Zendesk legal terms update 2021

As a service-first company, we update our terms and policies on an annual basis, driven by customer feedback, evolving legal standards, and product updates.

A summary of the key updates is below. If you would like more information about our legal terms, please visit our Agreements and Terms Website. If you would like more information about our privacy and security practices, please visit our Privacy and Data Protection Website.

For new subscribers, our updated Master Subscription Agreement (MSA) will become effective on June 1, 2021. For existing subscribers, this is your advance notice that the new MSA will apply to your use of the Services starting on July 1, 2021 and your continued use of the Services after that date constitutes your consent to these changes.

For subscribers who have purchased a subscription to our Services through an authorized reseller partner, we have made the equivalent changes to our Reseller Subscription Services Agreement, which is effective as of June 1, 2021 for new subscribers and July 1, 2021 for existing subscribers.

Master Subscription Agreement (MSA)

In addition to cleaning up the language to make the terms shorter and clearer, we made the following key updates to the Zendesk MSA:

• We have updated our privacy provisions to be more straightforward, including to refer to and align more closely with the protections and commitments we offer in our Data Processing Agreement.

• We have clarified the rules for acceptable use of our Services in the MSA and User Content and Conduct Policy to make these requirements more concise and easier to understand.

• We have simplified and updated how subscribers give Zendesk notice under the MSA, including to allow subscribers to provide us contractual notices by email.

• We continue to refer to and incorporate them into our MSA, but where they are applicable, we have moved terms related to Free Trials, Beta Services, the purchase of Zendesk Professional Services, and the Region-Specific Supplemental Terms applicable to subscribers in some jurisdictions out of the MSA and onto their own webpages on our Agreements and Terms website. This will allow subscribers to find this information more easily in a single, stand-alone location.
• We amended the Region-Specific Supplemental Terms to incorporate the United Kingdom’s Data Protection Act and Australia’s Privacy Act into the definition of Applicable Data Protection Law for subscribers in those countries. We also clarified the language for when it is necessary in Japan to obtain express consent from an End User to collect their Personal Data given such consent may already be justified on another legal basis.

Data Processing Agreement (DPA)

We have made some simple edits as well as a few substantive updates to our Data Processing Agreement (DPA):

• We have relocated a few provisions from our MSA into our DPA to provide greater clarity and certainty in how we process Personal Data. This includes our reliance on legitimate interest to process Personal Data and our commitment to ensure transfers of Personal Data outside of the European Economic Area (EEA) are consistent with GPRR requirements.

• We have made changes to clarify that while Zendesk does not rely on the Privacy Shield as a mechanism to transfer personal information out of the EEA, United Kingdom, or Switzerland, we continue to participate in and remain compliant with the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield Framework and the Swiss-U.S. Privacy Shield Framework. Zendesk continues to offer the Standard Contractual Clauses (aka Model Clauses) and our Processor and Controller Binding Corporate Rules (BCRs) as personal data transfer mechanisms.

• We made edits to incorporate the United Kingdom’s Data Protection Act, which adopts the substantive requirements of GDPR into UK law, into our DPA.

Privacy Policy

We updated our Region-Specific Terms to include reference to the United Kingdom’s Data Protection Act and Australia’s Privacy Act, with respect to collection of data under the Policy in those countries. We also clarified how we collect information under Japan’s Act on the Protection of Personal Information for users in Japan.