Privacy Policy

Introduction and overview 

Vlinder leverages technology responsibly to power prosperity around the world and we believe that everyone has a right to privacy. We also believe in providing transparency on how we collect, process and share personal information.  

Scope of this Privacy Statement

a) Personal information for the purposes of providing different services through Vlinder Platform and Applications.

b) Personal information for the purposes of providing the benefits of the Vlinder platform, which is collectively, all Vlinder’s services, sites, experiences and software (including through our mobile applications and desktop applications); and/or

c) Personal information as necessary to manage, run and improve our business

Our role

In certain circumstances, there may be more than one Information Controller processing your information. For example, your employer or your service provider or a financial partner may also act as an Information Controller of personal information processed by Vlinder. In these situations, we act as an independent Information Controller over our processing activities – meaning that we, as an Information Controller, make determinations over how your personal information will be processed independently from the other Information Controller. The other Information Controller may have their own obligations under applicable information privacy law, and you may need to speak with the other Information Controller directly for questions on how they process your personal information.

The Vlinder Platform and your Vlinder Account

Vlinder Account information 

In order to access the benefits we make available in the Vlinder Platform, data entered into one service or feature becomes a part of your Vlinder Account.  

The personal information contained within your Vlinder Account is the combination of information that Vlinder has about you. Your Vlinder Account includes your credentials; your name and contact details; Date of Birth; Anniversary Date; Location; Phone number; payment information; information about your activities, your interests and preferences; the content you place in our platform; information we have collected about you from third-party sources and insights that are associated with you 

The information in your Vlinder Account will be shared across the Vlinder Platform to generate our various offerings, services and experiences and otherwise maximize the benefits to you of our platform 

Organizational account information

Some experiences and services within our platform allow you to interact with an organization (such as your employer or your school or your Bank). If you are granted access to an organization or household account, the owner of the organization or a designated administrator may control and administer details of your account, for example, by deciding your access rights; making decisions about your personal information (such as details about your unique identification cards); or requiring you to take certain actions (for example, location tracking). If your access rights are amended by the owner or designated administrator, then you may lose access to the information that lives in the organization.  

Your use of our platform as part of an organization’s account may be subject to the organization’s policies, which may be different from this Statement. We are not responsible for the privacy or security practices of other organizations, and you should consider both the organization's policies and whether you are comfortable enabling the organization with access to your information prior to interacting with those organization’s Vlinder Accounts. 

Information we collect 

Information you give us 

The personal information that we receive about you depends on the context of your interactions with Vlinder, how your configure your Vlinder Account and the choices that you make, including your privacy settings. Personal information that you provide may also depend upon what services or experiences you use, your location and applicable law

• Creating an account. We collect information when you create an account, interact with our Platform or activate a subscription. Personal information may include your contact information (such as your name, address, phone number, date of birth, anniversary date, and email), profile photo, billing information (your payment information), usernames and credentials
• Identification information. We collect information to verify your identity, including your name, social security number, social insurance number, driver’s license numbers, government-issued identification details, for example to verify your identity as one of our experts or to help you authenticate yourself on request from any requester.
• Customer support, product research, training and feedback. We may collect personal information when you reach out to us for support, give us feedback, participate in optional surveys, product research or training and you choose to share (“Communication Information”).
• Social and community content. We receive content you post on our social media pages and our community pages.
• Information about others: Please see the section titled, “Information provided by others”, below.
• Biometric Information. Please see the section titled, “Biometric Information”, below.

Information we get when you use the products and services.

