HARDWARE STORE HERO Privacy Policy

Welcome and thank you for your interest in Hardware Store Hero, Inc., an Illinois corporation (“HSH,” “we”, “our” or “us”). Hardware Store Hero is a technology-enabled marketplace that helps independent, family-owned hardware stores move beyond DIY. We empower stores to offer trusted home improvement services under their own brand, connecting homeowners with vetted local professionals, while driving new service revenue, higher-margin product sales, and stronger customer loyalty.

This Privacy Notice explains how information about you, that directly identifies you, or that makes you identifiable (“personal information”) is collected, used and disclosed by HSH in connection with our website and mobile applications that post or link to this Privacy Notice, including our website HardwareStoreHero.com  (collectively, the “Site”), and our services offered in connection with the Site, including the HSH Platform (collectively with the Site, the “Service”).

1. How We Collect and Use Information

We collect personal information in connection with your visits to and use of the Service. This collection includes information that you provide in connection with the Service, information from third parties, and information that is collected automatically such as through the use of cookies and other technologies.

Information That You Provide

We may collect personal information from you. The categories of information we collect can include:

• Service Inquiries, Fulfillment Efficiency, and Quote Requests. We may collect personal information that you provide when you inquire about our Service or request a quote. This information may include your first name, last name, email, phone number, company, IP address, and any other information you provide, including your interests in relation to our Service or applicable business information. We use this information to communicate with you about your inquiry or interests, or schedule an information call to discuss our Service.
• Registration Information. We collect personal and/or business information that you provide when you register for an account to use our Service, including the HSH platform. This information may include your name, email, telephone number, company name, and password. We use this information to administer your account, provide you with the relevant services and information, communicate with you regarding your account, the Service, and for customer support purposes.
• Information Collected Through the Use of the Service. You may upload, or transmit files, documents, data, or information through your communications with us or your use of the Service (collectively, “User Content”). User Content and any information contained in the User Content, including personal information you may have included, is stored and collected as part of the Service. You have full control of the information included in the User Content. We use the User Content to provide you with the Service.
• Communications. If you communicate with us through any paper or electronic form, we may collect your name, email address, mailing address, phone number, company, role, region, or any other personal information you choose to provide to us. We use this information to investigate and respond to your inquiries, and to communicate with you, to enhance the services we offer to our users and to manage and grow our organization.
• Marketing Emails. If you sign up to receive news or alerts from us, we collect your email and applicable interests and communication preferences in order to send you regular updates about the Service. We use this information to manage our communications with you and send you information about products and services we think may be of interest to you. If you wish to stop receiving email messages from us, simply click the “unsubscribe link” provided at the bottom of the email communication. Note that you cannot unsubscribe from certain services-related email communications (e.g., account verification, confirmations of transactions, technical or legal notices). If you register for our newsletter or updates, we may communicate with you by email. To unsubscribe from promotional messages, please follow the instructions within our messages and review the Control Over Your Information section below.

Information from Third Party Sources

We may receive personal information about you from our business partners and service providers and combine this information with other data we collect from you. The third parties may include website and service operators, payment processors, marketing partners, and shipping providers. The information may include contact information, demographic information, information about your communications and related activities, and information about your orders. We may use this information to administer and facilitate our services, your orders, and our marketing activities.

• Social Media. When you interact with our Site through various social media, such as when you follow us on a social media Site, or post a comment to one of our pages, we may receive information from the social network such as your profile information, profile picture, gender, username, user ID associated with your social media account, age range, language, country, and any other information you permit the social network to share with third parties. The data we receive is dependent upon your privacy settings with the social network. We use this information to operate, maintain, and provide to you the features and functionality of the Service, as well as to communicate directly with you, such as to send you email messages about products and services that may be of interest to you.
• Information from Other Sources. We may obtain information from other sources, including through third-party information providers, our shareholders, customers, service providers, or through transactions such as mergers and acquisitions. We may combine this information with other information we collect from or about you. In these cases, our Privacy Notice governs the handling of the combined personal information. We use this information to operate, maintain, and provide to you the features and functionality of the Service, as well as to communicate directly with you, such as to send you email messages about products and services that may be of interest to you.

