Phemex Privacy Policy

1. Important information and who we are

Data controller

This Privacy Policy, as amended or otherwise changed from time to time (the “Privacy Policy”), explains the manner in which Phemex collects, uses, maintains and discloses user information obtained through the Phemex.com website (the “Site”) or via the official Phemex mobile application (the “App”) and through the provision of the services (the “Services”). Phemex Limited is the data controller of your Personal Data. When this Privacy Policy mentions “Phemex,” “we,” “us,” or “our,” it refers to the relevant Phemex group entity which is providing the Services directly and specifically.

European Supervisory Authority

If you are based in Europe, you have the right to make a complaint at any time to the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) (the EU’s supervisory authority for data protection issues (https://edps.europa.eu/)) or the supervisory authority of the country in which you are based. We would, however, appreciate the chance to deal with your concerns before you approach a supervisory authority so please contact us in the first instance.

Changes to this Privacy Policy

On occasion, we may revise this Privacy Policy to reflect changes in law, our personal data collection and use practices, the features on the Site/App, or advances in technology. If material changes are made to this Privacy Policy, the changes will be prominently posted on the Site/App. Capitalized terms not defined herein shall have the meanings ascribed to them in the Phemex Terms of Use (the “Terms”). Please note: This Privacy Policy does not cover any information that we may receive about you through channels external to Phemex.

2. What information do we collect?

We collect Personal Data and Anonymous Data, as described below.

“Personal Data” means data that allows someone to identify or contact you, including, for example, your name, biometric template (such as face and/or fingerprints scan), address, telephone number, e-mail address, an identification number, location data, an online identifier or to one or more factors specific to the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural or social identity of that natural person;

• We may collect Personal Data from you, such as your first and last name, e-mail and mailing addresses, date of birth, government-issued identification, tax ID, identity information, photographs, company name, and password when you use our Site/App.
• When you set up your Account, we may collect your biometric template (such as face and/or fingerprints scan) to make sure you are a real person, and to make sure no-one is pretending to be you.
• We may also collect other Personal Data provided by third-party identity verification, market surveillance providers, and sanctions screening services, service providers, regulators or via social networking websites.
• If you fill out a survey or tell us where you are (e.g., by allowing your mobile device or computer to send us your location), we may store that information.
• Certain Services, such as two-factor authentication, may require our collection of your phone number. We may associate that phone number to your mobile device identification information.
• If you provide us feedback or contact us via e-mail, we will collect your name and e-mail address, as well as any other content included in the e-mail, in order to send you a reply.
• We also collect other types of Personal Data that you provide to us voluntarily when seeking support and other Services, such as email, chat name and logs, information submitted via online form, video conferencing service information, other contact information, or other information provided to support services staff.
• We may collect referral URLs, your location, and blockchain analytics information related to blockchain addresses you provide. Some of the Personal Data used by the blockchain and crypto exchange services is public information and can be seen by others, including, your public address and the type and amount of digital assets transferred. Additionally, certain technologies, such as blockchain, are immutable meaning that information, including Personal Data, cannot be deleted from the ledger. If you have concerns about this use of your Personal Data, do not use the Services.

“Anonymous Data” is a data processing technique that removes or modifies personal information so that it cannot be associated with a specific individual. Except for this section, none of the other provisions of this Privacy Policy applies to Anonymous Data (i.e. information about our customers that we combine together so that it no longer identifies or references an individual customer).

• Phemex may use Anonymous Data for any business purpose, including to better understand customer needs and behaviors, improve our products and services, conduct business intelligence and marketing, and detect security threats. We may perform our own analytics on anonymized data or enable analytics provided by third parties.
• Types of data we may collect and anonymize include, transaction data, click-stream data, performance metrics, and fraud indicators.

Some information is collected automatically by our servers:

• Our servers (which may be hosted by a third-party service provider) collect information from you, including your browser type, operating system, Internet Protocol (“IP”) address (a number that is automatically assigned to your computer when you use the Internet, which may vary from session to session), domain name, and/or a date/time stamp for your visit.
• As is true of most websites, we gather certain information automatically and store it in log files. This information includes IP addresses, browser type, Internet service provider (“ISP”), referring/exit pages, operating system, date/time stamp, and clickstream data.
• Like many online services, we use Cookies to collect information.  “Cookies” are small pieces of information that a website sends to your computer’s hard drive while you are viewing the website.
• We retain information on your behalf, such as transactional data including records for trades, deposits, and withdraws for you and the counterparty to the transaction and other session data linked to your Account.

