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Effective date: October 12, 2021
At Karat, Inc. (“Karat”), we take your privacy seriously. Please read this Privacy Policy to learn how we treat your personal data. By using or accessing our services, including our websites (i.e., www.karat.com and central.karat.io) and our interviewing platform or otherwise performing an interview with us (collectively, “Services”), in any manner, you acknowledge that you accept the practices and policies outlined below, and you hereby consent that we will collect, use and share your information as described in this Privacy Policy.
If you participate in Karat’s interviewing platform or otherwise perform an interview with us, remember that your use of Karat’s Services is always subject to our Job Candidate Interview Agreement, which incorporates this Privacy Policy.
You may print a copy of this Privacy Policy by clicking here: Karat – Privacy Policy (Rev 2021-09-17) Download. If you have a disability, you may access this Privacy Policy in an alternative format by contacting privacy@karat.com.
What this Privacy Policy Covers
Personal Data
How We Share Your Personal Data
Tracking Tools, Advertising and Opt-Out
Data Security and Retention
Personal Data of Children
California Resident Rights
Other State Law Privacy Rights
European Union Data Subject Rights
Changes to this Privacy Policy
Contact Information
This Privacy Policy covers how we treat Personal Data that we gather when you access or use our Services. “Personal Data” means any information that identifies or relates to a particular individual and also includes information referred to as “personally identifiable information” or “personal information” under applicable data privacy laws, rules or regulations. This Privacy Policy does not cover the practices of companies we don’t own or control or people we don’t manage.
Categories of Personal Data We Collect
The following charts detail the categories of Personal Data that we collect and have collected over the past 12 months. The Personal Data we collect, and how we share it, depend upon your interactions with us. For example, we collect and share Personal Data differently depending upon whether you visit or interact with a Karat website (i.e. www.karat.com or central.karat.io), in which case you are a “Website Visitor,” or you are a candidate that is participating in our interviewing platform or otherwise performing an interview with us in which case you are a “Candidate.” Note that you can be both a Website Visitor and a Candidate, including, for example, if you are a Candidate that visits www.karat.com.
Candidate Personal Data
The following chart details the Personal Data that we collect and have collected over the past 12 months from Candidates. We may share your Personal Data with the categories of third parties identified in this table. Note that we may share your Personal Data with employers that refer you to Karat in order to provider our services (“Prospective Employers”). Only if we first obtain your consent, we may also share your Personal Data with employers that may be interested in your profile (“Interested Employers”) when you elect to participate in certain product features, offerings, and other opportunities with Karat and/or such Interested Employers. We value your privacy: we will first explain the opportunities and seek to obtain your informed consent to participate before your Personal Data is shared with Interested Employers, and we will not share your Personal Data for such purposes if you do not provide consent.
Personal Data of Website Visitors and Prospective Customers
When you visit or interact with our website (www.karat.com), we may collect certain Personal Data about you. For example, we may collect your Personal Data through the website if you express an interest in Karat or if you register for an event on our website. We also collect some data about you automatically when you visit our website including, for example, to understand your interactions with our website in order to improve our Services. For additional information on this automatic collection, please see the “Tracking Tools, Advertising and Opt-Out” section further below. We also collect Personal Data of representatives of prospective customers we think may be interested in our Services.
Categories of Sources of Personal Data
We collect Personal Data about you from the following categories of sources:
Our Commercial or Business Purposes for Collecting Personal Data
We will not collect additional categories of Personal Data or use the Personal Data we collected for materially different, unrelated or incompatible purposes without providing you notice.
We disclose your Personal Data to the categories of service providers and other parties listed in this section. Depending on state laws that may be applicable to you, some of these disclosures may constitute a “sale” of your Personal Data. For more information, please refer to the state-specific sections below.
Legal Obligations
We may share any Personal Data that we collect with third parties in conjunction with any of the activities set forth under “Meeting Legal Requirements and Enforcing Legal Terms” in the “Our Commercial or Business Purposes for Collecting Personal Data” section above.
Business Transfers
All of your Personal Data that we collect may be transferred to a third party if we undergo a merger, acquisition, bankruptcy or other transaction in which that third party assumes control of our business (in whole or in part). Should one of these events occur, we will make reasonable efforts to notify you before your information becomes subject to different privacy and security policies and practices.
