Waterline IQ Privacy Policy

1. Who We Are

Waterline IQ is a business intelligence service operated by Apex North LLC, an Oregon limited liability company. In this Privacy Policy, “Waterline IQ,” “we,” “us,” and “our” refer to Apex North LLC in its operation of the Waterline IQ service.

This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, disclose, and retain personal information through the public website at waterlineiq.com, the signed-in application at app.waterlineiq.com, and related communications and support channels (together, the “Service”).

2. Scope and Intended Users

The Service is intended for businesses and professionals in the United States, including contractors, specialty firms, engineering and architecture firms, equipment vendors, manufacturers’ representatives, and business-development or preconstruction professionals pursuing public water-infrastructure work.

Accounts are limited to users who are at least 18 years old. We do not intentionally market or offer accounts to users in the European Union, European Economic Area, United Kingdom, Switzerland, or other non-U.S. jurisdictions.

Some reviewed intelligence may be available on public pages without an account. Detailed intelligence and private workflow features require an authorized account.

3. Information We Collect

3.1 Information You Provide

We may collect information that you provide when you request or receive access, create or use an account, purchase a subscription, contact us, or report an issue. This may include:

• Your name, work email address, and company;

• An authentication identifier and related account information;

• Your subscription, plan, licensed coverage, billing status, and transaction records;

• Watchlist selections and other private workflow information;

• Signal review status and feedback, including whether a Signal was useful or not relevant and any optional reason;

• Customer messages, support requests, and data-issue or software-issue reports;

• Information included in an issue report, such as category, description, reproduction steps, expected behavior, related page, limited browser context, status, and resolution; and

• Optional attachments submitted with an issue report, subject to the file-type, size, and count limits shown in the Service.

A telephone number and job title are not required to provision an account.

3.2 Authentication and Payment Services

Waterline IQ processes the credentials, session records, and related account information needed to authenticate, secure, and administer your account. If we offer a third-party sign-in method, the provider may also process information needed to authenticate your account under its own terms and privacy notice.

When paid subscriptions are offered through Stripe, Stripe processes payment-method information and supports checkout, recurring billing, and the customer billing portal. Waterline IQ receives limited subscription, billing, payment-status, and transaction information needed to administer your account, but does not store complete payment-card numbers or card security codes.

3.3 Product, Device, and Log Information

When you use the Service, we and our service providers may collect:

• Internet Protocol address;

• Browser type, device information, operating system, and user-agent string;

• Login, authentication, security, and account timestamps;

• Request paths, referring pages, error information, and related diagnostic data;

• Cookie, session, or similar identifiers;

• General location inferred from an IP address;

• Pages, records, and features used;

• Searches, filters, and interactions with Projects, Owners, Firms, Contacts, Signals, Solicitations, Bid results, and Permits & approvals;

• Watchlist activity and Signal read or feedback state; and

• Other product-usage information needed to operate, secure, analyze, and improve the Service.

Private Watchlist activity, Signal feedback, customer messages, and issue reports are not shown to other customers. Waterline IQ operators may access them when reasonably necessary to operate, secure, review, and support the Service.

3.4 Public-Source Professional Information

Waterline IQ retrieves, preserves, parses, reviews, organizes, and links public-source information concerning public water-infrastructure activity. Sources may include agency websites, project pages, funding lists, budgets, capital plans, meeting records, procurement notices and attachments, bid tabulations, award records, permit records, spreadsheets, HTML pages, and PDFs.

Published intelligence may include professional information appearing in official public records, such as:

• Names and professional roles;

• Public-agency or business affiliations;

• Official work email addresses, business telephone numbers, and business addresses; and

• Participation in Projects, Solicitations, bids, awards, permits, contracts, or other public infrastructure activity.

Candidate and rejected records may be restricted to Waterline IQ operators. Material published facts are intended to be reviewed and connected to official evidence. Corrections may supersede or annotate earlier records rather than silently rewrite source history.

4. How We Collect Information

We collect information:

• Directly from you;

• From authentication or payment services you use, when applicable;

• Automatically through the Service, essential cookies, logs, and product analytics;

• From official public records, public procurement portals, agency websites, and other public sources; and

• From communications with customers, users, public agencies, and people or organizations reporting a data issue.