We may collect certain information about you when you access or use the Vlinder Platform. This may include:

• Device information. We may collect information about your device such as Internet Protocol (“IP”) addresses, log information, error messages, device type, and unique device identifiers . For example, we may collect IP addresses from you as part of our sign in and security features.
• Camera and contacts. Certain features may have access to your camera and contacts if you grant permission in your device settings.
• Location information. Certain features in our platform may collect your precise location information, device motion information, or both, if you grant permission to do so in your device settings. For example, if you use our time-tracking service.
• Content. We may receive documents (such as identity verification document, address verification document, educational certificate, work experience information, credit score, etc.).We may receive information about your business, your finances, expenses, invoices, financial statements, details of your financial transactions, payroll details, payment details, tax return details, details about your customers or vendors or employees, income and wage information, and/or investment information.
• Third-party service content. We receive information about you when you sign in to a third-party service with your Vlinder Account or when you connect your Vlinder Account to a third-party service. For example, you may choose to connect your Vlinder Account with your bank accounts. To sync your financial account information, we must access your financial account information.
• Usage information. We may collect usage information such as the pages you viewed, the features you use, your browser type and details about any links with which you interact.
• Information from cookies and other technologies. Vlinder and our service providers may use commonly used tools such as cookies, web beacons, pixels, local shared objects and similar technologies (collectively "cookies") to collect information about you (“Cookie Information”) so we can provide the experiences you request, recognize your visit, track your interactions, and improve your and other customers' experience. The Vlinder Platform is not currently configured to respond to browsers’ “Do Not Track” signals because at this time no formal “Do Not Track” standard has been adopted. You have control over some of the information we collect from Cookies and how we use it. For more information, please see our Cookies Policy
• Information stored locally. Some of our web-enabled desktop services and offerings synchronize with the information on your computer. We may also store personal information locally on your device

Biometric Information

Certain parts of the Vlinder Platform make use of biometric personal information (“Biometric Information“), Biometric Information can be subject to additional laws and regulations.

We collect Biometric Information from you when you enrol in our biometric identity program and automatically as part of our anti-fraud protection and customer support activities. These identifiers may include facial recognition information, voiceprints and key-stroke information, as well as mathematical representations of your biometric identifier, such as the template maintained for comparison. We use Biometric Information to identify and authenticate you, and for security and similar purposes (such as tracking access in our facilities). We share Biometric Information with thirdparty service providers who assist with our IT, security and fraud programs, our professional advisors, and as required by law or regulation. Vlinder does not sell your Biometric Information.

When we collect Biometric Information, you will receive a specific notice and consent request at the time of that collection. You are not required to consent to the collection of Biometric Information in order to use our services, although some functionality may not be available if you decline and you may withdraw your consent at any time.

Vlinder will retain Biometric Information until the purposes for which it was collected have been satisfied or three years from your or your organizational account manager’s last interaction with Vlinder, whichever comes first.

Information provided by others

Our platform is designed to help you connect with other people and organizations. As a result of those connections, others may be able to input information about you. For example, your employer may input information about work activity in order to record your work experience. You may also be able to input or process information about others, for example, if you are an account administrator. If you input information about others into our platform, you must only do so if you have first received the appropriate rights and permissions to do so, including by getting advanced written consent, if required by applicable law.

At Vlinder, we believe that you have rights to information that pertains to you, your household and/or your business. If another person has input or processed information in the Vlinder Platform on behalf of you, your family or your business (and we are processing such information as an Information Controller),you may ask to receive a copy of your information, even if you do not have an account with us. To help protect privacy and the security of your information, you may be asked to provide additional information to verify your identity and/or ownership rights prior to receiving a copy of the information. For specific instructions on how to request a copy of your information, please see the section “Your information rights and choices” below.

We also obtain information from outside parties or services to run our business. We protect and process information obtained from those parties as described in this Statement, consistent with any additional restrictions imposed by the source of the information. Our sources may vary over time and depend upon how you use the Vlinder Platform. For a list of the categories of sources from whom we obtain information, please see the section “Other information sources” below).

