1. Who we are
At FMG, we are devoted to protecting the privacy of your data. This privacy policy provides you with details of how we collect and process your personal data through your use of our website (https://fmgdesign.com/) including any information you may provide through our website when you fill in our contact form to sign up for our newsletter.
*Please note that this privacy policy is currently a draft and it is possible the content may change as we finalize it. Thank you for your patience.
By providing us with your data, you warrant to us that you are over 13 years of age.
FMG Design Inc. is the data controller, and we are responsible for your personal data (referred to as “we,” “us,” “our,” or “FMG” in this privacy policy).
Contact Details
- Full name of legal entity: FMG Design Inc.
- Email address: info@fmgdesign.com
- Postal address: 101 Crawford St # 100, Houston, TX 77002
You have the right to complain to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the US general authority for data protection issues if you are not satisfied with any aspect of how we collect and use your data. If you do have a complaint, we would be grateful if you contact us first so that we can try to resolve it.
It’s critical that the information we hold about you remain accurate and up to date. Please email us at info@fmgdesign.com to let us know if at any time your personal information changes.
2. What personal data we collect about you and why
Personal data is not just created by your interactions with our website. Personal data refers to any information capable of identifying an individual. It does not include anonymized data. It may also be generated from technical processes such as our contact form, comments, cookies, analytics, and third-party embeds that include media
We may collect and use certain types of personal data about you as described below:
- Identity Data may include your first name, maiden name, last name, username, or title.
- Contact Data may include your billing address, delivery address, telephone numbers, and email address.
- Financial Data may include your payment card details and bank account.
- Transaction Data may include details about payments between us and other information regarding payments made by you.
- Technical Data may include internet protocol addresses, browser type and version, browser plug-in types and versions, time zone setting and location, operating system and platform and other technology on the devices you use to access this site.
- Usage Data may include information on how you use our website and our services. It may also include your interests, preferences, feedback and online form responses.
- Marketing and Communications Data may include your preferences in receiving marketing communications from our third parties and us as well as specific communication preferences you may have.
We may also process Aggregated Data from your personal data. This data, however, does not reveal your identity and as such in itself is not personal data. To illustrate, we may review your Usage Data to work out the percentage of website users using a specific feature of our site. If the Aggregated Data is linked to your personal data to identify you, then it is considered personal data.
Sensitive Data
We do not collect any Sensitive Data about you. Sensitive data pertains to data that includes information about your religious or philosophical beliefs, race or ethnicity, sex life, gender, sexual orientation, marital status, date of birth, trade union membership, political opinions, information about your genetic and biometric data or your general health. Also, we do not collect any information about criminal convictions and offenses.
Where we are required to collect personal data either by US law or under the terms of the contract between you and us, we may ask you to provide us with personal data. If you do not provide us with that data when we request it, we may not be able to carry out the contract (for example, to deliver goods or services to you). In other words, we may have to cancel a service you have requested if you don’t provide us with the required data. However, we will notify you before we proceed with the cancellation.
3. How we collect your personal data
General
We collect data about you through the following methods:
- Direct interactions: You may provide data by filling in various fields within forms on our website (or otherwise) or by communicating with us via phone, email, post, or otherwise, including when you:
- request our consultation services;
- subscribe to our newsletter;
- request resources or marketing be sent to you;
- give us feedback.
- Automated technologies or interactions: As you use our site, we may automatically collect Technical Data about your equipment, browsing actions and usage patterns. We collect this data by using cookies, server logs, and similar technologies. We may also receive Technical Data about you if you visit other websites that use our cookies.
- Third Party Sources: We may receive information about you from publicly and commercially available sources, as permitted by law, which we may combine with other information we receive from or about you. For example, we may receive information about you from a social media site if you connect to the services through that site. For more information on data gathered through social media platforms, please refer to the Marketing Communications excerpt on section 4 of this privacy policy.
Contact Forms
We use a third party called Constant Contact to process data which is submitted via the various forms on our website. We will ask you to submit your email address as a minimum requirement and your first name as an option in order to maintain your email subscription to us and to send you emails that provide you with the latest news, tips, and updates about our consultation services and expertise that may be of interest to you. For more information on how your data submitted by these forms is being used, please refer to the Marketing Communications excerpt on section 4 of this privacy policy.
