Privacy Policy
Side Effects Software Inc (SideFX) is committed to protecting the privacy of data it collects. This Privacy Policy explains how SideFX collects, uses, shares, and stores information about you, including personal information (i.e. information that personally identifies you, such as your name, email address, or billing information, or other data that can be reasonably used to infer this information).
Account Creation
There are two ways you can create an account on the SideFX site: by registering your information with us or by logging in with a third party.
- When registering your information we request that you provide your name, email address, password, and publicly-visible username. Your password is stored in an encrypted format on our servers. We strive to protect your account password, enforcing secure password policies and employing security safeguards. You are responsible for choosing a secure account password and not sharing it with anyone.
- When creating an account by logging in with a third party (e.g. Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo, and others) the SideFX site will request your name and email address from that third party and store it. It will not store your password information.
Your name and email address is displayed to you when you visit our site, but it is hidden from other users of the site. Your username is visible to other users when they view your profile or other content you have uploaded to our site, such as forum posts, comments, gallery images, and tutorials.
Purchase Information
If you purchase products from the SideFX site, we request that you have an active account and that you provide your billing address and credit card information to complete the transaction. Your name, email address, billing address, and last 4 digits of your credit card will be stored by SideFX. We do not store your full credit card information. Our credit card processing service provider, PsiGate, will collect and store full payment card information from you when an order is placed. Your address information is used when preparing quotes and invoices for renewals of products and services you have purchased.
When purchasing products from the SideFX site, you may enter information about how you are using the product. SideFX uses this information to better understand its users and improve its products.
You may also provide an optional VAT (value-added tax) number and an optional PO (purchase order) number which SideFX will store and will include on your invoice.
Mailing List Information
You may choose to submit your email address when you sign up for a SideFX account. If you sign up, your email address may be used to send you news about SideFX-related services, surveys, products, promotions, upcoming events, seminars, or other information of interest. We may use one or more service providers to administer lists of email addresses and send bulk emails, but we do not share your email address with spammers or any other third parties without your permission. At any point you may unsubscribe from the mailing lists.
In some of our email messages, we use a “click-through URL” linked to content on the site. We track this click-through data to help us measure the effectiveness of our customer communications.
Contact Emails
When contacting SideFX, either by email or through our site, for sales inquiries, technical support, or other messages, we may store your name and email address.
License Server Computer Information
SideFX stores the computer name, license server version, IP address, and hardware hash of each computer where you installed SideFX licenses. This information is also stored for previous computers where you had installed licenses in the past, to make it easier to reinstall licenses to those servers. The hardware hash is required by SideFX's licensing software and is based on, but does not reveal, device-specific information about the computer such as the MAC address and disk identifiers.
If SideFX's licensing software detects the use of fraudulent licenses it might transmit your name, username, and computer name to SideFX. Otherwise, once you install SideFX licenses to your license server computer, SideFX’s licensing software running on that computer will not attempt to send any information to SideFX and will not connect to our site.
Online Tracking
Website Use Information: Like many websites, we and our third-party partners analyze log file information and other data collected through cookies and other tracking technology, to collect information about your browsing behavior when you visit our site, including for example, your browser type, domains, page views, IP address, referring/exit pages, information about how you interact with our site’s pages and with third-party links, traffic and usage trends on the service, etc. We use session cookies to keep you logged in while you use features of our site; these disappear after you log out from our site. We also use persistent cookies, which stay in your browser and allow us to recognize you when you return to the site. We use this to remember your information so you will not have to re-enter it, to better understand how you use our website and products and services, to diagnose and fix technology problems, and otherwise enhance our site, products, and services. We also use third-party analytics tools (including Google Analytics) to assist us with analyzing and improving our service. Most Internet browsers automatically accept cookies, but you may be able to change the settings of your browser to stop accepting cookies or to prompt you before accepting a cookie from the websites you visit. If you set your browser to reject cookies, parts of our site may not work for you. Please note, depending on your type of device or browser, it may not be possible to delete or disable all tracking mechanisms on your device.
- Your selection of the “Do Not Track” option provided by your browser may not have any effect on our collection of cookie information for analytic and internal purposes. The only way to completely “opt out” of the collection of any information through cookies or other tracking technology is to actively manage the settings on your browser or mobile device to delete and disable cookies and other tracking/recording tools. (To learn more about cookies, clear gifs/web beacons and related technologies, you may wish to visit allaboutcookies.org).
