Privacy Policy
Last updated: June 27, 2024
Hello! This is the Privacy Policy for TensorDock.com, Inc DBA TensorDock ("TensorDock," "we," "our" or "us") in order to maintain:
Our website (tensordock.com)
Any products and features that are available on or through our websites (such as Stripe)
We will refer to the list above as the "Services”, collectively.
Overall, your privacy is critically important to us. At TensorDock, we have a few fundamental principles:
We are thoughtful about the personal information we ask you to provide and the personal information that we collect about you through the operation of our services.
We help protect you from overreaching government demands for your personal information.
We aim for full transparency on how we gather, use, and share your personal information.
Below is our Privacy Policy, which incorporates and clarifies these principles. We’ll explain how we collect, use, and share information about you, along with the choices that you have with respect to that information.
Please note that this Privacy Policy does not apply to "Client Data", which is defined and described in Section 4 of our Terms of Service.
Information We Collect
We only collect information about you if we have a reason to do so — for example, to provide our Services, to communicate with you, or to make our Services better.
We collect this information from three sources: if and when you provide information to us, automatically through operating our Services, and from outside sources. Let’s go over the information that we collect.
The information we receive depends on which services you use or authorize, such as whether you are a Client (renting GPUs) or a Host (renting your GPUs to Clients).
Information You Provide
Basic account information: We ask for basic information from you in order to set up your account. For example, we require individuals who sign up for a TensorDock.com account to provide name, organization affiliation, address, email address, and phone number. You may provide us with more information — like your profile picture and other information you want to share — but we don’t require that information to create a TensorDock.com account.
Payment and contact information: There are various ways in which you may provide us payment information and associated contact information. If you purchase account balance on TensorDock.com, you’ll provide personal and payment information such as your name, credit card information, and contact information, which will be stored in Stripe, our third-party payment system. For Services discussed directly with our sales team, you may additionally provide bank account information or other information required for us to provide our Services. Additionally, we keep a record of purchases you’ve made.
Communications with us (Hi there!): You may provide us with information when you respond to surveys, communicate with our sales or support staff, or sign up and interact with our newsletter. This information includes but is not limited to your name, email address, phone number, message content, attachments sent, and additional information you choose to provide if you contact us directly. When you communicate with us via form, email, phone, meeting, or otherwise, we may store a copy of our communications.
Job applicant information: If you apply for a job with us — awesome! You may provide us with information such as your name, contact information, resume or CV, professional or personal references, similar professional and employment-related data, and work authorization verification as part of the application process. We may also collect additional information about you during the process, such as background and credit checks (in applicable jurisdictions and only for certain job roles).
Information We Collect Automatically
Log information: Like most online service providers, we automatically collect information that web browsers, mobile devices, and servers typically make available, including the browser type, IP address, unique device identifiers, language preference, referring URL, the date and time of access, operating system, and mobile network information. We collect log information when you use our Services.
Transactional information: When you rent a server through our Services, we collect information about the transaction, such as GPU count, RAM, vCPU count, amount of NVMe SSD storage, hourly price, and the date and location of the transaction.
Service Usage: We may collect information about your engagement with our Services during your use. That includes processor and memory usage, storage utilization, network connections, and other system-level metrics. We use this data to provide a record of Services provided and to optimize our business's ability to serve customers.
Location information: We may determine the approximate location of your device from your IP address. We collect and use this information to, for example, calculate how many people visit our Services from certain geographic regions.
Cookies and other technologies: A cookie is a string of information that a website stores on a visitor’s computer, and that the visitor’s browser provides to the website each time the visitor returns. Pixel tags (also called web beacons) are small blocks of code placed on websites and emails. TensorDock uses cookies and other technologies like pixel tags to help us identify and track visitors, usage, and access preferences for our Services, as well as track and understand email campaign effectiveness and to deliver targeted ads. A cookie will be placed on your device when visiting our Services to collect this information.
Information Received from Third Parties.
Third-Party Login: If you create or log in to your TensorDock account through another service (such as Google) we’ll receive associated login information (e.g. a connection token, your username, your email address). Visiting the privacy settings of your third-party accounts may limit the information shared with us.
Financial Account Info: If you are a Host, we’ll receive information relating to your Stripe account, such as your email address and phone number, when you ask to be paid.
