Privacy Policy

Last Updated: 6 June 2024

The standards organization that develops and maintains the specifications for Bluetooth technology is operated by Bluetooth SIG, Inc. (“Bluetooth SIG”), located at 5209 Lake Washington Boulevard NE, Suite 350, Kirkland, Washington 98033 (“Bluetooth SIG,” “we”, “us”, or “our”). Your privacy is very important to us. This policy describes our data collection and processing activities, including how we protect your information (“Privacy Policy”). This Privacy Policy pertains to registered and unregistered users of our websites (including the bluetooth.com and bluetooth.org domains), applications, databases, software, plug-ins, test scripts, tools, services, and forums (collectively the “Services”).

This Privacy Policy describes the types of information we collect from you and how that information is used, processed and, in certain cases, disclosed by us, and your rights and choices regarding the information you provide to us. PLEASE READ THIS PRIVACY POLICY CAREFULLY BEFORE YOU REGISTER FOR A USER ACCOUNT (AN “ACCOUNT”) TO ACCESS OR USE THE SERVICES. IF YOU DO NOT AGREE TO THIS PRIVACY POLICY, PLEASE DO NOT USE OUR SERVICES OR CREATE AN ACCOUNT.

Please also review our Terms of Use (TOU), which govern your use of the Services.

Information We Collect
We collect certain types of information from and about users of our Services, including the following information:

  • That personally identifies you, such as your name, business postal address, e-mail address, and telephone number (“personal information”); and
  • Technical details concerning equipment you use to access our Services, including your internet connection, computer operating system, browser type, general location, and telemetry data regarding your use of the Services.

We collect this information:

  • Directly from you when you provide it to us
  • Automatically as you navigate through the Services. Information collected automatically may include usage details, IP addresses, and information collected through cookies and other tracking technologies
  • From third parties, for example, our business partners, or other users or members

Payment Processors
If you purchase or pay for products or services via the Services, the transaction may be handled by a service provider responsible for processing your transaction (“Payment Processors”). When you interact with a Payment Processor, you are providing the information directly to them and not to us. Please be aware that Payment Processors have their own privacy policies regarding how they handle your personal information and it will apply to the information they collect from you.

Use of Personal Information
We may use or disclose the personal information we collect for the following purposes:

  • Identify you and improve and customize the Services and Bluetooth SIG
  • Send you administrative notices and account notifications
  • Send you requested information
  • Address inquiries and respond to membership or service requests, questions, and comments
  • Administer your accounts and manage your accounts profile information
  • For marketing and promotions, such as sending you newsletters and mail (including email)
  • Improve your experience and increase the efficiency and effectiveness of Bluetooth SIG, the Services, and our programs and offerings
  • Help maintain the safety, security, and integrity of our Services, databases, other technology assets, and business
  • Create, maintain, customize, and secure your account with us
  • Provide you with support, to communicate with you, and respond to your inquiries, including to investigate and address your concerns and monitor and improve our responses
  • Enforce our TOU and applicable law
  • Analyze Services and member usage and other trend data
  • Solicit feedback and other information regarding your experience with Bluetooth SIG or the Services, including with respect to programs, features, and functionalities that you would like or we have recently released
  • Test new programs, features, and offerings of the Bluetooth SIG or the Services
  • As we believe is necessary to protect or enforce our rights or the rights of others (including our members)
  • To prevent illegal activity, fraud, and abuse
  • Respond to law enforcement requests or as required by applicable law, court order, or governmental regulations
  • As described to you when collecting your personal information
  • To evaluate or conduct a merger, divestiture, restructuring, reorganization, dissolution, or other sale or transfer of some or all of our assets, whether as a going concern or as part of bankruptcy, liquidation, or similar proceeding, in which personal information held by us about our Services, members, and/or users is among the assets transferred

We will not collect additional categories of personal information or use the personal information we collected for materially different, unrelated, or incompatible purposes without providing you notice using the methods we describe in our TOU.

Disclosure of Your Information
We may disclose aggregated information about our users and information that does not identify any individual, without restriction. We may disclose your personal information:

  • To our affiliates, members, member representatives, and registered users
  • To contractors, service providers, and other third parties we use to support the activities of Bluetooth SIG
  • To a buyer or other successor in the event of a merger, divestiture, restructuring, reorganization, dissolution, or other sale or transfer of some or all of Bluetooth SIG’s assets, whether as a going concern or as part of bankruptcy, liquidation, or similar proceeding, in which personal information held by Bluetooth SIG about our Services, members and/or users is among the assets transferred
  • To fulfill the purpose for which you provide it
  • For any other purpose disclosed by us when you provide the information
  • With your consent

We may also disclose your personal information:

  • To comply with any court order, law, or legal process, including to respond to any government or regulatory request
  • To enforce or apply our TOU, membership, and other agreements, including for billing and collection purposes
  • If we believe disclosure is necessary or appropriate to protect or enforce the rights, property, or safety of Bluetooth SIG, our members, or others. This includes exchanging information with other companies and organizations (public or private) for the purposes of enforcing the intellectual property rights of Bluetooth SIG, stopping counterfeiters, and fraud protection and credit risk reduction.

