Flow Accelerator is a Palestinian-based start-up accelerator that helps early-stage entrepreneurs to grow their businesses. We respect the privacy of our participants and are committed to protecting their personal information. This Privacy Notice outlines how Flow Accelerator collects and handles personal data from your use of our website (flow.ps), as well as any of our Programs you sign up to.
For your convenience, please be aware that if you do not want your personal information collected when visiting our site, please do not submit it to us. If you have already submitted information and would like to review, change, or remove it from our records, please contact [email protected]
By browsing and using this website, you agree to the provisions of this Privacy Notice.
- Information that we collect
We collect different personal information from you depending on how you want to engage with us at flow Accelerator. We also automatically collect non-identifiable data through the Site (such as IP addresses, browser characteristics, device characteristics, operating system, language preferences, referring URLs, information on actions taken on our website, and dates and times of website visits).
- Personal Information
We require your name, email address, company and title to be able to contact you with relevant updates. We also offer regional updates (e.g. Ramallah, Nablus, Hebron, Gaza) so that you can be sure that we are sending updates relevant to you.
If you apply to participate in a Program as a startup or you apply to participate as a Flow Accelerator Expert (such as a “judge, “mentor,” or “speaker,”), we ask you to create a User Profile and you will create a password and provide additional details about yourself, including your bio, a photo, your gender, social networking links, and fuller details of your educational and business background and/or business idea. Some of this information is required and some is optional, and the specific details collected vary depending on your role. We use this information to evaluate your application. If we select you to participate, then we will process the information you and others generate during the course of the Program, such as work papers, correspondence with other Program participants and Flow Accelerator experts, and of course your final submission. For instance, we collect information about how competitors are judged, their rank, and which Mentors are assigned to which competitor teams, etc. All of this information is necessary for us to operate an individual Program.
By applying to participate as a startup or as an expert, we will use your basic contact details to send you surveys concerning your opinion of how we run applications and Programs, and we collect information from you when you respond to those surveys.
If you wish to apply for an internship or employment with Flow Accelerator, separate links on the Site will bring you to a page listing current opportunities. We and our recruiting team will use the information you submit in an application only for the purposes of evaluating and interacting with you for that specific job posting.
When you visit our Site, we may load social media features such as the Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter buttons. These features may also collect your IP address and the page you are visiting on our Site. These features may also give you the option to post information about your activities on our Site to your profile page to share with others within your social media network. Your interactions with these features are governed by the privacy notice of the company providing them.
Flow Accelerator may ask you to participate in questionnaires and surveys. If you choose to participate and provide information in response to a questionnaire or survey (collectively, “Survey Responses”), this information will be used to conduct research and analytics (for example, relating to Program application, participation and outcome trends).
- Cookies and Other Data Collection Tools
We also collect non-identifying information about your interaction with our Site so that we can better understand how visitors use our Site and thus how we can improve the Site functionality. For example, we collect certain standard information that your browser sends to every website you visit, such as your IP address, browser type, and language, access times and referring website addresses. We may also use website analytics tools on our site to retrieve information from your browser, including the site you came from, the search engines and keywords you used to find our Site, the pages you view within our Site, the links you click on, and your browser add-ons.
Additionally, we may use technologies, such as cookies and web beacons, to collect information about the pages you view, the links you click and other actions you take on our sites and services. Cookies, web beacons and/or similar technologies were originally designed to help a website distinguish a user’s browser from a previous visitor and thus save and remember any preferences that may have been set while the user was browsing the site or to track the user’s activities. These can be helpful, for example, in recognizing your browser as you move between pages of the Site, login, and improve your experience on the Site when you have logged in.
A cookie is a small text file that is placed on your hard disk by a Web page server. Cookies contain information that can later be read by a Web server in the domain that issued the cookie to you. Cookies cannot be used to retrieve any other data from your hard drive, capture your email address, run programs, or deliver viruses to your computer. A web beacon is a small transparent gif image that is embedded in an HTML page or email used to track when the page or email has been viewed. These assist in delivering cookies on our Site and allow us to count users who have visited those pages. This technology is similar to a cookie in that it tracks your visit and the data can only be read by the server that receives the data. It is different than a cookie in that it is not browser-based, may not function as an identification card, and does not store any data on your computer. We refer to these technologies collectively as “Data Collection Tools.”
