Privacy Policy

This policy is from Prime Instrumentation Company Inc., a California corporation doing business as PICO (“PICO”, “we”, “us”). It covers two things: this website, where anyone can read about PICO, and PICO Monitoring, the sign-in platform where a project’s team sees its instrumentation data, alerts, and records.

PICO works for businesses and public agencies. Nearly everything in PICO Monitoring is project data: readings from instruments in the ground and on structures, and the thresholds and alerts built on them. That data describes a site, not a person. This policy is about the smaller set of information that does identify a person, which we call personal information.

People are given access to PICO Monitoring by PICO or by a project manager at the organization PICO is working with (the “customer”). If your access came through your employer or a project you work on, that organization decides who is on the project and what role they hold, and it may have its own policies that also apply to you.

This policy does not cover job applicants, PICO’s own personnel records, or websites and services operated by others, including those this site links to.

On this website

• Usage counts. Which public pages are viewed, the referring site, and general device, browser, and approximate location information, collected without cookies and not tied to a named person. We also count clicks on an email address, a phone number, or a PDF.
• Technical and security data. IP address, browser type, and request details, which every web server receives and which we use to keep the site working and to block attacks and automated abuse.
• What you send us. This site has no forms. If you email or call PICO, we keep your message, your contact details, and our reply as business correspondence.

In PICO Monitoring

• Account details. Your name, work email address, mobile phone number if one is provided, password (held by our sign-in provider, never readable by PICO), and any second sign-in factor.
• Project membership. Which projects you belong to, your role on each, who invited you and when, and any change to your access.
• Notification settings and consent. Which alerts you receive and how, and, for text messages, a record of your consent: the number, the date and time, the wording you agreed to, how you agreed, and any later opt-out.
• A record of what was sent to you. Each alert, digest, and notice addressed to you, with its full text, its channel, when it was sent, and whether delivery succeeded.
• A record of what you did. PICO Monitoring keeps an audit trail. Actions that change something, such as inviting or removing a member, changing a role, editing a sensor or a threshold, dismissing or silencing an alert, or exporting data, are logged with your name and the time. The record may include the values before and after a change.
• What you write or upload. Comments on alerts, notes, labels, and any files or photographs you add to a project. A comment that is edited or deleted remains in the audit trail, and a photograph may carry the time and place it was taken.
• Usage and device data. When you last signed in and were last active, which projects you opened recently, display preferences stored in your browser, and the IP address, browser, and device details that our sign-in, security, hosting, mapping, and diagnostics providers receive when you use the platform.
• Diagnostics. When something fails or runs slowly, we record what happened so it can be fixed. That can include the page you were on, what you clicked, and a replay of what the page displayed during that session.

From other people

Most accounts start with someone else. A project manager or PICO enters your name, email address, role, and sometimes your mobile number in order to invite you to a project, and an invitation is emailed to you before you have an account. If you were invited by mistake, tell us or the person who invited you and the invitation will be withdrawn.

From instruments

Data loggers and sensors send readings, battery and signal levels, and the network address they sent from. Instrument locations are recorded as coordinates on the project site. None of this is collected from or about your personal devices, and PICO Monitoring does not track the location of people.

What we do not collect

We do not ask for and do not want government identification numbers, payment card numbers, health information, or other sensitive personal information. Please do not put it in a comment, a note, a label, or an upload.

We use personal information to:

• provide PICO Monitoring: create and secure accounts, show each member the projects and functions their role allows, and display who did what;
• send alerts, digests, invitations, and notices about access and service to the people a project has named to receive them;
• keep the record that is the purpose of the platform: what was measured, what thresholds applied, who was notified, when, and what each person changed;
• perform our engineering and monitoring work for the customer, and answer its questions about a project;
• keep the site and platform secure, find and fix faults, prevent misuse, and measure how the public pages are used;
• reply when you contact us, and carry on our business relationship with you;
• comply with law, contract, and professional obligations, enforce our terms, and establish or defend legal claims, including by producing the record in a dispute.

