Privacy Policy
Last updated: May 25, 2018
American Property Tax Counsel ("us", "we", or "our") is committed to protecting your privacy and your personal information when you are using our services and visiting our websites. This Privacy Policy explains how we collect your Personal Data, how we use these data, and your rights to control their use. This privacy policy applies to all data that we have collected or collect related to you, and according to our Terms of Conditions.
If you have any questions or comments, or if you want to update, delete, or change any Personal Data we hold, or you have a concern about the way in which we have handled any privacy matter, please use our contact form to send us a message.
1. Who is collecting your data?
Your data is collected and controlled by:
American Property Tax Counsel
2512 Artesia Blvd., Ste 200
Redondo Beach, CA 90278
2. What data is being collected?
We collect, store, and process the following types of information on our users.
When you are registering to our site:
- Name
- Username/Password (crypto hashed, never stored in plain text)
- E-mail address
- Registered date
- Last visit date
- Information you provide to us
When you are signing up for our newsletter:
- Name
- E-mail address
- Registered date
- Information you provide to us
Clients:
- Name
- E-mail address
- Registered date
- Information you provide to us
- Information provided by our Members who have obtained your permission through their own privacy policies to share information about you
- American Property Tax Counsel firms you may be associated with
- American Property Tax Counsel Members that may act as your point of contact
Information we collect automatically: When you use the Services or browse our Website, we may collect information about your visit to our Website, your usage of the Services, and your web browsing. That information may include:
- Your network routing information (where you come from).
- Your Internet Protocol (IP) address used to connect your computer to the Internet and may identify your general geographic location or company.
- Your computer and connection information such as browser type, version, and time zone setting, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system, and platform.
We may collect this information as a part of log files as well as through the use of cookies or other tracking technologies. Our use of cookies and other tracking technologies is discussed below, in the Use of Cookies section.
3. How we use Personal Data
We may use and disclose Personal Data only for the following purposes:
- To provide support and improve the Services we offer, as well as to enhance customer relationships.
- To notify you about news related to our Services, offers and to advertise our services under this policy.
- To track and evaluate our marketing campaigns, including online advertising and e-mail marketing campaigns. For more information about our use of cookies and other tracking technologies for this purpose, and instructions about how to opt out of having data collected through the use of cookies, please see the Use of Cookies section below.
- To communicate with you about a conference or event sponsored or participated by us, including information about the event’s content, logistics, payment, updates.
- To share Personal Data with third parties who provide services to us, provided that the third party has executed any data processing documentation required by law.
- To meet legal requirements, including complying with court orders, valid discovery requests, valid subpoenas, and other appropriate legal mechanisms.
- To transfer your information in the case of a sale, merger, consolidation, liquidation, reorganization, or acquisition. In that event, any acquirer will be subject to our obligations under this Privacy Policy, including your rights to access and choice. We will notify you of the change either by sending you an email or posting a notice on our Website.
4. What Personal Data we share and disclose to Third Parties
We do not sell your Personal Data to anyone. We may share your Personal Data with our third party Service Providers, who help us provide and support our Services, such as credit card processing services, order fulfilment, analytics, event or campaign management, information technology and related infrastructure provision, e-mail delivery, and other similar services. In this case, we require by contract from our services providers to use your Personal Data only to provide services to us and subject to terms consistent with this policy.
We may disclose your personal data as we believe to be necessary or appropriate:
- under applicable law, including laws outside your country of residence;
- to comply with legal process;
- to respond to requests from public and government authorities, including public and government authorities outside your country of residence;
- to enforce American Property Tax Counsel's terms and conditions, which are subject to this privacy policy; and
- to allow us to pursue available remedies or limit the damages that we may have.
Additionally, in the event of a reorganization, merger, sale, joint venture, assignment, transfer, or other disposition of all or any portion of American Property Tax Counsel business, assets or stock (including in connection with any bankruptcy or similar proceedings), we may transfer the Personal Data it has collected to the relevant third party.
5. Public Information and Third Party Websites
a) Social media platforms. We maintain presences on social media platforms including Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Any information, communications, or materials you submit to us via a social media platform is done at your own risk without any expectation of privacy. We cannot control the actions of other users of these platforms or the actions of the platforms themselves. Your interactions with those features and platforms are governed by the privacy policies of the companies that provide them.
(b) Links to third-party websites. Our Websites may include links to other websites, whose privacy practices may be different from ours. If you submit Personal Data to any of those sites, your information is governed by their privacy policies. We encourage you to read carefully the privacy policy of any website you visit.
6. Use of cookies
A cookie is a small file which asks permission to be placed on your computer's hard drive. Once you agree, the file is added, and the cookie helps analyze web traffic or lets you know when you visit a particular site. Cookies allow web applications to respond to you as an individual. The web application can tailor its operations to your needs, likes and dislikes by gathering and remembering information about your preferences.
We use traffic log cookies to identify which pages are being used. This helps us analyze data about web page traffic and improve our website in order to tailor it to customer needs. We only use this information for statistical analysis purposes. We also use cookies to measure the traffic and performance of our Website’s pages.
Overall, cookies help us provide you with a better website, by enabling us to monitor which pages you find useful and which you do not. A cookie in no way gives us access to your computer or any information about you, other than the data you choose to share with us. You can choose to accept or decline cookies. Most web browsers automatically accept cookies, but you can usually modify your browser setting to decline cookies if you prefer. This may prevent you from taking full advantage of the website.
