The Expert - Privacy policy

The Expert - Privacy Notice

Last Updated: May 4, 2023

This Privacy Notice describes the data collection, use, protection, and privacy practices of The Expert, Inc. (“The Expert,” “we,” “us,” and/or “our”) with respect to information and data we may collect, receive and/or process in connection with your use of The Expert Service (as defined in Section 3 below).

We ask that you please read this Privacy Notice carefully to understand our policies and practices regarding your information and how we will treat it. If you have any questions, comments, or concerns regarding this Privacy Notice and/or our data practices, please contact us as set forth in Section 18 below.

BY VISITING OR USING THE EXPERT SERVICE (OR ANY PART THEREOF), INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, SUBMITTING ORDERS TO PURCHASE PRODUCTS, SERVICES, AND/OR CONSULTATIONS, YOU ACKNOWLEDGE THAT YOU HAVE READ THIS PRIVACY NOTICE AND AGREE TO THE EXPERT’S COLLECTION AND USE OF YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION AS DESCRIBED HEREIN.

Changes to this Privacy Notice
Who Processes Your Personal Data
Information We Collect and Process; Legal Basis for Processing
Children’s Privacy
Sensitive Data
How The Expert Uses Personal Information
Sharing Personal Information
Marketing Communications
Accessing, Updating and Correcting Personal information
Third Party Social Plug-Ins
External Websites
Data Retention
Data Security and Protection
European Privacy Rights
California Privacy Rights – Shine the Light
Nevada Privacy Rights
International Transfers
How to Contact Us

1. Changes to this Privacy Notice

The Expert reserves the right to update or modify this Privacy Notice at any time. Except for material changes as described below in this Section, all updates and modifications to these documents will be effective from the day they are posted on the Site at https://www.theexpert.com/privacy. If we make any material changes to this Privacy Notice, we will provide reasonable prior notice of these changes by posting a prominent notice of any such changes on the Site, and if we have an email address on file for you, sending a notification to such email address. Material changes to this Privacy Notice will become effective on the date set forth in the notice. It is your responsibility to regularly visit and review this Privacy Notice.

If you do not agree to any updates or modifications to the Privacy Notice, do not visit or use The Expert Service or purchase any Products, Services and/or Consultations. Your continued use of The Expert Service, including, but not limited to, the purchase of any Products, Services and/or Consultations after the applicable effective date of the revised Privacy Notice, signifies to us that you acknowledge and agree to be bound by the revised Privacy Notice.

2. Who Processes Your Personal Data?

Your personal data are being processed by The Expert (as the “Controller“).

To learn more about personal data management or if you have any other questions, please follow the details in How to Contact Us.

3. Information We Collect and Process; Legal Basis for Processing

Information we Collect and Process

The term “personal information” or “personal data” means any information about an individual from which that person may be identified. For example, it may include a person’s name, telephone number, email address, or payment information, and in some jurisdictions, IP address. It does not include data from which the identity of an individual has been definitively removed along with any identifiers connected to such individual (also known as anonymous or anonymized data).

How and what personal information we collect in connection with the use of The Expert Service depends on how and why you use them. For instance, the information that you provide when you visit and/or browse the Site or sign up for our marketing communications is more limited than the information you provide when you purchase Products, Consultations and/or Services.

Generally, The Expert collects, processes and/or receives personal information for the following purposes:

To provide our services including:
- When visiting, browsing and/or using our website located at www.theexpert.com (the “Site”), including, but not limited to, using the Site to search for third party interior designers (“Designers”), and/or visiting or browsing our online marketplace platform (the “Marketplace”);
- When booking an interior design consultation (each, a “Consultation”) with a Designer;
- When registering and/or providing Consultations as a Designer;
- When purchasing home goods and/or products (“Products”) that we make available through the Marketplace and/or that we purchase on your behalf through our trade and/or reseller accounts with third party vendors (hereinafter, the “Trade Vendors”);
- In connection with the provisions of services we provide or make available in connection with The Expert Service, including, but not limited to, any delivery and/or installations services that The Expert provides through its white-glove delivery providers (the “Delivery Services”), connecting users with Designers, purchasing Products on behalf of users through Trade Vendors, and/or any related customer support services (all of the foregoing, collectively, the “Services”);
To facilitate any sweepstakes, contest, or promotional activities(each, a "Promotion") that The Expert sponsors or is involved with;
To provide marketing, such as:
- When you interact with us or our account page, and/or our content or posts through social media platforms, such as, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and/or YouTube (each, a “Social Media Platform”);
- When signing up for our newsletters and/or marketing communications, including, without limitation, signing up for our text messaging service (the "Text Service");
To communicate with you if you contact us directly, including, but not limited to, when you contact us through Social Media Platforms.