Other information sources

We may also get information about you from others where permitted by applicable law. For example, we receive information from:

• Your service providers. If you choose to sync a non-Vlinder account/service with your Vlinder Account, we will receive information from that account/service according to your settings with that account/service.
• Supplemental information and identity verification providers. Service providers who help us verify your identity, the specifics of your business and/or supplement the information you have provided and ensure the accuracy of your information. For example, we use third party service providers to validate your mailing address, phone number or provide additional details about your business. These providers may include, for example, your financial institution, telecommunications provider or email provider.
• Support providers. Service providers who provide us with information about you or your interaction with the Vlinder Platform. For example, we may obtain service and support information or technical issues you have raised with these third parties.
• Other users. As described in sections “information Provided By Others”, we may get information about you from other users, such as your educational institute, bank, civil agencies, law enforcement agencies, or your employer.
• Risk management, cybersecurity & anti-fraud providers. We may receive information from service providers who help us assess risks associated with our offerings, including to help combat fraud, illegal activity and to help protect your personal information.
• Content providers. We may receive information from software providers that make user-generated content from their service available to others, such as local business reviews or public social media posts.
• Communication providers & social networks. If you give us permission, we may collect information from email providers, communication providers and social networks.
• Joint offering partners. We may offer co-branded services or experiences or engage in joint-marketing activities with others, including through our conferences or live events.
• Publicly-available Sources. We collect information from publicly available sources, such as open government databases.
• Government agencies. We receive information from government agencies, including from various financial, credit rating agencies, educational institutions, and civil agencies.

Required information

Some services and experiences in the Vlinder Platform require you to provide information for it to function. If you do not wish to provide the required information, you may not be able to use certain features.

How we use personal information

We collect and process personal information from you only where:

• We have your consent to do so
• We need the personal information to perform a contract with you or provide a service to you
• Provide you with the benefits of the Vlinder Platform and operate our business
• The processing is in our legitimate business interests
• To comply with legal requirements, including applicable laws and regulations

Personal information is used to operate our business, including but not limited to:

• Provide you with the Vlinder Platform and create your Vlinder Account
• Improve our products and services
• Run and manage our business, including resolving billing and financial disputes
• Evaluate your eligibility for financial offers, products and services
• Connect you with experts and other users
• Communicate with you
• Advertise and market our services and experiences
• Advertise and market our services and experiences
• Provide you with support and resolve disputes
• Conduct research, including by partnering with academic institutions
• Comply with our legal and regulatory requirements
• Protect the rights, property, safety or security of Vlinder Platforms, our customers, employees or others and prevent fraudulent or illegal activity
• To enforce, remedy or apply our Terms of Service or other agreements

To provide you with valuable personalized advice, recommendations and experiences, we may process your personal information using automated and manual (human) methods. Our automated methods include artificial intelligence (AI) and a range of technologies that help our services learn and reason to improve our ability to personalize and enhance your experience in the Vlinder Platform.

We may also use your personal information for other purposes that are compatible with the disclosed purposes if and where this is permitted by applicable law.

How we share your information

From time to time, we may need to share your information in the following circumstances:

With your consent. We share your information with third-parties when you have requested us to do so.

For research. With appropriate controls, we may share information with third-parties for research purposes or to publish academic or policy-related materials. We only share information in a way that would not allow any individual to be identified.

For joint sales, promotions and events. We may share your information with thirdparties who are jointly providing sales initiatives, promotions or events with us.

With financial services providers. We may share personal Information with collection agencies, credit bureaus and loan service providers, financial product underwriters and payment card association members. Late payments, missed payments, or other defaults on your account may be reflected in your credit report and consumer report. We may also share your personal information with other companies, lawyers, credit bureaus, agents, government agencies, and card associations in connection with issues related to fraud, credit, or debt collection

With service providers. We share personal information with our service providers who provide services on our behalf for the purposes described in this Statement. Service providers are required to implement reasonable privacy and information protection controls to maintain the privacy and security of information provided to them consistent with the privacy practices outlined in this Statement.

For mergers and acquisitions. If we are involved with a merger, asset sale, financing, liquidation, bankruptcy, or the acquisition of all or part of our business to another company (collectively, a “Transaction”), we may share your information with that company and its advisors before and after the Transaction date.

