Privacy Policy

Hawkeye Privacy Policy

Updated December 22, 2022

Hawkeye SEO, Inc. ("Company," "Hawkeye," or "We") respect your privacy and are committed to protecting it through our compliance with this policy and any applicable laws when you use the website, www.hawkeye-seo.com and any related website or domain operated by Hawkeye (the “Sites”), or any Services (defined in the next paragraph) accessed from any Sites, or both of the Sites and Services or attend any Hawkeye events that require registration.

Hawkeye offers various services (the “Services”) to provide businesses and individuals access to a rich collection of resources related to search engine optimization and inbound marketing, including without limitation search engine optimization tools, link analysis tools, site profile services, search analytics, blogs, user-generated content, personalized content, and industry surveys and opinion polls.

This privacy policy describes the types of information we may collect from you or that you may provide when you visit our Sites or use our Services in general, and our practices for collecting, using, maintaining, protecting, and disclosing that information. This privacy policy informs you of additional information and rights you may have pursuant to certain applicable regulations related to privacy and data protection. 

If you are located in the European Union, the General Data Protection Regulation effective 25 May 2018 (“GDPR”) applies to information about you (“Personal Data” under GDPR) that Hawkeye may collect. In that case, and under GDPR, you are defined as a “Data Subject,” Hawkeye is a “Data Controller” for Personal Data that Hawkeye obtains and “Processes,” and this policy explains your rights with respect to that Personal Data.

In addition, The California Consumer Privacy Act, codified at Cal. Civ. Code §1798.100 et seq., including future amendments as well as any final implementing regulations adopted by the State of California Department of Justice Office of The Attorney General (together, “CCPA”) also now protects “Personal Information” that identifies, relates to, describes or can be associated with, or reasonably can be linked (directly or indirectly) with a specific individual (“Consumers”) or household in California. If you think Hawkeye is processing your Personal Information, please see the section in the Policy below with the heading “Your Rights Under California Privacy Statutes” for more information about Hawkeye and CCPA.

This policy applies to information we collect:

Please read this policy carefully to understand our policies and practices regarding your information and how we will treat it. If you do not agree with our policies and practices, your only recourse is not to use our Sites or Services. By accessing or using the Sites or Services, you agree to this privacy policy.

This policy may change from time to time (see Changes to Our Privacy Policy below). Your continued use of these Sites or Services after we make changes is deemed to be acceptance of those changes, so please check the policy periodically for updates.

Children Under the Age of 16

Our Sites are not intended for children under 13 years of age generally, and specifically for children under 16 years of age who are subject to GDPR (individually, a "Minor", and collectively, "Minors"). No minors may provide any information to or on the Sites. We do not knowingly collect personal information from minors. If you are a minor, do not use or provide any information on the Sites or on or through any of its features/register on the Sites, make any purchases through the Sites, use any of the interactive or public comment features of the Sites, or provide any information about yourself to us, including your name, address, telephone number, email address, or any screen name or username you may use. If we learn we have collected or received personal information from a minor without verification of parental consent, we will delete that information. If you believe we might have any information from or about a minor, please contact us at legal@Hawkeye-SEO.com.

GDPR Lawful Bases for Processing Personal Data of Data Subjects

Under GDPR, Hawkeye may only Process the Personal Data of a Data Subject lawfully if Hawkeye has at least one of six lawful bases for Processing the Personal Data. Currently under this version of the privacy policy, Hawkeye relies on at least one of the following legal bases to process Personal Data under GDPR:

(As a reminder, if you are not a Data Subject providing your Personal Data to Hawkeye from within the European Union, GDPR does not apply to you.)  

Information We Collect About You and How We Collect It

We collect several types of information from and about users of our Sites and Services, including information:

(Under GDPR, Hawkeye collects Personal Data from Data Subjects from within the EU, and Personal Data is considered to be broader and to include more categories of information than how we generally refer to “personal information” in this policy. We will be specific when we are discussing GDPR and activities we undertake related to Personal Data under GDPR.)

We collect this information:

Information You Provide to Us

The information we collect on or through our Sites or Services may include:

You also may provide information to be published, displayed, or transmitted (hereinafter "posted") on public areas of the Sites, or transmitted to other users of the Sites or third parties (collectively, "Interactive Content"). Your Interactive Content is posted on and transmitted to others at your own risk; we cannot control the actions of other users of the Sites with whom you may choose to share your Interactive Content. Therefore, we cannot and do not guarantee that Interactive Content will not be viewed by unauthorized persons.