We do not use personal information for advertising, do not build marketing profiles, and do not make decisions about people by automated means. Alerts are generated automatically from instrument readings; they are about the instrument, not about you.

PICO Monitoring can send alert text messages to a project member’s mobile phone: a reading crossing a threshold, a repeat of an alert that is still open, an alert resolving, and a daily summary of open alerts. They are sent only to members who have agreed to receive them for that project. Agreeing is optional and is never a condition of joining a project; alerts by email and in the platform do not depend on it.

To send them we use your mobile number, your consent record, and the content and delivery status of each message. We use this information only to deliver the alerts you agreed to and to keep the record of what was sent.

PICO does not send marketing text messages. You can stop alert texts at any time by replying STOP to any message. Reply HELP for help, or contact us at info@primeinstrumentation.com or (628) 288-3845. Message frequency varies with site conditions, and message and data rates may apply. The full program terms are in the Terms of Service.

Personal information is disclosed only as follows. None of what follows applies to mobile phone numbers or to text messaging originator opt-in data and consent, which are not shared with any third parties and are handled only as “Text messages” above says.

Within a project

A project’s team works from one shared record. Depending on their role, other members of a project you belong to, the customer, and PICO can see your name, email address, role, the comments and notes you wrote, the alerts sent to you, and the actions the audit trail records under your name. Members of other projects cannot.

The customer and its project

We provide project records, including the audit trail and the notification record, to the customer and to those it directs us to provide them to, such as the project owner, the design engineer, or a public agency. Records held by a public agency may be subject to public records laws.

Service providers

PICO uses other companies to run this site and PICO Monitoring. They handle information for PICO, or are set up to, in the course of providing their service to us, in the categories below. A current list of the companies is available on request.

Hosting

Serves this site and PICO Monitoring, and counts page views on the public pages without cookies.

Sign-in

Holds account credentials, verifies them, and keeps the sign-in session.

Database, storage, and backups

Hold the PICO Monitoring database, the retained record of what each data logger sent, uploaded files, and backup copies.

Email delivery

Delivers email from PICO Monitoring: alerts, daily digests, invitations, and notices.

Text message delivery

Delivers alert text messages, through the wireless carriers, to members who have agreed to receive them.

Maps

Draws the project maps. A browser showing a map requests it from the map provider directly, which shows that provider the browser’s IP address and the area being viewed.

Error diagnostics

Receives error and performance diagnostics, which can include a replay of what a page displayed and how it was used during a session.

Security screening

Screens incoming requests for attacks and automated abuse, using the request’s IP address and headers.

Background processing

Schedules the work that processes readings and sends alerts.

Business tools and advisers

Log management, source control and build systems, business email and office software, and professional advisers such as accountants, insurers, and lawyers, each receiving only what its job needs.

Licensed contractors

Instruments are installed and serviced by licensed contractors under PICO’s direction, by the customer, or by others the project engages. Their personnel may be members of a project and see what their role allows.

Legal and safety

We disclose information when we believe in good faith that it is required by law, subpoena, court order, or public records request, or is needed to protect the safety of any person, to address fraud or a security problem, or to protect PICO’s rights and property.

Business changes

If PICO is involved in a merger, acquisition, financing, reorganization, or sale of assets, account and project records may pass to the successor as part of it, subject to this policy. Mobile phone numbers and text messaging opt-in data and consent are excluded: they are not transferred, and consent given to PICO is not assigned to anyone else.

With your direction

We disclose information in other cases when you ask us to or agree to it.

This site and PICO Monitoring use only the cookies and browser storage needed to work: the cookies our sign-in provider sets to keep you signed in and to protect the sign-in form, which may be set on public pages too, and settings kept in your browser such as a collapsed sidebar or a chosen map layer. Blocking them will stop sign-in from working.

We use no advertising cookies, no advertising pixels, and no social media trackers, and we do not allow advertising networks or data brokers to collect information about your activity over time and across different websites when you use this site. The service providers listed under “Who receives it” receive technical data, such as an IP address, in the course of providing their service. Page views on the public pages are counted without cookies.

