Privacy Policy

Protecting our clients’ and client customers’ privacy is an important priority at Ascend Marketing and we are committed to maintaining strong and meaningful privacy protections. The privacy of personal information is a significant responsibility and we value the trust you place in us.

Our Privacy Policy is designed to provide understanding about the information we collect, how we use it, and options regarding certain uses of this information.

This policy applies to Ascend Marketing website visitors, app users, and client’s data..

Information we collect and how it is used

We collect information when you communicate with us and when you use our products, services and sites. This includes information you provide such as name and contact information, images, voice recordings or voiceprints, other biometric identifiers, and/or the reason for contacting us. Service and device information we collect includes websites visited, application and feature usage, product and device-specific information and identifiers, service options you choose, name, address, phone number, and other similar information.

We use the information we collect to deliver and maintain products and services; provide account-related services; help us improve and personalize our services, and research and develop new products and services; determine your eligibility for new products and services, and deliver marketing offers to you.

Information we collect may be aggregated or otherwise de-identified for business and marketing uses by us or by third parties. For example, aggregate or de-identified data may be used to improve our services, measure and analyze the use of services and to help make services and advertising more relevant to you.

When you establish an online account or register on our sites or apps, we may collect information about your user identification, password and secret questions and answers. We use this information to authenticate you when you sign in.

Information provided to us by third parties

Ascend Marketing obtains information from outside companies including demographic and interest data (such as gender, age range, or education level), as well as information such as device type, carrier, city and state. We use this data and combine it with other information we have about you to help make marketing offers more relevant to you, and to help us better analyze customer information for business modeling purposes.

When you use social media credentials to login to or interact with an Ascend Marketing enhanced site or offer, we may collect information about your social media profile, such as your interests, “likes” and friends list. We use this information, for example, to personalize your Ascend Marketing experiences and marketing communications, to enhance our services, and to better serve you. You can control this data sharing via options in your social media accounts.

We also obtain contact information and other marketing lead information from third parties, website “refer-a-friend” options or social media platforms and may combine it with information we have to contact you or direct our clients marketing offers to you.

Information collected on Ascend Marketing websites and apps

When you use Ascend Marketing enhanced websites and apps, information is collected about your device and your visit including browsing, searching and buying activity as you interact with our sites and apps; IP address; telephone, device numbers and identifiers; account information; web addresses of the sites you come from and go to next; and information about your connection, including your device’s browser, operating system, platform type and Internet connection speed. We use this information to help us deliver more relevant marketing messages on our websites, by our representatives, via mail and email, or via other services or devices. This information is also used to tailor the content you see, manage the frequency with which you see an advertisement, tailor advertisements to better match your interests and understand the effectiveness of our advertising. We also may use this information to assess the effectiveness of our sites and to help you should you request help with navigation problems on our sites.

We may place and read cookies on our enhanced sites to help us deliver marketing messages as described above. Consumers are given the ability to opt out of their use of information for these purposes where it is within our control to do so.

Information you provide

When you contact us for information we may use the information you supply to provide you with information about Ascend Marketing services, programs and offerings. Information you provide on our websites about your preferred location and other preferences may be used to provide you with more relevant product recommendations, services and special offers.

We also collect information from you when you participate in surveys or provide other feedback to us regarding our products or services, when you register to receive news, or when you apply for a job with Ascend Marketing. We use this information only for the purpose for which you provide it.

Ascend Marketing may send you emails about your account or about products, services, and promotions that may be of interest to you. We may collect information when you open these emails or click on links within the emails. This information is used to personalize the content of the emails themselves and make future communications and marketing more interesting to you. Please note that Ascend Marketing will not ask you to send sensitive personal or account information via email.

Information we share

Information shared outside Ascend Marketing

Except as explained in this Privacy Policy, Ascend Marketing does not sell, license or share information that individually identifies our clients, client’s customers, or website visitors with others that are not performing work on our behalf without the consent of the person whose information will be shared.

Ascend Marketing may use vendors and partners for a variety of business purposes such as to help us offer, provide, repair, restore and bill for services we provide. We share information with those vendors and partners when it is necessary for them to perform work on our behalf. For example, we may provide your credit card information and billing address to our payment processing company solely for the purpose of processing payment for a transaction you have requested. We require that these vendors and partners protect the customer information we provide to them and limit their use of Ascend Marketing customer data to the purposes for which it was provided. We do not permit these types of vendors and partners to use this information for their own marketing purposes.

As described in more detail in other sections of this policy, Ascend Marketing also may share certain information with outside companies, for example, to assist with the delivery of advertising campaigns, or preparing and sharing aggregate reports. This information does not identify Ascend Marketing customers individually.