Other Uses of Personal Information

In addition to the uses described above, we may collect and use personal information for the following purposes:

• For our business activities, including to operate and improve the Service, and to provide you with the features and functionality of the Service;
• To communicate with you and respond to your requests, such as to respond to your questions, contact you about changes to the Service, and communicate about account related matters;
• To authenticate your account credentials and identify you, as necessary to log you in and/or ensure the security of your account;
• For marketing and advertising purposes, such as to market to you or offer you with information and updates on our products or services we think that you may be interested in, including to provide other news or information about HSH and our select partners;
• For analytics and research purposes;
• To enforce our terms of service to resolve disputes, to carry out our obligations and enforce our rights, and to protect our business interests and the interests and rights of third parties;
• To comply with contractual and legal obligations and requirements;
• To fulfill any other purpose for which you provide personal information; and
• For any other lawful purpose, or other purpose that you consent to.

2. How We Use Cookies and Other Tracking Technology to Collect Information

We, and our third-party partners, automatically collect certain types of usage information when you visit our services, read our emails, or otherwise engage with us. We typically collect this information through a variety of tracking technologies, including cookies, web beacons, embedded scripts, location-identifying technologies, file information, and similar technology (collectively, “tracking technologies”).

We, and our third-party partners, use tracking technologies to automatically collect usage and device information, such as:

• Information about your device and its software, such as your IP address, browser type, Internet service provider, device type/model/manufacturer, operating system, date and time stamp, and a unique ID that allows us to uniquely identify your browser or your account (including, for example, a persistent device identifier or an Ad ID), and other such information. We may also work with third-party partners to employ technologies, including the application of statistical modeling tools, which permit us to recognize and contact you across multiple devices.
• When you access our Sites from a mobile device, we may collect unique identification numbers associated with your device or our mobile application (including, for example, a UDID, Unique ID for Advertisers (“IDFA”), Google AdID, or Windows Advertising ID), mobile carrier, device type, model and manufacturer, mobile device operating system brand and model, phone number, and depending on your mobile device settings, your geographical location data, including GPS coordinates (e.g., latitude and/or longitude) or similar information regarding the location of your mobile device, or we may be able to approximate a device’s location by analyzing other information, like an IP address.
• Information about the way you access and use our services, for example, the website from which you came and the website to which you are going when you leave our services, the pages you visit, the links you click, whether you open emails or click the links contained in emails, whether you access the services from multiple devices, and other actions you take on the Site.
• We may collect analytics data or use third-party analytics tools such as Google Analytics to help us measure traffic and usage trends for the services and to understand more about the demographics of our users. You can learn more about Google’s practices at https://policies.google.com/technologies/partner-Websites and view its opt-out options at https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.

We use the data collected through tracking technologies to: (a) remember information so that you will not have to re-enter it during your visit or the next time you visit the Site; (b) provide custom, personalized content and information, including targeted content and advertising; (c) identify you across multiple devices; (d) provide and monitor the effectiveness of our services; (e) monitor aggregate metrics such as total number of visitors, traffic, usage, and demographic patterns on our Site; (f) diagnose or fix technology problems; and (g) otherwise to plan for and enhance our services.

Cookies and Other Tracking Technologies Opt-Out. Depending on your browser or mobile device, you may be able to set your browser to delete or notify you of cookies and other tracking technology by actively managing the settings on your browser or mobile device.

If you would prefer not to accept cookies, most browsers will allow you to: (i) change your browser settings to notify you when you receive a cookie, which lets you choose whether or not to accept it; (ii) disable existing cookies; or (iii) set your browser to automatically reject cookies. Please note that doing so may negatively impact your experience using the sites, as some features and services on our sites may not work properly. Depending on your mobile device and operating system, you may not be able to delete or block all cookies. You may also set your email options to prevent the automatic downloading of images that may contain technologies that would allow us to know whether you have accessed our email and performed certain functions with it. You may also be able to limit interest-based advertising through the settings on your mobile device by selecting “limit ad tracking” (iOS) or “opt-out of interest-based ads” (Android).

We and our third-party partners may also use cookies and tracking technologies for advertising purposes. For more information about tracking technologies, including your choices regarding this technology, please see Third-Party Tracking and Online Advertising below.

3. How We Share Personal Information

We may share your personal information in the instances described below. For further information on your choices regarding your information, see Control Over Your Information.