Usage Details, IP Addresses, Cookies, and Other Technologies

As you navigate through and interact with our Sites and Services, we may automatically collect certain information about your equipment, browsing actions, and patterns, including without limitation:

The information we collect automatically is statistical data and does not identify any individual*. It helps us to improve our Sites and Services and to deliver better and more personalized future services by enabling us to do things such as:

  1. Estimate our audience size and usage patterns.
  2. Store information about your preferences, allowing us to customize our Sites according to your individual interests.
  3. Speed up user searches.
  4. Recognize you when you return to our Sites.
  5. Provide better services in the future.

(*The information referred to above may still constitute Personal Data under GDPR even though more generally Hawkeye does not try to identify any individuals beyond recognizing them when they return to the Sites in order to provide and/or to enhance the experience described in 2. to 5. above; however, to the extent this information is not anonymized or pseudonymized to the extent that it no longer qualifies as Personal Data, Hawkeye will comply with GDPR with respect to Processing any such Personal Data.)

The technologies we use for this automatic data collection may include:

We do not collect personal information automatically, but we may tie this information to personal information about you that we collect from other sources or you provide to us. However, to the extent the information we collect by automatic means constitutes Personal Data under GDPR either before or after we collect it, our processing of that Personal Data will comply with GDPR.

How to disable cookies

Most browsers automatically accept cookies, but this is typically something you can adjust. At the time this version of the Policy was drafted, here are instructions to disable cookies for each browser: 

How We Use Your Information

We use information that we collect about you or that you provide to us, including any personal information:

We never sell your personal information or provide it to others for their own and exclusive marketing purposes.

Disclosure of Your Information

We may collect and disclose anonymous and aggregated information about our users and subscribers, and other information that does not identify any individual without restriction for the purposes of product research, to improve our Services and for other commercial purposes.

We may disclose personal information that we collect or that you provide as described in this privacy policy as follows:

When we share Personal Data under GDPR with our partners, we will do so pursuant to GDPR appropriate Data Processing Addendum or Data Sharing Agreements as appropriate given the nature of the parties’ respective roles under GDPR (i.e. Data Controllers to Data Processors versus co-Data Controllers).

We may also disclose your personal information:

Choices About How We Use and Disclose Your Information

We strive to provide you with choices regarding the personal information you provide to us.

For those users of our Services and Sites Outside of the European Union and for which GDPR does not apply, we have created the following mechanisms and practice to provide you with the following control over your information:

Accessing and Correcting Your Information

You can review and change some of your personal information by logging into the Sites and visiting your account profile page.

You may also send us an email at legal@hawkeye-seo.com to request access to, correct, or delete any personal information that you have provided to us. In some cases, we cannot delete your personal information except by also deleting your user account. We may not accommodate a request to change information if we believe the change would violate any law or legal requirement or cause the information to be incorrect.

If you delete your Interactive Content from the Sites, copies of your Interactive Content may remain viewable in cached and archived pages or might have been copied or stored by other users of the Sites. Proper access and use of information provided on the Sites, including Interactive Content, is governed by our Terms of Use.

GDPR Process for Exercising Data Subject’s Rights in Personal Data

For those users of our Services and Sites from within the European Union and for which GDPR applies, we have created the following mechanisms and practices to provide you with the following control over your personal information that comprises GDPR Personal Data:

 


What are your rights?

By law, if any of your personal information/Personal Data provided to Hawkeye is subject to GDPR in the European Union, you have a number of rights when it comes to your personal information/Personal Data. Further information and advice about your rights can be obtained from the data protection regulator in your country.

IMPORTANT: When you contact Hawkeye to exercise your rights described below, it is very important for security verification and other purposes that you use any email address that you know is associated with the personal information/Personal Data about which you are contacting Hawkeye.

1. The right to object to processing

You have the right to object to certain types of processing, including processing for direct marketing (i.e. if you no longer want to be contacted with potential opportunities). 

HOW TO EXERCISE YOUR RIGHT: If you want to object to certain types of processing, please direct your communication to legal@hawkeye-seo.com providing specific and detailed information regarding your objection and requested action.  

2. The right to be informed

You have the right to be provided with clear, transparent, and easily understandable information about how we use your Personal Data and your rights. This is why we are providing you with the information in this privacy policy and also are available if you want information that you do not believe this privacy policy provides.

HOW TO EXERCISE YOUR RIGHT: If you have questions about the privacy policy or how Hawkeye may be processing your Personal Data, please direct your communication to legal@hawkeye-seo.com and please be specific and detailed about your questions and Hawkeye will promptly address those questions.  