Data that is Not Personal Data
We may create aggregated, de-identified or anonymized data from the Personal Data we collect, including by removing information that makes the data personally identifiable to a particular user. We may use such aggregated, de-identified or anonymized data and share it with third parties for our lawful business purposes, including to analyze, build and improve the Services and promote our business (including marketing and producing white papers and other publications relating to the Services), provided that we will not share such data in a manner that could identify you.
The Services use cookies and similar technologies such as pixel tags, web beacons, clear GIFs and JavaScript (collectively, “Cookies”) to enable our servers to recognize your web browser, tell us how and when you visit and use our Services, analyze trends, learn about our user base and operate and improve our Services. Cookies are small pieces of data– usually text files – placed on your computer, tablet, phone or similar device when you use that device to access our Services. We may also supplement the information we collect from you with information received from third parties, including third parties that have placed their own Cookies on your device(s). Please note that because of our use of Cookies, the Services do not support “Do Not Track” requests sent from a browser at this time.
We use the following types of Cookies:
You can decide whether or not to accept Cookies through your internet browser’s settings. 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) allow you to decide on acceptance of each new Cookie in a variety of ways. You can also delete all Cookies that are already on your device. If you do this, however, you may have to manually adjust some preferences every time you visit our website and some of the Services and functionalities may not work.
To explore what Cookie settings are available to you, look in the “preferences” or “options” section of your browser’s menu. To find out more information about Cookies, including information about how to manage and delete Cookies, please visit http://www.allaboutcookies.org/ or https://ico.org.uk/for-the-public/online/cookies/ if you are located in the European Union.
Information about Interest-Based Advertisements:
We may serve advertisements, and also allow third-party ad networks, including third-party ad servers, ad agencies, ad technology vendors and research firms, to serve advertisements through the Services. These advertisements may be targeted to users who fit certain general profile categories or display certain preferences or behaviors (“Interest-Based Ads”). Information for Interest-Based Ads (including Personal Data) may be provided to us by you, or derived from the usage patterns of particular users on the Services and/or services of third parties. Such information may be gathered through tracking users’ activities across time and unaffiliated properties, including when you leave the Services. To accomplish this, we or our service providers may deliver Cookies, including a file (known as a “web beacon”) from an ad network to you through the Services. Web beacons allow ad networks to provide anonymized, aggregated auditing, research and reporting for us and for advertisers. Web beacons also enable ad networks to serve targeted advertisements to you when you visit other websites. Web beacons allow ad networks to view, edit or set their own Cookies on your browser, just as if you had requested a web page from their site.
Users in the European Union should visit the European Interactive Digital Advertising Alliance’s user information website http://www.youronlinechoices.eu/.
We seek to protect your Personal Data from unauthorized access, use and disclosure using appropriate physical, technical, organizational and administrative security measures based on the type of Personal Data and how we are processing that data. You should also help protect your data by appropriately selecting and protecting your password and/or other sign-on mechanism; limiting access to your computer or device and browser; and signing off after you have finished accessing your account. Although we work to protect the security of your account and other data that we hold in our records, please be aware that no method of transmitting data over the internet or storing data is completely secure.
We retain Personal Data about you for as long as you have an open account with us or as otherwise necessary to provide you with our Services. In some cases we retain Personal Data for longer, if doing so is necessary to comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes or collect fees owed, or is otherwise permitted or required by applicable law, rule or regulation. We may further retain information in an anonymous or aggregated form where that information would not identify you personally.
As noted in the Terms of Use, we do not knowingly collect or solicit Personal Data about children under 16 years of age; if you are a child under the age of 16, please do not attempt to register for or otherwise use the Services or send us any Personal Data. If we learn we have collected Personal Data from a child under 16 years of age, we will delete that information as quickly as possible. If you believe that a child under 16 years of age may have provided Personal Data to us, please contact us at privacy@karat.com.
If you are a California resident, you have the rights set forth in this section. Please see the “Exercising Your Rights” section below for instructions regarding how to exercise these rights. Please note that we may process certain Personal Data of Candidates in our capacity as a service provider to our customers (e.g., Prospective Employers). If we are processing your Personal Data as a service provider, we may suggest that you also contact the entity that collected your Personal Data to address your rights with respect to such data.
If there are any conflicts between this section and any other provision of this Privacy Policy and you are a California resident, the portion that is more protective of Personal Data shall control to the extent of such conflict. If you have any questions about this section or whether any of the following rights apply to you, please contact us at privacy@karat.com.
