Privacy & accessibility

Fides Veritas Register INC. (“FVR”, “we”, “us”), a Wyoming corporation with offices at 7550 I-10 Ste 800, San Antonio, TX 78229, United States, is a certification body: we certify management systems under ISO/IEC 17021-1 and persons under ISO/IEC 17024. Under ISO/IEC 17021-1 we operate under accreditation certificate IAS MSCB-444; under ISO/IEC 17024 we are in the process of accreditation.

This policy explains how we handle personal information on our websites (www.fidesveritasregister.com and www.fvr.mx), on our client, auditor and learning platforms, and in our certification services, including audits and assessments held in person or remotely (together, the “Services”). It applies wherever you are; if you are in Mexico, the section “If you are in Mexico” also applies to you.

For any privacy matter: support@fidesveritasregister.com

• Contact and professional data: name, job title, organization, email address, phone number and postal address.
• Client organization data: legal name, tax registration, registered address and the addresses of the sites to be audited, and the legal documents you provide (such as the tax status certificate, articles of incorporation, proof of address and the official identification of the legal representative).
• Auditor, evaluator and personnel data: contact details, photograph, education, training and certifications, work experience, record of audits and assessments performed, declarations of interests and impartiality, and the documents that evidence all of this.
• Candidate and learner data: the identification needed to confirm who is sitting an assessment, the education and experience you declare to meet a scheme’s prerequisites, course progress, assessment answers and results, the evaluator’s observations and, when an oral examination is held with an AI interviewer, the text transcript of that interview.
• Account and activity data: your account details and a log of significant actions on the platforms: who performed them, when, and from which IP address.
• Payment data: card payments are made on a page hosted by our payment processor, Stripe. We do not receive or store card numbers.
• Communications: the messages you send us and our replies, including complaints, appeals and reports.
• Device and usage data: IP address, browser type and pages requested, as recorded by our hosting provider. To count visits we use Vercel Web Analytics, which works in aggregate, without cookies and without persistent identifiers. We use no other analytics, advertising or profiling tool. See the Cookie Notice.

Sensitive information. We collect official identification documents — a category some U.S. state laws treat as sensitive — only to verify identity or legal representation, and we use them for nothing else. We do not ask about your health, racial or ethnic origin, religion or sexual orientation, and we do not collect precise geolocation. If you request an accommodation to sit an assessment, we ask only for what is needed to provide it.

• From you, when you request a quote, sign a contract, register, sit an assessment or write to us.
• From the organization you work for or represent, for example when a client designates its contacts or an organization enrolls its staff in a course.
• From our authorized commercial representatives (franchises), who register the clients they refer to us in our platform.
• From the issuers of the certificates and qualifications you declare, when we verify them, and from public sources, such as company and tax registries.
• Automatically, when you use the Services, as described in the Cookie Notice.

To provide the Services:

• Preparing quotations and contracts, and carrying out the certification process.
• Planning and performing audits and assessments, and issuing the corresponding reports and certificates.
• Verifying the competence and impartiality of the people assigned to your certification.
• Keeping each certificate verifiable by anyone who holds its number or QR code.
• Invoicing and collections.
• Handling complaints, appeals and reports, and providing support.

To meet our obligations as a certification body: we keep a record of who did each thing, when and from which IP address, and we keep the records that support each certificate. This is not optional: ISO/IEC 17021-1 and ISO/IEC 17024 require traceable records, and the accreditation body reviews them.

To keep the Services secure: protecting accounts, tying each session to the browser where it began, and detecting and preventing fraud and misuse.

To comply with the law and to establish or defend legal claims.

To send you information about our services and technical content. This one is optional: you can opt out at any time by writing to support@fidesveritasregister.com, without affecting your service.

Certification decisions are made by people. We use AI tools to support our staff — for example, to check the consistency of an audit file, or to conduct an oral examination interview that an evaluator then reviews — but every certification decision is made by a competent person who did not take part in the evaluation. We do not make decisions with legal or similarly significant effects about you by automated means alone.

We share personal information only where necessary, and only with:

• The accreditation body. Our records — including personal information of clients, candidates and personnel — are reviewed by the body that accredits us. That review is a condition for the certificates we issue to remain valid, so this disclosure arises from a regulatory obligation.
• Service providers that operate the Services on our behalf and under confidentiality obligations: hosting and infrastructure, databases and file storage, email delivery and address validation, office and video-meeting software, AI services, and payment processing.
• Authorized commercial representatives (franchises). They work inside our platform, not in systems of their own: that is where they register and consult the information of the clients in their network, with access limited to those clients and under confidentiality obligations.
• The public, for verification. Anyone with a certificate’s number or QR code can check its holder, status, scope or level, and validity. Verification pages are not indexed by search engines.
• Professional advisers, such as lawyers, accountants and insurers, under a duty of confidentiality.
• Authorities, when the law requires it or in response to a valid legal request.
• A successor, if FVR is part of a merger, acquisition or sale of assets; this policy would continue to protect your information.

We do not sell personal information, and we do not share it for targeted (cross-context behavioral) advertising.

Wherever you live, you can ask us to:

• tell you what personal information we hold about you and give you a copy, in a portable format where feasible;
• correct it if it is inaccurate;
• delete it, subject to the limit explained below;
• stop using it for the optional purpose of sending you information about our services; and
• take a second look at a request we have declined (appeal).

Write to support@fidesveritasregister.com with your name, how to reply to you, what you are asking for, and enough information for us to confirm your identity — usually the email address registered with us; for records containing identification documents we may ask for more. Someone you authorize may make the request on your behalf with your signed permission.

