Privacy Policy

ONEKA TECHNOLOGIES PRIVACY POLICY

 (Last updated on August 20, 2024)

Welcome!

Welcome to the Oneka website at https://www.onekawater.com/ (the “Website”), which includes all subpages and subdomains, present and future. Our Website provides general information about our innovative desalination technology and serves as an important resource for our clients, prospective clients, collaborators, present and future team members and anyone else interested in our company, technology and all accompanying services (the “Services”). We are pleased that you have chosen to visit our Website and are interested in our Services. 

Oneka takes your privacy and the security of your personal data very seriously. We have provided and will continue to provide a secure environment and this privacy policy (the “Policy”) describes the limited ways that your personal data is used and accessed in connection with the Website. We ask that you read it carefully. 

Key Elements of this Policy

Here are the key elements of this Policy so that you can know the important parts right away to make an informed decision about your consent for our collection, use and disclosure of your personal data. By submitting personal data to us via any means, you consent to such collection, use and disclosure. You can find the details in the rest of the Policy. 

DEFINITIONS

Below are a few terms to know as you read through this Policy.

“Data Protection Laws” refers to the laws that are designed to protect your personal data and privacy in the place where you live. Oneka is committed to adhering to all applicable Data Protection Laws. The Data Protection Laws include: 

1. The “GDPR”, the European Data Protection Law which stands for “General Data Protection Regulation”, with the official name Regulation (EU) 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of the Council; 
2. The “UK GDPR” which applies to our activities in the United Kingdom; please note that when this Policy refers only to the “GDPR”, this includes the UK GDPR, as applicable;
3. “PIPEDA” (Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act), which is the Canadian Data Protection Law that applies to our activities in Canada; 
4. Québec’s Act Respecting the Protection of Personal Information in the Private Sector (the “Québec Privacy Act”) as amended by Law 25, that applies to our activities in Québec; 
5. The California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”) as amended by the California Privacy Rights Act which applies to our activities in the United States in certain circumstances; and
6. Other state privacy laws in the United States, specifically those which are currently in force in Colorado, Connecticut, and Virginia.

“Personal data” – this is information we collect from you or about you and which is defined in the GDPR as “any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person.” It can be as simple as your name or your email, or something more complicated like an online identifier (usually a string of letters and / or numbers) that gets attached to you. Under PIPEDA, the Québec Privacy Act and the CCPA, the equivalent concept is “personal information”, which is roughly the same. For example, the Québec Privacy Act defines “personal information” as “any information which relates to a natural person and allows that person to be identified either directly or indirectly.” Any mention of “personal data” in this Policy will also mean personal information. 

About Us and Contacting Us

9320-9054 Québec Inc., d.b.a. “Oneka Technologies” (“Oneka”), who owns and operates the Website and the Services, is a Québec corporation located in the province of Québec, Canada, with an office at the address listed below. Where this Policy refers to “Oneka”, it may refer to Oneka Technologies and / or its affiliates, and their respective officers, directors, employees, agents, partners, principals, representatives, successors and assigns (collectively “Representatives”), depending on the context. Any reference to “we”, “our”, or “us” in this Policy shall also refer to Oneka. In this Policy, a Website visitor or any other individual for whom we hold personal data may be referred to as “you” or “your”. 

Under the GDPR, Oneka is a “data controller”. That means we collect personal data directly from you and determine the purpose and means of “processing” that data. “Processing” is a broad term that means the collection, use, storage, transfer or any other action related to your personal data; it is used in this Policy in that way. Under PIPEDA, Oneka is an “organization” and under the Québec Privacy Act, Oneka is an “enterprise”. PIPEDA uses the phrase “collection, use and disclosure” and the Québec Privacy Act uses “collects, holds, uses or communicates to third parties” as the approximate equivalent to the “processing” of the GDPR. When we use “processing” in this Policy, you can substitute either of the Canadian or Québec law phrases.

If you want to ask us anything about what’s in this Policy, or anything else privacy- or data- related, or exercise any of your available privacy rights, you can contact:

Oneka Technologies Privacy and Data Protection Officer

confidentiality@onekawater.com

or:

Alexandre Bertrand

President, Canada

Oneka Technologies Privacy and Data Protection Officer 

4615 Boulevard de Portland, 

Sherbrooke, Québec

J1L 0J1

Your Rights 

You have the following rights regarding your personal data held by Oneka, and other privacy rights. Please note that, depending on where you are located and what Data Protection Laws apply to you, all of the rights listed below may not be available to you. These rights may be exercised without affecting any prices or fees charged by Oneka, if any, in connection with our Services. However, please note that exercising certain of these rights may affect your ability to use some or all of the Website or Services. 