Some information is collected from third parties:

We may obtain Personal Data about you from other sources, including through third party services such as sanctions screening services and other organizations to supplement information provided by you. This supplemental information allows us to verify the information that you have provided to us and to enhance our ability to provide you with information about our business, products, and Services.

If you fail to provide Personal Data

Where we need to collect personal data by law, or under the terms of a contract we have with you and you fail to provide that data when requested, we may not be able to provide the Services. In this case, we may have to close your Account but we will notify you if this is the case at the time.

3. How do we use the information we collect?

We will only use your Personal Data when the law allows us to. Most commonly, we will use your Personal Data in the following circumstances:

• Where we need to provide the Services;
• Where it is necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party) and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests; and/or
• Where we need to comply with a legal or regulatory obligation, including without limitation, the anti-money laundering, know-your-client (“KYC”) and counter-terrorist financing obligations under applicable laws. For more information about our KYC Policies, please refer to relevant rules and notices published on the Site/App.

You have provided your consent (or explicit consent where we process facial recognition and biometric data).

Please note that we may process your personal data without your knowledge or consent where this is required or permitted by law.

In general, Personal Data you submit to us is used either to respond to requests that you make, or to aid us in serving you better. We use your Personal Data in the following ways:

• facilitate the creation of and secure your Account on our network;
• maintain legal and regulatory compliance;
• identify you and perform identity verification through a service provider;
• provide improved administration of our Site/App and Services;
• improve the quality of experience when you interact with our Site/App and Services;
• send you a welcome e-mail to verify ownership of the e-mail address provided when your Account was created;
• send you administrative e-mail notifications, such as account activity, transaction processing, security or support and maintenance advisories;
• identify, prevent, and report potentially suspicious, fraudulent, or illegal activities;
• notify you about important changes to our Terms; and
• respond to your inquiries.

Data collected automatically will be used to administer or improve our Services and for other lawful purposes.

• We use IP address to make our Site/App and Services more useful to you, and to perform identity verification.
• We use information from log files to analyze trends, administer the Site, track users’ movements around the Site/App, gather demographic information about our user base as a whole, and better tailor our Services to our users’ needs. Except as noted in this Privacy Policy, we do not link this automatically-collected data to Personal Data.
• We may use both session Cookies (which expire once you close your web browser) and persistent Cookies (which stay on your computer until you delete them) to provide you with a more personal and interactive experience on our Site/App. This type of information is collected to make the Site/App more useful to you and to tailor the experience with us to meet your special interests and needs.

We may create aggregated or de-identified records from Personal Data by excluding information (such as your name) that makes the data personally identifiable to you. We use this to analyze request and usage patterns so that we may enhance the content of our Services and improve Site/App navigation. We reserve the right to use and aggregated and other de-identified information for any purpose and disclose to third parties in our sole discretion.

Where European Union data protection laws apply, such as the General Data Protection Regulation, we will process your personal data for the purposes described above and for marketing (described below) where we have a lawful basis to do so, as set out at the start of this Section 3. For example, for processing necessary to provide you with the Services, the lawful basis will generally be that it is necessary for the purposes of performing our contract with you. For marketing (described below), we may send you marketing based on it being in our ‘legitimate interests’ to do so (where you are a corporate customer) or based on consent where you are acting in an individual capacity. Other processing we do, such as that for product development and improvement, may not be ‘necessary’ to provide the Services but may still be necessary for our ‘legitimate interests’ of running a business.

Legal Bases for Processing Your Information

For individuals who are located in the European Economic Area, United Kingdom or Switzerland (collectively “EEA Residents”) at the time their personal data is collected, we rely on legal bases for processing your information under Article 6 of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”). We generally only process your data where we are legally required to, where processing is necessary to perform any contracts we entered with you (or to take steps at your request prior to entering into a contract with you), for our legitimate interests to operate our business or to protect Phemex’s or your, property, rights, or safety, or where we have obtained your consent to do so. Below is a list of the purposes described in our policy with the corresponding legal bases for processing.

Marketing

We provide you with choices regarding certain Personal Data that we use, particularly around marketing and advertising. We have established the following personal data control mechanisms:

• Promotional offers from us. We may use your Personal Data to determine what may be of interest to you in accordance with applicable law. This is how we decide which products, Services, and offers may be relevant for you.
• Third-party marketing. In accordance with applicable law, we may obtain your express consent (opt-in) before we share your Personal Data with any company outside our group for that company’s own marketing purposes.
• Opting out. You can ask us or third parties to stop sending you marketing messages at any time by following the unsubscribe links on any marketing message sent to you or by contacting us.

4. How do we share your Personal Data?

We disclose your Personal Data as described below and as described elsewhere in this Privacy Policy.

