Last updated: July 30, 2024
The privacy of your data—and it is your data, not ours!—is a big deal to us. In this policy, we lay out: what data we collect and why; how your data is handled; and your rights with respect to your data. We promise we never sell your data: never have, never will.
This policy is split into sections. For your convenience, links to each of those sections is as follows:
This policy applies to all products built and maintained by Spadework.
This policy applies to our handling of information about site visitors, prospective customers, and customers and authorized users (in relation to their procurement of the services and management of their relationship with Spadework). We refer collectively to these categories of individuals as “you” throughout this policy.
However, this policy does not cover information about a customer’s end users that Spadework receives from a customer, or otherwise processes on a customer’s behalf, in connection with the services provided by Spadework to the customer pursuant to an applicable services agreement (including the content of messages of customer end users (“End User Communications”)). Spadework processes End User Communications under the instructions of the relevant customer, which is the “data controller” or “business” (or occupies a similar role as defined in applicable privacy laws), as described in the applicable services agreement between such customer and Spadework. Spadework’s obligations as a “data processor” or “service provider” with respect to such information are defined in such services agreement and applicable data protection addendum and are not made part of this policy.
If you are a customer’s end user and you have questions about how your information is collected and processed through the services, please contact the organization who has provided your information to us for more information.
Our guiding principle is to collect only what we need. Here’s what that means in practice:
When you sign up for a Spadework product, we ask for identifying information such as your name, email address, and maybe a company name. That’s so you can personalize your new account, and we can send you product updates and other essential information. We may also send you optional surveys from time to time to help us understand how you use our products and to make improvements. With your consent, we will send you our newsletter and other updates. We sometimes also give you the option to add a profile picture that displays in our products.
We’ll never sell your personal information to third parties, and we won’t use your name or company in marketing statements without your permission either.
If you sign up for a paid Spadework product, you will be asked to provide your payment information and billing address. Credit card information is submitted directly to our payment processor and doesn’t hit Spadework servers. We store a record of the payment transaction, including the last 4 digits of the credit card number, for purposes of account history, invoicing, and billing support. We store your billing address so we can charge you for service, calculate any sales tax due, send you invoices, and detect fraudulent credit card transactions. We occasionally use aggregate billing information to guide our marketing efforts.
We store on our servers the content that you upload or receive or maintain in your Spadework product accounts. This is so you can use our products as intended, for example, to create resume templates. We keep this content as long as your account is active. If you delete your account, we’ll delete the content within 30 days.
For most of our products, we log the full IP address used to sign up a product account and retain that for use in mitigating future spammy signups. We also log all account access by full IP address for security and fraud prevention purposes, and we keep this login data for as long as your product account is active.
We collect information about your browsing activity for analytics and statistical purposes such as experimenting with new product designs. This includes, for example, your browser and operating system versions, your IP address, which web pages you visited and how long they took to load, and which website referred you to us. If you have an account and are signed in, these web analytics data are tied to your IP address and user account until your account is no longer active, otherwise the information is collected anonymously. The web analytics we use are described further in the Advertising and Cookies section.
Spadework does not run ads or use cookies to track your behavior across the Internet. We only use functional cookies. We only use cookies to the extent necessary to provide you with our Services or as requested by you once you register an account (or are otherwise authenticated) to store preferences, settings and verify signed-in status. For example, we store an authentication token so we know it’s you that is using our services and we store cookies to for example remember preferences like whether you wish to use the chat interface or not.
When you email Spadework with a question or to ask for help, we keep that correspondence, including your email address, so that we have a history of past correspondence to reference if you reach out in the future.
We also store information you may volunteer, for example, written responses to surveys. If you agree to a customer interview, we may ask for your permission to record the conversation for future reference or use. We will only do so with your express consent.
To provide products or services you’ve requested. We use some third-party subprocessors to help run our applications and provide the Services to you. These are listed in our Data Processing Agreement (DPA) which will be provided to you upon request.
We may disclose your information at your direction if you integrate a third-party service into your use of our products. For example, we may allow you, at your option, to save a resume template and/or candidate information to an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) or other systems that you wish to integrate.
No Spadework human looks at your personal data submitted to our platform or personal data of other natural persons submitted by you to our platform, except for limited purposes with your express permission, such as:
To help you troubleshoot or squash a software bug, with your permission. If at any point we need to access your content to help you with a support case, we will ask for your consent before proceeding.
To investigate, prevent, or take action regarding restricted uses. Accessing a customer’s account when investigating potential abuse is a measure of last resort. We want to protect the privacy and safety of both our customers and the people reporting issues to us, and we do our best to balance those responsibilities throughout the process. If we discover you are using our products for a restricted purpose, we will take action as necessary, including notifying appropriate authorities where warranted.
