PRIVACY POLICY

SOUTHWEST BONDING PRIVACY POLICY

Effective as of July 29, 2020

 

This Privacy Policy (this “Policy”) applies to your use of our website located at www.southwestbonding.com (“Southwest Bonding, “we,” “us,” or “our”), all subdomains thereof, any other websites and online offerings operated by Southwest Bonding which link to this Policy, whether accessed via computer or mobile device (the “Services”).  This Policy describes how Southwest Bonding collects, stores, and processes the information we collect from users of our Services.  We take your privacy seriously and strive to provide our Services with the protection of your information in mind.  This Policy does not apply to third-party properties or Southwest Bonding properties that contain other privacy policies.

If you have any questions regarding this Policy, please contact us at info@southwestbonding.com.

 

Section 1.  Summary

We are providing this Policy to you in order to explain how we collect, use, share, and disclose information collected via our Services.  In summary, the principal features of our privacy practices are outlined in this Section, but in order to have a complete understanding of our privacy practices, you should review and understand the entirety of our Policy:

We collect both Personal Information and Non-Personal Information (each as defined below) from you based on both the information that you give to us and information that we collect from your use of our Service.

  • We may share your Personal Information with third parties in certain circumstances, including as necessary to provide you with our Services or certain aspects thereof, or in our discretion to third parties for our or their own purposes. You can learn more about our information sharing practices below, by reviewing the “Disclosure and Sharing of Information” section below.
  • In compliance with applicable laws, you can contact us at info@southwestbonding.com in order to review and, where applicable, update your Personal Information.
  • We use commercially reasonable efforts to secure your information, but cannot guarantee that your information will remain secure.
  • Our Services are not directed to people under 18, as further set forth in the section titled “Regarding Children” below.

 

Section 2.  Acceptance

We strongly recommend that you read this Policy in its entirety and return to it periodically to review any changes made.  By accessing our Services, you accept all the terms and conditions of this Policy.  If you do not agree to the terms of this Policy, you should stop using and accessing our Services immediately.

 

Section 3.  Information Collected

We collect both information you provide to us, and information we collect as a result of your use of our Service, as more completely described below.  The information we collect is comprised of both “Personal Information” and “Non-Personal Information.”

For purposes of this Policy, “Personal Information” means information that you provide to us that personally identifies you, including, but not limited to, your first and last name, email address, physical address, telephone number, billing information, or social security number.  Personal Information may have alternative definitions in certain jurisdictions.  Where applicable, we abide by the definition of Personal Information or similar term in the applicable jurisdiction.

“Non-Personal Information” means information that does not specifically identify you.

 

Information You Give to Us

When you use our Services we may require you to submit information about yourself, for example through our Contact Us form, via email, via other online forms we may provide from to time, or in connection with setting up an account for our Services, as well as information you provide in connection with your use our Services.  We will collect and retain all of this information, whether Personal Information or Non-Personal Information.

Our most common ways to collect both Personal Information and Non-Personal Information about you are as follows:

  • Submitting an application when seeking a bond or paying for an existing bond;
  • Requesting assistance from customer service or others at the Company;
  • Signing up to receive information from us;
  • Participating in surveys, special events, and promotions;
  • Engaging in transactions through or utilizing our Services; and
  • Other areas of our Services where you knowingly volunteer information.

Any information you provide or that is collected about you will be collected, retained, processed, and used by us in accordance with this Policy.  To the extent that any of this information is collected by us via telephone, you acknowledge and agree that we may be recording your telephone call for our training or quality control purposes during such call, as well as for use in accordance with this Policy.

 

Information We Gather from Your Use of Our Services

We collect information about your use of our Services, including without limitation:

  • Device information, which may include information such as your hardware model, mobile device type, unique identifiers from your computer or mobile device, operating system, operating system version, application download information, and/or IP address.
  • Location information such as your geolocation when you use our Services from a mobile device and/or mobile application. We also may ask you to manually provide precise location information or to enable your mobile device to send us precise location information.
  • Computer or browser information such as your system activity, the domain name of the web site from which you linked to our Services, the time and duration of your use of our Services and any queries, browser type, and browser language.

