Privacy Policy

Solar Offset Limited (“Solar Offset”, “we” or “us”) is a trusted provider of solar and wind installation credit aggregation and marketing services to companies and individuals. This Privacy Policy (“Policy”) covers the Personal Information that Solar Offset, its subsidiaries and affiliates (if any) collect through https://www.solaroffset.ca and other websites or applications that post a link to this Policy.

This Policy informs you about how we collect, use, disclose, and store Personal Information in our role as a Controller of Personal Information when you:

Interact or use our websites, including when you download materials from our resources page, submit a solar and wind installation credit aggregation and marketing application or ask us to contact you.
Register and/or attend our events such as, conferences or webinars (“Event” or collectively “Events”).
Provide your Personal Information for the purposes of serving your solar and wind installation credit aggregation and marketing related needs which includes current and past applicants to become a customer. For example, when evaluating, assessing solar or wind installations, activities relating to continued engagement with applicants in the process of becoming a customer, and providing all solar and wind installation credit related aggregation, administrative or marketing services (collectively, the “Services”)).

Definitions

Personal Information means information that (either in isolation or in combination with other information) enables you to be directly or indirectly identified (“Personal Information” or “Personal Data”)

Data controller or a Business (“Controller”) is a party that sets out the purposes and means of processing of Personal Information. Data processor or a Service Provider/Contractor/Third Party (“Processor” or “Third Party”) is a party that processes Personal Information on the Controller’s behalf.

Personal Information Solar Offset Collects

Personal Information you Provide to Solar Offset

From Websites or Events: We collect Personal Information that you choose to provide to us, for example, on solar or wind credit aggregation and marketing applications, when you interact with a chat bot on one of our websites, or if you register for any Events. If you contact us through the Website, we will keep a record of our correspondence.

From the Services: We receive and store the Personal Information you provide directly to us. For example, when setting up new account, we collect Personal Information, such as name, e-mail address, postal or physical address, phone number, property description and installation description, etc. We may collect and store media, documents, or other information you provide to us. We collect commercial information, such as records of the purchased Services or information related to solar or wind credit aggregation and marketing applications.

Personal Information Solar Offset Automatically Collects

When you use the Websites: When you visit our websites, we collect Internet or other electronic network activity information through the use of cookies and other trackers. Depending on your tracking preferences, the information we collect may include for example your device’s Internet Protocol address, referring website, what pages your device visited, and the time that your device visited our website. We also rely on analytics and tools used to prevent spam and other security risks related to the use of abusive automated software.

When you use the Services: Solar Offset collects different types of Personal Information depending on the purpose for collection. For example, Solar Offset may collect names, contact information including emails and physical addresses, property descriptions, installation descriptions and installation performance.

Information Solar Offset Collects from Trusted Third Parties

If your Personal Information has been collected as (i) you interacted or used our website, (ii) you registered and/or attended our Events, and/or (iii) part of the Services, your stored Personal Information, may be enriched or updated to ensure it is accurate and up to date, and we achieve the purpose for which it was originally collected. Please note that we will also obtain non-Personal Information related to your organization’s name, structure, industry, and similar attributes through the use of Third Parties’ data sets, for the purpose of enriching or updating your Personal Information we already hold.

Some of the Personal Information collected by Solar Offset is provided to us by Third Party solar and wind installation partners with your consent. If a solar or wind installation partner tells Solar Offset that they have a customer’s consent to collect and use Personal Information, Solar Offset will rely on that statement. When we provide Services to a company, the company may provide Solar Offset with information concerning the directors, officers, employees, representatives or contractors of the company, and we may obtain Personal Information about those individuals from the company.

How and on what grounds does Solar Offset use your Personal Information?

Personal Information Solar Offset Collects Directly from you Through our Websites or Events

We use the Personal Information we collect through our websites:

To administer our websites, our Events, and for internal operations, including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, statistical and survey purposes.
To improve our websites so the content is presented most effectively for you and your device.
For trend monitoring, marketing, and advertising.
For purposes made clear to you at the time you submit your Personal Information, for example, to fulfill your solar or wind credit aggregation and marketing applications, to provide you with access to one of our webinars or whitepapers, to provide you with information you have requested about our Services, or to provide you with information on Services we think might be of interest to you.
To supply Third Party solar or wind installation referral partners with information concerning the state of your solar or wind aggregation and marketing application.
As part of our efforts to keep our websites secure.