- We permit third-party advertising partners to use cookies and other technology to collect information about your browsing activities over time and across different websites when you use our site. For example, we may use advertising services provided by third-party ad partners, such as Google Display Network and AdRoll, to market our services to you on other websites and online services. Through a process called “retargeting,” each service places a cookie on your browser when you visit our site so that they can identify you and serve you ads on other sites around the web based on your browsing activity. To avoid use of this information for advertising by these third-party ad partners, you can change your browser settings to reject cookies or to notify you when cookies are set and you could select the Do Not Track option on your browser, though we have no control over and cannot confirm whether these third party ad parties honor the Do Not Track browser signal. Additionally, many advertising companies are members of the NAI or DAA and/or provide opt-outs on those industry pages at networkadvertising.org/choices or aboutads.info/choices.
Third-Party Sites and Third-Party Services
Our Site may contain links to other websites operated by third parties and may include social media features such as Facebook and Twitter buttons (such as “Like,” “Tweet” or “Pin”). These third-party sites may collect information about you if you click on a link and the social media sites may automatically record information about your browsing behavior every time you visit a site that has a social media button. Your interactions with these features are governed by the privacy policy of the company providing the feature, not by our privacy policy. We do not control what information these third parties collect. Please review your privacy settings on your social media sites and think carefully before clicking on links which may take you to a third-party website.
We provide information to the following third-party services:
- We provide your name and email address to the third party service MailChimp to send email campaigns you are subscribed to.
- We provide your name and email address to the third party service Mailgun to send you transactional emails related to your licenses or purchases.
- We provide your email address to the third party service ZeroBounce to verify that it is valid, so that we are less likely to be blacklisted by email providers.
- If you live in the United States we provide your address information to the third party service Avalara to compute sales tax information.
Anonymous Usage Statistics
You may choose to have SideFX’s software products send anonymous usage statistics to our Site, on order to improve our software. This information does not contain any personally-identifiable data. More information about this information is available at https://www.sidefx.com/legal/houdini-anonymous-usage-statistics/.
Minors
Our site does not knowingly collect or store any personal information about children under the age of 13. Children under the age of 16 must ask for parental permission and the parent must certify the child has permission in order for the child to create and use an account on SideFX.
Data Sharing
Under no circumstance do we share personal information for any commercial or marketing purpose unrelated to the delivery of SideFX Products and services without asking you first. We do not rent or sell our customer lists.
The following are the limited situations where we may share personal information:
- As part of business transactions: Upon the sale or transfer of the company and/or all or part of its assets, your personal information may be among the items sold or transferred. We will request a purchaser to treat our data under the privacy policy in place at the time of its collection.
- For legal reasons: We may provide information to a third party if we believe in good faith that we are required to do so for legal reasons. For example, to respond to legal process, or comply with state and federal laws (or the applicable laws of foreign countries other than Canada).
- Where we have reasonable grounds to believe that disclosing such information is necessary to identify, contact, or bring legal action against someone who may be violating the Terms of Use of our site or may be causing injury to or interference with, (either intentionally or unintentionally), our rights or property, or anyone else that could be harmed by such activities.
We may share non-personal information (for example, aggregated or anonymized customer data) publicly and with our partners. For example, we may publish trends about system hardware in our user base.
Security
SideFX takes security seriously and cares about the integrity of your personal information. We use commercially reasonable physical, administrative, and technological methods to transmit and store your data securely. However, SideFX cannot guarantee that unauthorized third parties will never be able to defeat our security measures or use your personal information for improper purposes. In the event that any information under our control is compromised as a result of a breach of security, we will take reasonable steps to investigate the situation and where appropriate, notify those individuals whose information may have been compromised and take other steps, in accordance with any applicable laws and regulations.
To improve the security of our site and your data, SideFX administers a Responsible Disclosure Program where participants can make us aware of security vulnerabilities for a monetary reward. More information is available at https://www.sidefx.com/responsible-disclosure-program/.
Retention
SideFX generally stores your personal information on SideFX’s servers until you delete or edit it, or for as long as you remain a SideFX customer in order to provide you with SideFX Products. In addition, SideFX may store your personal information to resolve disputes, establish legal defenses, conduct audits, pursue legitimate business purposes, enforce our agreements and comply with applicable laws.
If you delete your SideFX account, or if you ask SideFX to erase your personal information, SideFX will erase all personal information held about you by SideFX except as required by legal conformance, such as purchase information on invoices, or as required to provide purchased services, such as active software licenses. Public comments and forum posts are kept for archiving purposes in the public interest. Your username is also kept for archiving purposes, unless it contains personally identifiable information such as your full name. To protect your privacy, SideFX will take commercially reasonable steps to verify your identity before granting you access to delete or change your personal information.
Data Portability
You may use our site to download all of your personal information and content you have created, including your name, email address, mailing address, license server machine names, license server hardware identifiers, forum posts, and gallery images.
Changes to Privacy Policy
Please note that this privacy policy may change from time to time. We will provide notice of any changes on our site or by contacting you.
Contact
If you have any questions or requests about your personal data, please contact us at privacy@sidefx.com.