When we use the term “The Expert Service” throughout this Privacy Notice, we mean, individually and collectively, the Site, the Marketplace, and the Services.

Legal basis for Processing

The Expert processes your personal data on the legal basis as follows:

In order to perform and/or provide The Expert Service you interact with and/or request. This may also include disclosure to the third parties who help us perform our obligations to you in connection with your use of The Expert Service, such as hosting, customer support, and/or delivery providers.
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. For example, for security purposes and protection against fraud.
Where we need to comply with a legal or regulatory obligation. For example, keeping records of our sales for tax compliance.
If we have obtained your prior consent (for example, where required by law, when you subscribe to our newsletter or participate in our surveys or marketing campaigns). Please note that for this specific legal basis, you have the right to withdraw your consent at any time.

Information Provided Directly to The Expert
The Expert collects the following types of information directly from you. Please be advised that we may ask you to update your information from time to time in order to keep it accurate.
1. Account & Contact Information
  If you sign-up and register an account for The Expert Service and/or purchase Products, Consultations and/or Delivery Services, we will collect contact information such as:
  - Your identity (first and last name).
  - Your username, password and/or other login credentials.
  - Your shipping address and related information.
  - Your phone number.
  If you are a Designer, in addition to the information above, The Expert may collect the following information when you set-up and/or update your Designer page and/or profile:
  - Information about your business, such as the legal business name, business phone number, and business address.
  - Your Social Media Platform usernames and/or handles.
  - Your photo, biographical information, portfolio work, qualifications, licenses, specialties, and any other information you decide to share to your public profile.
2. Payment and Transaction Information
  In certain circumstances, we may collect certain payment information, such as your credit card, bank account information, when you purchase any Products, Consultations and/or Delivery Services, or if you are Designer, your taxpayer identification information (e.g., your employer identification number or social security number).
  Note that we do not directly collect or store any payment and/or billing information. Payment transaction information is processed through our third-party PCI-compliant payment processors (currently, Stripe), on our behalf in order to collect fees payable by you in connection with any Services, Consultations and/or Products purchased by you.
  The information provided to The Expert only includes partial payment or credit card information, and limited transaction information via our payment processors’ portals. Please review the following Privacy Policies of our current payment providers to learn more about how they collect, process and protect your personal information:
  - Stripe: https://stripe.com/privacy
3. Other Information You May Provide to Us
  In addition to the above scenarios, there may be certain features of The Expert Service which allow you to provide additional information to us directly, which may include:
  - Your name (first and last) and/or email address, when you sign up for our email marketing communications;
  - Your mobile phone number if you opt-in to our Text Service;
  - Information that you provide when you enter into and/or participate in a Promotion through the Site and/or in connection with your use of The Expert Service. Each Promotion that we sponsor and manage has its own terms and conditions or official rules, which you should review as they may contain other requirements (such as, allowing use of your name or likeness in advertising unless prohibited by applicable law);
  - Messages, photos, video, audio, images, data, information, text and/or any other content or materials submitted by you when you use any interactive communication features of The Expert Service that may permit you to comment on any Product listings in the Marketplace and/or any blogs and/or forums we make available through the Site; and/or
  - Information, data, content, documents and/or materials you provide to us when you fill out forms, answer surveys, or contact us (such as your feedback, requests for support, or other communications with us, including, but not limited, communications via phone calls and/or text messages).
Information Collected from Third Parties (someone other than you) and/or Third Party Sources
In some instances, we may process and/or receive personal information from third parties or third party sources as, such as:
- Information from our third party service providers (as described in Section 7(a) below).
- Information from other users that you engage with in connection with The Expert Service, for example, if you are a Designer, we may receive information about you from the client and/or customer who purchased your Consultations, and if you are client and/or customer, we may receive information about from the Designer that you booked your Consultation with.
- Information from Trade Vendors related to Products you purchase from such Trade Vendors.
- Information and/or data from certain third-party products, services and/or applications (including, without limitation, including, without limitation, data products and services) that The Expert Service may integrate and/or enable you to utilize certain in connection with the use of The Expert Service (collectively, “Third-Party Integrations”). For example, if you sign-in or register an account using single sign-on services through your account with a third party (such as, Google), we may receive information from the third party provider that manages your account.