Third-party services may also give us information, like contact information for individuals who are not yet our users (but we hope will be!). We use this information for marketing purposes.
How and Why We Use Information
We use information about you for the purposes listed below:
To provide our Services: For example, to set up and maintain your account, facilitate the hosting of servers, provide customer service, process payments, and verify user information.
To ensure quality, maintain safety, and improve our Services: For example, by providing automatic upgrades and new versions of our Services. Or, for example, by monitoring and analyzing how users interact with our Services so we can create new features that we think our users will enjoy and that will help them create and manage servers more efficiently or make our Services easier to use.
To market our Services and measure, gauge, and improve the effectiveness of our marketing: For example, by targeting our marketing messages to groups of our users (like those who have a particular level of spending with us or have been users for a certain length of time), advertising our Services, analyzing the results of our marketing campaigns (like how many people increased spending after receiving a marketing message), and understanding and forecasting user retention.
To protect our Services, our users, and the public: For example, by detecting security incidents; detecting and protecting against malicious, deceptive, fraudulent, or illegal activity; fighting spam; complying with our legal obligations; and protecting the rights and property of TensorDock and others, which may result in us, for example, declining a transaction or terminating Services.
To protect us and our Hosts from fraud: For example, by responding to credit card disputes with detailed logs of the Services we’ve provided.
To fix problems with our Services: For example, by monitoring, debugging, repairing, and preventing issues.
To customize the user experience: For example, to personalize your experience by serving you relevant notifications and advertisements for our Services.
To communicate with you: For example, by emailing you to ask for your feedback, share tips for getting the most out of our products, or keep you up to date on TensorDock. If you don’t want to hear from us, you can let us know and opt out of marketing communications at any time. If you opt out, we’ll still send you important updates relating to your account.
To recruit and hire new TensorDock employees: For example, by evaluating job applicants (including verifying their identity, experience, and other information submitted) and communicating with them by phone, email, or social media platforms. If the application progresses, we may also collect interview information and background check information. This may also include verifying information required to initiate employment, for purposes such as confirming ability to legally work in a specific location, setting up payroll, and complying with statutory reporting requirements.
How Long We Keep Information
Given that we’re a relatively young company, we by default keep all user information we collect, and plan to do so indefinitely.
If you are a job applicant, we will keep your personal data during the application process, and for a certain period thereafter. To determine that period, we take into account a number of factors, like our legal and regulatory obligations (such as equal opportunity obligations) and whether we may need to retain personal data for internal business purposes like analyzing our applicant pool.
Legal Bases for Collecting and Using Information
A note here for those in the European Union about our legal grounds for processing information about you under EU data protection laws, which is that our use of your information is based on one of the following grounds:
The use is necessary in order to fulfill our commitments to you under the applicable terms of service or other agreements with you or is necessary to administer your account — for example, in order to enable access to our website on your device or charge you for a paid plan.
The use is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation.
The use is necessary in order to protect your vital interests or those of another person.
We have a legitimate interest in using your information — for example, to provide and update our Services; to improve our Services so that we can offer you an even better user experience; to safeguard our Services; to communicate with you; to measure, gauge, and improve the effectiveness of our advertising; and to understand our user retention and attrition; to monitor and prevent any problems with our Services; and to personalize your experience.
You have given us your consent — for example before we place certain cookies on your device and access and analyze them later on.
How We Share Information
We share information about you in limited circumstances, and with appropriate safeguards on your privacy. These are spelled out below.
Subsidiaries and independent contractors: We may disclose information about you to our subsidiaries and independent contractors who need the information to help us provide our Services or process the information on our behalf. We require our subsidiaries and independent contractors to follow this Privacy Policy for any personal information that we share with them.
Third-party vendors: We may share information about you with third-party vendors who need the information in order to provide their services to us, or to provide their services to you or your site. This includes vendors that help us provide our Services to you (like Stripe, payment providers that process your credit and debit card information, and if you are a Client, our Hosts); those that assist us with our marketing efforts (e.g., by providing tools for identifying a specific marketing target group or improving our marketing campaigns, and by placing ads to market our services); those that help us understand and enhance our Services (like analytics providers); those that make tools to help us run our operations (like programs that help us with task management, scheduling, word processing, email and other communications, and collaboration among our teams); and other third-party tools that help us manage operations. Specifically, we may share information Clients provide to us about their needs to our Hosts and vice versa. We use Google Analytics to collect non-identifying information through the use of cookies. Specific privacy options can be found here. We require vendors to agree to privacy commitments in order to share information with them.