Accessing and Correcting Your Information
You can request access to, correct, or delete your personal information by submitting a support request here. Depending on the nature of your request, we may not be able to delete your personal information without deleting your user accounts. We may not accommodate a request to change information if we believe the change would violate any law or legal requirement or cause the information to be incorrect. If you discover inaccuracies in our data or if your personal information changes, please notify us immediately.

Storage and Transfer of Information
Information collected by us may be stored and processed in the United States or any other country in which we or our agents maintain facilities. By using the Services, you expressly consent to transfer and storage of information outside of your country of residence, where data protection laws may be different and less stringent. However, we will endeavor to take reasonable measures to keep an adequate level of data protection when sharing your personal information in those countries.

We make no representation or warranty with respect to any duty to store any information you may provide or that we otherwise collect about you. We strive to limit our processing activities with respect to your personal information to the extent possible. In the absence of specific retention periods set out in this Privacy Policy, we will retain the information we collect from or about you:

  • Only as long as is necessary to effectively operate Bluetooth SIG or provide you with the Services, which includes for the duration of, but could extend beyond, the termination of your accounts or your active participation in the Bluetooth SIG;
  • As otherwise set forth in this Privacy Policy; or
  • As necessary to comply with our legal or statutory obligations, resolve disputes, enforce our agreements, and protect our legal rights.

Additionally, we may retain indefinitely any aggregated, anonymized, or pseudonymized information, which we may collect and maintain, and may from time to time transfer or merge your information collected off-line to our online databases or store off-line information in an electronic format. By using the Services and providing us with information (including personal information), you waive any claims that may arise under your own or any other local or national laws, rules or regulations or international treaties. This Privacy Policy applies to your information for as long as your information is in our possession, even if you terminate or discontinue your account or use of the Services.
With respect to any personal information that may be originally collected and stored in the European Economic Area (EEA), if and when we transfer your personal information to countries outside the EEA, we will do so under the European Commission’s standard contractual clauses for the transfer of personal information to third countries. For a copy of these Standard Contractual Clauses, please contact us at [email protected].

Your Rights and Choices
Under applicable law, you have specific rights regarding your personal information. This section describes your rights and explains how to exercise them. As an overview, depending on where you reside, you may have the following rights:

  • The right to require free of charge: (i) confirmation of whether we process your personal information and (ii) access to a copy of the personal information we retain
  • The right to request proper rectification, removal, or restriction of your personal information
  • Where processing of your personal information is either based on your consent or necessary for the performance of a contract with you and processing is carried out by automated means, the right to receive the personal information concerning you in a structured, commonly-used, and machine-readable format or to have your personal information transmitted directly to another company, where technically feasible (data portability)
  • Where the processing of your personal information is based on your consent, the right to withdraw your consent at any time without impact to data processing activities that have taken place before the withdrawal or to any other existing legal justification of the processing activity in question
  • The right not to be subject to automatic individual decisions which produce legal effects on you or similarly significantly affect you
  • The right to take legal actions in relation to any breach of your rights regarding the processing of the personal information, as well as to lodge complaints before competent data protection regulators

    • As far as we process your personal information based on our legitimate interests, you can object to processing at any time. You can find a detailed description of our processing activities and the legal basis in the sections above. If you object to that processing, we ask you to state the grounds of your objection in order for us to examine the processing of your personal information and decide whether to adjust it accordingly.

Information Relating to Minors
Our Services are not directed to people under the age of 18, and we do not knowingly collect, use, or disclose personal information from people under the age of 18 (or any greater age required to be deemed to have reached the age of majority under the applicable law of the state or jurisdiction of the individual’s primary residence) that do not have parental or legal guardian consent to use the Services. If we ever discover that we have inadvertently collected personal information from an individual under the age of 18 on or through the Services, we will delete it from our records as soon as possible.

If you believe that we have personal information about, or have collected personal information from an individual under the age of 18 (or any greater age required to be deemed to have reached the age of majority under the applicable law of the state or jurisdiction of the individual’s primary residence) without parental/legal guardian consent, or that they are using the Services, please contact us to report this.

Cookies and Other Tracking Technologies
We may use cookies, for example, to keep track of your preferences and account profile information, or to engage in certain retargeting activities that we feel will better enhance your experience and the efficiency and effectiveness of the Bluetooth SIG, the Services, and our programs and offerings. Cookies are also used to collect general usage and volume statistical information that does not include personal information. We may use another company or third-party service to place cookies on your computer to collect non-personally identifiable information to compile aggregated statistics for us about users of the Services.

Cookies are small pieces of information that are stored as text files by your Internet browser on the hard drive of your device. Most Internet browsers are initially set to accept cookies. You can set your browser to refuse cookies from websites or to remove cookies from your hard drive, but if you do so, you may not be able to access or use portions of the Services or certain offerings on the Services may not function as intended or as well. If you block cookies, certain features on the Services may not work. If you block or reject cookies, not all of the tracking described herein will stop. Please note that certain options you select are browser- and device-specific.

