This Privacy Policy explains how and why AcCare collects, uses, and shares personal information when you interact with or use our Site or Service. It also includes any information AcCare collects offline in connection with the Service, which we may combine with information from the Site and Service.
AcCare provides a digital marketplace which facilitates interactions between users. Users of the Service may be Clients, Experts or Site Visitors (as each is defined in the User Agreement). This Privacy Policy applies to AcCare’s processing of personal information of Users and does not apply to processing of information by Users themselves.
1. When you use the Service, you may provide us with information about you. This may include your name and contact information, financial information to make or receive payment for services obtained through the AcCare platform, or information to help us fill out tax forms. When you use the Service, we may also collect information related to your use of the Service and aggregate this with information about other users. This helps us improve our Services for you.
The following categories and types of information will be collected from you:
Categories of Personal Information We Collect | Examples of Personal Information Collected | Categories of Sources of Personal Information | Business Purpose for Collection of Personal Information |
Identifiers | Name, Date of Birth, Social Media Account Information, Profile Data, IP Address | Directly from You or Your use of the Service; Cookies and Other Tracking Technologies; Third Parties (such as affiliates, agents, service providers and other users) | Developing, Improving, and Providing the Service, Identification, Communications, Marketing, Analytics, Security, Legal, Compliance and Regulatory Obligations. |
Contact / Account Profile Information | Email Address, Home Address, Billing Address, Phone Number | Directly from You or Your use of the Service; Third Parties (such as affiliates, agents, service providers and other users) | Developing, Improving, and Providing the Service, Identification, Communicating with You, Marketing, Analytics, Security, Legal, Compliance and Regulatory Obligations. |
Sensitive Personal Information / | Social Security Number, Driver’s License, State Identification or | Directly from You | Improving and providing the |
| Government Issued Identification Numbers | Passport Number, GST Identification Number, Tax Identification Number, Immigration Status, Citizenship Information, Business Registration and License information | Service, Verifying Your Identity and Detecting Fraud, Identity Theft, or Other Misuse of Your Account, Legal, Compliance and Regulatory Obligations. | |
Commercial Information | Transaction Data including services offered, considered, or purchased | Directly from You or Your use of the Service; Third Parties (such as affiliates, agents, service providers and other users) | Developing, Improving, and Providing the Service, Identification, Communications, Marketing, Analytics, Security, Legal, Compliance and Regulatory Obligations. |
Financial Data/Payment Information | Credit card or other financial account information | Directly from You or Your use of the Service; Third Parties (such as affiliates, agents, service providers and other users) | Improving and Providing the Service, Identification, Communications, Security, Legal, Compliance and Regulatory Obligations. |
Internet or Other Network or Device Activities Including Information from Cookies | Unique device and app identifiers, browsing history or other usage data, the browser and operating system you are using, the URL or advertisement that referred you to the Service, the search terms you entered a search engine that led you to the Service, areas within the Service that you visited, which | Directly from You or Your use of the Service; Cookies and Other Tracking Technologies; Third Parties (such as affiliates, agents, | Developing, Improving, and Providing the Service, Identification, Communications, Marketing, Analytics, Security, Legal, Compliance and |
| links you clicked on, which pages or content you viewed and for how long, other similar information and statistics about your interactions, such as content response times, download errors and length of visits to certain pages and other information commonly shared when browsers communicate with websites | service providers and other users) | Regulatory Obligations. | |
Customer Support Interactions | Audio recordings if you call our customer service, video recording (if you provide permission). | Directly from You or Your use of the Service; Service Providers; Third Parties (such as affiliates) | Providing and Improving the Service, Identification, Communications, Marketing, Security, Legal, Compliance and Regulatory Obligations. |
Platform Communications | Communication Information (e.g., your name, contact information, and the contents of any communications) | Directly from You, your use of the Service, and Users with whom you communicate | Developing, Improving, and Providing the Service, Security, Legal, Compliance and Regulatory Obligations. |
Professional Information | Previous place(s) of employment, position(s), work history, earnings, resume, professional license, and other relevant information | Directly from You or Your use of the Service; Service Providers; Third Parties (such as other users) | Developing, Improving, and Providing the Service, Marketing, Analytics, Security, Legal, Compliance and Regulatory Obligations. |
Other information that identifies or can be reasonably associated with you | User-generated content, (e.g., community posts, feedback, ratings, and job postings), photographs, examples of your work, information on work previously performed via the Service and outside the Service, skills, tests taken, test scores, hourly pay rates and earnings information. | Directly from You or Your use of the Service; Service Providers; Third Parties (such as affiliates, agents, and other users) | Developing, Improving, and Providing the Service, Identification, Communications, Marketing, Analytics, Security, Legal, Compliance and Regulatory Obligations. |
During business, we receive technical information when you use our Services. We use technologies to analyze how people use the Service, to improve how our Site functions, and to serve you with advertisements that may interest you.
