Privacy Policy | RealTime Advisory

1. Introduction

This Privacy Policy explains how RealTime Advisory ("RealTime Advisory," "we," "our," or "us") collects, uses, processes, stores, shares, and protects personal data when you visit our website, interact with us online or offline, use our products and services, or otherwise engage with us (collectively, the "Services").

We are committed to protecting your privacy and handling your personal data in a transparent and lawful manner. This Privacy Policy is designed to comply with applicable data protection and privacy laws, including, where they apply, the EU/UK General Data Protection Regulation ("GDPR"), the California Consumer Privacy Act ("CCPA"), as amended by the California Privacy Rights Act ("CPRA"), and other similar laws.

Please read this Policy carefully. By using our Services, you acknowledge that you have read and understood this Privacy Policy. If you do not agree with any part of this Policy, you should not use our Services.

2. Who We Are and Contact Details

RealTime Advisory is a provider of advisory, consulting, and related professional services. For the purposes of the GDPR and other applicable privacy laws, RealTime Advisory is typically the "data controller" of your personal data when we determine the purposes and means of processing. In some cases, we may act as a "processor" (or "service provider") on behalf of our business clients. If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy or our privacy practices, or if you wish to exercise your data protection rights, you may contact us using the details below:

Privacy Contact:

RealTime Advisory

Email: contact@realtimeadvisory.com

(If applicable, please include "Privacy Request" in the subject line.)

3. Scope of this Privacy Policy

This Policy applies to:

Visitors to our websites and online properties that link to this Policy;
Prospective and current clients, vendors, and business partners;
Individuals who communicate or interact with us by email, phone, or other channels;
Individuals whose personal data we receive in connection with providing our Services.

This Policy does not apply to personal data we process solely on behalf of our clients as their processor/service provider; in such cases, our clients' privacy policies and contracts with us will govern our processing. It also does not apply to the practices of third parties that we do not own or control.

4. Types of Personal Data We Collect

"Personal data" (also called "personal information") means any information that identifies, relates to, describes, is reasonably capable of being associated with, or can reasonably be linked, directly or indirectly, with a particular individual or household.

4.1 Information you provide to us

Contact and identity data: name, job title, company name, business or personal email address, telephone number, postal address, country, and similar identifiers.
Account and profile data: username, password, authentication information, preferences, and other information associated with an account you create with us (if applicable).
Professional information: employer, role, industry, expertise and interests, and other professional background information.
Communication data: content of emails, messages, feedback, survey responses, and other communications you send to us.
Event and marketing data: registration details, attendance information, dietary restrictions (if voluntarily provided), and preferences when you sign up for events, webinars, newsletters, or other marketing activities.
Business engagement data: information you provide in the course of receiving our Services, including statements of work, billing details, and correspondence.

4.2 Information we automatically collect

When you access or use our website or online Services, we may automatically collect certain information using cookies and similar tracking technologies (see Section 10).

Device and usage data: IP address, browser type and version, operating system, device identifiers, language settings, referring/exit pages, date/time stamps, and pages or content viewed.
Interaction data: clickstream data, time spent on pages, navigation paths, and interaction with forms, links, or features.
Location data: general location information based on IP address (e.g., city, region, country).

4.3 Information we receive from third parties

We may receive personal data about you from various third parties, such as:

Business partners and clients: contact details and professional information about individuals involved in projects, transactions, or engagements.
Service providers: analytics providers, advertising networks, event organizers, and other vendors that help us operate our business.
Publicly available sources: professional networking sites, public websites, and public records.

4.4 Special categories of data

We generally do not seek to collect sensitive or special categories of personal data (such as health data, biometric data, or data revealing racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, or religious beliefs) unless necessary and permitted by law (for example, limited dietary or accessibility needs for events). If we do collect such information, we will do so with your explicit consent or as otherwise legally permitted.

5. Purposes and Legal Bases for Processing Personal Data

We process personal data for the following purposes and, where applicable, under the following legal bases:

To provide and operate the Services: including responding to inquiries, delivering advisory and consulting services, managing accounts, processing transactions, and providing customer support.
Legal bases (where applicable): performance of a contract; legitimate interests in operating our business; consent (where required).
To communicate with you: including sending administrative information, responding to your requests, invitations to events, and service-related notifications.
Legal bases: performance of a contract; legitimate interests in responding to inquiries and maintaining relationships; consent (where required).
To manage relationships and business operations: including client relationship management, supplier management, and internal administration.
Legal bases: legitimate interests in managing and developing our business; compliance with legal obligations.
For marketing and business development: including sending newsletters, insights, and promotional communications; analyzing engagement with our content and Services.
Legal bases: legitimate interests in promoting our Services; consent (e.g., where email marketing requires consent under local law). You may opt out at any time (see Section 9).
For analytics, improvement, and personalization: including understanding how our Services are used, improving functionality and user experience, and personalizing content.
Legal bases: legitimate interests in improving and developing our Services; consent for certain cookies/trackers (where required).
For security and fraud prevention: including monitoring and protecting the security and integrity of our websites, IT systems, and Services, preventing fraud, and detecting illegal activity.
Legal bases: legitimate interests in ensuring network and information security; compliance with legal obligations.
For legal and regulatory compliance: including complying with applicable laws, regulations, legal processes, and lawful requests from public authorities, and establishing, exercising, or defending legal claims.
Legal bases: compliance with legal obligations; legitimate interests in protecting our rights and interests.
For any other purpose with your consent: where we rely on your consent, you may withdraw it at any time as described in Section 9, without affecting the lawfulness of processing based on consent before withdrawal.

6. How We Share Personal Data

We do not sell your personal data in the traditional sense. We may share personal data as described below:

Within RealTime Advisory: We may share personal data among our internal teams, affiliates, and subsidiaries as necessary for the purposes described in this Policy.
With service providers and vendors: We engage trusted third parties to perform services on our behalf, such as hosting, IT support, analytics, email delivery, customer relationship management, payment processing, and professional services. These providers are authorized to use personal data only as necessary to provide services to us and subject to contractual obligations to safeguard the data.
With business partners and clients: In connection with specific engagements, transactions, events, or joint activities, we may share personal data with our clients or business partners as necessary to provide the Services or to fulfill your requests.
For legal, security, and compliance purposes: We may disclose personal data if we believe it is reasonably necessary to comply with law, regulation, legal process, or governmental request; to protect the rights, property, or safety of RealTime Advisory, our clients, you, or others; or to enforce our agreements and policies.
In connection with corporate transactions: We may share personal data as part of, or during negotiations of, any merger, sale of company assets, financing, acquisition, restructuring, or similar event involving all or part of our business. In such cases, we will require the relevant parties to protect personal data in a manner consistent with this Policy.
With your consent or at your direction: We may share personal data with third parties when you authorize us to do so or when you use features that require us to share information (for example, registering for a third-party hosted event through us).

7. International Data Transfers

RealTime Advisory may process and store personal data in countries other than the country where you are located, including countries that may have different data protection standards. If you are located in the European Economic Area (EEA), the United Kingdom (UK), or another region with data transfer restrictions, we will ensure that appropriate safeguards are in place for any transfer of personal data outside your region.

Such safeguards may include:

Implementing the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses or equivalent mechanisms for cross-border data transfers;
Transferring data to countries that have been recognized by the European Commission or relevant authorities as providing an adequate level of data protection;
Relying on your explicit consent where legally permitted.

You may contact us (see Section 2) for more information about the safeguards we use for international data transfers.

8. Data Retention

We retain personal data only for as long as reasonably necessary to fulfill the purposes for which it was collected, including to satisfy any legal, regulatory, accounting, or reporting requirements, to resolve disputes, and to enforce our agreements.

When determining the appropriate retention period, we consider:

The nature and sensitivity of the personal data;
The potential risk of harm from unauthorized use or disclosure;
The purposes for which we process the data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means;
The applicable legal, regulatory, tax, accounting, or other requirements.

When personal data is no longer needed for its original purpose and we are not required to retain it, we will delete, anonymize, or aggregate it in accordance with our data retention and deletion procedures.

9. Your Privacy Rights

Depending on your location and subject to applicable law, you may have certain rights regarding your personal data. These may include:

Right of access: to obtain confirmation of whether we process your personal data and to receive a copy of that data.
Right to rectification: to request correction of inaccurate or incomplete personal data.
Right to deletion: to request that we delete your personal data in certain circumstances (also known as the right to be forgotten).
Right to restriction: to request that we restrict the processing of your personal data in certain circumstances.
Right to data portability: to receive personal data you have provided to us in a structured, commonly used, and machine-readable format and to transmit it to another controller, where technically feasible.
Right to object: to object to processing of your personal data where we rely on legitimate interests, including profiling based on those interests, and to object at any time to the processing of your personal data for direct marketing.
Right to withdraw consent: where we rely on consent for processing, to withdraw that consent at any time.

Rights related to automated decision-making: to not be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing, including profiling, that produces legal or similarly significant effects on you, except as permitted by law.