Aggregated and de-identified data. We may aggregate and/or de-identify information collected through the services. We may use de-identified or aggregated data for any purpose, including marketing, analytics or training machine learning algorithms. This policy does not restrict our use of aggregated or de-identified data because it does not identify you personally.
When required under applicable law. Spadework is a company based in the Netherlands and all data infrastructure are located within the European Union.
Requests for user data. Our policy is to not respond to government requests for user data unless we are compelled by legal process or in limited circumstances in the event of an emergency request. However, if law enforcement authorities have the necessary warrant, criminal subpoena, or court order requiring us to disclose data, we must comply. Likewise, we will only respond to requests from government authorities outside the Netherlands if compelled by the Dutch government through procedures outlined in a mutual legal assistance treaty or agreement. It is Spadework’ policy to notify affected users before we disclose data unless we are legally prohibited from doing so, and except in some emergency cases.
Preservation requests. Similarly, Spadework’ policy is to comply with requests to preserve data only if compelled by the Dutch government. We do not disclose preserved data unless required by law or compelled by a court order that we choose not to appeal. Furthermore, unless we receive a proper warrant, court order, or subpoena before the required preservation period expires, we will destroy any preserved copies of customer data at the end of the preservation period.
If we are audited by a tax authority, we may be required to disclose billing-related information. If that happens, we will disclose only the minimum needed, such as billing addresses and tax exemption information.
Finally, if Spadework is acquired by or merges with another company — we don’t plan on that, but if it happens — we’ll notify you well before any of your personal information is transferred or becomes subject to a different privacy policy.
At Spadework, we strive to apply the same data rights to all customers, regardless of their location. Some of these rights include:
Many of these rights can be exercised by signing in and updating your account information. Please note that certain information may be exempt from such requests under applicable law. For example, we need to retain certain information in order to provide our services to you.
In some cases, we also need to take reasonable steps to verify your identity before responding to a request, which may include, at a minimum, depending on the sensitivity of the information you are requesting and the type of request you are making, verifying your name and email address. If we are unable to verify you, we may be unable to respond to your requests. If you have questions about exercising these rights or need assistance, please contact us at privacy@spadework.ai. If an authorized agent is corresponding on your behalf, we will need written consent with a signature from the account holder before proceeding.
Depending on applicable law, you may have the right to appeal our decision to deny your request, if applicable. We will provide information about how to exercise that right in our response denying the request. You also have the right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority. If you are in the EU or UK, you can contact your data protection authority to file a complaint or learn more about local privacy laws.
All data is encrypted via SSL/TLS when transmitted from our servers to your browser. The database backups are also encrypted. In addition, we go to great lengths to secure your data at rest using the cloud provider’s infrastructure-level disk encryption. For more information about how we keep your information secure, please review our security overview.
In many of our applications, we give you the option to trash content. Anything you trash in your product accounts while they are active can be kept in an accessible trash can for about 25 days (it varies a little by product). After that time, the trashed content cannot be accessed via the application and we are not able to retrieve it for you. The trashed content may remain on our active servers for another 30 days, and copies of the content may be held in backups of our application databases for up to another 30 days after that. Altogether, any content trashed in your product accounts should be purged from all of our systems and logs within 90 days.
If you choose to cancel your account, your content will become immediately inaccessible and should be purged from our systems in full within 60 days. This applies both for cases when an account owner directly cancels and for auto-canceled accounts.
We keep your information for the time necessary for the purposes for which it is processed. The length of time for which we retain information depends on the purposes for which we collected and use it and your choices, after which time we may delete and/or aggregate it. We may also retain and use this information as necessary to comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes, and enforce our agreements. Through this policy, we have provided specific retention periods for certain types of information.
Spadework has selected its datacenters in order to ensure reliability and compliance with EU regulations. Our servers and databases are located in the European Union and hosted on SOC Type 2 certified data centers.
The European Data Protection Board (EDPB) has issued guidance that personal data transferred out of the EU must be treated with the same level of protection that is granted under EU privacy law. UK law provides similar safeguards for UK user data that is transferred out of the UK. Accordingly, Spadework has adopted a data processing addendum with Standard Contractual Clauses to help ensure this protection. Spadework’ DPA is available upon request.
We may update this policy as needed to comply with relevant regulations and reflect any new practices. You may request a history of the changes to our policies since Spadework was founded by e-mailing us at privacy@spadework.nl. Whenever we make a significant change to our policies, we will take appropriate steps to notify users.
Have any questions, comments, or concerns about this privacy policy, your data, or your rights with respect to your information? Please get in touch by emailing us at privacy@spadework.nl and we’ll be happy to try to answer them!