3. The right of access

You have the right to obtain access to your Personal Data (if we are processing it), and certain other information about our privacy practices with respect to your Personal Data (similar to that provided in this privacy policy).

This is so you are aware and can check that we are using your information in accordance with GDPR or any other applicable data protection laws.

HOW TO EXERCISE YOUR RIGHT: If you have questions specific to your personal information/Personal Data and how Hawkeye is using it in accordance with GDPR or other applicable laws, please direct your communication to legal@hawkeye-seo.com and please be specific and detailed about your questions and Hawkeye will promptly address those questions.

4. The right to rectification

You are entitled to have your information corrected if it is inaccurate or incomplete.

HOW TO EXERCISE YOUR RIGHT: If you believe your personal information/Personal Data processed by Hawkeye is incorrect and needs to be updated or otherwise corrected, please check your settings with respect to your account, and if you still believe your Personal Data is inaccurate, direct your communication to legal@hawkeye-seo.com.

5. The right to erasure

This is also known as “the right to be forgotten” and, in simple terms, enables you to request the deletion or removal of your personal information/Personal Data where there’s no compelling reason for us to keep using it. This is not a general right to erasure; there are exceptions.

HOW TO EXERCISE YOUR RIGHT: If you no longer want Hawkeye to have and process your personal information/Personal Data, please direct your communication to legal@hawkeye-seo.com.  

(NOTE: Consistent with GDPR, Hawkeye may retain a trivial amount of information to keep a record of its compliance with your request.)

6. The right to restrict processing

You have rights to “block” or suppress further use of your personal information/Personal Data that Hawkeye processes. When processing is restricted, we can still store your personal information/Personal Data, but may not use it further. We keep lists of people who have asked for further use of their information to be “blocked” to make sure the restriction is respected in future. 

For clarity, if you do make these requests, it does not mean that anything we have done with your personal information/Personal Data with your consent up to that point is unlawful.

HOW TO EXERCISE YOUR RIGHT: If you no longer want to restrict Hawkeye from processing your personal information/Personal Data, please direct your communication to legal@hawkeye-seo.com.  

7. The right to data portability

You have rights to obtain and reuse your personal information/Personal Data for your own purposes across different services. For example, if you decide to switch to a new provider of services like the Services from Hawkeye that you subscribed to, this enables you to move, copy, or transfer your personal information/Personal Data easily between our IT systems and theirs safely and securely, without affecting its usability.

HOW TO EXERCISE YOUR RIGHT: If you want Hawkeye to export your personal information/Personal Data for portability, please direct your communication to legal@hawkeye-seo.com.  

(NOTE: Hawkeye will retain and continue to process your personal information/Personal Data unless you also request to be forgotten or request restricted or blocked processing.)

8. The right to lodge a complaint

You have the right to lodge a complaint about the way we handle or process your personal information/Personal Data with your national data protection regulator. However, we hope you will contact Hawkeye first (legal@hawkeye-seo.com) so Hawkeye can try to address your complaint directly.

HOW TO EXERCISE YOUR RIGHT: If you want to lodge a complaint with Hawkeye, please direct your communication to legal@hawkeye-seo.com.  

9. The right to withdraw consent

If you have given your consent to anything we do with your personal information/Personal Data, you have the right to withdraw your consent at any time. This includes your right to withdraw consent to us using your personal information/Personal Data for marketing purposes.

HOW TO EXERCISE YOUR RIGHT:  If you want Hawkeye to withdraw your consent to process your personal information/Personal Data, please direct your communication to legal@hawkeye-seo.com).  

 


We usually act on requests and provide personal information/Personal Data free of charge, but may charge a reasonable fee to cover our administrative costs of providing the personal information/Personal Data for:

Please consider your request responsibly before submitting it. We will respond as soon as we can. Generally, this will be within one month from when we receive your request but, if the request is going to take longer to deal with, we will come back to you and let you know.

Most importantly, PLEASE UNDERSTAND that if you are a paid/unpaid subscriber to a Hawkeye Service, many types of personal information/Personal Data are necessary for Hawkeye to maintain and continue your account, along with the subscription to any Services which that personal information/Personal Data is associated. If the personal information/Personal Data can no longer be used by Hawkeye for that purpose, it may necessitate terminating the account and/or subscription (without any refund) and discontinuing access to and the use of the Service and/or Sites to which the personal information/Personal Data is associated. We will use reasonable efforts to advise you of any such adverse consequences of restricting or removing our ability to maintain accounts and subscriptions by requests related to Personal Data, e.g. removal, restriction, blocking, etc.