Some of the most common cookies, along with their primary purposes, that we use on our Site are listed below:
AddThis (_atssc, _atuvc, _attuvs, loc, mus, na-_id, ouid, ssc, uid, uvc): These cookies help enable social sharing tools on our Site that allows you to share the content on social media or by email. These cookies track interactions with the embedded sharing buttons and monitor its usage.
Facebook (_fbp): These cookies enable Flow Accelerator to deliver targeted advertising to visitors to our Site when they are on Facebook or a digital platform powered by Facebook Advertising.
Google Analytics (_ga, _gi): Registers a unique ID that we use to gather statistical data on how anonymous visitors use the Site.
If you wish to disable cookies, you can set your browser not to accept cookies. You can find out how to do so here: www.aboutcookies.org. Please note though that if you turn off cookies, there may be some features and functions of our Site that will not be available to you and some pages may not display properly.
Do-Not-Track Signals – Your browser may allow you to set a “Do Not Track” preference. We currently do not respond to “Do Not Track” or similar signals.
- Data Collection by Third Parties and Google Analytics
We may integrate Data Collection Tools from third parties in order to help us compile aggregated statistics regarding the effectiveness of our promotional campaigns or other operations of our Site.
We use Google Analytics to collect data about and to assess the performance of our Site. Google captures this Site usage data for use as described in “How Google uses data when you use our partners’ sites or apps.” You can prevent your data from being used by Google Analytics on websites including ours by installing the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on here. We also employ IP address masking, a technique used to truncate IP addresses collected by Google Analytics and store them in an abbreviated form to prevent them from being traced back to individual users. Portions of our Site may also use Google Analytics for Display Advertisers including DoubleClick or Dynamic Remarketing which provide interest-based ads based on your visit to this or other websites. You can use Ads Settings to manage the Google ads you see and to opt-out of interest-based ads.
- How we use your information
We collect your personal information to provide you with the information that you request, to manage your participation in our Programs, and to provide a safe and efficient service for you. We explained in the Personal Information section what sort of identifiable information we collect, when we collect it, and how we use it. We use your personal information to operate and promote Flow Accelerator and the Programs. These include using your personal information for our own internal business operations as well as to operate the Programs. We may also use your personal information to:
- Send you newsletters you request
- Manage your application for an internship or a job posting
- Verify your eligibility to participate in a Program
- Match you with mentors and judges
- Match you with partners
- Match you with other Program participants and Flow Accelerator staff in order to operate the Program
- Provide a technology platform for document submissions and communications with your mentors and others
- Match you with the event, category, or services best suited to your company’s needs
- Analyze and measure the success of our Programs and Program participants over time
When you sign up for a Program, we may use your information to contact you for ongoing service and support during the Program. Occasionally, we may also contact you to complete surveys that we use to improve the Programs.
If you have expressly permitted us to do so, we may also use your personal information to send you (or have our business partners or marketing agencies send you on our behalf) marketing information or to contact you for marketing research. At a minimum, we will always give you the opportunity to “opt out” of receiving marketing materials you choose to unsubscribe from.
If we would like to use your personal information for any purposes other than those described, or as otherwise permitted under applicable law, we will obtain your prior consent.
- Information sharing and disclosure
Your information may be shared with third parties that we trust who need your information in order for us to provide you with the services you requested. From time to time, we may share your personal information with our partners that are running the programs you’re participating in. These partners would be people like our flow accelerator staff. We will only share the following types of personal information with them:
- Startup team and team participant names and basic contact details
- Basic Startup Profile Information, such as your elevator pitch
We’re more than happy to share your Startup Profile information with our partners, but you can choose to put your profile into ‘stealth mode’ if you wish. You can also turn off the ‘stealth mode’ at any time from our website.
When you provide personal information in a Survey Response, we may also share it with Partners for their use to conduct research and analytics (for example, relating to Program application, participation and outcome trends).
The second category of third-party recipients largely consists of our vendors and service providers, who help us to run a Program and our business. These include, for example, ClearCompany for employment applications, CRM purposes, surveys, Microsoft Office 365 and Apps for online communication purpose. We only share personal information with these third-parties for the purpose of performing services on our behalf. We require that these parties only process the personal information for limited and specified purposes consistent with this Notice.