If you would like more information about cookies, how we use them and your ability to manage them as part of your use of our Services, please see the section titled “Cookies and Web Beacons” below.  In connection with the provision of our Services, we may also use unique identifiers, web beacons, web server log information, Flash cookies, and other technologies to collect information about you.  In some circumstances, we may also collect information from you for third parties to assist us in providing our Services to you, such as information that we provide to surety companies that issue the types of bond you are seeking.

 

Section 4.  Use of Information We Collect

We use the information we have collected about you to provide our Services, measure and maintain our Services and to improve our Services.

More specifically, we use the information we collect from and about you in order to:

  • Provide you with the Services your request from us;
  • Communicate with you about your account or transactions with us and to provide you with information about features and functions of our Services;
  • Personalize content and experiences available to you through our Services;
  • Communicate with you about changes to our policies and our Services;
  • Send you newsletters, offers, and promotions for our Services and third party products and services by email or via other media;
  • Develop and provide advertising tailored to your interests, including advertising based on your activity on our Services;
  • Administer promotions and surveys;
  • Optimize or improve our Services and business operations;
  • Detect, investigate, and prevent activities that may violate our policies or applicable law;
  • Share it with third-party providers to the extent needed to provide you with our Services and respond to your requests, as well as any third-party offerings made available through our Services;
  • Comply with applicable laws and other legal process; and
  • Perform statistical, demographic, and marketing analyses of user of our Services and their purchasing patterns.

By using our Services, you understand and agree to our use of your information for all of the above purposes.  If you have provided us with your email, you also understand and agree that we may use your e-mail address to assist you with any questions and/or issues you may have, send important notices to you, and/or to send you an e-mail that gives you the opportunity to elect to receive periodic e-mail alerts from Southwest Bonding regarding developments at the Company and the nature of our Services. Given the importance of this information to the operation of our Services, you may not opt out of receiving these communications

We may also aggregate your information with information gathered from other end-users, to, among other things, determine the total number of end-users who are using our Services, prepare utilization reports for our internal business purposes, diagnose and fix compatibility problems or other problems with our Services, and perform statistical analyses to enable us to build higher quality, more useful online Services.

To the extent we receive information about you from our business partners, we may combine your Personal Information maintained by such business partners with the Personal Information that we collect about you.  We may also combine your Personal Information with Non-Personal Information, in which case any combined information will be treated as Personal Information for as long as it remains combined.

We will generally retain information collected about you only for as long as is necessary for us to fulfill our business purposes, as set forth above, unless a longer retention period is required to comply with law or a legal request.  However, if we would like to retain your information for longer periods of time we may, in certain circumstances, choose to anonymize certain information you provide to us so that it can no longer be attributed to you.

 

Section 5.  Disclosure and Sharing of Information

We may find it necessary or beneficial to share your information, including your Personal Information, with our service providers, including our vendors, credit card processing services, our advertising service providers, and other third parties that assist us in connection with the provision of the Services, such as hosting partners (collectively, “Providers”) or allow such Providers to gather information directly from you.

Your Personal Information may be shared with third parties in some circumstances including the following situations:

  • Consent: When we have your consent to do so, we may share Personal Information with third parties, including our vendors and by using our Services, you are consenting to such sharing, subject at all times to your right to opt-out subsequently.
  • Providers: We provide your Personal Information to Providers, who work with us to provide our Services or provide services outside of and/or unrelated to the Services. Our Services with which our Providers may assist us include among other things, communicating with you about offers available from such Providers, new or existing Services we provide or third-party services, creating or maintaining our databases, researching or analyzing our users, advertising (including online advertising) or processing payment card information.
  • Affiliates: We may also share your Personal Information with our Affiliates. “Affiliates” means any entity controlled by, controlling, or under common control with Southwest Bonding.  Our Affiliates will use and distribute your information in accordance with the terms of this Policy.
  • Legal Issues: In order to prevent, or take action regarding any illegal activities, suspected fraud, situations involving potential threats to the physical safety of any person, violations of the terms of our Services, or as otherwise required by law, we may also use or share your Personal Information. We may also use your Personal Information to the extent necessary to respond to subpoenas, court orders, or legal process, or to establish or exercise our legal rights or defend against legal claims.
  • Acquisition or Merger: If in the future we sell or transfer our assets or portions of our business, or if we experience a change in control, reorganization or liquidation, we may transfer information to our successor or buyer, subject to the terms of this Policy.