- Information and/or content that you provide and/or that may be provided to us, when you engage with and/or interact with us through a Social Media Platform. For example, if you like, comment, and/or view Courses we have made available through our YouTube account, or if you tag us in an of your social media posts, we will have access to that information and content. We only use this information to respond to and/or engage with you on Social Media Platforms and not for any other purposes.
Please note that we do not control or operate the Social Media Platforms or the use of your information by the providers of the Social Media Platforms and/or other users of the Social Media Platforms. You should review the privacy notices for any Social Media Platforms you use to understand how they collect, use, share and protect your information.
Usage Information; Cookies & Targeted Advertising
1. Usage Information
  Just like many websites and services, we, or our authorized third-party service providers, automatically collect technical and/or analytics information about how you use and/or interact with our Site and/or Marketplace (collectively, “Usage Information”).
  Usage Information may include (but is not necessarily limited to) identifiers, commercial information, and internet activity information such as IP address (or proxy server), mobile device number, device and application information, identification numbers and features, your approximate location (as determined through your IP address), browser type, plug-ins, integrations, Internet service provider or mobile carrier, the pages and files viewed, website and webpage interactions including searches and other actions you take, websites, apps and/or ads that referred you to the website, advertising and language preferences, operating system type and version, system configuration information, date and time stamps associated with your usage, and frequency of visits to the websites, and details of which of our products and product versions you are using.
  Some of the device and usage data collected, whether alone or in conjunction with other data, could identify you. Please note that this device and usage data is primarily used to identify the uniqueness of each user logging on (as opposed to specific individuals), apart from where it is strictly required to identify an individual for security purposes.
  Typically, all Usage Information is collected in anonymous form and does not identify you personally. For example, some of the device and usage information collected, whether alone or in conjunction with other data, could identify you, although, except where strictly required to identify an individual for security purposes, such data and information is primarily used to identify the uniqueness of each user logging on (as opposed to specific individuals). To the extent any Usage Information is linked or tied to personally identifiable information, such information is deemed “personal data” and we will use it and protect it in accordance with this Privacy Notice.
2. Cookies and Similar Technologies
  We or authorized third parties may collect certain information (including, without limitation, Usage Information) by automated means using technologies such as cookies, web beacons, embedded scripts, pixels, browser analysis tools, server logs, and mobile identifiers, and similar technologies that are deployed, and typically stored on your device and have a unique identifier, when you visit a website, when you open an email or click on links or images within an email, and/or when you interact with online advertisements. If consent for the use of such cookies and/or automated technologies is required by applicable laws or regulations in your location, then such cookies and/or automated technologies are only used by The Expert in this way if we have obtained such consent. For more information on our use of these technologies, see our Cookie Policy.
3. Targeting & Advertising
  We may use third party advertising partners (e.g., Facebook, Inc. and Google, Inc.) who use targeting/advertising cookies and similar technologies to deliver advertisements that are more relevant to you and your interests. If consent for the use of targeting and advertising cookies is required by applicable laws or regulations in your location, then such cookies are only used by The Expert in this way if we have obtained such consent. They are also used to limit the number of times you see an advertisement as well as help measure the effectiveness of the advertising campaigns. They are usually placed by advertising networks with the website operator’s permission. They remember that you have visited a website and this information is shared with other organizations such as advertisers. Targeting or advertising cookies will often be linked to site functionality provided by the other organizations.For more information on our and/or third-party advertising partners` use of these targeting & advertising cookies and similar technologies, please see our Cookie Policy.
4. How to Manage Cookie Preferences
Aggregated Data
With the personal information and other data (including, Usage Information) collected by us, we process “Aggregated Data”, such as statistical or demographic data. Aggregated Data may be derived from personal information, but is not considered personal information under the law if it does not directly or indirectly reveal your identity. If we combine or connect Aggregated Data with your personal information so that it can directly or indirectly identify you, we treat the combined data as personal information, which will be processed in accordance with this Privacy Notice.