AcCare and its partners use cookies or similar technologies to analyze trends, administer the website, track users’ movement around the website, the desktop app, and the mobile app, and to gather demographic information about our user base. In addition, we and our marketing partners, affiliates, analytics, and service providers may use a variety of other technologies that collect similar information for security and fraud detection purposes, and we may use third parties to perform these services on our behalf.
2. With your permission, we collect information about an Expert’s work for a client, including automatically collected information about work on a particular project. We tell when we are capturing information and allow Expert to block such data sharing.
3. We may work with advertising agencies and vendors who use technology to help us understand how people use our Site. These vendors may use technologies to serve you advertisements that may interest you. Depending on your location, you may have the right to opt out of receiving certain interest-based advertising.
AcCare works with ad networks, ad agencies, analytics service providers and other vendors to provide us with information regarding traffic on the Service, to serve our advertisements on other websites, within mobile apps and elsewhere online; and to provide us with information regarding the use of the Service and the effectiveness of our advertisements. Our service providers may collect certain information about your visits to and activity on the Service as well as other websites or services, they may set and access their own tracking technologies on your device (including cookies, pixels, and web beacons), and may use that information to show you targeted advertisements. Some of these parties may collect Personal Information when you visit the Service or other online websites and services. We may also share certain Non-Identifying Information with these parties, including Hashed Information, in connection with the services they provide to us.
4. The Service is general audience and intended for users 18 and older. We do not knowingly collect Personal Information from anyone younger than age 18. If we become aware that a child younger than 18 has provided us with Personal Information, we will use commercially reasonable efforts to delete such information from our files. If you are the parent or legal guardian of a child younger than age 18 and believe that AcCare has collected Personal Information from your child, please contact us at: [email protected]
We, along with our service providers, may use your data for the purposes described below. As part of these purposes, your data may be processed using Artificial Intelligence technologies (“AI”) including AI that generates images, text, audio, or video from user inputs (generative AI). We may use your data for the following purposes:
- To develop, provide, and improve the Service, complete your transactions, address your inquiries, process your registration, verify the information you provide is valid, and for compliance and internal business purposes.
- To administer and develop our business relationship with you and, if applicable, the corporation or other legal entity you represent.
- For the purposes disclosed at the time you provide your information, with your consent, and as further described in this Privacy Policy.
- To contact you with administrative communications and AcCare newsletters, marketing or promotional materials (on behalf of AcCare or third parties) and other information that may be of interest to you. To tailor content we display to you and offers we may present to you, both on the Service and elsewhere online.
- To prepare internal statistics reports.
- To honor our contractual commitments, or to take steps at Users’ request in anticipation of entering a contract with them.
- For our legitimate interests. In many cases, we handle Personal Information on the grounds that it furthers our legitimate interests in commercial activities, such as the following, in ways that are not overridden by the interests or fundamental rights and freedoms of the affected individuals:
- Providing our Site and Service.
- Detecting security incidents, protecting against malicious, deceptive, fraudulent, or illegal activity, and prosecuting those responsible for that activity.
- Measuring interest and engagement in our Services.
- Short-term, transient use, such as contextual customization of ads.
- Improving, upgrading, or enhancing our Services.
- Developing new products and services.
- Ensuring internal quality control and safety.
- Authenticating and verifying individual identities.