A more detailed list of the cookies we currently (or in the future may) use and how we use (or may use) them is as follows:

  • Security: To secure the Services with cookies that facilitate security features and allow us to detect activity that might violate our rules, policies, membership agreements, and TOU, such as unauthorized access or activity.
  • Localization: To help us provide localized experiences, such as displaying the Services in the local language.
  • Services Features and Services: To provide greater functionality to the Services and help us deliver our services, offerings, and programs.
  • Performance: To help us route traffic between servers and understand how the Services are performing so we can provide users with the best experience possible.
  • Analytics and Research: To, along with other technologies, help us to understand, improve, and research features and content on the Services (see Analytics Providers below for more information).
  • Marketing and Online Behavioral Advertising: To help us deliver targeted advertisements through web browsers and on social media platforms based on your activity on the Services and to track the performance of those ads. In some cases, our partners may also use cookies to provide us with information about your interactions with their services, as applicable. Those third-party cookies would be subject to that third-party service’s privacy policies. The Self-Regulatory Program for Online Behavioral Advertising program provides consumers with the ability to opt-out of having their online behavior recorded and used for advertising purposes. Visit http://optout.aboutads.info/ to opt-out of having your online behavior collected for advertising purposes.

Analytics Providers
We use third party analytics providers (“Analytics Providers”) to collect information about Services usage and the users of the Services. Analytics Providers use the information they collect from the Services and other websites to share with us and other website operators the information they collect about users, including geographic regions and details about devices used to visit the Services. For more information regarding our Analytics Providers’ use of cookies, collection and use of information, and how to opt-out of tracking, see:

  • Google: Refer to “How Google uses data when you use our partners’ sites or apps”, (located at www.google.com/policies/privacy/partners/ for more information.
  • Mouseflow. This website uses Mouseflow, a third-party analytics tool, to track page content and click/touch, movement, scroll, and keystroke activity. You can opt-out at https://mouseflow.com/opt-out/.

Link to Third Party Websites
The Services may include links to other websites, mobile applications or services (“Third Party Sites”) with their own privacy practices and policies. Links are not an endorsement by Bluetooth SIG of those Third Party Sites or the products or services they offer. If you visit a Third Party Site or submit personal information to it, your visit and personal information are governed by the operator’s privacy policies. We encourage you to carefully read the privacy statement of any Third Party Site you visit, as it may differ substantially from this privacy policy. Bluetooth SIG makes no representations or warranties with respect to, nor is Bluetooth SIG responsible for the privacy policies of, any Third Party Sites. If you decide to click on and access any Third Party Sites appearing through links in the Services, you do so at your own risk.

Do Not Track Requests
Please note that your browser setting may allow you to automatically transmit a “Do Not Track” signal to websites and online service you visit. There is no consensus among industry participants as to what “Do Not Track” means in this context. Like many websites and online services, we do not alter our practices when we receive a “Do Not Track” signal from a visitor’s browser. To find out more about “Do Not Track,” please visit http://www.allaboutdnt.com.

Data Security
The security of your information is important to us and we take steps to protect your information and limit use and disclosure so that it is in accordance with this Privacy Policy. Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure. Although we will do our best to protect your personal information, for example, by encryption, we cannot guarantee the security of your information transmitted through the Services; any transmission is at your own risk.

We follow generally accepted industry standards to protect your information (both during transmission and once we receive it), keep it confidential (unless it is non-confidential by nature, for example, publicly-available information), and keep it free from any unauthorized alteration. However, no method of transmission over the Internet or electronic storage is 100% secure and the nature of security risks is constantly evolving, as are the technical and organizational industry standards relating to management of those risks. While we strive to keep current our security technology and will review, refine, and upgrade it as we deem appropriate based on new tools that may become available in the future, the complete and absolute security of information collected, stored, or used by us cannot be guaranteed. In the unlikely event that an unauthorized third party compromises our security measures, we will not be responsible for any damages directly or indirectly caused by an unauthorized third party’s ability to view, use, or disseminate the information. If you ever suspect an unauthorized individual may have changed your information, please notify us using the process described in “Accessing and Correcting Your Information.”

Changes to Our Privacy Policy
We may update this Privacy Policy to reflect changes to our information practices from time to time in our sole discretion. We will update the “Last Updated” date at the top of this Privacy Policy. Please periodically review this Privacy Policy for the latest information on our privacy practices. Once a change becomes effective, your continued use of or creation of an account and use of the Services each constitutes your acceptance of any changes.

Contact Information
If you have any questions or comments about this Privacy Policy, including the ways we describe how Bluetooth SIG collects and uses your information, your choices and rights regarding use, or you wish to exercise your rights under the Privacy Policy, please contact us by email at [email protected] or by mail at the below address. Bluetooth SIG will respond to your request as soon as possible. This is without prejudice to your right to launch a claim with your data protection authority or follow the dispute process set forth in the TOU.

Bluetooth SIG, Inc.
Attn: Executive Director
5209 Lake Washington Blvd NE
Suite 350
Kirkland, WA 98033 USA

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NOTICE: The Bluetooth SIG updated its Terms of Use on 29 October 2024Learn more
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