• Service Providers. We may share your personal information with third-party service providers who help us deliver or improve our Service or who perform services on our behalf, which are subject to reasonable confidentiality terms, and may include identifying and serving targeted advertisements, processing payments, providing web hosting services, or providing analytics.
• Business Partners. We may share your information with our business partners for transactional and marketing purposes, including to promote their products or services.
• Data Analytics Providers. We may share personal information with data analytics providers who analyze statistics and trends relating to the usage of and activity relating to our services. These data analytics providers produce reports and make suggestions for our customer and business strategy based on the personal information and other information analyzed.
• Online Advertising Partners. We may also share personal information with advertising networks or permit these partners to collect information from you directly on our websites to facilitate online advertising, such as search engines and social network advertising providers to serve targeted ads to you or to groups of other users who share similar traits, such as likely commercial interests and demographics, on third-party platforms. For more information, including how to opt out of interest-based advertising, please see Third Party Tracking and Online Advertising, below.
• Within HSH, Inc. We may share with other companies and brands owned or controlled by HSH, Inc., and other companies owned by, affiliated with, or under common ownership as HSH. These companies will use your personal information in the same way as we can under this Privacy Notice.
• Corporate Business Transaction or Reorganization. We may transfer any information we collect in the event we sell or transfer all or a portion of our business or assets (including any shares in the company) or any portion or combination of our products, services, businesses and/or assets. Should such a transaction occur (whether a divestiture, merger, acquisition, bankruptcy, dissolution, reorganization, liquidation, or similar transaction or proceeding), we will use reasonable efforts to ensure that any transferred information is treated in a manner consistent with this Privacy Notice.
• Legal Obligations and Rights. Third parties as required by law or subpoena or if we reasonably believe that such action is necessary to (a) comply with the law and the reasonable requests of law enforcement; (b) to enforce our Terms of Service or other agreements or to protect the security or integrity of the HSH services, including to prevent harm or financial loss, or in connection with preventing fraud or illegal activity; and/or (c) to exercise or protect the rights, property, or personal safety of HSH, our Customers, visitors, or others.
• Consent. We may disclose personal information about you to certain other third parties with your consent.
• Aggregated or Anonymized Format. We may share your personal information with others in an aggregated or otherwise anonymized form that does not reasonably identify you directly as an individual.

4. Customer Data

In providing our Service, our customers may upload data to our Service, or we may collect data on their behalf, which may include personal information or data about our customers’ end users (all of which we call “Customer Data”). We collect and process Customer Data as needed to provide our Services to our customers in accordance with our agreements with the customers. This Privacy Notice does not apply to the processing of Customer Data.

Security of your personal data

We will take reasonable precautions to prevent the loss, misuse, or alteration of your personal information. Data transmission over the Internet is inherently insecure and we cannot guarantee the security of data sent over the internet. We will store all the personal information you provide on our secure servers. You are responsible for keeping your passwords confidential. We will not ask you for your passwords.

5. Control Over Your Information

Email Communications. From time to time, we may send you emails regarding updates to our Service, products or services, notices about our organization, or information about products/services we offer (or promotional offers from third parties) that we think may be of interest to you. If you wish to unsubscribe from such emails, simply click the “unsubscribe link” provided at the bottom of the email communication. Note that you cannot unsubscribe from certain services-related email communications (e.g., account verification, confirmations of transactions, technical or legal notices).

Modifying Account Information. If you have an account for our Service, you have the ability to modify certain information in your account (e.g., your contact information) through the account setting page or a similar option provided on the Service. If you have any questions about modifying or updating any information in your account, please contact us at the email or postal address provided below. Please note that HSH does not own or control the Customer Data uploaded to our Service by our customers and cannot modify or delete Customer Data except at the request of our customer, or as permitted by our Terms of Service.

6. Third-Party Tracking and Online Advertising

We may share, or we may permit third-party online advertising networks, social media companies, and other third-party services, to collect information about your use of our Site over time so that they may play or display ads that may be relevant to your interests on other websites or apps, or on other devices you may use. Typically, though not always, the information we share is provided through cookies or similar tracking technologies, which recognize the device you are using and collect information, including hashed data, clickstream information, browser type, time and date you visited the website and other information. This information is used to display targeted ads on or through our services or on other websites, apps, or services. We or the online advertising networks use this information to make the advertisements you see online more relevant to your interests. We may also display targeted advertising to you through social media platforms, such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Google, and others. These companies have interest-based advertising programs that allow us to direct advertisements to users who have shown interest in our services or our clients’ services while those users are on the social media platform, or to groups of other users who share similar traits, such as likely commercial interests and demographics. These advertisements are governed by the privacy policies of those social media companies that provide them.