To exercise any of these rights, please contact us at contact@realtimeadvisory.com. We may need to verify your identity before responding to your request to protect your privacy and security.

9.1 Additional Information for EEA/UK Data Subjects (GDPR)

If you are located in the EEA or UK, you also have the right to lodge a complaint with your local data protection authority if you believe that our processing of your personal data violates applicable data protection law. We encourage you to contact us first so that we can address your concerns.

9.2 Additional Information for California Residents (CCPA/CPRA)

If you are a California resident, you may have additional rights under the CCPA/CPRA with respect to your personal information, including:

Right to know/access: to request that we disclose the categories and specific pieces of personal information we have collected about you, the categories of sources, the business or commercial purposes for collection, and the categories of third parties with whom we share personal information.
Right to deletion: to request that we delete personal information we have collected from you, subject to certain exceptions.
Right to correct: to request that we correct inaccurate personal information that we maintain about you.
Right to limit use and disclosure of sensitive personal information: where applicable, to direct us to limit the use of sensitive personal information to certain permissible purposes.
Right to opt out of "sale"/"sharing" for cross-context behavioral advertising: to direct us not to "sell" or "share" your personal information as those terms are defined under the CCPA/CPRA. We do not sell personal information for monetary compensation. If in the future we engage in activities that could be considered a "sale" or "sharing," we will provide appropriate notice and opt-out mechanisms.
Right to non-discrimination: we will not discriminate against you for exercising any of your CCPA/CPRA rights.

To exercise your California privacy rights, please contact us at contact@realtimeadvisory.com and indicate that you are making a "California Privacy Rights" request. We may need to verify your identity and, where permitted, may require authorization if an agent submits a request on your behalf.

10. Cookies and Tracking Technologies

We use cookies and similar tracking technologies (such as web beacons, pixels, and local storage) to collect and store certain information when you visit or interact with our website. Cookies are small text files that are stored on your device when you visit a website.

10.1 Types of cookies we use

Strictly necessary cookies: required for the operation of our website and to enable basic functions such as page navigation and access to secure areas. The website cannot function properly without these cookies.
Performance and analytics cookies: help us understand how visitors interact with our website by collecting and reporting information anonymously (e.g., pages visited, time spent on pages, and error messages).
Functionality cookies: enable the website to remember choices you make (such as language or region) and provide enhanced, more personalized features.
Targeting or advertising cookies: may be used, where implemented, to deliver content or advertisements relevant to your interests and to measure the effectiveness of advertising campaigns.

10.2 Managing cookies

You can control and manage cookies in various ways. Most web browsers allow you to refuse or delete cookies through their settings. If you choose to disable or reject cookies, some features or parts of our website may not function properly.

Where required by law, we will obtain your consent before using certain cookies or similar technologies. You may withdraw your consent at any time by adjusting your cookie preferences or browser settings.

11. Data Security

We implement appropriate technical and organizational measures designed to protect personal data against accidental or unlawful destruction, loss, alteration, unauthorized disclosure, or access. These measures may include access controls, encryption, network security technologies, secure development practices, regular monitoring, and staff training.

However, no method of transmission over the internet or method of electronic storage is completely secure. While we strive to protect your personal data, we cannot guarantee its absolute security. If you believe that your interaction with us is no longer secure, please contact us immediately using the details provided in Section 2.

12. Children's Privacy

Our Services are not directed to children under the age of 16, and we do not knowingly collect personal data from children under 16 without appropriate parental or guardian consent. If we become aware that we have collected personal data from a child in violation of applicable law, we will take steps to delete such data promptly.

If you believe that we may have collected personal data from a child, please contact us at contact@realtimeadvisory.com.

13. Third-Party Websites and Services

Our website and Services may contain links to third-party websites, applications, or services that are not operated by RealTime Advisory. This Privacy Policy does not apply to the privacy practices of those third parties, and we are not responsible for their practices. We encourage you to review the privacy policies of any third-party sites or services you visit or use.

14. Changes to This Privacy Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect changes in our practices, technologies, legal requirements, or for other operational reasons. When we make material changes, we will take appropriate steps to inform you, such as posting a prominent notice on our website or sending you a direct communication where required by law.

The "Last updated" date at the top of this Policy indicates when it was last revised. We encourage you to review this Policy periodically to stay informed about our privacy practices.

15. How to Contact Us

If you have any questions, comments, or concerns about this Privacy Policy or our handling of your personal data, or if you wish to exercise your privacy rights, please contact us at:

Email: contact@realtimeadvisory.com

Attn: Privacy, RealTime Advisory