Sales of personal information to third parties. We do not and will not sell personal information to third parties. We do share personal information with third-parties for the business purposes described in this Statement.

With our affiliates and subsidiaries. We may share your information with and among our affiliates and subsidiaries for everyday business purposes (as described in this Statement) as well as for marketing purposes

Your Right to Limit information Sharing: certain laws, including Federal Law for our US customers, provides our customers with the right to limit our information sharing activities in certain circumstances. For example, you may have the right to limit our sharing of information about your creditworthiness with our affiliates for everyday business purposes or to limit sharing of your information to both affiliates and thirdparties for marketing purposes.

Non-Vlinder Services, links and integrations

Other companies’ products, services and applications may use or integrate with our Vlinder Platform, or otherwise be offered through our Vlinder Platform or Apps.com (“Non-Vlinder Services”). If you choose to link, sync or otherwise use any of these NonVlinder Services you consent and direct Vlinder to share your information, including personal information, to the company providing the Non-Vlinder Services. Non-Vlinder Services are subject to the applicable terms and privacy statement of the company providing the service.

Some of our features enable you to connect to a social media account or share information on social media platforms, like Facebook and Twitter. Any information you choose to share on social media may potentially be visible to a global audience and will be subject to the social media provider's privacy policies (not this Statement). You should take care only to share information on social media that you are comfortable sharing.

Advertising and analytics

Vlinder may use advertising networks and other providers to display advertising on our Vlinder Platform or to manage our advertising on other sites. Our advertising partners may place cookies on unaffiliated websites in order to serve advertisements that may be relevant to you based on your browsing activities and interests and determine the effectiveness of such advertisements. You may be able to opt-out of such interest-based advertising by visiting Digital Advertising Alliance's Network Advertising Initiative's, or Your Online Choices

For legal reasons

We may share your information with third-parties for legal reasons, including:

• When we reasonably believe disclosure is required in order to comply with a subpoena, court order, or other applicable law, regulation or legal process
• To protect the rights, property, or safety of Vlinder, the Vlinder Platforms, our customers or others
• To protect or defend against attacks
• To enforce, remedy, or apply our Terms of Service or other agreements
• To prevent fraud, cybersecurity attacks or illegal activity
• For debt collection
• With regulatory agencies, including government tax agencies, as necessary to help detect and combat fraud and/or protect our customers, users and/or the Vlinder Platform

Your information rights and choices

Your rights

Regardless of your location, we believe that all persons should have privacy and information protection rights and choices.

Depending on where you live, you may have certain state-specific legal rights with respect to your personal information that we collect and process.

If you are an individual in the United States, you can file a request or take action on one of your rights by visiting your Vlinder Account settings or our Privacy Center or contacting us at the contact details provided under the section “How to contact us.”

If you are a California resident, you may have the following rights:

Verification. In order to protect your personal information from unauthorized access or deletion, we may require you to verify your login credentials before you can submit a rights request. If you do not have an account with us, or if we suspect that your account has suffered fraudulent or malicious activity, we may ask you to provide additional personal information for verification. If we are subsequently unable to confirm your identity, we may refuse your rights request.

Authorized agents. You may use an authorized agent to submit a rights request. If you do so, the agent must present signed written authorization to act on your behalf, and you may also be required to independently verify your identity or your legal authority or ownership of the personal information with us.

Access. You may have the right to access the categories of personal information we have collected about you, the sources from which that information was collected, the business or commercial purpose for collecting your personal information, the categories of third parties with whom we share your personal information, the specific pieces of personal information we have collected about you, the categories of personal information we sold about you, the categories of third parties to whom we sold personal information about you, and the categories of personal information we disclosed for a business purpose.

Deletion. You may have the right, under certain circumstances, to request that we delete the personal information you have provided to us.

Non-discrimination. You have the right to be free from discrimination related to your exercise of any of your California privacy rights.

Please note that we may claim legal exemptions for certain types of personal information from all or certain parts of the CCPA pursuant to various CCPA exemptions.