Hawkeye’s Retention of Personal Data Under GDPR and Other Applicable Laws

We only retain your personal information/Personal Data for as long as is necessary for us to use your information as described above or to comply with our legal obligations and legitimate interests. Please be advised that this means that we may retain some of your personal information/Personal Data after you cease to use our Services. For instance, we may retain your data as necessary to meet our legal obligations, such as for tax and accounting purposes.

When determining the relevant period in which we retain or establish/revise periods for retaining personal information/Personal Data, we will take the following factors into account: 

Otherwise, pursuant to GDPR, we will securely erase your personal information/Personal Data once there is no lawful basis or legal obligation to store or process it.

Your Rights Under California Privacy Statutes

Cal. Civ. Code Section § 1798.83, commonly referred to as California’s “Shine the Light” law, permits users of our Sites that are California residents to request certain information regarding our disclosure of personal information to third parties for their direct marketing purposes. To make such a request, please send an email to legal@hawkeye-seo.com or write to us at: Hawkeye SEO/HQM Media, LLC, 119 W. Gregory Blvd. #8511, Kansas City, MO 64114.

Hawkeye is preparing its processes, technology and disclosures related to managing regulated Personal Information as needed to comply with CCPA (or its successor as of January 1, 2023, The California Privacy Rights Act of 2020 or “CPRA”) by the extended deadline. Other than CCPA’s regulations related to “Sale” of Personal Information and certain disclosures related to Personal Information of Consumers seeking employment with or employed by Hawkeye, Hawkeye will not become subject to most of CCPA’s requirements under two exemptions, until January 1, 2023. The first of the two CCPA exemptions applies to the remainder of CCPA’s obligations related to any applications by Consumers for, and any resulting, employment with, Hawkeye and commonly is referred to as “the Employee Personal Information Exemption.” The Employee Personal Information Exemption is codified in CCPA at Cal. Civ. Code § 1798.145(m). The second of the two CCPA Exemptions deferring most of CCPA’s obligations for Hawkeye applies to businesses collecting Personal Information in the process of doing business with other businesses, and commonly is referred to as “the Temporary B2B Exemption.” The Temporary B2B Exemption is codified in CCPA at Cal. Civ. Code § 1798.145(n).

Hawkeye’s Privacy Policy states “[w]e never sell your personal information or provide it to others for their own and exclusive marketing purposes.” Hawkeye stands by that statement. CCPA, however, adds specific requirements for third parties to be a “Service Provider” to otherwise avoid transfer of Personal Information to these third parties being deemed a “Sale” under CCPA. Like most companies, managing vendor or other third-party access to Hawkeye information is a complicated and continuing effort. In this ongoing process, if Hawkeye determines its relationships with any third-party having access to CCPA Personal Information risks being a “Sale” for lack of meeting the Service Provider definition or satisfying another CCPA exception to a “Sale,” Hawkeye will promptly act to remediate that relationship by aligning it with CCPA’s Service Provider requirements or otherwise to prevent the relationship resulting in a Sale under CCPA. Again, Hawkeye has never wanted and Hawkeye does not want to sell to or provide any Personal Information to any third party for their own exclusive marketing purposes.

Data Security

We have implemented measures designed to secure your personal information from accidental loss and from unauthorized access, use, alteration, and disclosure. All information you provide to us is stored on our secure servers behind firewalls. Any payment transactions will be encrypted using SSL technology.

The safety and security of your information also depends on you. Where we have given you (or where you have chosen) a password for access to certain parts of our Sites, you are responsible for keeping this password confidential. We ask you not to share your password with anyone. We urge you to be careful about giving out information in public areas of the Sites like message boards. The information you share in public areas may be viewed by any user of the Sites.

Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the Internet is not completely secure. Although we do our best to protect your personal information generally and in compliance with applicable laws, we cannot guarantee the security of your personal information transmitted to our Sites or via our Services. Any transmission of personal information is at your own risk. We are not responsible for circumvention of any privacy settings or security measures contained on the Sites or via the Services.

Changes to Our Privacy Policy

It is our policy to post any changes we make to our privacy policy on this page. If we make material changes to how we treat our users' personal information, we will notify you by email to the primary email address specified in your account and/or possibly through a notice on the Sites’ home page. The date the privacy policy was last revised is identified at the bottom of the page. You are responsible for ensuring we have an up-to-date active and deliverable email address for you, and for periodically visiting our Sites and this privacy policy to check for any changes.

Contact Information

To ask any other questions or comment about this privacy policy and our privacy practices on subjects in which a process for making requests is not already provided above, contact us at legal@hawkeye-seo.com