Privacy Policy

VNS Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy describes the policies and procedures of VNS for the collection, use, security and disclosure of personal information about you. It also describes your choices regarding use, access, deletion, and correction of your personal information.

1.Scope

This Privacy Policy explains how VNS treats the personal information it gathers when you use or access VNS website or the services, features, content or applications offered by VNS (collectively with the Site, the “Services”), or when you view or interact with a VNS link. This Privacy Policy also covers VNS’s treatment of any information about you that VNS’s customers share with VNS.

This Privacy Policy does not apply to the practices of other businesses that VNS does not own or control, including other companies’ websites, services and applications (“Third Party Services”) that you can access through the Services or to individuals that VNS does not manage or employ. We cannot take responsibility for the content or privacy policies of Third Party Services. We encourage you to review the privacy policies of any Third Party Services you access or use.

2.Information We Collect

VNS may collect personal information about you from the following sources, as described in this Privacy Policy, when you (i) register for the Site and the Services, through your user account with VNS, including registering through a third-party social networking service (your “Account”); (ii) use the Services; or (iii) view or interact with a VNS link on a third-party website. We collect the following types of information from you, some of which might be considered personal information under applicable law.

3.When You Register for a VNS Account

When you create an Account, we may collect personal information from you, such as your name, phone number, company name, industry, job title, company size, email address, and sign-in information. If you create an Account using your login information from a third-party account, such as Google, Facebook, Apple, or Twitter, we will access and collect the personal information about you that the third-party account provides (which is based on your privacy settings with the third-party account), so that you can log into your Account with us. We use your contact information to send you information about our Services and communicate with you about your Account, your activities on our Site and Services and policy changes. You may unsubscribe from receiving certain types of these messages through your Account settings, although VNS reserves the right to contact you when we believe it is necessary, such as for administrative and account management purposes.

Some features of the Services allow registered users to provide their own content to the Services, such as written descriptions of URLs, comments, images and video. Unless you request deletion of your personal information as described in this Privacy Policy, all content submitted by you to the Services may be retained by VNS, even after you terminate your Account and may continue to be shared by third parties, as described in this Privacy Policy.

4.When You Create A VNS Link

One feature of the Services is the ability to create shortened uniform resource locators (URLs) of websites (“VNS Links”). Users can create VNS Links without registering for an account.When you create a VNS Link, VNS collects and stores both the original URL and the shortened URL and, if you are logged in to your Account, we will associate that information with your Account. VNS also collects and stores your IP address, your geolocation data (which we derive from your IP address), the time and date on which you shortened the original URL, and if you share a VNS Link on a social networking platform, the name of the platform and your username on that platform.

5.When You Interact With a VNS Link

VNS automatically collects personal information about the interaction (such as clicks or views) with every VNS Link created through the Services on a third-party website. This information includes, but is not limited to: (i) the IP address and location derived from the IP address; (ii) internet or other electronic network activity information like the referring websites or services; (iii) the time and date of each access; (iv) device settings, such as browser type, operating system, and language; (v) cookies, as described below, and mobile advertising identiﬁers and (v) information about sharing of the VNS Link on Third Party Services (collectively, “VNS Link Metrics”). As described in this policy, we use VNS Link Metrics to provide the Services, to understand and analyze how our Services are used and to identify trends, and to detect, deter and prevent malicious, fraudulent or unlawful activity. Please see the “Information We May Share” section of this Privacy Policy for a description of how we may share information we collect when you create, view or interact with VNS Links.

6.Other Information We Automatically Collect

When you visit the Site, we automatically collect (i) your IP address and location derived from the IP address; (ii) internet or other electronic network activity information, like the referring websites or services; (iii) the time and date of each access; (iv) device settings, such as browser type, operating system, and language; and (v) cookie information. This type of data enables us and third parties authorized by us to ﬁgure out how often individuals use parts of the Site so that we can analyze and improve them.

We may receive a conﬁrmation when you open an email from us. We use this conﬁrmation to improve our customer service.

VNS may use third-party APIs and software development kits (“SDKs”) to provide certain functions in our Services.

7.Third Party Services

Some features of the Services allow you to share your content and Bitly Links through your accounts with Third Party Services such as Twitter. If you choose to connect Bitly to such Third Party Services, we may collect information related to your use of those Third Party Services, such as authentication tokens that allow us to connect to your Third Party Service accounts. We will ask you for permission before you authorize our collection of this information. We will only use that information for the speciﬁc reason for which it was provided to us. We may also collect information about how you are using the Services to interact with those connected Third Party Services. Note that Third Party Services may have the ability to restrict the information that is provided to us based on your privacy settings of that account.

To enable us to infer the location from the IP addresses of computers or devices that visit our website or click, view or interact with Bitly links as described in this policy, we receive IP-derived location information from our third-party service provider. We also receive business contact information of our business customer contacts and prospects from our third party service provider.

8.Cookies and Other Similar Technologies

VNS and its partners use cookies or similar technologies to analyze trends, administer the website, track users’ movements around the website, and to gather demographic information about our user base as a whole.

Cookies are pieces of text that may be provided to your computer through your web browser when you access a website. Your browser stores cookies in a manner associated with each website you visit. We use cookies to enable our servers to recognize your web browser and tell us how and when you visit our Site and use the Services through the web.

VNS cookies also allow VNS to track when you have clicked on a VNS Link. Each click of a VNS Link is tracked using a unique identiﬁer assigned to you in one or more cookies stored by your web browser and associated with VNS. We may associate the unique identiﬁer in our cookies with the other information we automatically collect when you use the Services, as described above, including your IP address, VNS Links you click, VNS Links you create, and information with your Account if you have one.