We want to share our events with the world, so we take photographs, make videos and recordings. We may share your name, photo and information about you online in order to inform people about our programs. We will not use your information for any other purposes than promoting our services and programs unless we ask you and you permit us to do so in advance. We reserve our right to disclose your personal information if we have a good faith belief in our sole discretion that access, use, preservation or disclosure of such information is reasonably necessary to (a) satisfy any applicable law, regulation, legal process or enforceable governmental request, (b) enforce applicable Legal Notice and terms of Program participation, including investigation of potential violations thereof, (c) detect, prevent, or otherwise address fraud, security or technical issues, or (d) protect against harm to the rights, property or safety of Flow Accelerator, its users or the public as required or permitted by law. We may also share personal information in connection with the sale, merger, divestiture, reorganization or any other corporate transaction involving Flow Accelerator.
We may share aggregated and non-personal information with third parties, including advisors, advertisers and investors, for the purpose of conducting general business analysis, including analysis into the success of our Programs and Program participants. We do not share the information you provide with third parties for their direct marketing purposes unless you affirmatively agree to such disclosure.
In order to conduct statistical analysis and academic research, we may share your personal information with academic researchers. This information will be provided in a pseudonymized format to ensure your privacy.
We do not sell your personal information under Palestinian Law, which defines certain disclosures of personal data for monetary or valuable consideration as “sales.”
- How long we keep your personal information
Flow Accelerator will retain your information for a period of time that is necessary to fulfill the purposes outlined in this privacy policy and to carry out our legal obligations.
We will typically retain personal information for the longer of the period a) required by law or b) a time-bound determination of legal and business risk. For examples of the latter, we will maintain: An internship or employment application for 3 years beyond the application submission A Startup or Expert application for 15 years beyond the application submission Participant contact details along with your Program role for 15 years beyond the specific Program work papers, communications, and such except for materials forming part of a team’s final submission for 15 years.
- Rights and access to your personal data
We provide you with access to your personal information, so that you can correct it if it is inaccurate or delete it at your request if it is not required to be retained by law or for legitimate business purposes.
If you have created a User Profile and registered to participate as a startup or an expert, you can login to your Account from the Login Page, review your personal information, and make changes from there. If there is something you wish to change but cannot from your Account page, then contact us and we will help.
Upon request we will provide you with information about whether we hold, or process on behalf of a third party, any of your personal information. To request this information, please contact us at [email protected]
- Children’s privacy
You must be at least 16 years old to use this website.
We make every effort to protect your privacy, and will delete any information we collect if we find out it is from a child under 16. If you think there is any personal information on the site, please contact us.
- Visiting our Site from outside and inside Palestine
We store and process all personal information for the Flow Accelerator Programs within Palestine.
Account Information Security
When you send us your personal information, we make every effort to safeguard and protect it. We take reasonable precautions to prevent unauthorized access, unlawful processing, and accidental or unauthorized loss, destruction, or damage to your personal information. To protect the confidentiality of personally identifiable information, we employ industry-standard safeguards such as encryption, firewalls, and SSL (Secure Sockets Layer). While we work hard to protect your personal information, we need your help to ensure the security of the information you send us. We strongly advise you to take every precaution to safeguard your personal information when using the Internet. Use a secure internet browser, follow the vendor’s recommendations, and apply updates as needed.
- Third Party Sites
Flow Accelerator has links on its website to third-party websites, some of which might be co-branded with a Flow logo. We don’t share your personal information with them, and are not responsible for the privacy practices on these websites. When you leave our website to go to a third-party’s site, it’s important that you read the privacy notice of that site. This will tell you how they handle any information they collect from you.
- Blogs
If you disclose information on this Site through discussion forums, blogs, or other means, that information will become public and may be read, collected or used by other Users. Please note that we cannot be held liable for any of your personal data that you choose to submit in these forums. You should be very careful when deciding what you are willing to disclose. All opinions expressed herein are the person’s own and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of Flow Accelerator. Note also that your use of these online communication tools is subject to our Terms of Use.
- Changes to this Privacy Notice
We’re always looking for ways to improve our site. To do this, we’re going to review and update our Privacy Notice periodically. If you continue using our site, you’ll automatically agree to the revised Privacy Notice unless required by law. This is an important step in understanding how we collect and use your data. We recommend that you check our Privacy Notice from time to time to ensure that you have the latest information. We may send you a notice when there are significant changes to this Privacy Notice.
- Contact, or Feedback
We hope you find this privacy policy and practice informative and easy to understand. If you have any questions or concerns, please reach us at the following:
Main Office,
Ramallah,
BeirZait
[email protected]