protect our business and website, to deliver relevant website content you and to understand the effectiveness of our advertising. 

Personal data collected by law or where required by law for client and contractor agreements. This includes data provided by the contractors we retain to perform services for us or by clients who are contracting our services. This data is collected outside of our website through other online communications such as email, or other forms of data collection, such as by phone, PayPal invoicing, contract agreements, 1099s, or W9s. Certain data, such as tax ID numbers, addresses, and financial transactions, is collected as required by law to ensure compliance with contractual, legal, and tax requirements. Where we are required to collect personal data by law, or under the terms of the contract between us, and you do not provide us with that data when requested, we may not be able to perform the contract (for example, to deliver goods or services to you, or make payment to you). If you don’t provide us with the requested data, we may have to cancel a service ordered but if we do, we will notify you at the time.

Sensitive data or Special Categories of Personal Data. We do not collect any sensitive data or special categories of personal data about website users. This data refers to data that includes details about your race or ethnicity, religious or philosophical beliefs, sex life, sexual orientation, political opinions, trade union membership, information about your health and genetic and biometric data. We do not collect any information about criminal convictions and offenses either.

Automated decision making. We do not carry out any automated decision making.

 

4. How is your personal data collected?

We use different methods to collect data from and about you including through:

Direct interactions. You may give us your identity and contact data by filling in forms or by corresponding with us by post, phone, email, or through social media.

This includes personal data you provide when you:

  • make enquiries or request information be sent to you;
  • agree to receive our services;
  • sign a contract for our services;
  • engage with us on social media;
  • use our site’s contact form; or
  • contact us via info@refineediting.com or any of our refine email addresses.

When you communicate with us by using the site’s contact form, by emailing us, or by using any other means of communication, we collect the names and email addresses of those who communicate with us, and any other information provided in those communications. In part, we use the information you provide to respond to a communication you initiate or to complete contracted work.

At this time, we do not offer marketing information like newsletters or blog post emails. If in the future we do offer such services and create a sign up mechanism for such services, this privacy policy will be updated to discuss the specifics of how such mechanisms affect your privacy and data.

Automated technologies or interactions. As you interact with us, including via the refineediting.com website, we may automatically collect technical data about your equipment, browsing actions and patterns. We may also collect tracking data when you use our website, or when you click on one of our links. Though you may visit our site anonymously, your IP address is logged by our web hosting service for systems administration purposes whenever you visit the site and we use cookies, as discussed below. We also use page hits in the aggregate to track the popularity of pages that people visit in order to improve the quality of the site.

 

5. Do we use your data for other purposes?

We will only use your personal data for a purpose it was collected for or a reasonably compatible purpose if necessary. For more information on this please email us at info@refineediting.com.

 

6. Amendments or corrections to your personally identifiable data

It is important to us that the information we hold about you is accurate and up to date. Please let us know if at any time your personal information changes by emailing us at info@refineediting.com using our direct contact form.

For any user where their local law requires reasonable access to your personal information, we will provide such access upon written request made via email or regular mail (see “How to contact us” below), and we will respond within sixty days unless applicable law requires a sooner response time.

If you are in the European Union, please see the section titled “Compliance with GDPR and the rights of EU residents” regarding your additional rights.

 

7. Disclosures of your personal data

We do not sell or trade your personally identifiable information to outside third parties.

In certain instances, we may share your personal data with the third parties for the purposes set out in this privacy policy. We require all third parties to whom we share your data to respect the security of your personal data and to keep this information confidential. We only allow such third parties to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions. These instances include:

  • sharing your personal data with members of Refine Editing’s team (specifically, our independent contractors) who are considering taking on your work for a service you requested (i.e. trial edit periods, proposals, and so on);
  • sharing your personal data with members of Refine Editing’s team (specifically, our independent contractors) who are rendering services on your contracted work and are contracted for services on said work; and
  • sharing your personal data with other parties relevant to the services being rendered after providing you with advance notice and receiving your explicit permission.

We do not share your personal data with any third party for their commercial or marketing purposes. In any other instance where we would desire to share your personal data, we would first request your explicit permission to do so.

However, non-personally identifiable visitor information may be provided to other parties for our own marketing, advertising, educational, or other uses.

Additionally, we may have to share your personal data with:

  • service providers who provide cloud storage or cloud software;
  • service providers who provide IT and system administration services, including website hosting and programming;
  • professional advisers including lawyers, accountants, auditors, and insurers;
  • government bodies that require us to report processing activities for a specific purpose; and
  • third parties to whom we may choose to sell, transfer, or merge parts of our business or our assets. Alternatively, we may seek to acquire other businesses or merge with them. If a change happens to our business, then the new owners may use your personal data in the same way as set out in this privacy policy.