We may disclose information that individually identifies our customers or identifies customer devices in certain circumstances, such as:

to comply with valid legal process including subpoenas, court orders or search warrants, and as otherwise authorized by law; in cases involving danger of death or serious physical injury to any person or other emergencies;
to protect our rights or property, or the safety of our customers or employees;
to protect against fraudulent, malicious, abusive, unauthorized or unlawful use of or subscription to our products and services and to protect our network, services, devices and users from such use;
to advance or defend against complaints or legal claims in court, administrative proceedings and elsewhere;
to credit bureaus or collection agencies to determine credit risk, for reporting purposes or to obtain payment for Ascend Marketing-billed products and services;
to a third-party that you have authorized to verify your account information;
when you have authorized others to authenticate you or verify your account information;
to outside auditors and regulators; or
with your consent.

When you purchase services offered jointly by Ascend Marketing and one of our partners, customer information may be received by both Ascend Marketing and our partner that is providing your service. For these jointly offered services, you should also review the partner company’s privacy policy which may include practices that are different from the practices described here.

If Ascend Marketing enters into a merger, acquisition or sale of all or a portion of its assets or business, customer information will also be transferred as part of or in connection with the transaction.

Information provided to or used by advertising entities or social networks

You may see third-party advertisements on some Ascend Marketing enhanced websites, services, apps and devices. Some advertisements are chosen by companies that operate on our sites and other sites (for example, ad servers, ad networks, or technology platforms) to place ads on behalf of advertisers. These companies may place and access cookies on your device to collect information about your visit on websites and may collect device advertising identifiers from your mobile operating system to learn about your use of apps, including ours. The information they collect from our sites and apps is in a form that does not identify you personally and may be combined with similar data they obtain from other websites and apps to help advertisers better reach audiences they wish to target. Targeting may be accomplished by tailoring advertising to interests that they infer from your interactions on our sites and apps and your interaction with other sites and services where these companies also are present.

If you choose to interact with specific advertisers who advertise on our apps, sites or services, the information you provide to them is subject to the conditions of their specific privacy policies.

Advertising that is customized based on predictions generated from your visits over time and across different websites is sometimes called “online behavioral” or “interest-based” advertising. We require that companies disclose when they are using online behavioral advertising programs to deliver third-party ads on our sites or collecting information about your visit to our sites for these purposes and give consumers the ability to opt out of this use of their information.

Ascend Marketing enhanced websites and services may include social network or other third-party plug-ins and widgets that may provide information to their associated social networks or third-parties about your interactions with Ascend Marketing enhanced pages you visit or services you use, even if you do not click on or otherwise interact with the plug-in or widget.

How to limit the sharing and use of your information

Customer Proprietary Network Information (CPNI)

Ascend Marketing clients’ customers may choose to limit the use and sharing of CPNI for marketing services outside of services you currently have by notifying our client via their opt out mechanisms. A withdrawal of CPNI consent by a client’s customer is applied by Ascend Marketing at the request of our client.

Telemarketing

Ascend Marketing clients’ customers may opt out by notifying our client. A request to be removed from a clients’ customer telemarketing list is applied by Ascend Marketing at the request of our client.

Marketing e-mail, text messages, postal mail and door-to-door calls

Ascend Marketing clients’ customers may opt out of email, text messages, postal mail and door-to-door calls by notifying our client. A request to be removed from a client’s customer marketing list will be applied by Ascend Marketing at the request of our client.

Information security and data retention

Ascend Marketing has technical, administrative and physical safeguards in place to help protect against unauthorized access to, use or disclosure of customer information we collect or store. Employees are trained on the importance of protecting privacy and on the proper access to, use and disclosure of customer information. Under our practices and policies, access to sensitive personally identifiable information is authorized only for those who have a business need for such access. Personally identifiable and other sensitive records are retained only as long as reasonably necessary for business, accounting, tax or legal purposes.

Although we work hard to protect personal information that we collect and store, no program is 100% secure and we cannot guarantee that our safeguards will prevent every unauthorized attempt to access, use or disclose personal information. Ascend Marketing maintains security and incident response plans to handle incidents involving unauthorized access to private information we collect or store.

If you become aware of a security issue, please contact Ascend Marketing’s Security Team. We will work with you to address any problems.

Information sharing: Blogs and social networking

Some Ascend Marketing enhanced websites, apps and services may allow you to participate in blog discussions, message boards, chat rooms, and other forms of social networking and to post reviews. These forums are accessible to others and information you post can be read, collected, shared, or otherwise used by anyone who accesses the forum. If you post content to information sharing forums you are doing so by choice and you are providing consent to the disclosure of this information.

Changes to this policy

We reserve the right to make changes to this privacy policy, so please check back periodically for changes. You will be able to see that changes have been made by checking to see the effective date posted at the end of the policy.

Updated: December 2020