We may use your personal data to contact you with newsletters, marketing or promotional materials and other information that may be of interest to you. 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. We may use email marketing service providers to manage and send emails to you.

Direct Marketing

Our direct marketing purposes are based on your consent. For example when you contact us directly, provide us your business card, agree to receive communications after an Event, and similar circumstances. We may also rely on our legitimate interests to contact you to offer related Services that may be of interest to you based on the Services that you may have bought from us, or a solar or wind credit aggregation and marketing application that you have submitted to us. You always have the right to opt out of any direct marketing by notifying us in writing of your desire to opt out; for example you can reply to any marketing correspondence with the message “unsubscribe” to opt out of any direct marketing.

Personal Information Solar Offset Collects Directly from you as Part of the Administration of our Services

We use the Personal Information we collect from our customers in connection with the Services we provide for the following reasons:

Set up a user account.
Provide, operate and maintain the Services.
Process and complete transactions, and send related information, including transaction confirmations and invoices.
Manage our customers’ use of the Services, respond to inquiries and comments, and provide customer service and support.
Send customers technical alerts, updates, security notifications, and administrative communications.
Investigate and prevent fraudulent activities, unauthorized access to the Services, and other illegal activities. Undertake analysis of conversion rates, sales, marketing effectiveness and other analytics projects.
For any other purposes about which we notify customers and users.
To supply to Third Party solar or wind installation referral partners.

We use your Personal Information in this context based on the Agreement that we have in place with you or our legitimate interests, typically, either for security purposes or business practice improvement (e.g., the prevention and investigation of fraudulent activities).

How Does Solar Offset Share and Disclose Personal Information to Third Parties?

We share and disclose information, including Personal Information, about our customers in the following limited circumstances:

Vendors, Consultants, and Other Service Providers

We may share your Personal Information with vendors, consultants, and other Processors we employ to perform Services on our behalf. These Processors include our payment processing providers, website analytics providers, tools we use to prevent spam and other security risks related to the abusive automated software, online activities, product feedback or help desk software providers, CRM service providers, e-mail service providers, solar and wind credit aggregation and marketing referral partners, advisory service providers, emission administration and verification providers, and carbon registries.

If Solar Offset receives your Personal Information and subsequently transfers that information to a Processor for processing, Solar Offset remains responsible for ensuring that such Processor processes your Personal Information to the standard required by the applicable privacy laws. These transfers will typically be based on our legitimate interests or agreed upon in the Agreement.

Solar Offset discloses Personal Information, including to Third Party solar and wind installation providers, only for the reasons listed above or if required to do so by law. By way of example, in order to provide various Services, we may be required to disclose Personal Information to Third Party service providers such as a credit verification body, government institution and others.

Similarly, Solar Offset may disclose Personal Information to obtain further Personal Information required for furtherance of the Services or onboarding a new customer to the Services. For instance, a name and installation description may be provided to Third Party solar and wind installation referral partners to facilitate and further the onboarding of new and prospective customers.

Marketing Operations

We process your Personal Information to provide and enhance our advertising. Our use of Personal Information collected for marketing operations is limited to the following purposes:
Targeting specific audiences based on users’ location and interests related to the search query.
Personalizing the ads that users see based on their search queries.
Optimizing our campaigns based on front-end metrics provided by Google Ads (e.g. clicks and webpage impressions).
Tracking the performance of our campaigns and measuring key metrics such as clicks, conversions, and return on investment to understand how our campaigns are performing and make data-driven decisions.
Adopting Brand Safety protection: ensuring we are not displaying our ads on unsafe or inappropriate websites, to protect our brand reputation.
Adopting of fraud prevention in our campaigns to protect our campaigns from online fraud (e.g. click fraud).

Business Transfers

We may choose to buy or sell assets and may share and/or transfer customer information, including Personal Information, in connection with the evaluation of and entry into such transactions and based on our legitimate interests. Also, if we or our assets are acquired, or if we go out of business, enter bankruptcy, or go through some other change of control, Personal Information may be one of the assets transferred to or acquired by the Third Party.

Protection of Solar Offset and others

We reserve the right to access, read, preserve, and disclose any Personal Information as necessary to i) comply with a law or a court order, ii) enforce or apply our Agreements with you and other agreements, or iii) protect the rights, property, or safety of Solar Offset, our employees, our users, or others.