 

8. How we look after your data

We use appropriate technological and operational security measures to protect your information against any unauthorised access to or unlawful use. In addition, we limit access to your personal data to those agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to know. They will only process your personal data on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality.

Unfortunately the transmission of information over the internet in not always completely secure. Although we do our best to implement measures to protect your information from unauthorised access, you acknowledge that we cannot always guarantee the security of information that you send over the internet to Refine Editing. Once we have received your information, we will use appropriate and operational measures to protect it in accordance with paragraph above.

 

9. How long we keep your data

We will only retain your personal data for as long as necessary to fulfill the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements.

When deciding what the correct time is to keep the data for, we look at its amount, nature and sensitivity, potential risk of harm from unauthorized use or disclosure, the processing purposes, if these can be achieved by other means and legal requirements.

For tax purposes, the law requires us to keep basic information about our contractors and clients (including Contact, Identity, Financial and Transaction Data) for seven years after they stop being contractors or clients.

We also make a promise to you that you can come back at any time in the future and sign up for another service with us with the expectation of our retaining the necessary knowledge about your work, your writing style, and the editorial methods that best suited you to meet your new editorial needs as best we can. This particularly applies to manuscripts that are part of a series. So, unless you actively ask us to delete information in regards to our previous work together, we keep it, so we can keep this promise to you.

In some circumstances you can ask us to delete your data; see your legal rights below for further information.

In some circumstances we may anonymize your personal data (so that it can no longer be associated with you) for research, educational, or statistical purposes in which case we may use this information indefinitely without further notice to you.

 

10. What about third-party links?

This website may include links to third-party websites, plug-ins and applications. Clicking on those links or enabling those connections may allow third parties to collect or share data about you. We do not control these third-party websites and are not responsible for their privacy statements. When you leave our website, we encourage you to read the privacy notice of every website you visit.

 

11. What about cookies?

What are cookies exactly? Cookies are small files that a site or its service provider transfers to your computer’s hard drive through your Web browser (if you allow) that enables the site’s or service provider’s systems to recognize your browser and capture and remember certain information. Persistent cookies are stored as a file on your computer and remain there when you close your web browser. The cookie can be read by the website that created it when you visit that website again.

What we use cookies for. Cookies collect information about how visitors use refineediting.com, for instance which pages visitors go to most often, and if they get error messages from web pages. They enable us to understand how you use the site and track any patterns with regards how you are using our website. This helps us to develop and improve our website as well as our services in response to what you might need or want. We also use cookies to help us compile aggregate data about site traffic and site interaction so that we can offer better site experiences and tools in the future. All information these cookies collect is aggregated and used to improve how refineediting.com works. We may also use trusted third-party services that track this information on our behalf, like Google Analytics. Google Analytics, which we use, is a web analytics tool used to help understand how visitors engage with this website. It reports website trends using cookies and web beacons without identifying individual visitors. Google Analytics uses persistent cookies. You can read more about it by searching for the Google Analytics Privacy Overview.

Third-party cookies. When you use refineediting.com, your device or browser may be sent cookies from third parties, for example when using embedded content and social network links. It's important for you to know that we have no access to or control over cookies used by these companies or third-party websites. We suggest you check the third-party websites for more information about their cookies and how to manage them.

It’s your decision. You can set your browser to refuse all or some browser cookies, or to alert you when websites set or access cookies. If you disable or refuse cookies, please note that some parts of this website may become inaccessible or not function properly.

 

12. Compliance with GDPR and the rights of EU residents

Refine Editing is a limited liability company based in the United States, but one that processes data both in and out of the United States, specifically in Ireland, which is part of the European Union. We therefore are updating our privacy policy with the new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in mind.

Please note: Most of our service providers process data in the United States, but some may process it in locations other than the United States.

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) applies to you if you are a user in the European Union (EU). According to the GDPR, you have the following rights under data protection laws in relation to your personal data:

  • The right to be informed. That’s an obligation on us to inform you how we use your personal data (and that’s what we’re doing that in this privacy policy);
  • The right of access. That’s a right to make what’s known as a “data subject access request” for copy of the personal data we hold about you;
  • The right to rectification. That’s a right to make us correct personal data about you that may be incomplete or inaccurate;
  • The right to erasure. That’s also known as the “right to be forgotten” where in certain circumstances you can ask us to delete the personal data we have about you (unless there’s an overriding legal reason we need to keep it);
  • The right to restrict processing. That’s a right for you in certain circumstances to ask us to suspend processing personal data;
  • The right to data portability. That’s a right for you to ask us for a copy of your personal data in a common format (for example, a .doc file);
  • The right to object. That’s a right for you to object to us processing your personal data (for example, if you object to us processing your data for direct marketing); and
  • Rights in relation to automated decision making and profiling. That’s a right you have for us to be transparent about any profiling we do, or any automated decision making (which as specified above, we do not do at this time).

