We respect your privacy. SPECNET will not disclose your name, email address, or other personal information to third parties without your consent, except as specified in this policy.
You can control your privacy settings through the opt-out buttons in your account settings privacy tab, and the Privacy Settings link in the footer of most site pages and our homepage. Please note that some changes to your privacy settings may take a few days to take effect. We or our sellers may advertise our Services or our sellers’ products through a variety of different mediums and rely on your consent to do so off-site.
Legal Bases
When you access or use the Services, we collect, use, share, and otherwise process your personal information for the purposes described in this policy. We rely on a number of legal bases to use your information in these ways. These legal bases include where:
Necessary to perform the contractual obligations in our Terms of Use and in order to provide the Services to you;
You have consented to the processing, which you can revoke at any time;
Necessary to comply with a legal obligation, a court order, or to exercise or defend any impending or asserted legal claims;
Necessary for the purposes of our or a third party’s legitimate interests, such as those of visitors, members, or partners (described in more detail below);
You have expressly made the information public;
Necessary in the public interest, such as to prevent crime; and
Occasionally necessary to protect your vital interests or those of others (in rare cases where we may need to share information to prevent loss of life or personal injury).
We principally rely on consent (which can be withdrawn at anytime) (i) to send marketing messages, (ii) for third-party data sharing related to advertising, and, to the extent applicable, (iii) for the use of location data for advertising purposes.
We rely on consent for targeted online and offline marketing including through tools like Facebook Custom Audience and Google Customer Match. We or our sellers may advertise our Services or our sellers’ products through a variety of different mediums and rely on your consent to do so off-site. As part of this, we may work with advertising partners such as Facebook, Google, and other partners disclosed in our Cookies and Similar Technology Policy. These partners have their own privacy policies and consent mechanisms for their customers, in addition to SPECNET’s controls. You may see the privacy policies and privacy choices for these partners, and the information you share with them, in our Cookies and Similar Technology Disclosures.
Buying and Selling: As part of the buying and selling process, SPECNET will facilitate the sharing of information between the two members involved in the transaction, such as the other SPECNET member’s shipping address and payment status. This can also involve us sharing your information with some of our third party partners such as our shipping and payment partners to enable us to provide the Service to you. Such partners will process your personal information in accordance with their own privacy policies. In some instances, while they are subject to SPECNET’s privacy and security requirements for vendors, these partners, not SPECNET, are responsible for the protection of personal information under their control. By making a sale or a purchase on SPECNET, you are directing us to share your information in this way. Since this is an important part of the Services we provide, we need to do this in order to perform our obligations under our Terms of Use. We expect you to respect the privacy of the member whose information you have received. As described in SPECNET’s Terms of Use, you have a limited license to use that information only for SPECNET-related communications or for SPECNET-facilitated transactions. SPECNET has not granted a license to you to use the information for unauthorized transactions or sending unsolicited commercial messages in violation of any applicable laws, including any consent requirements of the jurisdiction of the recipient. You should only add a member to your email or physical mailing list or otherwise use or store a member’s personal information in accordance with applicable laws, including any consent requirements that apply in that member’s jurisdiction.
Site Customization: We may learn about the types of products that you’re interested in from your browsing and purchasing behavior on (and off) the Site or Apps and use such information to suggest potential purchases as a result. As a core part of our Services, we have a legitimate interest in customizing your on-site experience to help you search for and discover relevant items and recommended purchases, including using this information to help sellers find the best ways to market and sell their products on SPECNET.
Legal and Safety: SPECNET may also retain, preserve, or release your personal information to a third party in the following limited circumstances: in response to lawful requests by public authorities, including to meet legitimate national security or law enforcement requirements; to protect, establish, or exercise our legal rights or defend against impending or asserted legal claims, including to collect a debt, or a material violation of our policies (including our Intellectual Property Policy); to comply with a subpoena, court order, legal process, or other legal requirement; or when we believe in good faith that such disclosure is reasonably necessary to comply with the law, prevent imminent physical harm or financial loss, or investigate, prevent, or take action regarding illegal activities, suspected fraud, threats to our rights or property, or violations of SPECNET’s Terms of Use. In these cases, our use of your information may be necessary for the purposes of our or a third party’s legitimate interest in keeping our Services secure, preventing harm or crime, enforcing or defending legal rights, or preventing damage. Such use may also be necessary to comply with a legal obligation, a court order, or to exercise or defend legal claims. It may also be necessary in the public interest (such as to prevent crime) or to protect vital interests (in rare cases where we may need to share information to prevent loss of life or personal injury).