5. How We Use Information

We use personal information to:

• Provision, authenticate, secure, and administer accounts;

• Provide public and signed-in Service features;

• Preserve Watchlists and other private workflow information;

• Process subscriptions, payments, cancellations, and billing support;

• Send account, security, billing, support, and service communications;

• Answer customer messages and investigate issue reports;

• Maintain reviewed public-market intelligence and official evidence;

• Operate source ingestion, review, audit, troubleshooting, backups, and service reliability;

• Measure product usage, diagnose friction, and improve coverage, data quality, usability, and performance;

• Detect misuse, fraud, and security threats;

• Enforce our Terms of Use and protect rights, safety, and property;

• Comply with law, legal process, and lawful requests; and

• Create and use aggregated or deidentified information for analytics, product improvement, and internal reporting.

We do not currently send marketing email. If we add marketing communications, we will provide an unsubscribe method and continue to send necessary account and service messages.

6. Cookies and Product Analytics

The Service uses essential cookies or similar technologies for authentication, session continuity, security, and account functions. When Stripe-hosted checkout or billing tools are used, Stripe may also use cookies or similar technologies to process payments, authenticate transactions, prevent fraud, and operate its services.

We may use PostHog for product analytics, including page and feature usage, product funnels, retention, and friction analysis. PostHog may process technical information, product interactions, and account-linked or pseudonymous identifiers depending on our configuration.

Currently:

• We do not use session replay;

• We do not use advertising cookies, advertising pixels, or cross-site behavioral tracking; and

• If PostHog is enabled, we do not intentionally send payment-card details, support-message contents, issue-report attachments, or other private form contents to it.

We may change analytics tools or configurations over time. We will update this policy and implement consent or preference controls before using technologies that require them under applicable law.

7. AI-Assisted Processing and Waterline IQ Analysis

AI tools may assist Waterline IQ in processing public-source documents and preparing Waterline IQ analysis, summaries, forecasts, confidence labels, qualification context, or expected milestones. These outputs support professional research and qualification. They are not official findings and require independent verification.

Currently:

• Private Watchlists, customer messages, issue-report attachments, and other private customer information are not sent to AI providers;

• Customer information is not used to train third-party AI models; and

• Waterline IQ does not use automated processing to make legal or similarly significant decisions about individuals.

Waterline IQ analysis may be reviewed, edited, or approved by Waterline IQ personnel and is distinguished from official-source facts.

8. How We Disclose Information

We may disclose personal information in the following circumstances:

8.1 Service Providers

We may use service providers to host and operate the application and database, store files, support authentication, process payments, deliver email, provide product analytics, monitor errors, maintain security, and support other business operations. These providers receive information reasonably necessary to perform services for us. Depending on the features and configurations in use, examples may include Stripe for billing and PostHog for product analytics.

8.2 Waterline IQ Personnel

Authorized Waterline IQ operators and contractors may access information when reasonably necessary to administer accounts, review evidence, operate the Service, provide support, investigate reports, maintain security, and enforce our agreements.

8.3 Legal, Safety, and Rights Protection

We may disclose information when we reasonably believe disclosure is necessary to comply with law or legal process; respond to lawful requests; investigate fraud, security incidents, or misuse; protect the rights, safety, or property of Waterline IQ, our users, public agencies, or others; or establish, exercise, or defend legal claims.

8.4 Business Transactions

We may disclose or transfer information in connection with a financing, merger, acquisition, reorganization, sale of assets, or similar transaction, subject to appropriate confidentiality and legal requirements.

8.5 At Your Direction

We may disclose information when you direct us to do so, consent to the disclosure, or use a feature that is designed to share information.

9. No Sale or Targeted Advertising

Waterline IQ does not sell personal information. We do not share personal information for cross-context behavioral advertising or use advertising networks to target ads based on activity across unrelated websites or services.

Because we do not currently engage in those practices, browser-based opt-out signals such as Global Privacy Control do not change our present processing. We will honor legally required opt-out preference signals if our practices change or applicable law requires a response.