Your request is handled by our Technical Director, who is responsible for personal data at FVR. We will respond within 20 calendar days and, if your request is granted, carry it out within the following 15 calendar days. If we decline all or part of a request, we will tell you why. To appeal, reply to our answer with the word “Appeal”: a person who did not handle your original request will review it and reply within 45 days.

One limit worth knowing: certain records cannot be deleted while a certificate is valid, nor during the retention period that our management system and the standards require, because they are the evidence behind that certificate. If that applies to you, we will tell you which records and for how long.

Exercising these rights is free and will never affect how we treat you or your certification.

Several U.S. states — including California, Texas, Colorado, Connecticut and Virginia — give their residents rights over their personal information. To the extent those laws apply to us, the rights in the previous section are the ones you can exercise, through the same channel. In addition:

• Sale and targeted advertising: we do not sell personal information or process it for targeted advertising, so there is nothing to opt out of. Even so, we treat a Global Privacy Control (GPC) signal from your browser as a valid opt-out request.
• Profiling: we do not use personal information for profiling in furtherance of decisions that produce legal or similarly significant effects.
• Sensitive information: we use it only for the purposes in this policy and never to infer characteristics about you.
• People under 16: we have no actual knowledge of selling or sharing the personal information of anyone under 16.
• California “Shine the Light”: we do not disclose personal information to third parties for their own direct marketing purposes.
• Nevada: we do not sell covered information as defined by Nevada law.

We keep data for the duration of the relationship and, thereafter, for as long as applicable regulatory and tax obligations and our management system's records-retention rules require. Records that support an issued certificate are kept for at least the full certification cycle. If you need the exact period that applies to your case, write to support@fidesveritasregister.com.

When we no longer need it, we delete or de-identify it, and we do not attempt to re-identify de-identified data.

We use technical, organizational and physical safeguards to protect personal information: encrypted connections, access limited by role, sessions that close after 10 minutes of inactivity, and a record of each significant action. No system is completely secure, so we cannot guarantee absolute security; if an incident affects your information, we will notify you as the law requires.

We are based in the United States and also serve clients in Mexico and other countries. Some of our service providers process information in the United States and in other countries whose laws may differ from those of your country. Wherever it is processed, we protect it as this policy describes.

The Services are intended for people who have reached the age of majority. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you believe a child has given us personal information, write to support@fidesveritasregister.com and we will delete it.

If you are in Mexico, the Federal Law on the Protection of Personal Data Held by Private Parties also applies, and this document is your privacy notice under it:

• Controller: Fides Veritas Register INC., at the address and email above. Personal data department: the Technical Director, at the same email.
• Primary purposes: those under “How we use it” that are needed to provide the Services. Secondary purpose: sending you information about our services and technical content; you can refuse it at any time by writing to support@fidesveritasregister.com, and refusing it does not affect your service.
• ARCO rights: you can request access, rectification, cancellation or opposition, and revoke your consent, through the procedure under “Your rights and how to exercise them”.
• Transfers: disclosures to the accreditation body and to competent authorities arise from legal or regulatory obligations and do not require your consent. Service providers act on our behalf and do not receive your information for their own purposes.
• Cookies and similar technologies: described in the Cookie Notice.

We will publish any change at this same address with its new effective date. If a change is significant, we will also let registered users know through the platform or by email before it takes effect.

• Email: support@fidesveritasregister.com
• Mail: Fides Veritas Register INC., 7550 I-10 Ste 800, San Antonio, TX 78229, United States

Fides Veritas Register INC. works to make its certification platform usable by as many people as possible, including people with disabilities. Accessibility is part of our commitment to delivering certification services without discrimination.

We use the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1, Level AA, published by the W3C, as our reference standard.

This platform has not yet been formally audited against WCAG 2.1 AA. We declare partial conformance: some content meets the guidelines and some does not, and we say below which is which.

We would rather report this precisely than claim a level of compliance we cannot yet demonstrate.

• Every image carrying information has alternative text.
• The language of each page is declared and follows the language the user selects (Spanish or English).
• About half of the portal's components are built on a library that implements keyboard navigation and accessible labelling natively.
• The platform is fully available in both Spanish and English.

These are the barriers we have identified and are working to remove:

1. There is no link to skip directly to the main content. People navigating by keyboard or with a screen reader must move through the navigation on every page.
2. Some form fields do not have a programmatically associated label. A screen reader may announce them without saying what information is expected.
3. A visible focus indicator is not guaranteed on every element. When navigating by keyboard, on some screens it may not be clear which element you are on.
4. Colour contrast has not been measured systematically.
5. The platform has not been tested with screen readers, nor navigated end to end using the keyboard alone.

We have a staged plan: first limitations 1 and 2, which are Level A — the most basic requirement — then the focus indicator, and finally a full audit against WCAG 2.1 AA including screen reader testing and contrast measurement. This statement will be updated as we progress.

If you cannot access any content or complete any process on our platform, we want to know and to help you right away.

• Email: support@fvr.mx

When you write, please tell us which page it happened on and what you were trying to do. We will acknowledge your message within 2 business days and give you an alternative way to complete your task while we remove the barrier.

Anything that can be done in the portal — checking the status of your certification, reviewing documents, scheduling an audit or downloading your certificate — can also be done by email or by phone with the help of our team. Write to support@fvr.mx and we will walk you through it.

If you are a candidate for a personnel certification and need an accommodation to sit your assessment — additional time, an alternative format, technical support or anything else — request it at support@fvr.mx before the date of your assessment. Accommodations are granted without lowering the standard required for certification.

We will publish updates at this same address as we make progress. The date shown at the top reflects the most recent revision.