Legal and regulatory requirements: We may disclose information about you in response to a subpoena, court order, or other governmental request. We will make it clear when you need to provide personal information in order to comply with a legal order or when entering a contract with you. We will notify you at the corresponding time, and inform you if providing your personal information is required and if there are possible consequences that will result from a failure to provide your personal information.
To protect rights, property, and others: We may disclose information about you when we believe in good faith that disclosure is reasonably necessary to protect the property or rights of TensorDock, third parties, or the public at large. For example, if we have a good faith belief that there is an imminent danger of death or serious physical injury, we may disclose information related to the emergency without delay.
Business transfers: In connection with any merger, sale of company assets, or acquisition of all or a portion of our business by another company, or in the unlikely event that TensorDock goes out of business or enters bankruptcy, user information would likely be one of the assets that is transferred or acquired by a third party. If any of these events were to happen, this Privacy Policy would continue to apply to your information and the party receiving your information may continue to use your information, but only consistent with this Privacy Policy.
With your consent: We may share and disclose information with your consent or at your direction.
Aggregated or de-identified information: We may share information that has been aggregated or de-identified, so that it can no longer reasonably be used to identify you. For instance, we may publish aggregate statistics about the use of our Services, or share a hashed version of your email address to facilitate customized ad campaigns on other platforms.
Your Rights
If you are located in certain parts of the world, including some US states and countries that fall under the scope of the European General Data Protection Regulation (aka the “GDPR”), you may have certain rights regarding your personal information, like the right to request access to or deletion of your data.
European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
If you are located in a country that falls under the scope of the GDPR, data protection laws give you certain rights with respect to your personal data, subject to any exemptions provided by the law, including the rights to:
Request access to your personal data;
Request correction or deletion of your personal data;
Object to our use and processing of your personal data;
Request that we limit our use and processing of your personal data; and
Request portability of your personal data.
You also have the right to make a complaint to a government supervisory authority.
US Privacy Laws
Laws in some US states, including California, Colorado, Connecticut, Utah, and Virginia, require us to provide residents with additional information about the categories of personal information we collect and share, where we get that personal information, and how and why we use it. You’ll find that information in this section (if you are a California resident, please note that this is the Notice at Collection we are required to provide you under California law).
In the last 12 months, we collected the following categories of personal information, depending on the Services used:
Identifiers (like your name, contact information, and device and online identifiers)
Commercial information (your billing information and purchase history, for example)
Characteristics protected by law (for example, you might provide your gender as part of a research survey for us or you may choose to voluntarily disclose your race or veteran status as part of your job application)
Internet or other electronic network activity information (such as your usage of our Services)
Geolocation data (such as your location based on your IP address);
Professional or employment-related information (for example, your company and team information when you create an organization or information you provide in a job application)
Inferences we make (such as likelihood of retention or attrition).
If you are a job applicant, we may have also collected:
Education information, such as the education you disclose in your job application.
You can find more information about what we collect and sources of that information in the Information We Collect section above.
We collect personal information for the business and commercial purposes described in the How and Why We Use Information section. And we share this information with the categories of third parties described in the Sharing Information section. We retain this information for the length of time described in our How Long We Keep Information section.
In some US states you have additional rights subject to any exemptions provided by your state’s respective law, including the right to:
Request a copy of the specific pieces of information we collect about you and, if you’re in California, to know the categories of personal information we collect, the categories of business or commercial purpose for collecting and using it, the categories of sources from which the information came, and the categories of third parties we share it with;
Request deletion of personal information we collect or maintain;
Request correction of personal information we collect or maintain;
Opt out of the sale or sharing of personal information;
Receive a copy of your information in a readily portable format; and
Not receive discriminatory treatment for exercising your rights.
Right to Opt Out
We never directly sell your personal information in the conventional sense (i.e., for money).
We may share your information as necessary with our third-party service providers to provide our services to you. To the extent that we share your information with certain advertising, marketing, or analytics vendors, this can be considered a “sale” or “share” in certain U.S. States, which you may have the right to opt out of.