• It may be necessary to disclose your information to law enforcement agencies, regulators, government/public officials, or other relevant third parties to comply with any law, subpoenas, court orders, or government request, defend against claims, investigate or bring legal action against illegal or suspected illegal activities, enforce our Terms, or to protect the rights, safety, and security of us, our users, or the public.
• We may share Personal Data within the Phemex group entities or with our affiliated entities, and the trustees, shareholders, partners, investors, directors, supervisors, senior managers and employees of such entities. For purpose of this Privacy Policy, an “affiliated entity” means, with respect to any given person, a person that controls, is controlled by, or is under common control with the given person, and any entity subsequently established by any of Phemex or the nominee shareholders in relation to the Services, including without limitation our joint ventures and alliance partners.
• We may allow third-party advertising partners to set technologies and other tracking tools to collect information regarding your activities and your device (e.g., your IP address, mobile identifiers, page(s) visited, location, time of day). We may also combine and share such data and other information with third-party advertising partners. These advertising partners may use this information (and similar information collected from other websites) for purposes of delivering targeted advertisements to you when you visit third-party websites within their networks.
• We may share your Personal Data with third-party service providers to provide you with the Services that we offer you through our Site/App; to conduct quality assurance testing; to facilitate creation of accounts; to provide technical support; to verify your identity; and/or to provide other services to us or our users. These third-party service providers are required not to use your Personal Data other than to provide the services requested by us.
• We may provide Personal Data to business partners with whom we jointly offer products or services as allowed by law. In such cases, our business partner’s name will appear with ours.
• We may share some or all of your Personal Data with third parties (e.g. the investor, purchaser or new owner) in connection with or during negotiation of any merger, financing, acquisition or dissolution transaction or proceeding involving sale, transfer, divestiture, or disclosure of all or a portion of our business or assets. In the event of an insolvency, bankruptcy, or receivership, Personal Data may also be transferred as a business asset. If another company acquires our company, business, or assets, that company will possess the Personal Data collected by us and will assume the rights and obligations regarding your Personal Data as described in this Privacy Policy.
• We may share some or all of your Personal Data with credit bureaus, any debt collection agencies or dispute resolution centers in the event that any party hereto is under violation of or dispute in respect of the Terms, this Privacy Policy or other policies of Phemex.
• We may share some or all of your Personal Data with other third parties who provide us with certain services in relation to our operation, business and/or assets, including without limitation the insurance companies, insurance investigators, credit providers, banks, credit card companies, auditors and lawyers.
• We may share some or all of your Personal Data with persons with your consent as determined by you or the applicable contract.

The Site/App may contain links to other third-party websites which are regulated by their own privacy policies. We are not responsible for the privacy policies of these third-party websites even if they were accessed using the links from our Site/App. Other than as stated in this Privacy Policy, we do not disclose any of your Personal Data to third parties unless required to do so by law enforcement, court order, or in compliance with legal reporting obligations.

5. Transfers outside of the EEA if you are based in Europe

We share your Personal Data within our affiliated group of entities, which are based in various locations globally. If you are based in Europe, this will involve transferring your data outside the European Economic Area (EEA). In addition, many of our external third parties are also based outside of the EEA so their processing of your Personal Data will involve a transfer of data outside the EEA. Whenever we transfer your Personal Data out of the EEA, we ensure a similar degree of protection is afforded to it by putting in place appropriate safeguards, as required by applicable law.

Please contact us if you want further information on the specific mechanism used by us when transferring your Personal Data out of the EEA.

6. How can you update your information?

You can contact support@phemex.zendesk.com to see what parts of your information can be updated, and we will provide support in this regard. We will retain your information for as long as your Account has not been closed or as needed to provide you access to your Account. If you wish to close your Account, open a ticket in our support center. We will retain and use your information as necessary to comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes, and enforce our Terms.

7. How long do we keep your information?

We retain Personal Data for as long as we need it for the purposes set out in this Privacy Policy. This period will vary depending on the nature of the information and your interactions with our Site/App and our Services. If you unsubscribe from our marketing communications, we will keep a record of your email address to ensure we do not send you marketing emails in the future.

8. How do we use cookies, social media, advertising and other technologies?

We collect web browser information in order to enhance your experience on our Site/App and track how the Services are being used. In addition to using Cookies to provide you with better user experience, we use Cookies to identify and prevent fraudulent activity. The information collected can include, but is not limited to, your IP address, referral URLs, the type of device you use, your operating system, the type of browser you use, geographic location, and other session data. Cookies are not permanent and will expire after a short period of inactivity. You may opt to deactivate your Cookies, but it is important to note that you may not be able to access or use some features of our Site/App. Please note that we are not responsible or can be held liable for any loss resulting from your decision or inability to use such features.