10. Retention and Deletion

We retain information for as long as reasonably necessary for the purposes described in this policy, including while an account is active and as needed to provide the Service, maintain security, administer billing, resolve disputes, enforce agreements, comply with law, and preserve business records.

Retention depends on the type of information and why it is needed. For example:

• Account, subscription, and private workflow information may be retained while the account is active and for a reasonable period afterward;

• Billing, tax, fraud-prevention, security, and legal records may be retained as required or permitted by law;

• Logs, analytics, support records, and backups may be retained according to operational needs and provider configurations;

• Deleted information may remain in backups until those backups are overwritten through normal processes; and

• Official source documents, evidence provenance, audit history, public professional information, and correction history may be retained longer to preserve source integrity and an accurate historical record.

We may retain aggregated or deidentified information that no longer reasonably identifies an individual. We do not promise immediate or unconditional deletion when retention is required or reasonably necessary for law, security, disputes, public-record provenance, evidence integrity, or other legitimate operational purposes.

11. Security

We use administrative, technical, and organizational safeguards designed for the nature of the Service and the information we process. These safeguards may include HTTPS in production, secure authentication and session controls, access restrictions separating public, member, and operator functions, restricted access to candidate evidence and administrative workflows, audit events, login rate limiting, and file-upload restrictions.

No method of transmission, storage, or security is completely secure. You are responsible for protecting your account, authentication method, devices, and credentials and for notifying us promptly of suspected unauthorized access.

Do not submit confidential material that you are not authorized to share or sensitive infrastructure, vulnerability, emergency-response, security-design, internal SCADA, or network information through the Service.

12. Your Privacy Rights and Choices

Depending on your state of residence and whether a privacy law applies to Waterline IQ, you may have rights to:

• Confirm whether we process your personal information;

• Access or obtain a copy of personal information;

• Correct inaccurate personal information;

• Request deletion of personal information;

• Request portability of information you provided;

• Opt out of certain sale, targeted-advertising, or profiling activities; and

• Appeal a decision on a privacy request.

Waterline IQ does not currently sell personal information or process it for targeted advertising.

To submit a request, email [email protected] with “Privacy Request” in the subject line. We may ask for information reasonably necessary to verify your identity, account, authority, or relationship to the information. An authorized agent may submit a request where permitted by law, but we may require proof of authorization and identity verification.

If applicable law gives you a right to appeal, email [email protected] with “Privacy Appeal” in the subject line and explain the decision you are appealing.

We will not discriminate against you for exercising an applicable privacy right. Rights may be limited by legal exceptions, security needs, the rights of others, public-record provenance, evidence integrity, or our need to retain information for lawful purposes.

13. Public-Record Corrections and Suppression Requests

A person or organization may report a data or classification issue through the Service’s “Report an issue” feature or by emailing [email protected].

We may verify the requester’s identity, authority, and relationship to the information. When appropriate, we may correct, annotate, suppress from display, or supersede inaccurate presentation. A request may not result in deletion of an official source document, evidence record, audit history, legal record, or correction history when we have a legitimate need to preserve it.

14. U.S. Availability and Processing

Accounts are offered to U.S. businesses and professionals. The Service is operated from the United States, and information may be processed in the United States and in locations where our service providers operate. We do not intentionally offer accounts to users outside the United States.

15. Children

The Service is not intended for anyone under 18, and we do not knowingly create accounts for or collect personal information directly from children.

16. Third-Party Websites and Documents

The Service may link to government websites, procurement portals, agency pages, documents, and other third-party resources. Those third parties control their own websites, documents, security, availability, and privacy practices. This Privacy Policy does not govern their independent processing.

17. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy to reflect changes to the Service, vendors, legal requirements, or data practices. We will post the updated policy with a new effective date. If a change is material, we may also provide notice through the Service or by email where appropriate or required by law.

18. Contact Us

For privacy requests, legal notices, support, or questions about this policy, contact:

Apex North LLC Waterline IQ 91410 Coburg Industrial Way Coburg, Oregon 97408 United States [email protected]