What you can do to manage your privacy

You have choices when it comes to managing the privacy of your personal information.

Update your privacy settings. You may update your privacy settings by visiting your Vlinder Account settings.

Manage marketing communications from us. To update your marketing communication preferences, you can go to the marketing preference tools in your Vlinder Account settings. You may also click unsubscribe at the bottom of the marketing emails or respond with STOP to SMS messages.

Download a copy of your personal information. You may request a copy of your personal information by visiting your Vlinder Account or our Privacy Center.

Correct your personal information. You can edit and correct your personal information at any time by changing it directly in our products and services.

Delete your personal information. You may request for us to delete your personal information by visiting your Vlinder Account settings or our Privacy Center.

Cookies and other tracking technologies. You can find information on changing your browser settings to opt-out of cookies in your browser settings or make changes to your cookies settings by using our cookie preferences tool. If you disable some or all of the cookies the service, or parts of the service may not work. For more information, please see our Cookies Policy

Even if you opt-out of such cookies or otherwise opt-out of interest-based advertising, you will still receive advertisements, they just won't be tailored to your interests. If you opt-out and later delete your cookies, use a different browser, or buy a new computer, you may need to renew your opt-out choices.

Cookies are tracked differently between browsers, products, and devices. If you use QuickBooks (or SKU name) on multiple browsers or are using multiple products, you’ll need to do this for each. Vlinder does not control the functionality of your browser, certain browsers may not allow you to access our consent manager or may require you to periodically reset your settings.

Information retention

Unless you specifically ask us to delete your personal information as explained in section “Your information rights and choices,” above, we retain your personal information as long as it is necessary to comply with our data retention policies and obligations. For example, we may maintain your Vlinder Account for our legal or regulatory compliance needs (e.g. maintaining records of transactions you have made with us), to exercise, establish or defend legal claims and to protect against fraudulent or abusive activity on our service.

There may be occasions where we are unable to fully delete or de-identify your information due to technical or other operational reasons. Where this is the case, we will take reasonable measures to securely isolate your personal information from any further processing until such time as we are able to delete or de-identify it.

International data transfers

In accordance with and as permitted by applicable law and regulations, we reserve the right to transfer your information, process and store it outside your country of residence to wherever we or our third party service providers operate.

EU-U.S. Privacy Shield and Swiss-U.S. Privacy Shield Frameworks

We may transfer your personal information to and process and store your personal information in other countries in compliance with applicable law. Some of these countries may have data protection laws that are different from the laws of your country (and, in some cases, may not be as protective). However, we have taken appropriate safeguards to require that your personal information remain protected. When Vlinder transfers your personal information from the European Union, the United Kingdom, or Switzerland to the United States or other countries, we rely on one or more of the following legal mechanisms: EU-U.S. Privacy Shield, Swiss-U.S. Privacy Shield, European Commission approved Standard Contractual Clauses, and your consent in limited circumstances.

Security of your personal information

We use physical, technical and organizational safeguards designed to protect your information. However, despite these controls, we cannot completely ensure or warrant the security of your information.

How to contact us

If you have questions or comments about this Privacy Statement or our practices, please contact us:

Submit your privacy question here

Direct Mail: Vlinder Inc., Attention: Privacy, 16 Green Ash St, Monroe, NJ 08831-5349

Changes to our Privacy Statements

From time to time we may change or update our Privacy Statement. We reserve the right to make changes or updates at any time. If we make material changes to the way we process your personal information, we will notify you by posting a notice in our platform or on a community post, by sending you a notification or by other means consistent with applicable law.

You can see when this Privacy Statement was last updated by checking the “last updated” date displayed at the top of this Privacy Statement. Please review this Privacy Statement periodically to stay informed about how Vlinder protects your privacy.

Collection and use of children’s personal information

Our services are not intended for or directed to children under the age of 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from users under the age of 13. If you believe we may have information from a child under the age of 13, please contact us.