4. Children’s Privacy

The Expert does not target The Expert Service to persons under the age of 18 and does not knowingly collect personal information from persons under the age of 18. Therefore, we ask you not to provide us with personal information of persons under the age of 18. If we learn that personal information of persons under 18 years of age has been collected on or through The Expert Service or otherwise provided to us, then we may deactivate the account or otherwise terminate access to The Expert Service and/or make the content and/or information inaccessible.

5. Sensitive Data

The Expert does not require you to provide any sensitive data about your race or ethnicity, religious or philosophical beliefs, sex life, sexual orientation, political opinions, trade union membership, health and genetics, or biometric data to use The Expert Service.

6. How The Expert Uses Personal Information

Depending on how you use The Expert Service, we use your personal information in the following instances:

To host and provide the Site and Marketplace, and perform our Services to you and other visitors/customers;
To deliver direct marketing communications regarding our products and services that we may think are of interest to you;
To ship and deliver Products you have purchased from us through the Site;
If you are a Designer, to market you and your participation and/or offerings through The Expert Service;
To conduct and administer a Promotion if you have chosen to participate;
To respond to your queries and requests, or otherwise communicate directly with you;
To detect any fraudulent or illegal activity against you, our other users, and/or The Expert;
To perform system maintenance and upgrades, and enable new features;
To enforce and/or protect our rights and the rights of others;
To comply with a legal or regulatory obligation (for example, keeping records of our sales for tax compliance); and
To provide information to regulatory bodies when legally required, and only as outlined below in the Section titled “Required Disclosures – Responding to Legal Orders” under Legal Obligations, Required Disclosures, and Exigent Circumstances.

In addition, we may use Usage Information for the following purposes:

To compile statistics and analytics about your use of and interaction with The Expert Services, including details about how and where The Expert Service is accessed, how often you visit or use The Expert Service, the date and time of your visits, your actions on the Site and/or Marketplace, and other similar traffic, usage, and trend data, which allow us to better understand the functionality of our Site and Marketplace on your device and gain insights about how The Expert Service is used in order to improve your experience;
To gather important functionality, testing, and performance data about the Site and Marketplace, including performance data related to the Site, such as networking activity, CPU load, and resource usage, among other relevant data;
To moderate user behavior on the Site, such as protecting against fraud and other inappropriate activities;
To gather demographic information about our user base;
To provide you with notifications, recommendations, and information about specific Products and/or features of The Expert Service and/or additional products, services, or features we believe may be of interest to you; and
Advertise The Expert, The Expert Service, Designers, and the Products across the Internet (as further explained in Targeting & Advertising above).

Aside from disclosing your information to those of our personnel who are authorized to process the information in order to provide The Expert Service and who are committed to confidentiality, we disclose your personal information only to the third parties as described below.