Cookies and Tracking
A “cookie” is a small data file that can be placed on your hard drive when you visit certain websites or open certain emails. We may use cookies to collect, store, and sometimes track information for statistical purposes to improve the services we provide and to manage our telecommunications networks. More specifically, we use different types of cookies for different purposes:
- Required cookies: These are necessary for our website to work properly. Without these cookies, the services available to you on our website cannot be provided. These cookies do not gather information about you that could be used for marketing or remembering where you have been on the internet.
- Session cookies: These are only stored on your computer during your web session and are automatically deleted when you close your browser – they usually store an anonymous session ID allowing you to browse a website without having to log in to each page but they do not collect any personal data from your computer.
- Persistent cookies: These are stored as a file on your computer and it remains there when you close your web browser. The cookie can be read by the website that created it when you visit that website again. We use persistent cookies for Google Analytics.
- Performance cookies: These allow us to analyze how Visitors use our website so we can measure and improve the performance of our website. For example, they allow us to count visits, identify traffic sources and see which parts of the site are most popular.
- Functional cookies: These allow us to remember choices you may have made on our website and to provide you with enhanced features. For instance, we may be able to provide you with news or updates relevant to the features of our website that you use. The information these cookies collect is usually anonymized.
- Advertising cookies: Third party websites may utilize advertising cookies to present ads that are relevant to your interests. We do not collect advertising cookies since we do not use advertisements on our website.
We may utilize cookies to track referrals from internal and external affiliates, as well as advertising campaigns. We may also use a third party service provider to send emails that you have agreed to receive. Pixel tags and cookies may be used in those email messages to help us measure the effectiveness of our advertising and to enable us to provide more focused marketing communications to you. You may set your web browser to notify you when you receive a cookie or change the settings on your web browser to clear or disable cookies. If you decide not to accept cookies, you may not be able to take advantage of all of the features of our website. Additionally, please be aware that if you visit third party websites where you are prompted to log in or that are customizable, you may be required to accept cookies. Cookies do not enable third parties to access any of your personal (i.e., contact) information. However, advertisers and partners may also use their own cookies. We do not control use of these cookies and are not responsible for information collected through them.
Embedded content from other websites
Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). 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 tracing your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.
Analytics
We use information gathered from our website analytics (for example, User IP addresses) to help diagnose problems with our website and to administer and optimize our website. We also gather broad demographic information from this data to help us improve our website and make your browsing experience more responsive, efficient, or enjoyable. Any statistics gathered by us are our proprietary property.
We use a third-party hosting provider called Fat Cow to host our website. Fat Cow may collect some anonymous analytics data from your browsing experience. As mentioned previously, we do not control the use of this data and are not responsible for information collected through them. You can read Fat Cow’s Privacy Policy here.
4. How we use your personal data
FMG will only use your personal data when legally allowed. The most common uses of your personal data are:
- Where we need to adhere to a regulatory or legal requirement.
- Where it is necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party) and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests.
- Where we need to carry out the contract between us.
In general, we do not rely on consent as a legal ground for processing your personal data, other than sending marketing communications to you via email, in person, or by mail. You have the right to withdraw consent to marketing at any time by emailing us at info@fmgdesign.com.
Purposes for processing your personal data
Below, you will find a detailed description of the ways we intend to use your personal data. The legal grounds on which we will process such data and our legitimate interests are included.
We may collect and process your personal data for more than one legal ground. This will depend on the specific purpose for which we are using your data. Please email us at info@fmgdesign.com if you need details about the specific legal ground we are relying on to process your personal data where more than one ground has been described in the table below.