Transfers of your information shall at all times be in accordance with applicable law.  Southwest Bonding disclaims any liability or obligation as a result of any third-party actions or omissions concerning your information, including those occurring as a result of our sharing and disclosure pursuant to this Section 5.  We reserve the right to share your Non-Personal Information publicly and with others. We urge you to contact third parties directly with any issues you may have concerning their use of your information.  Please see the section titled “Third Party Practices” below for more information on third-party use of your information.

 

Section 6.  Cookies and Web Beacons

Cookies and other tracking technologies (such as browser cookies, pixels, and beacons) are comprised of small bits of data that often include de-identified and anonymous user information and/or identifiers.  A cookie that uniquely identifies your IP address, your browser and the portion of our Services that you have requested (such as webpage) may be sent from your computer or mobile device directly to us in connection with your use of our Services.

We may use these technologies to collect and store information about you and your usage of our Services, such as the content you view within our Services, purchases you have made or have indicated an interest in making in respect of our Services, and any advertisements you may have seen. We also use cookies to improve the quality of our Services (for example, by fulfilling your language, account recognition, filtering and other preferences) and to better understand how people interact with our Services (for example, by tracking user trends and patterns of associated with the use of our Services).  Most browsers are initially set up to accept cookies.  You can reset your browser to refuse all cookies or to indicate when a cookie is being sent. However, some aspects of the Services may not function properly without cookies. If you would like more information about cookies and how to control and delete cookies in various browsers, such as Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Opera and Chrome, please click here.

In providing our Services, including certain portions of our Services that may be provided by or in conjunction with our Providers, our Providers may also utilize flash or enhanced cookies or web beacons to better provide you with those Services, as well as advertisements about goods and services, including our Services, that may be of interest to you. As a result, we may also deliver a file to your computer through the Services (known as a “web beacon”) from an advertising network Provider.  Web beacons allows advertising networks to provide anonymized, aggregated auditing, research and reporting for us and for other advertisers.  Web beacons also enable ad networks to serve targeted advertisements to you when you visit other websites.  These beacons may, for example, log that you have viewed a certain product or service on our site and then show you an ad for that product or service or a similar product or service when you browse to another website.  Since your web browser sends a request to receive content from webpages you visit, these companies can view, edit, or set their own cookies, just as if you had requested a web page from their site.

Finally, we may also use the services of web analytics companies to help us measure the effectiveness of our Services. In order to do this, we allow the web analytics companies to include Web beacons and cookies on the web pages of our Services. The type of information collected via such Web beacons and cookies includes click-throughs by users and other similar information. By supplementing our records, this information helps us learn things like user preferences, click-through rates, and how to improve our Services. Although our web analytics company may log this information on our behalf, we control how that data may be used.

If you wish to “opt-out” of receiving cookies from certain of our third party advertising Providers, please click here.

 

Section 7.  Confidentiality and Security

We take our responsibility to protect your Personal Information seriously. We restrict access to Personal Information to Southwest Bonding employees, contractors, Affiliates, Providers, and agents. Southwest Bonding maintains physical, electronic and procedural safeguards designed to comply with applicable law to guard your information. Unfortunately, no website or Internet transmission is completely secure, notwithstanding the precautions we take to guard against breaches of our Services and customer databases. As such, we can make no guarantee that unauthorized access, hacking, data loss, or other breaches will never occur and you assume the risk of using our Services. Please take appropriate action to protect your Personal Information when you are on the Internet by changing your passwords often using a combination of letters and numbers, and make sure you use a secure Internet browser.

 

Section 8.  Third-Party Practices

We are not responsible for the actions or omissions of our Providers in connection with the protection of your information.  Our Providers are obligated by applicable law to protect the privacy of certain types of data, but no guarantee can be made that they will do so in all circumstances.  If you believe that any of our Providers, or any third party who claims association with Southwest Bonding, is improperly collecting or using information about you, we urge you to contact them directly and also to inform us by e-mailing us at info@southwestbonding.com.