- Google Analytics: This cookie allows us to see information on user website activities including, but not limited to page views, source and time spent on a website. The information is depersonalized and is displayed as numbers, meaning it cannot be tracked back to individuals. This will help to protect your privacy. Using Google Analytics, we can see what content is favorite on our website, and strive to give you more of the things you enjoy reading and watching.
- Matomo Analytics: This cookie allows us to see information on user website activities including, but not limited to page views, source and time spent on a website. Using Matomo Analytics, we can see what content is favorite on our website, and strive to give you more of the things you enjoy reading and watching.
7. How You May Exercise Your Rights
You may send a written communication through our contact form on our Website, or e-mailing to aptc@aptcnet.com, including in both cases a photocopy of your ID card or another similar identification document, to request the exercise of the following rights:
- Right to require access to any Personal Data we may have about you.
- Right to request rectification (if incorrect) or deletion of Personal Data.
- Right to object to processing. American Property Tax Counsel will no longer process the Personal Data in the way you indicate unless for compelling legitimate reasons or the exercise or defense of possible claims have to be further treated.
- Right to data portability. If you wish your Personal Data to be processed by another company, American Property Tax Counsel will provide you with the portability of your data to the new data controller.
We will give you access to any Personal Data we hold about you within 30 days of any request for that information. Unless it is prohibited by law, we will remove any Personal Data about an individual from our servers at your or their request. There is no charge for an individual to access or update their Personal Data.
Possibility of withdrawing consent. If you have given your consent for a specific purpose, you have the right to withdraw it at any time, without it affecting the lawfulness of the processing based on the consent before its withdrawal.
How to complain to the Control Authority. If you consider that there is a problem with the way in which American Property Tax Counsel is handling your Personal Data, you may address your complaints to American Property Tax Counsel (indicated above).
8. Accuracy and Data Retention
We take reasonable business measures in compliance with laws to keep your Personal Data accurate and up to date, to the extent that you provide us with the information we need to do so. If your Personal Data change (for example, if you have a new email address), then you are responsible for notifying us of those changes.
We will retain the following data:
(a) Disaggregated data: Disaggregated data will be retained without a deadline for deletion.
(b) Subscribers data: During the time your account is active or as long as needed to provide you with our Services under our Terms of Service.
(c) Newsletter subscribers’ details: From the moment the user subscribes to the newsletter until the subscription is ceased.
9. Children’s Privacy
Our Services and Products are not directed or targeted to children. If you have not reached the age of majority or are not able to enter into legally binding agreements in your country, you may not use our Services and Products unless supervised/accepted by an adult, as applicable.
Our goal is to comply with applicable laws and regulations relating to collection and use of information from children as such term is defined by applicable laws. If you believe that we have received information from a child or other person protected under such laws, please notify us immediately by e-mailing to aptc@aptcnet.com, and we will take reasonable steps to remove that information from our databases.
10. Notice of Breach of Security
We take reasonable and appropriate measures to protect Personal Data from loss, misuse, and unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration, and destruction, taking into account the risks involved in the processing and the nature of the Personal Data. If a security breach causes an unauthorized intrusion into our system that materially affects you, then we will notify you as soon as possible (in the event of a breach being detected, American Property Tax Counsel undertakes to inform users within 72 hours) and later report the action we took in response.
We only use service providers that enter into agreements with us whereby the service provider commits to take the appropriate measures to protect Personal Data and be compliant with GDPR.
11.Third Party Service Providers
To be transparent and provide you with the maximum information about who our third party service providers are, we list below the ones that may keep Personal Data, what information they keep, and how we ensure the GDPR compliance through their contracts.
Google
On our website, we use Google Analytics to analyze their use and optimize their performance. Google is a US company the data of which are in Google Cloud Locations. As described in their Privacy Shield certification, they comply with the EU-US and Swiss-US Privacy Shield as set forth by the US Department of Commerce regarding the collection, use and retention of Personal Data from European Union member countries and Switzerland, respectively. Google is fully committed to GDPR compliance as described on their Commitments to GDPR that articulate the commitments with us. For all the previous services, as a commitment to privacy and security, we have signed the following documents: Data Processing Security Terms (Customers) contract, and an EU Model Contract clauses.
ROCHEN
We use ROCHEN to host of our website. Personal Data related to this service is kept in Rochen’s systems. Rochen Ltd. is a United Kingdom private limited company (registration number: SC242971) with its registered office at: 11 Dudhope Terrace, Dundee, DD3 6TS, United Kingdom and is a provider of cloud, web hosting, content delivery network, internet security including SSL certificates, domain registrations and other related services (collectively or separately herein referred to as the “Services”) either by ourselves or in conjunction with partners and subsidiaries. ROCHEN is fully committed to GDPR compliance as described on their Compliance to GDPR that articulate the commitments with us.
Elastic Email
We use Elastic Email to deliver our newsletters and other email communications. Therefore, Elastic Email, keeps Personal Data about your name and email and gathers statistics about email opening and clicks as part of its service. Elastic Email is a company of Canada. They are committed to achieving compliance with the GDPR and is mindful of compliance efforts.