If SPECNET receives a lawful, verified request for a member’s records or information in one of the limited circumstances described in the previous paragraph, SPECNET may disclose personal information, which may include, but may not be limited to, a member’s name, address, phone number, email address, and company name. Find out more about how SPECNET responds to requests for records or information about members of SPECNET’s community in our Requests for Information Policy.
Affiliated Businesses: SPECNET is affiliated with a variety of businesses and works closely with them for a variety of purposes, including assisting us to perform and improve the Services. These businesses may sell items or services to you through the Services or, with your consent, offer promotions (including email promotions) to you. SPECNET also provides services or sells products jointly with affiliated businesses, including providing you with the opportunity to sign up with such partners and allow them to more effectively market to you. When an affiliated business assists in facilitating your transaction, we may need to share information related to the transaction with that affiliated business in order to facilitate your transaction, and this forms part of the Services we provide in accordance with our Terms of Use. We rely on consent (which can be withdrawn at any time) to send marketing messages and for third-party sharing relating to advertising. As part of this, we may work with advertising partners such as Facebook or Google, and we may use analytics aggregated from usage information including, for example, search keywords, favorites, browsing history, and purchase history.
Aggregated Information: SPECNET may share demographic information with business partners, but it will be aggregated and de-personalized so that personal information is not revealed.
Service Providers: SPECNET also needs to engage third-party companies and individuals (such as research companies, and analytics and security providers) to help us operate, provide, and market the Services. These third parties have only limited access to your information, may use your information only to perform these tasks on our behalf, and are obligated to SPECNET not to disclose or use your information for other purposes. Our engagement of service providers is often necessary for us to provide the Services to you, particularly where such companies play important roles like helping us keep our Service operating and secure. In some other cases, these service providers aren’t strictly necessary for us to provide the Services, but help us make it better, like by helping us conduct research into how we could better serve our users. In these latter cases, we have a legitimate interest in working with service providers to make our Services better.
Business Reorganization: In some cases, SPECNET may choose to buy or sell assets. Such transactions may be necessary and in our legitimate interests, particularly our interest in making decisions that enable our business to develop over the long term. In these types of transactions (such as a sale, merger, liquidation, receivership, or transfer of all or substantially all of SPECNET’s assets), member information is typically one of the business assets that is transferred. If SPECNET intends to transfer information about you, SPECNET will notify you by email or by putting a prominent notice on the Site and the App, and you will be afforded an opportunity to opt out before information about you becomes subject to a different privacy policy.
Third Parties: Third-party plug-ins also collect information about your use of the Site. For example, when you load a page on SPECNET that has a social plug-in from a third-party site or service, such as a “Like” or “Send” button, you are also loading content from that third-party site. That site may request cookies directly from your browser. These interactions are subject to the privacy policy of the third-party site. In addition, certain cookies and other similar technologies on the Site are used by third parties for targeted online marketing and other purposes. These technologies allow a partner to recognize your computer or mobile device each time you use the Services. Please be aware that when you use third-party sites or services, their own terms and privacy policies will govern your use of those sites or services. SPECNET chooses and manages these third-party technologies placed on its Sites and Apps. However, these are third-party technologies, and they are subject to that third party’s privacy policy. For more information, see our Cookies & Similar Technologies Policy. We rely on your consent to drop and read these cookies when not technically necessary or when not required based on another purpose such as legitimate interest.
This policy does not apply to the practices of third parties (such as other members who sell using the Services, certain third-party providers on whom we rely to provide certain services, or API users) that SPECNET does not own or control or individuals that SPECNET does not employ or manage, except as otherwise provided for in the Terms or as required by law. If you provide your information to such third parties in connection with your use of the Services, different practices may apply to the use or disclosure of the information that you provide to them. While SPECNET requires these third parties to follow SPECNET’s privacy and security requirements, SPECNET does not control the privacy or security policies of such third parties. To the full extent applicable in your jurisdiction, SPECNET is not responsible for the privacy or security practices of these sellers, API users, or other websites on the internet, even those linked to or from the Services. We encourage you to read the privacy policies and ask questions of third parties before you disclose your personal information to them. For the purposes of European law, these sellers, third party providers, and API users are independent controllers of data, which means that they are responsible for providing and complying with their own policies relating to any personal information they obtain in connection with the Services.