Purpose/Activity | Type of data | Lawful basis for processing |
To register you as a new client | (a) Identity (b) Contact | Performance of a contract with you |
To process and deliver your order including: (a) Manage payments, fees and charges (b) Collect and recover money owed to us | (a) Identity (b) Contact (c) Financial (d) Transaction (e) Marketing and Communications | (a) Performance of a contract with you (b) Necessary for our legitimate interests to recover debts owed to us |
To manage our relationship with you which will include: (a) Notifying you about changes to our terms or privacy policy (b) Asking you to leave a review or take a survey | (a) Identity (b) Contact (c) Profile (d) Marketing and Communications | (a) Performance of a contract with you (b) Necessary to comply with a legal obligation (c) Necessary for our legitimate interests to keep our records updated and to study how our clients and end users experience the results of our services |
To enable you to partake in a prize draw, competition or complete a survey | (a) Identity (b) Contact (c) Profile (d) Usage (e) Marketing and Communications | (a) Performance of a contract with you (b) Necessary for our legitimate interests to study how customers use our products/services, to develop them and grow our business |
To administer and protect our business and our site (including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, system maintenance, support, reporting and hosting of data) | (a) Identity (b) Contact (c) Technical | (a) Necessary for our legitimate interests for running our business, provision of administration and IT services, network security, to prevent fraud and in the context of a business reorganization or group restructuring exercise (b) Necessary to comply with a legal obligation |
To deliver relevant content and advertisements to you and measure and understand the effectiveness of our advertising | (a) Identity (b) Contact (c) Profile (d) Usage (e) Marketing and Communications (f) Technical | Necessary for our legitimate interests to study how customers use our products/services, to develop them, to grow our business and to inform our marketing strategy |
To use data analytics to improve our website, services, marketing, client relationships and experiences | (a) Technical (b) Usage | Necessary for our legitimate interests to define types of clients for our services, to keep our site updated and relevant, to develop our business and to inform our marketing strategy |
To make suggestions and recommendations to you about goods or services that may be of interest to you | (a) Identity (b) Contact (c) Technical (d) Usage (e) Profile | Necessary for our legitimate interests to develop our consultation strategy and grow our business |
Marketing communications
You will receive marketing communications from FMG if you have:
- requested information from us or if you have asked for consultation services from us; or
- if you provided us with your information when filling in our contact form and checked the consent box at the point of entry of your information so that we may send you marketing communications; and
- in each case, you have not opted out of receiving those marketing communications.
We use a third party called Constant Contact to maintain your email subscription to us and to send you emails that provide you with the latest news, tips, and updates about our consultation services and expertise that may be of interest to you. All of our emails have clear unsubscribe links at the bottom of them. We will only use your email to send you such emails with your consent. You can read Constant Contact’s Privacy Policy here.
To manage the information we receive about you from a social networking site or any other third party, you will need to follow the instructions from that party for updating your information and changing your privacy settings. The information we collect is covered by this privacy statement and the information the third party collects is subject to such third party’s privacy practices. Privacy choices you have made on any third party site will not apply to our use of the information we have collected directly through our sites.
We will get your expressed opt-in consent before we share your personal data with any third party for marketing purposes.
You can ask third parties or us to stop sending you marketing messages at any time by following the opt-out links on any marketing message sent to you or OR by emailing us at info@fmgdesign.com at any given moment.
As a result of a payment for a service, warranty registration, service experience or other kinds of transactions, opting out of receiving our marketing communications will not apply to personal data provided to us during a transaction.
Change of purpose
Your personal data will solely be used by FMG for the purposes for which we collected it unless we reasonably consider that we need to use it for another reason and that reason is compatible with the original purpose. If you wish to find out more about how the processing for the new purpose is consistent with the original purpose, please email us at info@fmgdesign.com.
If we must use your personal data for a purpose unrelated to the purpose for which we collect such data, we will inform you. During which, we will discuss the legal ground of processing in detail.
Where permitted or required by law, we may process your personal data without your knowledge or consent.
5. Disclosures of your personal data
We may have to share your personal data with the following parties mentioned below for the purposes described in the table in section 4 above:
- Service providers who provide system and IT administration services.
- HM Revenue & Customs, regulators and other authorities based in the United States and other relevant jurisdictions which demand to report of processing activities in certain circumstances.
- Professional advisers including lawyers, bankers, auditors and insurers who provide consultancy, banking, legal, insurance, and accounting services.
- Cloud-based remote services: We use a third-party file hosting service called Google Drive to backup and store our website data for security purposes. Google Drive may collect data from your browsing experience. You can read Google Drive’s Privacy Policy here.
- Web hosting services: We use a third-party hosting provider called Fat Cow to host our website. Fat Cow may collect some anonymous analytics data from your browsing experience. You can read Fat Cow’s Privacy Policy here.