We may also use other service providers to collect information regarding visit, or behavior and visitor demographics on our Services.

The online advertising industry also provides websites from which you may opt out of receiving targeted ads from data partners and other advertising partners that participate in self-regulatory programs.

Please note you must separately opt out in each browser and on each device. Our Services may include public blockchain technology, publicly accessible blogs, forums, social media pages. As such information will be public, the Personal Data provided by you may be viewed and used by third parties for any number of purposes. In addition, social media buttons such as Twitter (that might include widgets such as the “share this” button or other interactive mini-programs) may be on our Site/App. These features may collect your IP address, which page you are visiting on our Site/App and may set a Cookie to enable the feature to function properly. These social media features are either hosted by a third party or hosted directly on our Site/App. Your interactions with these features apart from your visit to our Site/App are governed by the privacy policy of the company providing it.

We may use third-party APIs and software development kits (“SDKs”) as part of the functionality of our Services. APIs and SDKs may allow third parties including analytics and advertising partners to collect your Personal Data for various purposes including to provide analytics services and content that is more relevant to you. For more information about our use of APIs and SDKs, please check here.

Do Not Track (“DNT”) is an optional browser setting that allows you to express your preferences regarding tracking by advertisers and other third parties. At present, we do not respond to DNT signals.

9. What security precautions do we take?

We take the protection of your Personal Data seriously. We use industry-standard data encryption technology and have implemented restrictions related to the storage of and the ability to access your Personal Data. Please note that no transmission over the Internet or method of electronic storage can be guaranteed to be 100% secure. Please recognize that you play a vital role in protecting your own personal information.

Furthermore, we cannot ensure or warrant the security or confidentiality of information you transmit to us or receive from us by Internet or wireless connection, including email, phone, since we have no way of protecting that information once it leaves and until it reaches us. If you have reason to believe that your data is no longer secure, please contact us using the contact information provided in this Privacy Policy.

10. Your legal rights

Under certain circumstances, you have rights under data protection laws in relation to your Personal Data which are set out in more detail below:

If you wish to exercise any of the rights set out above, please contact us through Online Chat.

No fee usually required

You will not have to pay a fee to access your Personal Data (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive or excessive. Alternatively, we may refuse to comply with your request in these circumstances.

What we may need from you

We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your rights to access your Personal Data (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is a security measure to ensure that Personal Data is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it. We may also contact you to ask you for further information in relation to your request to speed up our response.

Time limit to respond

We try to respond to all legitimate requests within a reasonable period. Occasionally it may take us longer time if your request is particularly complex or you have made a number of requests. In this case, we will notify you and keep you updated.

Like almost every other online service, our Services (including our Site and App) use cookies and similar technologies to provide you with an enhanced user experience as well as allowing us to analyze and improve our Services. We would not be able to provide you with all of our Services, including certain personalized features, without the use of Cookies and related technology and as such, your computer, mobile phone, tablet or other enabled mobile devices (which we refer to collectively in this Privacy Policy as a “device”) will need to be set up to enable such technologies.

11. Cookie Policy

By visiting and continuing to browse our Site, downloading and using our App and using, your Account, including, where appropriate, with your browser settings adjusted to accept Cookies, you are consenting to our use of Cookies, web beacons and related technologies to provide our Services. If you do not consent to our use of Cookies your only recourse is to stop using the Services and stop visiting our Site/App. You are also free to disable Cookies in your browser but doing so may interfere with your use of our Site/App or the Services.

You can manage your Cookies (including the enabling or disabling of Cookies) by using your browser. For example, you block cookies by activating the setting on your browser that allows you to refuse the setting of all or some Cookies. However, if you use your browser settings to block all Cookies (including Cookies that are strictly necessary) you may not be able to access all or parts of our Services. Each browser is different and as such we suggest that you check the ‘Help’ menu on your particular browser (or your mobile phone’s handset manual) to learn how to change your Cookie preference. You may also find more information on how to manage your Cookies from third-party websites.

While we have provided details of third-party websites and services which we thought you may find useful, please note that we are not responsible for the content, functionality or services provided by such sites.

12. Children’s privacy

Unfortunately, if you’re under 18, you can’t use our Services. We do not knowingly solicit or collect information from anyone under 18. If we become aware that a person under the age of 18 has provided us with personal information, we’ll delete it immediately.

13. Contacting Us

If you have any questions about our Privacy Policy as outlined above, please contact us through support@phemex.zendesk.com or Online Chat.