• The right to withdraw your consent for Oneka to process your personal data at any time;
• The right to have your personal data erased from Oneka’s records, and to have your name de-indexed if we link to any information about you (which we currently do not);
• The right to access (view) your personal data and any relevant information around its processing and use; 
• The right to have a copy of your personal data given to you in an easy-to-read format so that you can transfer it to any data controller, data processor or other third party;
• The right to have your personal data corrected or updated if you believe it is inaccurate or out of date;
• The right to opt out of email communications we send you, at any time;
• The right to know whether Oneka shares your personal data (and if so, who gets it). Please refer to that information elsewhere in this Policy or contact our Privacy and Data Protection Officer if you need additional information or clarification;
• The right to demand that Oneka not sell your personal data. Please note that Oneka does not sell your personal data;
• The right to restrict the processing of your personal data if it is inaccurate or if our processing or use of it is against the law; and 
• The right to refuse any marketing or advertising targeted at you by Oneka.

If you wish to exercise any of these rights, please contact our Privacy and Data Protection Officer at the contact information above or refer to certain relevant sections further in this Policy. 

Limited Personal Data Collected from You and What We Use It For

Oneka limits the amount of personal data we collect to what is necessary and appropriate for the identified purposes. We will not use or disclose your personal data for purposes other than those for which it was collected, except with your consent or as permitted or required by applicable law.

In the table below, please find all the personal data we may collect from you directly, what we use it for and the legal basis under the GDPR for us having and processing this personal data. Under PIPEDA, the Québec Privacy Act and the CCPA, the legal basis is your informed consent and by submitting this personal data, you acknowledge having granted this consent to Oneka.

Personal Data Collected About You from Third Parties and What We Use It For

Oneka does not routinely collect personal data about you from third parties, except to the extent that analytics identifiers are generated from third parties and, as such, may be considered personal data collected from third parties. You can find details about our analytics practices further below in this Policy. 

Sensitive Personal information

We do not collect any of what the Data Protection Laws consider sensitive personal information from you when you use the Website or Services, unless you voluntarily submit it to us, which we encourage you not to do. 

Who We Transfer Your Personal Data To

We only share some of your personal data with third parties who are identified in the table further below in this section, along with what they do with it. Each third party identified below is under a contractual obligation not to (1) transfer or sell your personal data; or (2) use your personal data for any purpose, other than the purpose identified in the table below.

We will share personal data with law enforcement or other public authorities if: (1) we are required by applicable law in response to lawful requests, including to meet national security or law enforcement requirements; (2) if we believe it is necessary in order to investigate, prevent, or take action regarding illegal activities, fraud, or situations involving potential threats to the safety of any person; (3) if we believe it is necessary to investigate, prevent, or take action regarding situations that involve abuse of the Website infrastructure or the internet in general (such as voluminous spamming or denial of service attacks); or (4) we are required to under any applicable law.

We may also share personal data: (1) to a parent company, subsidiary, joint venture or other company under common control with Oneka (in which case we will require such entity to honour this Policy); or (2) if Oneka merges with another entity, is subject to a corporate reorganization, sells or transfers all or part of its business, assets or shares (in which case we will require such entity to assume our obligations under this Policy or inform you that you are covered by a new privacy policy).

Some of these third-party recipients may be based outside your home jurisdiction. If you are in the European Economic Area or the U.K., please see the “Transfer of Your Personal Data Outside of the European Economic Area” further down in this Policy for more information, including on how we safeguard your personal data when this occurs. If you are in Québec, please see the “Transfer of Your Personal Data Outside of Québec” section further down in this Policy for information on how we safeguard your personal data when this occurs.

We will never share your personal data with other third parties except under these circumstances or as otherwise permitted under applicable Data Protection Laws. We do not sell or rent your personal data to any third party for direct marketing purposes or any other purpose. 