We require all third parties to whom we transfer your data to respect the security of your personal data and to treat it in accordance with the law. We only allow such third parties to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions. As mentioned previously, we do not control the use of any data gathered by third parties service providers and we are not responsible for information collected through them.
6. International transfers
Countries outside of the European Economic Area (EEA) do not always offer the same levels of protection to your personal data, so European law has prohibited transfers of personal data outside of the EEA unless the transfer meets certain criteria.
Many of our third parties service providers are based outside the European Economic Area (EEA) so their processing of your personal data will involve a transfer of data outside the EEA.
Whenever we transfer your personal data out of the EEA, we do our best to ensure a similar degree of security of data by ensuring at least one of the following safeguards is implemented:
- We will only transfer your personal data to countries that have been deemed to provide an adequate level of protection for personal data by the European Commission; or
- Where we use certain service providers, we may use specific contracts or codes of conduct or certification mechanisms approved by the European Commission which give personal data the same protection it has in Europe; or
- Where we use providers based in the United States, we may transfer data to them if they are part of the EU-US Privacy Shield which requires them to provide similar protection to personal data shared between Europe and the US.
If none of the above safeguards is available, we may request your explicit consent to the specific transfer. You will have the right to withdraw this consent at any time.
Please email us at info@fmgdesign.com if you want further information on the specific mechanism used by us when transferring your personal data out of the EEA.
7. Data Security
In order to protect and to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorized way, altered or disclosed, we established the following security measures:
- Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption: provided by Comodo Group Inc.
- Website Security Enforcement: We take precautions against security breaches by means of brute force protection, strong password enforcement, malware scans, and much more.
- Limitations to Third Parties: Access to your personal data is limited to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business-related need to access and process such data. They will only process your personal data with our guidance and instructions, and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality.
- Periodic Data Review: We regularly review our data collection, storage, and processing practices, including physical and electronic security measures.
- Staff training: We hold periodic staff training in data protection in order to avoid the possibility of any data breach.
Regarding third-party links, please see Section 10 of this privacy policy.
We have prescribed procedures to deal with any suspected personal data breach. Where we are legally required, we will inform you and any applicable regulator of a breach.
8. Data Retention
FMG will only retain your personal data for as long as necessary to fulfill the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements.
To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider the following factors:
- The nature, amount, and sensitivity of the personal data.
- The potential risk of harm from unauthorized use or disclosure of your personal data.
- The purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through any other means, and the applicable legal prerequisites.
By law, we have to keep vital information about our clients (including Contact, Identity, Financial and Transaction Data) for seven (7) years after they cease being our clients for tax purposes.
In some circumstances you can ask us to delete your data: see below for further information.
In some circumstances, we may anonymize your personal data (so that your personal data can no longer be associated with you) for research or statistical purposes. In which case, we may use this information indefinitely without further notice to you.
9. Your legal rights
Under certain circumstances, you have rights under the data protection laws concerning your personal data. Among these rights will include the right to:
- Request access to your personal data.
- Request correction of your personal data.
- Request erasure of your personal data.
- Request restriction of processing your personal data.
- Request transfer of your personal data.
- Object to the processing of your personal data.
- Right to withdraw consent.
For more information about your rights under the data protection laws, please visit the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) website.
If you wish to exercise any of the rights mentioned above, please email us at info@fmgdesign.com.
If you have left any comments, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.
To access your personal data (or to exercise any of the other rights), you will not be required to pay a fee. However, we may charge a reasonable price if your request is misleading, repetitive or excessive. Alternatively, we may refuse to comply with your request in such circumstances.
To help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access your personal data (or to exercise any of your other rights), we may need to request specific information from you. We follow this procedure as a security measure to ensure that personal data is not disclosed to any individual who has no right to receive it. In order to speed up our response, we may also contact you for further information concerning your request.
We try to respond to all legitimate requests within the period of (1) one month. If your request is particularly complex or you have made many requests, it may take us longer than (1) one month. In such case, we will inform you and keep you updated.
10. Third-parties
Our website may include links to third-party sites, plugins, and applications. Clicking on such links or enabling those connections may allow third parties to collect and/or share data about you. We do not control these third-party websites and are not responsible for their privacy policies. Upon leaving our website, we encourage you to read the privacy notice of every site you visit.