Third-Party Service Providers/Sub-Processors
We share personal information with third parties that provide services to us that help us in the operation, provision, administration and management of The Expert Service (“Service Providers”), and to otherwise operate our business. Depending on how you use The Expert Service, the following categories of third parties collect data on our behalf or receive personal information:
- Hosting services providers,
- Analytics providers,
- Payment processing providers (currently Stripe);
- Shipping providers and carriers;
- Merchants and/or vendors of the Products we make available through the Marketplace (but excluding Trade Vendors, which are not our Service Providers as described below);
- Providers of our Delivery Services;
- Advertising and marketing partners,
- Providers of business operations and communication tools,
- Other third-party service providers that help us provide features and functions for The Expert Service (e.g., customer support providers), and
- Professional service providers, such as auditors, lawyers, consultants, accountants and insurers.
For a list of all Service Providers we use, please contact us.
To Designers and/or Trade Vendors
If you are a client and/or customer that purchases a Consultation with a Designer and/or a Product from a Trade Vendor, we will share your information with the applicable Designer and/or Trade Vendor related to your purchase. Note that Designers and Trade Vendors are not our service providers. The applicable Designer and/or Trade Vendor may use your personal information differently than we do and we do not control their use of your information. Please consult directly with the Designers and Trade Vendors regarding their privacy notices and data collection practices.
To Other Users of The Expert Service
If you communicate through and/or comment or post using any public boards, messaging and/or communication features of The Expert Service, including, but not limited to, posting and reviews for Products, Consultations and/or Services, your communications and posts, including, any personal information contained therein, will be publicly available to other users of The Expert Service.
Please be aware that other users with whom you choose to share your information may use your personal information differently than we do, and we do not control their use of your information. The Expert will not be able to contain or retrieve personal information once it has been shared or disclosed with other users, and The Expert will have no responsibility or liability for any consequences that may result because you have released or shared personal information with others.
Please make your choice to share and/or publicly post information carefully.
Third Party Integrations
When you interact with and/or use Third Party Integrations in connection with The Expert Service, certain data and information may be exchanged between us and the provider of the applicable Third Party Integration. Information that is shared with us through Third Party Integration is used by us as described in this Privacy Notice. Note that the Third Party Integrations you choose to interact with and/or use are not our service providers. The applicable providers of Third Party Integrations may use your personal information differently than we do and we do not control their use of your information. Please review the privacy notices for the Third Party Integrations.
Business Transfers
We may also share data with third parties to whom we choose to sell, transfer, or merge parts of our business or our assets. Alternatively, we may seek to acquire other businesses or merge with them. If a change happens to our business, then the new owners may use your personal information in the same way as set out in this Privacy Notice.
Affiliates and Subsidiaries
Personal information that we collect may be shared with the employees, contractors, and agents of The Expert and our affiliated and subsidiary entities (“Affiliates”) who are involved in providing or improving The Expert Service and/or other products and/or services that we offer. We obligate the employees, contractors and agents of The Expert and our Affiliates to ensure the security and confidentiality of your personal information and to act on that personal information only in a manner consistent with this Privacy Notice.
Legal Obligations and Security
Regulatory and Government Bodies – Compliance with Law
We may disclose your information to regulatory agencies and official government bodies, as required to comply with or satisfy any laws, rules, or regulations applicable to The Expert.

Required Disclosures – Responding to Legal Orders
If we are required to disclose personal information by law, such as pursuant to a subpoena, warrant or other judicial or administrative order, our policy is to respond to requests that are properly issued by law enforcement within the United States. Under such circumstances, unless prohibited by applicable law, we will attempt to provide you with prior notice that a request for your personal information has been made in order to give you an opportunity to object to the disclosure. We will attempt to provide this notice by email, if you have given us an email address. However, government requests may include a court-granted non-disclosure order, which prohibits us from giving notice to the affected individual. In cases where we receive a non-disclosure order, we will notify you when it has expired or once we are authorized to do so.

Exigent Circumstances & Enforcement/Protection of Our Rights
Your information, including the contents of all of your online communications in our Services and between you and The Expert may be accessed and monitored as needed to provide our Services and may be disclosed to law enforcement, regulatory agencies, official government bodies, and other third parties, as we, in our sole discretion, believe necessary or appropriate:
- To enforce our rights under our Terms of Service (including, any applicable Additional Terms, guidelines, policies, and/or rules incorporated or referenced therein), and/or other agreements, terms, and/or policies we enter into with our users, customers, clients, and/or Designers and/or that are applicable to the use of The Expert Service;
- In connection with an investigation of fraud, intellectual property infringement, piracy or other unlawful activity or activity that may expose us or our affiliates, partners and/or agents to legal liability; and/or
- If we receive information that provides us with a good faith belief that there is an exigent emergency involving the danger of death or serious physical injury to a person.
With your Consent
There may be situations where you are asked to consent to share personal information with third parties for additional reasons not included in this Privacy Notice. In such event, we will only share such personal information if we have received your prior consent and only for the purposes as listed in the request to share such information.

8. Marketing Communications

If you are a customer of ours and have not otherwise opted out (or with your consent where required by applicable law), or if you have opted in to receive direct marketing emails from us, we may use your personal information to send you marketing information about The Expert Service, including, but not limited to, new Products, new Designers, new features of The Expert Service, and/or other products and services of The Expert, Designers and/or merchants/vendors of the Products that we think may interest you.

You may manage the receipt of marketing and non-transactional email communications you receive from us by clicking on the “unsubscribe” link located on the bottom of any of our marketing e-mails.

We will use commercially reasonable efforts to process your requests to opt-out of email marketing communications in a timely manner. Note that you cannot opt out of receiving transactional e-mails or communications related to the use of The Expert Service or your purchase of Products (e.g., requests for support), which, for clarification, are not marketing communications.