Most browsers have an option for turning off the cookie feature, which will prevent your browser from accepting new cookies, as well as (depending on the sophistication of your browser software) allowing you to decide on acceptance of each new cookie in a variety of ways. If you disable cookies, you will not be able to use some features of the Services. We do not currently recognize do-not-track signals.

This Privacy Policy covers the use of cookies by VNS only and does not cover the use of cookies by any Third Party Services. VNS does not control when or how third parties place cookies on your computer, such as when you visit a website through a VNS Link.

9.How We Use Information

We use the personal information we collect for a variety of administrative and business purposes to:

operate our Site and provide the Services, process and complete any transactions, verify individual identity,
respond to inquiries, questions and comments and provide customer and technical support, provide access to certain functionalities of our Services,
personalize and improve the Services and develop new products and services,
communicate with our current and prospective customers concerning our services, measure interest and engagement in our Site and Services,
monitor and analyze usage and trends of the Site and Services,
provide services to our customers to allow them to understand how you interact with our Services and to help detect, deter and prevent malicious, fraudulent or unlawful activity,
comply with any legal obligations, and
enforce our terms and as otherwise described in this Privacy Policy.

10.Usage Across Devices

We may use the information we collect to make inferences that a unique individual has created or interacted with VNS links on different devices so that we can detect, deter and prevent malicious, fraudulent or unlawful activity and analyze how users use our Services. For example, if you created a VNS link on a computer connected to your residential WiFi network, and you soon thereafter clicked on a VNS link on a mobile device connected to the same WiFi network, we may infer that a single individual created and clicked on the VNS links because both events were associated with the same IP address in the same time period.

11.Other Legitimate Interests

We also may use personal information to pursue legitimate interests, such as direct marketing, research (including marketing research), network and information security, prevention of fraudulent, malicious and unlawful activities, or any other purpose disclosed to you at the time you provide personal information or allowed by law.

12.Information We Share

The Services are designed to help you share information with others. In addition, we provide Services to our Customers that use VNS Link Metrics. As a result, the following categories of personal information generated through your use of the Services are shared publicly or with the following categories of third parties for the business purposes described below.

13.VNS Links You Create

Much of your activity on and through the Services is public by default. For example, when you create a VNS Link, the original URLs you have shortened and the corresponding VNS Links are publicly available.

14.Account Information

Where permitted by law, if you register a VNS Account with an email address on a domain owned by an organization, (for example, an employer or educational institution where you have an email account), we may share your email address and information about your Account, such as the number of links you have created, with that organization to explore the organization’s interest in creating or managing an enterprise account or for related purposes.

15.Information We Share With Customers

We may share the personal information we collect as described in this Privacy Policy with our customers. When you create a VNS Link of one of our customer’s sites, the customer may be able to view the unshortened original URL, the date and time the VNS Link was created, the location where it was created as derived from your IP address, and aggregated information about clicks and views of the VNS Links, including the number of times the VNS Link was shared, whether or not it was viewed, comparison of that VNS Link’s performance to that of all VNS Links pointing to the same content, whether others are sharing a VNS Link to the same content, geographic regions where the content is being viewed, and identiﬁcation of social networks on which the VNS Links appear. In addition, we may share VNS Link Metrics with customers to help them detect, deter and prevent malicious, fraudulent or unlawful activity.

16.Information You Elect to Share

When creating a VNS Link, you can share that VNS Link through Third Party Services. Any information that you elect to distribute through Third Party Services, such as a social network post you create, may then become accessible to users of those services. You can also access other Third Party Services through the Services, for example by clicking on links in the Statistics page for a VNS Link. We recommend that you review the terms of services and privacy policies of such Third Party Services that you access through the Services since VNS does not control and is not responsible for the privacy practices of these Third Party Services.

17.Information Shared with Service Providers

We may employ and contract with third parties to perform certain tasks on our behalf and under our direction (our “Service Providers”). We may need to share information about you with our Service Providers in order to fulfill certain business purposes, like providing our product with research and analytics on user behavior and providing advertising products and services to users, processing payments, and providing email marketing and support services. Our agreements with these Service Providers authorize them to use your information only as necessary to provide services to us. Transfers to subsequent third parties are covered by our agreements with our service providers.

18.Information Disclosed Pursuant to Business Transfers

We may transfer and/or provide information about our users in connection with an acquisition, sale of company assets, or other situation where user information would be transferred as one of our business assets.

In such a case, the acquirer of VNS may continue to use your information as set forth in this policy or as otherwise allowed by law.

19.Information Disclosed for the Protection of Bitly and Others

VNS may access, read, preserve, and disclose any information it collects when it has a good faith belief that doing so is reasonably necessary to (i) comply with a law, regulation, or compulsory legal request, including process from a governmental law enforcement or national security agency, (ii) enforce the Privacy Policy or Terms of Service, including investigation of potential violations hereof, (iii) detect, deter, prevent or otherwise address malicious, fraudulent or unlawful activity, (iv) respond to user support requests, or (v) protect the rights, property or safety of VNS, its users and the public. This includes exchanging information with other companies and organizations for protection from malicious, fraudulent or unlawful activity.

20.Information We Share With Your Consent

We will share information about you when you direct or otherwise instruct us to do so, such as when you share VNS Links or content with others through the Services, if you intentionally use or direct us or the Services to interact with third parties, or if we notify you that the information you provide will be shared in a particular manner and you provide such information (like sharing/posting it with a third-party Service).

21.Retention

We retain the personal information we receive as described in this Privacy Policy for as long as you use our Services or as necessary to fulﬁll the purpose(s) for which it was collected, provide our Services, resolve disputes, establish legal defenses, conduct audits, pursue legitimate business purposes, enforce our agreements, and comply with applicable legal obligations.