- Debugging to identify and repair errors with our Services.
- Auditing relating to interactions, transactions, and other compliance activities.
- Enforcing our agreements and policies.
- Analyzing and improving our business.
- Communications, including marketing and responding to your inquiries about our services.
- Addressing information security needs and protecting our Users, Upwork, and others.
- Managing legal issues.
- As part of providing an integrated platform experience, we may use personal information collected through one feature or interaction on the Service to support other features or offerings within the Service.
- To enforce and comply with the law, including to investigate, to protect the property and rights of AcCare or a third party, to protect the safety of the public or any person, or to prevent or stop activity we may consider to be, or to pose a risk of being, illegal, fraudulent, unethical or legally actionable activity.
- To Comply with Legal Obligations. We need to use and disclose Personal Information in certain ways to comply with our legal obligations.
5. Some parts of the Service allow you to share personal information publicly, such as when you create a public profile, post a public job, submit proposals that include visible content, or leave feedback (“Public Content”). When you choose to make information public through the Service, it may be indexed by search engines, accessible to other users or third parties, and reused within other parts of the Service, including features that help connect Clients and Experts or generate insights and recommendations.
Please note that information you choose to make public may be accessed, copied, or used by others in ways we do not control. AcCare cannot guarantee how third parties or other users will use such publicly available information. You should not include information you consider sensitive or confidential in areas of the platform designated as public.
AcCare may use Public Content to power, develop, or improve other services and features. For example, public job posts and profiles may be used to enhance search results, match recommendations, or provide aggregated insights.
6. Unless you request that we delete certain information, we will only retain your personal information for as long as is necessary to fulfill the purposes for which it was collected, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, regulatory, accounting, or reporting requirements, as well as ongoing fraud prevention, backup, and business continuity purposes.
7. We do not sell your Personal Information for monetary consideration, and we do not share your Personal Information with third parties for those third parties’ marketing purposes unless we first provide you with the opportunity to opt-in to or opt-out of such sharing. However, we may use technologies on our Site for the purposes of advertising or marketing to you and understanding how you interact with our ads. This may be considered a “sale” or “sharing” of personal information for targeted advertising under applicable data protection laws.
8. We may also share information we have collected about you, including Personal Information, as disclosed at the time you provide your information, with your consent, as otherwise described in this Privacy Policy, or for the following business or commercial purposes:
AcCare Users | As part of the Service, AcCare provides a platform that facilitates interactions between users. To provide the Services, AcCare shares your information with other users. For example, Upwork may share the jobs you post and your profile data publicly on our platform, return your information in search results, share your information with other Upwork users who might be interested in the content you shared, or share your information with other users as part of a potential or active contract. |
Service Providers | We may employ service providers and individuals to facilitate our Service, to provide the Service on our behalf, to perform Service-related services (e.g., without limitation, maintenance services, database management, web analytics and online advertising, payment processing, fraud detection and improvement of AcCare’s features) or to assist us in analyzing how our Service is used. These Service providers may include analytics companies, advertising partners, payment processors, identity verification companies, security companies, generative AI partners, or other merchants. These third parties may have access to your Personal Information to perform these tasks on our behalf. The Service includes a two-sided marketplace, which results in platform information pertaining to both parties on either side of an interaction. Thus, if a Client or Expert chooses to use a feature that involves information being shared with a service provider, the platform information associated with that user’s account – including information described above – may be shared with that service provider. |
Generative AI Partners | We provide certain features of our Service by integrating trusted generative AI service providers. We may share the information you provide while using these features with these generative AI service providers, as well as additional information necessary to utilize the feature. Where AcCare uses this information to power features, we leverage certain treatments of the data appropriate for the feature, including but not limited to, first removing personal information, and only using public data. |
Legal and Investigative Purposes | AcCare will share information with government agencies as required by law including (without limitation) in response to lawful requests by public authorities to meet national security or law enforcement requirements and in |
