Updates to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy

Hi All!

Today (Sept 2) I sent an email to all of our customers about some upcoming changes to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use. I wanted to use this space to provide a bit of context around those changes.

There are 2 main factors to the changes we’ve made:

1) Readability!

Something I’m really happy to unveil is our new Terms of Use side-by-side with a plain-English “translation.” As more and more of our lives move online, it’s essential that we all become better at reading and understanding what we’re signing up for. Though we still need the official legalese, I’m hoping that the translation helps you get the gist of each paragraph, and makes it easier to find the bits that you’re most interested in.

2) Wave keeps growing!

With 1.5 million (that’s a lot of zeros!) businesses using Wave in some way, our data needs have grown exponentially. Specifically, since Wave is such a large and complex set of applications (accounting, invoicing, payroll, payments, receipt scanning, personal finance… did I miss anything?), we have a lot of data. To better understand our business (and in turn build the software you actually need) we have to run diagnostic and analytical stuff all the time!

The bigger and more sophisticated Wave gets, the more we need to find heavy-duty tools that we can use to get the job done here at Wave HQ. This means looking for tools globally. I love and support Canada and Canadian businesses, but we simply can’t satisfy all of our needs locally.

Previously, our statement on where your data is stored was simple: It was all in Canada.

Going forward, it’s more complex: The “operational” data — the stuff that you’re looking at when you log into Wave, and that you use to run your business — that’s still stored in Canada. But since we intend to use diagnostic and analytical tools and third party service providers that are global in nature, that means that copies of data (usually just fragments of data) may be handled by systems in other jurisdictions. And we want to be upfront about that.

I’d like to add that our promise to you about the privacy and security of your information is not changing: We will never give or sell your individual information to anyone. You will not wind up on a third-party mailing list or anything of the sort without your explicit permission. And nobody will ever find out how much you spend at Starbucks, Amazon or any other place.

If you have any questions, now or in future, about the Terms of Use or Privacy Policy, please feel free to contact me: privacy@waveapps.com.