Email Communications and Compliance with Anti-Spam Laws

We respond directly via email to anyone contacting us through the Website (from an @onekawater email address)  and we use Mailchimp (the “Email Service Provider”) to manage our mailing list and to send out our newsletter. Personal data is transferred to the Email Service Provider in order for the newsletter to be sent out properly. The Email Service Provider does not use your personal data for any other purpose and will not transfer or sell your personal data to any other third party. For more information, please refer to Intuit’s Privacy Statement, which statement covers Mailchimp’s use and processing of personal data. 

You may unsubscribe from our newsletter at any time by following the link at the bottom of an Oneka newsletter. Other types of emails, such as those related to a job application or correspondence relating to a quote that you requested, will not include an opt-out provision, as they are essential for the use of our Services.

Oneka’s email practices are designed to be strictly compliant with anti-spam laws, including, but not limited to, the law unofficially called “CASL” or Canada’s Anti-Spam Law (S.C. 2010, c. 23) and the American CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. If you believe you have received any email from Oneka in violation of these laws, please contact our Privacy and Data Protection Officer using the contact information further up in this Policy.

Limited Gathering of Information for Statistical, Analytical and Security Purposes
Oneka automatically collects certain information using the “Third-Party Analytics Program” Google Analytics to help us understand more about our Website visitors and how they use the Website, but none of this information identifies you personally, except via an alphanumeric string. For example, each time you visit the Website, we automatically collect (as applicable) your IP address, browser and computer or device type, access times, the web page from which you came, the web page(s) or content you access, and other related information. We use information collected in this manner only to better understand your needs and the needs of Website visitors in the aggregate. Oneka also makes use of information gathered for statistical purposes to keep track of the number of visits to the Website and the specific pages visited on the Website, with a view to introducing improvements to the Website, Services and our activities. 

Your IP address and other relevant information we collect using the Third-Party Analytics Program may be used in order to trace any fraudulent or criminal activity.

Tracking Technology (“Cookies”) and Related Technologies

Oneka uses tracking technology (“cookies” and related technology such as tags, pixels and web beacons) on the Website. Cookies are small text files placed on your computer or device when you visit a website, in order to track the use of the website and to improve the user experience by storing certain data on your computer. By visiting or using the Website, you agree to their use, but only if you explicitly consent to such use, according to the cookie banner presented to you when you visit the Website.  

Specifically, we use cookies and related technologies for the following functions:

• to provide general internal and user analytics and to conduct research to improve the content of the Website and to monitor the performance of the Website using the Third-Party Analytics Program as described above in this Policy; and
• to assist in identifying possible fraudulent activities.

Your browser can be set to refuse cookies or delete them after they have been accepted and stored. You can refer to your browser’s help section for instructions, but here are instructions for the most commonly used browsers and operating systems:

• Google Chrome
• Mozilla Firefox
• Microsoft Edge
• Opera
• Apple Safari
• iOS
• Android

Please note that deleting or refusing cookies may reduce your user experience on the Website. Furthermore, deleting cookies may prevent certain functions from working at all. 

How We Protect Your Personal Data

We have implemented strict technical and organisational procedures for ensuring that, by default, only personal data which are necessary for each specific purpose of the processing are processed by us. These procedures prevent your personal data from being lost or used or accessed in any unauthorised way.

We also have procedures in place to deal with any suspected data security breach. We will notify you and any applicable supervisory authority of a suspected data security breach where the Data Protection Laws require us to do so and within the time frame required by the applicable Data Protection Law(s).

Oneka uses only industry best practices (physical, electronic and procedural) in keeping any data collected (including personal data) secure, including a security plug-in to protect the Website from hacking and malware. In addition, we use third-party vendors and hosting partners to provide the necessary hardware, software, networking, storage, and related technology required to operate the Website, and these third parties have been selected for their high standards of security, both electronic and physical. For example, Oneka uses Web Hosting Canada  for hosting of the Website and related data and for the collection and storage of data, including personal data.

Finally, all information, including personal data, is transferred with encryption using Secure Sockets Layer (“SSL”) or Transport Layer Security (“TLS”), robust security standards for internet data transfer and transactions. You can use your browser to check Oneka’s valid SSL security certificates on the Website.

Internal Procedures and Policies

In addition to the measures to protect your personal data described in the previous section, we have drafted and implemented certain internal procedures and policies regarding personal data, including the following:

1. A framework for the keeping and destruction of the personal data that we collect, including where we may keep anonymized data;
2. Defining and describing the roles and responsibilities of the members of Oneka personnel throughout the life cycle of the personal data; 
3. A process for dealing with individual complaints and requests for personal data and exercising of the individual’s rights under Data Protection Laws; and
4. A management and IT policy and procedure for addressing potential data breach incidents involving personal information in the custody of Oneka. 