Access
You have the right to request certain information about our collection and use of your Personal Data over the past 12 months. In response, we will provide you with the following information:
If we have disclosed your Personal Data to any third parties for a business purpose over the past 12 months, we will identify the categories of Personal Data shared with each category of third party recipient.
Deletion
You have the right to request that we delete the Personal Data that we have collected about you. Under the CCPA, this right is subject to certain exceptions: for example, we may need to retain your Personal Data to provide you with the Services or complete a transaction or other action you have requested. If your deletion request is subject to one of these exceptions, we may deny your deletion request.
Exercising Your Rights
To exercise the rights described above, you or your Authorized Agent (defined below) must send us a request that (1) provides sufficient information to allow us to verify that you are the person about whom we have collected Personal Data (e.g., your email address, name (if applicable), and date of interview (if applicable)), and (2) describes your request in sufficient detail to allow us to understand, evaluate and respond to it. Each request that meets both of these criteria will be considered a “Valid Request.” We may not respond to requests that do not meet these criteria. We will only use Personal Data provided in a Valid Request to verify your identity and complete your request. You do not need an account to submit a Valid Request.
We will work to respond to your Valid Request within 45 days of receipt. We will not charge you a fee for making a Valid Request unless your Valid Request(s) is excessive, repetitive or manifestly unfounded. If we determine that your Valid Request warrants a fee, we will notify you of the fee and explain that decision before completing your request.
You may submit a Valid Request using the following methods:
You may also authorize an agent (an “Authorized Agent”) to exercise your rights on your behalf. To do this, you must provide your Authorized Agent with written permission to exercise your rights on your behalf, and we may request a copy of this written permission from your Authorized Agent when they make a request on your behalf.
Personal Data Sales Opt-Out and Opt-In
We will not sell your Personal Data, and have not done so over the last 12 months. To our knowledge, we do not sell the Personal Data of minors under 16 years of age.
We Will Not Discriminate Against You for Exercising Your Rights Under the CCPA
We will not discriminate against you for exercising your rights under the CCPA. We will not deny you our goods or services, charge you different prices or rates, or provide you a lower quality of goods and services if you exercise your rights under the CCPA. However, we may offer different tiers of our Services as allowed by applicable data privacy laws (including the CCPA) with varying prices, rates or levels of quality of the goods or services you receive related to the value of Personal Data that we receive from you.
Under California Civil Code Sections 1798.83-1798.84, California residents are entitled to contact us to prevent disclosure of Personal Data to third parties for such third parties’ direct marketing purposes; in order to submit such a request, please contact us at privacy@karat.com. However, Karat does not disclose Personal Data to third parties for such third parties’ direct marketing purposes.
Nevada Resident Rights
If you are a resident of Nevada, you have the right to opt-out of the sale of certain Personal Data to third parties who intend to license or sell that Personal Data. You can exercise this right by contacting us at privacy@karat.com with the subject line “Nevada Do Not Sell Request” and providing us with your name and the email address associated with your account. However, Karat does not sell Personal Data.
EU Residents
If you are a resident of the European Union (“EU”), United Kingdom, Lichtenstein, Norway or Iceland, you may have additional rights under the EU General Data Protection Regulation (the “GDPR”) with respect to your Personal Data, as outlined below.
For this section, we use the terms “Personal Data” and “processing” as they are defined in the GDPR, but “Personal Data” generally means information that can be used to individually identify a person, and “processing” generally covers actions that can be performed in connection with data such as collection, use, storage and disclosure. Karat will be the controller of your Personal Data processed in connection with the Services.
If there are any conflicts between this section and any other provision of this Privacy Policy, the policy or portion that is more protective of Personal Data shall control to the extent of such conflict. If you have any questions about this section or whether any of the following applies to you, please contact us at privacy@karat.com. Please note that we may act as a processor when we collect certain Personal Data about Candidates from the Prospective Employers. In these cases, we may suggest that you also contact the controller party (typically, the Prospective Employer that referred you to Karat) to address your rights with respect to such data.
Personal Data We Collect
The “Categories of Personal Data We Collect” section above details the Personal Data that we collect from you.
Personal Data Use and Processing Grounds
The “Our Commercial or Business Purposes for Collecting Personal Data” section above explains how we use your Personal Data.