| connection with reporting earnings. We cooperate with government and law enforcement officials and private parties to enforce and comply with the law. We will disclose information about you to government or law enforcement officials or private parties as we, in our sole discretion, believe necessary or appropriate to respond to claims and legal process (including but not limited to subpoenas), or, at the request of governmental authorities or other third parties conducting an investigation where we determine in our sole discretion the disclosure is necessary to (a) protect the property and rights of AcCare or a third party, (b) protect the safety of the public or any person, or (c) prevent or stop activity we may consider to be, or pose a risk of being, illegal, fraudulent, unethical or legally actionable activity. We may also proactively disclose information if we have a good faith belief that such disclosure is reasonably necessary to detect, prevent, or address suspected illegal activity, fraud, security, or technical issues, or to protect the rights, property, or safety of AcCare, its users, or the public. This may include sharing information without receiving a formal legal request, where permitted by applicable law and consistent with our legitimate interests. | |
Internal and Business Transfers | AcCare may share information, including Personal Information, with its parent company, and any current or future subsidiaries or affiliates, primarily for business and operational purposes, including activities such as IT management, for them to provide services to you, or support and supplement the Services we provide. We may sell, transfer, or otherwise share some or all our assets, including your Personal Information, in connection with a merger, acquisition, reorganization or sale of assets (including, in each case, as part of the due-diligence process with any potential acquiring entity) or in the event of bankruptcy. |
9. We may share aggregated Non-Identifying Information and we may otherwise disclose Non-Identifying Information (including, without limitation, Hashed Information) or De-Identified Information to third parties.
10. Clients, Expert, users, and visitors may have choices and rights associated with your personal information, including opting out of targeted advertising or other disclosures to third parties, or the right to have an authorized agent submit certain requests on your behalf. You or your authorized agent may request that AcCare honor these rights by submitting a request here.
11. Non-Discrimination: You will not receive any discriminatory treatment by us for the exercise of your privacy rights.
Verifying Your Request: Only you, or a person that you authorize to act on your behalf, may make a request related to your personal information. In the case of access and deletion, your request must be verifiable before we can fulfill such request. Verifying your request will require you to provide sufficient information for us to reasonably verify that you are the person about whom we collected personal information, or a person authorized to act on your behalf. We will only use the personal information that you have provided in a verifiable request to verify your request. We cannot respond to your request or provide you with personal information if we cannot verify your identity or authority.
Please note that we may charge a reasonable fee or refuse to act on a request if such request is excessive, repetitive, or manifestly unfounded.
12. AcCare takes reasonable steps to help protect and secure the information it collects and stores about Users, but no security is guaranteed. We maintain reasonable administrative, technical, and physical safeguards designed to protect personal information that we receive against accidental, unlawful, or unauthorized destruction, loss, alteration, access, disclosure, or use.
13. Because we are a Canadian company, we process and store your information in Canada and our service providers may process and store it elsewhere. AcCare may transfer your personal information to a third party that is located in a jurisdiction other than the one from which we collected your personal information, including to countries that have not been deemed to have an adequate level of protection for the rights and freedoms of data subjects. If we do transfer your personal information to another jurisdiction, we will do so following due diligence and provided that the data recipient is subject to contractual agreements imposing obligations on it to ensure appropriate technical and organizational are implemented and maintained at all times to prevent the unauthorized and unlawful processing of personal information, and the accidental loss or destruction of, or damage to, personal information, consistent with our obligations under applicable data protection laws. We will use appropriate legal transfer mechanisms, including Standard Contractual Clauses, where required by law.
14. We may provide links to digital assets such as websites or applications of services that we do not own or operate (“third-party digital assets”). This Privacy Policy does not apply to data collected through any such third-party digital assets. AcCare is not responsible for the privacy practices of such third-party digital assets. We encourage you to carefully review the privacy policies or statements applicable to any third-party digital assets you visit.
15. We may change this Privacy Policy. If we make material changes, we will provide notice. This Privacy Policy is effective as of the date stated at the top of this page. AcCare may update this Privacy Policy at any time and any changes will be effective upon posting. By accessing or using the Service after we notify you of such changes to this Privacy Policy, you are deemed to have accepted such changes. Please refer to this Privacy Policy on a regular basis.
16. If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, please contact us by email to: [email protected]