Because we do not track people across sites, this site does not change its behavior in response to a browser’s Do Not Track signal or a Global Privacy Control signal: there is nothing for the signal to turn off.

PICO Monitoring exists to keep a record that can be relied on later, when a decision made from the data is questioned. That shapes what can and cannot be removed.

• The project record is kept, not pruned. Readings, alerts, the notifications sent, and the audit trail are written once and are not edited or deleted afterward; a comment that is edited or deleted stays in the audit trail. The record is generally kept through the retention period set for the project, which runs for a number of years after the project is complete, and may be kept longer. It includes the names of the people who received an alert or made a change. Demonstration projects, whose data is simulated, may be deleted.
• Some of it is locked. The record of what each data logger sent is held in storage that is built so that no one, PICO included, can alter or delete it before the project’s retention period ends.
• Account details are kept while your account is active and afterward for as long as the project records that refer to you are kept.
• Backups of the database are made regularly, kept for a limited period, and then expire.
• Diagnostics, logs, and usage counts are kept for the periods our providers set, generally weeks to months.
• Correspondence is kept as business records for as long as it is useful or the law requires.

When your access to a project ends, you stop receiving its alerts and can no longer sign in to it, but the record of what you did and what was sent to you while you were a member stays.

Connections to PICO Monitoring are encrypted, stored data is encrypted, access is by invitation and limited by role, each project’s data is kept separate from every other project’s, and sign-in can require a second factor.

No system is perfectly secure, and we cannot guarantee that information will never be accessed, disclosed, altered, or lost. You are responsible for keeping your password and devices secure and for telling us promptly if you think your account has been used by someone else. If a breach affects your personal information, we will notify you and others as the law requires.

• See and correct your details. Your account page shows your profile. Change what you can there, and ask your project manager or PICO to correct the rest.
• Text messages. Reply STOP to any alert text, or ask your project manager or PICO, and they stop. Agreeing again later turns them back on.
• Email. Alert emails, digests, and notices about your access are part of the service for the projects you belong to, not marketing, so they have no unsubscribe link. Change which alerts reach you in your notification settings where your project allows it, or ask your project manager or PICO to change them or to remove you from the project.
• Leave a project or close your account. Ask your project manager or PICO. Your access ends; the project record described under “How long we keep it” does not.
• Ask us. To ask what personal information we hold about you, to have it corrected, or to ask that it be deleted, contact us at the address below. We will verify who you are and respond as the law that applies to you requires. Where your information is part of a customer’s project record, we may need to refer your request to that customer, and we will tell you if we cannot do what you ask and why. We will not treat you worse for asking.

California

California residents may ask a business whether it has disclosed their personal information to third parties for those parties’ direct marketing (Civil Code section 1798.83). PICO does not disclose personal information to third parties for their direct marketing. PICO has not sold personal information, and has not shared it for cross-context behavioral advertising, and does not knowingly do either with the personal information of anyone under 16. Depending on the law that applies, California residents may also have rights to know, correct, and delete personal information, subject to exceptions that include records a business must keep; to use them, contact us as described above, yourself or through an agent you have authorized in writing.

This site and PICO Monitoring are for people acting for a business or a public agency. They are not directed to children, accounts are for adults 18 and over, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 18. If you believe a child has given us personal information, contact us and we will remove what we are able to.

PICO is in California, works on projects in California, and offers this site and PICO Monitoring for use in the United States. Information is stored and processed in the United States by PICO and its service providers. If you use them from elsewhere, your information will be transferred to and handled in the United States, whose laws may differ from those where you are.

We will update this policy when our practices change. The date at the top is when the current version took effect. If a change materially affects how we handle personal information already collected, we will give notice before it takes effect, on this page and, for people with accounts, by email or in PICO Monitoring. The version posted here is the one in force. This policy describes PICO’s practices; it is not a contract and does not create rights or obligations beyond those the law provides.

Questions, requests, and complaints about privacy go to info@primeinstrumentation.com or (628) 288-3845. Please say which project you are a member of, if any, so we can find your records.

Prime Instrumentation Company Inc. dba PICO
San Francisco, California