Disclosures for National Security or Law Enforcement

Under certain circumstances, we may be required to disclose your Personal Information in response to valid requests by public authorities, including to meet national security or law enforcement requirements, based on our legitimate interests or legal obligations.

How Long do we Store your Personal Information?

We store your Personal Information for different time periods depending on the category of Personal Information and the nature of relationship that you have with us. We determine how long we need Personal Information on a case-by-case basis, but our goal is to keep your Personal Information for as short period as possible to achieve the purpose for which Personal Information is collected. We consider the following criteria when we are making decisions on how long we will retain your Personal Information:

The category of Personal Information.
Whether the Personal Information is typically deleted based on specific schedules.
Whether the Personal Information is necessary to operate or provide our Services. For example, account information may be retained for a longer period of time based on the Agreement you have with us.
How long we need to retain the Personal Information to comply with our legal obligations.
Our legitimate interests or legal purposes, such as network improvement, fraud prevention, record-keeping, promoting safety, security and integrity, or enforcing our legal rights.

Security

We use appropriate technical, organizational, and administrative security measures to protect any Personal Information we store from loss, misuse, and unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration, and destruction.

No company or service can guarantee complete security. Unauthorized entry or use, hardware or software failure, and other factors may compromise the security of user’s Personal Information at any time.

Personal Information recorded in documents is securely stored at Solar Offset’s offices in Canada and at offices of Solar Offset’s affiliated companies. Electronically recorded information is stored on computer systems maintained by Solar Offset and Solar Offset’s affiliated companies. Those computer systems and the information stored in them are protected by electronic security systems.

Solar Offset and its affiliated companies restrict access to Personal Information and Solar Offset employees, contractors and representatives can only access Personal Information when they have a legitimate business reason. Solar Offset employees receive training on how to protect Personal Information and they are under obligation to respect privacy laws and this privacy policy.

How Can I Exercise my Privacy Rights?

You may have certain rights relating to your Personal Information, depending on your location and subject to local applicable laws. These rights may include, subject to any exceptions or limitations:

The right to know what Personal Information is being collected and for what purpose.
The right to know what Personal Information is being “sold” or “shared”, for what purpose and the categories of recipients of your Personal Information.
The right to access your Personal Information.
The right to have your Personal Information rectified, corrected or updated.
The right to have your Personal Information deleted, including from any Third Parties where your Personal Information has been shared or disclosed.
The right to opt out of the sale or sharing of your Personal Information.
The right to object to the processing of your Personal Information.
The right not to be subject to any automated decision making and profiling.

Please contact us if you would like to access, review, update, correct, and delete any Personal Information we hold about you, or exercise any other privacy rights available to you. Our privacy team will review your verifiable privacy rights request and respond to you as quickly as possible. If we are unable to comply with your request due to an exception or limitation, we will explain this in writing. If we need more time, we will inform you of the reason and extension period in writing.

Solar Offset does not collect or use any sensitive categories of Personal Information and does not discriminate against you for exercising your privacy rights. We remind you that you have a right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority should you feel unsatisfied with our treatment of your Personal Information.

Children

We do not knowingly collect or solicit Personal Information from anyone under the age of 13. If you are under 13, please do not attempt to register for the Services or send any Personal Information about yourself to us. If we learn that we have collected Personal Information from a child under age 13, we will delete that information as quickly as possible. If you believe that a child under 13 may have provided us their Personal Information, please contact us.

Linked Websites

For your convenience, hyperlinks may be posted on the websites that link to other websites (“Linked Sites”). We are not responsible for, and this Policy does not apply to, the privacy practices of any Linked Sites or of any companies that we do not own or control. Linked Sites may collect information in addition to that which we collect on the websites. We do not endorse any of these Linked Sites, the Services or products described or offered on such Linked Sites, or any of the content contained on the Linked Sites. We encourage you to seek out and read each Linked Site’s privacy policy to understand how the Personal Information about you is used and protected.

Changes to this Policy

We are constantly trying to improve our websites and Services, so we may need to change this Policy from time to time. We will alert you about material changes by, for example, placing a Policy on our website and/or sending you an e-mail (if you have registered your e-mail with us) when we are required to do so by applicable law. You can see when this Policy was last updated by checking the date at the top of this page. You are responsible for periodically reviewing this Policy.