We do not collect or process your sensitive (and potentially sensitive) personal information except where it is strictly necessary to provide you with our service, where the processing is not for the purpose of inferring characteristics about you, or for other purposes that do not require an option to limit under California law. We don’t knowingly sell or share personal information of those under 18. In correlation, minors under 18 are not allowed to use our Services. You can alert us via email if you discover any violations of the rules listed in this paragraph.
Contacting Us About These Rights
When you contact us about one of your rights under this section, we’ll need to verify that you are the right person before we disclose or delete anything. For example, if you are a user, we will need you to contact us from the email address associated with your account. You can also designate an authorized agent to make a request on your behalf by giving us written authorization. We may still require you to verify your identity with us.
Appeals Process for Rights Requests Denials
In some circumstances we may deny your request to exercise one of these rights. For example, if we cannot verify that you are the account owner we may deny your request to access the personal information associated with your account. As another example, if we are legally required to maintain a copy of your personal information we may deny your request to delete your personal information.
In the event that we deny your request, we will communicate this fact to you in writing. You may appeal our decision by responding in writing to our denial email and stating that you would like to appeal. All appeals will be reviewed by an internal expert who was not involved in your original request. In the event that your appeal is also denied this information will be communicated to you in writing. Please note that the appeal process does not apply to job applicants.
If your appeal is denied, in some US states (Colorado, Connecticut, and Virginia) you may refer the denied appeal to the state attorney general if you believe the denial is in conflict with your legal rights. The process for how to do this will be communicated to you in writing at the same time we send you our decision about your appeal.
Choices
You have several choices available when it comes to information about you:
Limit the information that you provide: If you have an account with us, you can choose not to provide the optional account information, profile information, and transaction and billing information. Please keep in mind that if you do not provide this information, certain features of our Services may not be accessible. If you are a job applicant, and you choose not to provide certain data elements to us, we may not be able to proceed with the recruitment process.
Opt out of marketing communications: You may opt out of receiving promotional communications from us. Just follow the instructions in those communications or let us know. If you opt out of promotional communications, we may still send you other communications, like those about your account and legal notices.
Set your browser to reject cookies: Many browsers now allow you to remove or reject browser cookies before using our website, with the drawback that certain features of our website may not function properly without the aid of cookies.
Close your account: While we’d be very sad to see you go, you can close your account if you no longer want to use our Services by reaching out to us. Please keep in mind that we may continue to retain your information after closing your account, as described in How Long We Keep Information above — for example, when that information is reasonably needed to comply with (or demonstrate our compliance with) legal obligations such as law enforcement requests, or reasonably needed for our legitimate business interests.
Other Things You Should Know (Keep Reading!)
How to Reach Us
If you have a question about this Privacy Policy, or you would like to contact us about any of the rights mentioned in this section, please contact us through web form or via email here.
Security
While no online service is 100% secure, we work very hard to protect information about you against unauthorized access, use, alteration, or destruction, and take reasonable measures to do so. We monitor our Services for potential vulnerabilities and attacks.
If you have any inquiries regarding this Privacy Policy, please feel free to contact us.
Controllers and Responsible Companies
The data controller of your personal information is TensorDock.com, Inc.
Changing Our Privacy Policy
This Privacy Policy can be changed at our discretion. Although most changes are likely to be minor, TensorDock may change its Privacy Policy from time to time. TensorDock encourages visitors to frequently check this page for any changes to its Privacy Policy. If we make changes, we will notify you by revising the change log below, and, in some cases, we may provide additional notice (like adding a statement to our homepage or our blog, or sending you a notification through email or your dashboard. Your further use of the Services after a change to our Privacy Policy will be subject to the updated policy.
International Data Transfers
Because TensorDock’s Services are offered worldwide, the information about you that we process when you use our Services may be transferred to countries other than the origin country which may have different data protection laws. Particularly, information processed about you when you use our Services in the EU may be used, stored, and/or accessed by individuals operating outside the European Economic Area (EEA) who work for us or third-party data processors. This is required for the purposes listed in the How and Why We Use Information section above.
When providing information about you to entities outside the EEA, we will take appropriate measures to ensure that the recipient protects your personal information adequately in accordance with this Privacy Policy as required by applicable law. These measures include entering into European Commission approved standard contractual arrangements with entities based in countries outside the EEA.
You can ask us for more information about the steps we take to protect your personal information when transferring it from the EU.
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Change Log
June 27, 2024: Complete overhaul
Last updated