In addition, if you have opted-in to our Text Service, we may send you SMS/MMS/OTT text messages as set forth in our Text Service T&Cs. You can opt-out at of the Text Service at any time by following the procedures set forth in the Text Service T&Cs.

9. Accessing, Updating and Correcting Personal information

If you would like to correct or update certain personal information (such as your contact information), please contact us and we will use reasonable efforts to correct and/or update such information.

On or through the Site, we provide third-party “share” buttons which enable you to share certain content via social media sites (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and LinkedIn). These “share” buttons may function as web beacons when you interact with the button. Please note that when you “share” using the buttons, you may send to the third party provider of the “share” button the information that you are viewing. If you are not logged into your account with the third party provider, then the third party may not know your identity. If you are logged in to your account with the third party, then the third party may be able to link information or actions about your interactions with the Site to your account with the applicable third party provider. Please refer to each third party’s privacy policies to learn more about its data practices.

11. External Websites

On or through the Site, we may provide or make available, for informational purposes only, links to other websites or resources and over which we do not have control (“External Websites”). Such links do not constitute an endorsement by The Expert of those External Websites, and are provided to you only as a convenience. By clicking on links to External Websites, the operators of the External Websites may collect your personal information. We are not responsible for the content or data collection practices of those External Websites, and your use of External Websites is subject to their respective terms of use and privacy policies.

12. Data Retention

Personal information is processed for the period necessary to fulfill the purposes for which it is collected (for example, in connection with The Expert Service provided to you pursuant to the applicable terms and/or agreement entered into with The Expert with respect to your use of The Expert Service or purchase of any Products, Consultations and/or Services), to comply with legal and regulatory obligations and for the duration of any period necessary to establish, exercise or defend any legal rights.

13. Data Security and Protection

We have put in place reasonable and appropriate security measures designed to prevent your personal information from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorized way, altered or disclosed. For example, we use encryption, secure socket layer, firewalls, and password protection. In addition, we limit access to personal information to those employees, agents, contractors and the third parties who have a business need-to-know.

We also have procedures in place to deal with any suspected data security breach. However, no method of transmission over the Internet, or method of electronic storage, is 100% secure, and while we take reasonable steps to provide secure services, by using The Expert Service, you understand and assume the risks associated with your activities on the internet.

In addition, you have responsibility and control over protecting your personal information. For example, you, and not The Expert is responsible for safeguarding your password, and other authentication information you use to access The Expert Service. You should not disclose your password and/or authentication information to any third party and should immediately contact us of any unauthorized use of your password or you have reason to believe that your information and/or account is no longer secure.

In addition, as described in this Privacy Notice, The Expert cannot secure, and has no responsibility for, any personal information that you share or release on your own or that you request us to share or release or share with other users of The Expert Service.

14. European Privacy Rights

The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation and certain other countries’ data protection laws provide certain rights for data subjects. If you are a resident of the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom or another country with data protection laws that provide for certain data subject rights, you may submit a request to exercise your rights.

Users in the European Economic Area and the United Kingdom have the following rights:

The right to be informed - that’s an obligation on us to inform you how we use your personal data (and that’s what we’re doing in this Privacy Notice)

Right of access - The Controller offers you access to your personal data we process. This means you can contact us and request from us a confirmation whether or not your personal data are being processed and if so, you have the right to request access to your data, which we will provide to you in the form of a so-called "registry" (stating, in particular, purposes, categories of personal data, categories of recipients of personal data, storage periods or criteria for determining storage periods).

Right to rectification - You have the right to have inaccurate personal data we have stored about you rectified.

Right to erasure - You may also ask us to erase your personal data from our systems. We will comply with such requests unless we have a legitimate ground to not delete your personal data.

Right to restriction of processing - You may request us to restrict certain processing of your personal data. If you restrict certain processing of your personal data, this may lead to fewer possibilities to use our Services and website.

Right to data portability - You have the right to receive your personal data from us in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format in order to transmit the personal data to another controller.

Right to object - that’s a right for you to object to us processing your personal data (for example, if you object to us processing your data for direct marketing).

Rights in relation to automated decision-making and profiling - that’s a right you have for us to be transparent about any profiling we do, or any automated decision-making.