We will only process your Personal Data if we have a lawful basis for doing so. Lawful bases for processing include consent, contractual necessity and our “legitimate interests” or the legitimate interest of others, as further described below.
Examples of these legitimate interests include (as described in more detail above):
With respect to Personal Data of Website Visitors and Prospective Customers:
Sharing Personal Data
The “How We Share Your Personal Data” section above details how we share your Personal Data with third parties.
EU Data Subject Rights
You have certain rights with respect to your Personal Data, including those set forth below. For more information about these rights, or to submit a request, please email us at privacy@karat.com. Please note that in some circumstances, we may not be able to fully comply with your request, such as if it is frivolous or extremely impractical, if it jeopardizes the rights of others, or if it is not required by law, but in those circumstances, we will still respond to notify you of such a decision. In some cases, we may also need you to provide us with additional information, which may include Personal Data, if necessary to verify your identity and the nature of your request.
Transfers of Personal Data
The Services are hosted and operated in the United States (“U.S.”) through Karat and its service providers, and if you do not reside in the U.S., laws in the U.S. may differ from the laws where you reside. By using the Services, you acknowledge that any Personal Data about you, regardless of whether provided by you or obtained from a third party, is being provided to Karat in the U.S. and will be hosted on U.S. servers, and you authorize Karat to transfer, store and process your information to and in the U.S., and possibly other countries.
Karat has certified to the EU-U.S. and Swiss-U.S. Privacy Shield Frameworks set forth by the U.S. Department of Commerce regarding the collection and use of Personal Data transferred from the EU and Switzerland to the U.S., respectively. Although the Privacy Shield is no longer a valid lawful basis on which Karat may rely to transfer personal data from the EU to the U.S. pursuant to the GDPR, Karat continues to comply with both the EU-U.S. and Swiss-U.S. Privacy Shield Frameworks. For more information about the Privacy Shield Program, and to view Karat’s certification, please visit www.privacyshield.gov. Karat is committed to the Privacy Shield Principles of (1) notice, (2) consent, (3) accountability for onward transfer, (4) security, (5) data integrity and purpose limitation, (6) access and (7) recourse, enforcement and liability with respect to all Personal Data received from within the EU and Switzerland in reliance on the Privacy Shield. The Privacy Shield Principles require that we remain potentially liable if any third party processing Personal Data on our behalf fails to comply with these Privacy Shield Principles (except to the extent we are not responsible for the event giving rise to any alleged damage). Karat’s compliance with the Privacy Shield is subject to the investigatory and enforcement powers of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission.
Please contact us at privacy@karat.com with any questions or concerns relating to our Privacy Shield Certification. If you do not receive timely acknowledgment of your Privacy Shield-related complaint from us, or if we have not resolved your complaint, you may also resolve a Privacy Shield-related complaint through JAMS, an alternative dispute resolution provider located in the U.S. You can visit https://www.jamsadr.com/file-an-eu-us-privacy-shield-or-safe-harbor-claim for more information or to file a complaint, at no cost to you. Under certain conditions, you may also be entitled to invoke binding arbitration for complaints not resolved by other means.
We’re constantly trying to improve our Services, so we may need to change this Privacy Policy from time to time, but we will alert you to any such changes by placing a notice on the Karat website, by sending you an email and/or by some other means. Please note that if you’ve opted not to receive legal notice emails from us (or you haven’t provided us with your email address), those legal notices will still govern your use of the Services, and you are still responsible for reading and understanding them. If you use the Services after any changes to the Privacy Policy have been posted, that means you agree to all of the changes. Use of information we collect is subject to the Privacy Policy in effect at the time such information is collected.
Contact Information:
If you have any questions or comments about this Privacy Policy, the ways in which we collect and use your Personal Data or your choices and rights regarding such collection and use, please do not hesitate to contact us at:
If you are located in the European Union or the United Kingdom (UK), you may use the following information to contact our Data Protection Officer and our European Union- and UK-Based Member Representatives:
Fieldfisher Tech Rechtsanwaltsgesellschaft mbH, Am Sandtorkai 68, 20457 Hamburg, Germany
Lionheart Squared (Europe) Ltd, 2 Pembroke House, Upper Pembroke Street 28-32, Dublin
D02 EK84, Republic of Ireland
Lionheart Squared Limited, Attn: Data Privacy, 17 Glasshouse Studios, Fryern Court Road, Fordingbridge, Hampshire, SP6 1QX, United Kingdom
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