Transfer of Your Personal Data Outside of the European Economic Area (“EEA”) and the U.K. 

For our European users, we cannot guarantee that your personal data will remain inside the EEA or the U.K. (as applicable), since our data processors (and Oneka) are in other countries where your personal data may be transferred. However, these countries are limited to countries with particular circumstances that protect your data, specifically:

• Canada. We transfer personal data to our operations in Canada, but Canada has been determined to have an “adequate level of protection” for your personal data under European Data Protections Laws. 
• The United States. Your personal data is only transferred to companies in the United States that: (1) have signed agreements with us or have informed us that they are GDPR-compliant; and (2) have concluded the Standard Contractual Clauses for the transfer of personal data outside the EEA and the U.K. 

That’s it! You have the right, however, to refuse to have your data transferred outside the EEA or the U.K. Please contact our Privacy and Data Protection Officer to make that request. Please note that making this request may prevent you from being able to use certain aspects of the Website or Services.

Transfer of Your Personal Data Outside of Québec

For our Québec Website visitors, we endeavour to keep your personal data in Québec. However, certain of our third-party service providers are in other provinces or countries where your personal data may be transferred. When this happens, we do the following to safeguard your personal data:

1. We will perform what the Québec Privacy Act calls an “Assessment of the privacy-related factors” (what is generally called a “Privacy Impact Assessment,” or “PIA”) prior to the personal data leaving Québec. If the PIA does not meet our standards and the standards required by the Québec Privacy Act, we will not transfer your personal data to such a service provider; and
2. If the PIA allows us to transfer the personal data to such a service provider outside Québec, we will sign what is generally called a “Data Processing Agreement,” or DPA, with the service provider, which protects the personal data transferred to them and limits their use of it to what we have contracted with them to do. This DPA will adhere to the requirements of the Québec Privacy Act. 

Supervisory Authorities and Complaints

If you are in the EEA or the U.K., under the GDPR, you have the right to make a complaint to the appropriate supervisory authority. If you are not satisfied with the response received or the actions taken by our Privacy and Data Protection Officer, or if you would like to make a complaint directly about Oneka’s data practices, we invite you to contact the supervisory authority in your country. 

If you are in the U.K., you should contact the Information Commissioner’s Office who is the supervisory authority. You can reach them in a variety of ways, including by phone (0303 123 1113 in the UK) and mail (Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF). If you are in France, you should contact the Commission Nationale de l’Informatique et des Libertés, which is the supervisory authority there. Their contact information can be found here. 

The full listing of all Data Protection Authorities (the supervisory authorities) across the EEA can be found here. 

If you are in Canada and you are not satisfied with the response received or the actions taken by our Privacy and Data Protection Officer, you can make a complaint to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada. Instructions on how to do so can be found on their website. If you are in Québec, you can make a complaint to the Commission d’accès à l’information, with the instructions for contacting them on their website.

Data Retention 

Your personal data will only be kept for as long as is necessary for the purpose needed for that processing. 

We may have to keep your data for a longer period of time to satisfy our requirements under any applicable law, including anti-spam laws, or to protect our legal interests.

In some cases, where permitted by the Data Protection Laws, we may keep personal data that has been anonymized, for our legitimate business purposes. 

Automated Decision-Making

Oneka does not use any automated decision-making processes with regard to your personal data in providing the Website or the Services.

Children’s Privacy Statement

The Services are only intended for persons who are 18 years old for a resident of a Canadian province or the age of majority in any other country. 

The Data Protection Laws have various age limits as to the minimum age required for us to hold personal data about an individual. We do not knowingly collect any personal data from a child under those minimum ages. If we become aware that we have inadvertently received personal data from a person under the minimum ages through the Website, we will delete such information from our records.

Changes to This Privacy Policy

The date at the top of this page indicates when this Policy was last updated. Every now and then, we will have to update this Policy and we will update it no less than once every 12 months. You can always find the most updated version at this URL, and we will always post a prominent notice on the Website if we make significant changes.

Thanks for reading! Please keep your personal data safe; we promise to do the same. 

Oneka Technologies, 2024.