Right to withdraw Consent — that’s the right to revoke any consent you may have previously given us at any time, if we have collected and processed your personal information with your consent. Withdrawing your consent will not affect the lawfulness of any processing we conducted with your consent prior to your withdrawal, nor will it affect processing of your personal information conducted in reliance on lawful processing grounds other than consent.

How to use your rights - You may exercise your rights above in writing by sending an email to the contact details in How to Contact Us. You will not have to pay a fee to exercise any of your rights unless your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive or excessive. Alternatively, we may refuse to comply with your request in these circumstances. We may require confirmation of your identity depending on your request. We respond to all requests we receive from individuals wishing to exercise their data rights in accordance with applicable data protection laws.

In case you consider our processing activities of your personal data to be inconsistent with the applicable data protection laws, you may lodge a complaint with the local supervisory authority for data protection.

15. California Privacy Rights - Shine the Light

California residents who have provided us with personal information have the right (under California Civil Code§ 1798.83) to request and obtain from us, once each year, the details of any personal information we shared with a third party for that third party’s direct marketing purposes during the prior calendar year. The details would include the categories of personal information and the names and addresses of the third party with which it was shared.

To request information about this sharing, you may submit a request with "Your California Privacy Rights" in the subject line, along with your first and last name, and complete mailing address (including street address, city, state, and zip code) by either: sending an email message or writing to us at the email and/or mailing address specified in the How to Contact Us Section.

If you do not submit and send your request with complete information as set forth above, we will not be able to process it.

16. Nevada Privacy Rights

Under Nevada law, certain Nevada residents may opt out of the sale of covered personal information (which includes first and last name, address, email address, phone number, Social Security Number, or an identifier that allows a specific person to be contacted either physically or online) to a person for that person to license or sell such information to additional persons.

The Expert does not currently sell your covered information as defined under applicable Nevada law; however, you may submit an opt-out request, which we will honor as required by Nevada law should we engage in such a sale in the future.

You may submit an opt-out request by sending an email message or writing to us at the email and/or mailing address specified in the How to Contact Us Section; along with your full name, any user name, and complete mailing address (including street address, city, state, and zip code), email address (so that we can contact you, if needed, in connection with the request) and confirmation that you are a Nevada resident.

You must provide us with information reasonably requested by us to verify your identity and the authenticity of the request. We typically process these requests within 60 days from the day we receive it (and will notify you within that period if we need an additional 30 days to do so).

17. International Transfers

The Expert is based in the United States. The personal information that we collect are sent to and stored on servers located in the United States. Such storage is necessary in order to process the information. The Expert may transfer the personal data that we collect from you to our other offices and/or to the third parties mentioned in the circumstances described above, which may be situated outside of your country or regional area, and may be processed by staff operating outside of your country or regional area. In particular, information provided to us or collected by us likely will be transferred to and processed in the United States by us or our Affiliates and our respective agents and contractors.

In such a case personal data of a User in the European Union is transferred, we transfer your personal data with appropriate safeguards in place to protect your personal data, such as standard contract clauses or binding internal company rules. Regardless of the country in which your personal data is processed, the Controller takes reasonable technical, legal and organizational measures to ensure that the level of protection is the same as in the European Union, United Kingdom, and the European Economic Area.

18. How to Contact Us

If you have any questions about this Privacy Notice or our Cookie Policy, including any requests to exercise your legal rights, please contact us as follows:

By email at:hello@theexpert.com; Subject Line: Privacy Request

The Expert - Privacy Notice

Last Updated: May 4, 2023

Table of Contents

1. Changes to this Privacy Notice

2. Who Processes Your Personal Data?

3. Information We Collect and Process; Legal Basis for Processing

Information we Collect and Process

Legal basis for Processing

Information Provided Directly to The Expert

Account & Contact Information

Payment and Transaction Information

Other Information You May Provide to Us

Information Collected from Third Parties (someone other than you) and/or Third Party Sources

Usage Information; Cookies & Targeted Advertising

Usage Information

Cookies and Similar Technologies

Targeting & Advertising

How to Manage Cookie Preferences

Aggregated Data

4. Children’s Privacy

5. Sensitive Data

6. How The Expert Uses Personal Information

7. Sharing Personal Information

Third-Party Service Providers/Sub-Processors

To Designers and/or Trade Vendors

To Other Users of The Expert Service

Third Party Integrations

Business Transfers

Affiliates and Subsidiaries

Legal Obligations and Security

With your Consent