Any web sites that you click to from one of the web pages forming a part of our Services may have been developed by third parties over which we exercise no control. Such web sites may send their own cookies to end-users, collect data, or solicit Personal Information from you. We are not responsible for the privacy practices or the content of such web sites, including the use of any information collected when our end-users click through to such web sites. If you are concerned about the privacy policy of a third party, we strongly encourage you to contact them directly or visit their individual web sites to learn more about their individual privacy policies.

 

Section 9.  Regarding Children

COPPA

We comply with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). For more information about COPPA and children’s privacy, please click here. When we use the term “parent” below, we mean to include legal guardians.

 

Children Under the Age of 18

Our Services are not directed to persons under the age of 18. We do not intentionally gather Personal Information about visitors or end-users who are under the age of 18. You are prohibited from accessing the Services and may not give us any Personal Information or participate in any aspect of our Services if you are under the age of 18. We will not knowingly collect, maintain, or disclose any Personal Information from children under the age of 18, unless required by applicable law. If you believe that we have collected Personal Information about a visitor or end-user who is under the age of 18, please contact us at info@southwestbonding.com and such account and/or Personal Information will be deleted.

 

Section 10. International Usage and Data Transfers

If you choose to access our Services, you do so on your own initiative and at your own risk and remain responsible for complying with all local laws, rules and regulations in connection with your use of our Services.  We make no representation and/or warranty that our Services are appropriate and/or lawful in all jurisdictions from which such Services are available. We may limit access to our Services, in whole or in part, to any person, geographic area or jurisdiction we choose, at any time and in our sole discretion.

You are hereby notified that, if you live outside the United States, we will transfer your Personal Information to countries other than the one in which you live, including the United States where our central databases operate. By using our Services, you consent to such cross-border data transfers of your Personal Information, as outlined herein. By using the Services, you consent to your Personal Information being collected, processed and transferred as set forth in this Policy and U.S. law and you acknowledge that the data protection and other laws of other countries, such as the United States, may provide a less comprehensive or protective standard of protection than those in your country.

 

Section 11. Your Right to Access, Modify and Delete Your Information

Depending on where you live, you may have certain statutory rights in relation to your Personal Information. For example, if you live in California and/or the European Economic Area, you may have the right to request access to your Personal Information that we retain, as well as to seek to update, delete or correct this Personal Information (subject to any exemptions available under applicable law). You can exercise your rights by contacting us at info@southwestbonding.com. We may be able to provide you access to your Personal Information in some cases, but there is no guarantee we will be able to provide access in all circumstances. If we are unable to verify your identity or are required to retain such information in accordance with applicable laws, we may not be able to modify or remove your Personal Information, but we will remove your Personal Information in accordance with applicable law.

To the extent that our processing of your Personal Information is subject to the General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”), the Company relies on your consent. If we have collected and process your Personal Information with your consent, then you can withdraw your consent at any time by contacting us at info@southwestbonding.com. 

 

Section 12. California Data Privacy Rights

Under California’s “Shine The Light” law (California Civil Code Section 1798.83), users who are California residents may request from us free of charge and no more than once a calendar year a list of the Personal Information (if any) that we have disclosed to third parties for direct marketing purposes during the preceding calendar year, this includes the names and addresses of such third parties. Please contact us at info@southwestbonding.com to make such a request.  If your request is not labeled or sent properly or does not have complete information, we cannot be responsible for fulfilling your request. In the body of such request, you must put the statement “Your California Privacy Rights”, as well as your name, street address, city, state and zip code and you must provide enough information for us to determine if this applies to you. Additionally, you must attest to the fact that you are a California resident and provide a current California address.

 

Section 13.  Additional Terms

Changes to this Privacy Policy

This Policy may be revised by us from time to time in our sole discretion. Any such changes will be posted to https://www.southwestbonding.com/privacy-policy/ and if the changes are significant, we will also provide a more prominent notice.  Your continued use of our Services after such change has been made will signify your acceptance of such change.

 

Contact Us

If you have any questions about this Policy, or if you would like us to update information, we have about you or your preferences, please contact us by:

Emailing us at info@southwestbonding.com

Calling us at (817) 509-1511

Writing us at:

Bond Services of California, LLC
300 Burnett St. #127
Fort Worth, TX 76102

If you feel that we are not following our Policy, please contact us using the above contact information.

 

Last Updated:  July 29, 2020