Google Analytics and Advertising. We may also utilize certain forms of display advertising and other advanced features through Google AdSense Advertising, such as DoubleClick Platform Integration, Remarketing with Google AdSense, Google Display Network Impression Reporting, Demographics and Interest Reporting. These features enable us to use first-party cookies (such as the Google Analytics cookie) and third-party cookies (such as the DoubleClick advertising cookie) or other third-party cookies together to inform, optimize, and display ads based on your past visits to our services. You may control your advertising preferences or opt-out of certain Google advertising products by visiting the Google Ads Preferences Manager, currently available at https://google.com/ads/preferences, or by visiting NAI’s online resources at http://www.networkadvertising.org/choices.

To learn more about interest-based advertising and how you may be able to opt-out of some of this advertising, you may wish to visit the Digital Advertising Alliance’s (DAA) resources and/or the Network Advertising Initiative’s (NAI) online resources, at www.aboutads.info/choices or http://www.networkadvertising.org/choices/ and you can opt-out of receiving some interest-based advertisements on mobile apps by visiting http://www.aboutads.info/appchoices. You may also be able to limit interest-based advertising through the settings menu on your mobile device by selecting “limit ad tracking” (iOS) or “opt-out of interest-based ads” (Android). You may also be able to opt-out of some — but not all — interest-based advertising served by mobile ad networks by visiting http://youradchoices.com/appchoices and downloading the mobile AppChoices app.

Please note that when you opt out of receiving interest-based advertisements, this does not mean you will no longer see advertisements from us or on our online services. It means that the online ads that you do see from DAA program participants should not be based on your interests. We are not responsible for the effectiveness of, or compliance with, any third-parties’ opt-out options or programs or the accuracy of their statements regarding their programs. In addition, third parties may still use cookies to collect information about your use of our online services, including for analytics and fraud prevention as well as any other purpose permitted under the DAA’s Principles.

7. Data Retention

We will retain your personal information for the length of time needed to fulfill the purposes outlined in this Privacy Notice unless a longer retention period is required or permitted by law. Any Customer Data that we have access to shall be retained, stored, and deleted according to our agreements with our customers. We store data on servers in the U.S. or any other country in which HSH or its affiliates, subsidiaries, agents, or contractors maintain facilities.

8. Links to Third-Party Websites and Services and Imbedded Content

For your convenience, our Service may provide links to third-party websites or services that we do not own or operate. We are not responsible for the practices employed by any websites or services linked to or from the services, including the information or content contained within them. Your browsing and interaction on any other website or service are subject to the applicable third party’s rules and policies, not ours. If you are using a third-party website or service, you do so at your own risk. We encourage you to review the privacy policies of any website or service before providing any personal information.

We may include on this site embedded content (e.g., videos, images, articles, etc.) from other websites. Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website. These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website. We are not responsible for the practices employed by any websites from which embedded content is linked, including the information or content contained within them.

9. Children’s Personal Information

Our services are not intended for children under the age of 13. We do not knowingly solicit or collect personal information from children under the age of 13. If we learn that any personal information has been collected inadvertently from a child under 13, we will delete the information as soon as possible. If you believe that we might have collected information from a child under 13, please contact us at privacy@HardwareStoreHero.com.

10. Your California Privacy Rights

If you are a California resident, California Civil Code Section 1798.83 permits you to request information regarding the disclosure of personal information to third parties for their direct marketing purposes during the immediately preceding calendar year. To opt out of having your information shared in this manner, please email us at privacy@HardwareStoreHero.com.

11. Nevada Residents

Chapter 603A of the Nevada Revised Statutes permits a Nevada resident to opt out of future sales of certain covered information that a website operator has collected or will collect about the resident. Note we do not sell your personal information within the meaning of Chapter 603A. However, if you would still like to submit such a request, please contact us at privacy@HardwareStoreHero.com.

12. Changes to Privacy Notice

We reserve the right to change this Privacy Notice from time to time in our sole discretion. We will notify you about material changes in the way we treat personal data by sending a notice to the primary email address specified in your HSH account, by placing a prominent notice on our Site, or through other appropriate communication channels. It is your responsibility to review this Privacy Notice periodically. All changes shall be effective from the date of publication unless otherwise provided.

13. Contact Us

For additional inquiries about this Privacy Notice, please send us an email at privacy@HardwareStoreHero.com or contact us at:

Hardware Store Hero, Inc.
1189 Wilmette Avenue
Box 173
Wilmette IL 60091
United States
privacy@HardwareStoreHero.com