These rights are subject to certain rules around when you can exercise them. You can see a lot more information on them, if you are interested, here.

If you wish to exercise any of the rights set out above, please contact us at info@refineediting.com, via our contact form, or see the section “How to contact us” below.

You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal data (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive or excessive. Alternatively, we may refuse to comply with your request in these circumstances.

We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access your personal data (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is a security measure to ensure that personal data is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it. We may also contact you to ask you for further information in relation to your request to speed up our response.

We try to respond to all legitimate requests within one month. Occasionally it may take us longer than a month if your request is particularly complex or you have made a number of requests. In this case, we will notify you and keep you updated.

If you have any questions about this privacy policy, including any requests to exercise your legal rights, please contact us using the details in the “How to contact us” section below.

If you are not happy with any aspect of how we collect and use your data, we would be grateful if you would contact us first if you do have a complaint so that we can try to resolve it for you. If you are in the EU, you also have the right to complain to the Data Protection Commissioner, the Ireland supervisory authority for data protection issues, who’s details are below.

Irish Data Protection Commissioner
Office of the Data Protection Commissioner
Canal House, Station Road, Portarlington, Co. Laois, R32 AP23, Ireland
Phone +353 57 868 4757
Fax: +353 57 868 4757
Email: info@dataprotection.ie
Website: https://www.dataprotection.ie/

 

13. What about international transfers?

Refine Editing is a company based and founded in the United States, though data is accessed and processed within the EEA, as well. Most of our third party service providers (like Google, Squarespace, and so on) are based outside the European Economic Area (EEA) so their processing of your personal data will involve a transfer of data outside the EEA.

Countries outside of the European Economic Area (EEA) do not always offer the same levels of protection to your personal data, so European law has prohibited transfers of personal data outside of the EEA unless the transfer meets certain criteria.

Whenever we transfer your personal data out of the EEA, we do our best to ensure a similar degree of security of data by ensuring at least one of the following safeguards is in place:

  • We may transfer your personal data to countries that the European Commission have approved as providing an adequate level of protection for personal data; or
  • If we use US-based providers that are part of EU-US Privacy Shield, we may transfer data to them, as they have equivalent safeguards in place; or
  • Where we use certain service providers who are established outside the EEA, we may use specific contracts or codes of conduct or certification mechanisms approved by the European Commission, which give personal data the same protection it has in Europe.

If none of the above safeguards are available, we may request your explicit consent to the specific transfer. You will have the right to withdraw this consent at any time.

 

17.     A notice to Non-US users: Data transfer risk disclosure

If you are located outside the United States of America, you should be aware that your personally identifiable information will be transferred to the United States of America or possibly other locations used by our service providers, the laws of which may be deemed by your country to have inadequate data protection. If you are located in a country outside the United States of America and voluntarily submit personally identifiable information to us on this website or via electronic communications, you thereby consent to the general use of such information as provided in this Privacy Policy and to the transfer of that information to, and/or storage of that information in, the United States of America or other locations.

The possible risk of such transfers to service providers outside your country (or for European users, outside the EEA) is that your personally identifiable information may not be handled as proscribed by laws governing your data and could increase the risk of release of your personally identifiable information to unintended persons.

 

18.    Who is the controller of your personally identifiable information?

Refine Editing is the data controller and we are responsible for your personal data (referred to as “we”, “us” or “our” in this privacy policy).

 

19.   A little request

It is important that the personal data we hold about you is accurate and current. Please keep us informed if your personal data changes during your relationship with us. You can do this by reaching out to info@refineediting.com or submitting a request on our contact form. Thank you.

 

20. How to contact us

If you have any questions about this privacy policy, or would like to exercise any of your rights, please email us at info@refineediting.com or our contact form, or write us a letter and mail it to Refine Editing, LLC, P.O. Box 430785, Miami, FL, 33243. Our full contact details can be found below.

Refine Editing, LLC
P.O. Box 430785
Miami, FL, 33243
+1 (786) 200-8865
+1 (305) 809-7084
+353 (83) 314-7104
info@refineediting.com
https://www.refineediting.com/contact-us/

 

21. Changes to this privacy policy

We reserve the right to modify or amend the terms of our privacy policy from time to time without advance notice. If we make a material change in the way we use your personally identifiable information, we will provide prominent notice of the change on this privacy policy page and update the policy date at the bottom of this page. Your continued use of the website or other email communications following the posting of changes to these terms will mean you accept those changes, unless we are legally required to obtain your affirmative consent.