Kowa American Corporation Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy is effective as of November 1st 2020.

At Kowa American Corporation, we respect your privacy. We want to maintain your confidence in our handling of your data and information that is collected during your visit to our web site at https://www.kowa-usa.com/ , https://www.kowachemical.com/ and any other web site that we own or that posts to this Privacy Policy (“Privacy Policy”). We have developed and provided this Privacy Policy to inform you of our practices and policies regarding the collection, use, maintenance, and disclosure of your personal information.

For the purposes of this Privacy Policy, Kowa American Corporation is referred to as “KAC”, the “Company” or “we”.

Please review this Privacy Policy and if you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, please contact by either;
Mailing us at 20001 South Vermont Avenue, Torrance, CA 90502, US;
Emailing us at privacypolicy-kac@kowa.com ; or
Calling us at Toll Free: (800) 966-5692 from US, +1-310-327-1913 from outside of US.

The information we collect

Information you provide to us. We collect personal data or information you provide to us when visiting our web site that may include

Business and personal contact information such as your name, company name, address, e-mail address, telephone number;
Profile information, such as your username and password that you may set to establish an online account with us, your photograph, interests, and preferences;
Registration information, such as information that may be related to a service, an account or an event you register for;
Feedback or correspondence, such as information you provide when you contact us with questions, feedback, or otherwise correspond with us online;
Demographic Information, such as your city, state, country of residence, postal code, and age;
Financial information, such as your stated income, economic standing, financial account numbers or payment card information;
Transaction information, such as information about payments to and from you and other details of products or services you have purchased from us;
Usage information, such as information about how you use the Service and interact with us, including information associated with any content you upload to the websites or otherwise submit to us, and information you provide when you use any interactive features of the Service;
Marketing information, such as your preferences for receiving communications about our activities, events, and publications, and details about how you engage with our communications;

and;

Other information that we may collect that is not specifically listed here but that we will use in accordance with this Privacy Policy or as otherwise disclosed at the time of collection.

Information we obtain from other third parties. We may also obtain information about you from third parties, such as our distributors and business partners. For example, a business partner (such as an independent repair shop) may share your contact information with us if you have expressed an interest in learning specifically about our products or services or obtaining a repair for your product. We may obtain your personal information from other third parties such as marketing partners, publicly-available sources and data providers.

Information automatically collected

We, our service providers and our business partners may automatically log information about you, your computer or mobile device and activity occurring on or through our web site. The information that may be collected automatically includes your computer or mobile device operating system type and version number, manufacturer and model, device identifier (such as the Google Advertising ID or Apple ID for Advertising), browser type, screen resolution, general location information such as city, state or geographic area, information about your activity on a page or screen (including access times and length of access), the date and time of each visit to our web site, your IP (internet protocol) address, the referring IP address or domain (the prior web site visited), and the files viewed on our web site (including HTML pages, graphics, etc.). We use log file information to analyze data in the aggregate to determine the trends and usage of our site.

Cookies and other tracking technologies

When you use our web site we may gather information about you through Internet access logs, cookies and other technical means. ‘Cookies’ are text files placed on your computer to collect Internet log information and user behavior information. These are used to track website usage and monitor website activity and for other data processing reasons set out below.
Some of the cookies we use are essential for parts of the site to operate and have already been set. You may delete and block all cookies from this site, but parts of the site will not work.
We may use web beacons which is an often-transparent graphic image that is placed on a website or in an email used to monitor the behavior of the user visiting the website or opening the email in order to access cookies and to count users who visit our site or open email messages.
Our website may contain share buttons. When users wish to share content using share buttons, users must have provided login credentials to the share site. We do not gather any login information for third-party share sites that may be in our website including listed below. We do not have influence with regard to the scope of data which may be collected with clicking the share button.

Facebook: operated by Facebook, Inc. https://www.facebook.com/policy.php
Twitter: operated by Twitter, Inc. https://twitter.com/en/privacy
Instagram: operated by Facebook, Inc. https://help.instagram.com/519522125107875
LinkedIn: operated by LinkedIn Corporation www.linkedin.com/legal/privacy-policy

Information about third parties

Information we process as described in this Privacy Policy may also include information about third parties whose details you supply to us. If you provide us with information about a third party, you may only do so if you have permission from the third party.

Information you provide to us

You can make an informed decision whether to visit our web site and whether you wish to voluntarily provide any personal data or information. If you register for or enroll in a promotion or service through our web site, make purchases from our on-line offerings, respond to a request for information or make any other on- line request of us, you will be voluntarily providing personally identifiable information. If you do not agree with this Privacy Policy, we ask that you please do not provide the requested information. You may nevertheless continue to use most of our web site subject, however, to the collection of information through cookies or other tracking technologies. Where we are required by law to collect your personal information or where we need your personal information in order to provide you with a service, if you do not provide this information when requested (or you later ask to delete it), we may not be able to provide you with our services. We will tell you what information you must provide to receive the service by designating it as required at the time of collection or through other appropriate means.

Collection of information from children

As a general rule, children are not allowed to use the web site. We do not deliberately collect personal information from children. We define “children” as follows:

residents outside of Europe: anyone under 16 years old; and
residents of Europe and the United Kingdom: anyone under 16 years old or the age needed to consent to the processing of personal information in your country.

If we learn that a child has provided us with personal information without the consent of the child’s parent or guardian, we will delete it or otherwise comply with applicable law.

How we may use your information

To operate the services provided by the web site and our business, we may use your personal information for the following reasons, to:

develop and manage our relationship with you and our business partners which may include providing our services, works and information about our products, services and transactions;
have communications with you or your company which may include informing you of products, services, updates, transactions and, responding to questions, inquiries or requests and, marketing our business and those of our group;
provide our customer services and works or products;
comply with legal, regulatory and corporate governance obligations and good practice;
gather information as part of investigations by regulatory bodies or in connection with legal proceedings or requests;
adhere to our business policies;
operate our business, such as recording transactions, training and quality control;
protect the confidentiality of commercially sensitive information;
vet security concerns, investigate claims, complaints and allegations of criminal offences;
complete statistical analysis;
prevent unauthorized access and modifications to systems;
prevent fraudulent, harmful, unauthorized, unlawful, or unethical activity
analyze purchasing preferences and improving services; and
enforce the terms and conditions that govern the web site.

We also use your personal information for the following purposes:

for research and development, we analyze web site visitors’ use of the web site to improve our business and develop new products and services;
to send you marketing and promotional communications, we may send you KAC-related marketing communications as permitted by law. You will have the ability to opt-out of our marketing and promotional communications as described in the opt-out of marketing section;
to display advertisements, we may work with advertising partners to display advertisements on our web site or elsewhere online. These advertisements are delivered by our advertising partners and may be targeted based on your use of the web site or your activity elsewhere online. To learn more about your choices in connection with advertisements, please see the section titled “Targeted online advertising”;
with your consent, we may use your information as your direct us to;
to create anonymous, aggregated or de-identified data, we may create anonymous, aggregated or de-identified data from your personal information and other individuals whose personal information we collect. We may use this anonymous, aggregated or de-identified data and share it with third parties for our lawful business purposes, including to analyze and improve our web site or business.

How we may share your information

We do not disclose or share your personal information without your consent except as described below;

Affiliates. We may disclose and exchange your personal information with our group companies including those in different countries.
Service Providers. We may disclose and exchange your personal information with third party service providers, sales representatives, agents, and distributors to perform their service or works for us including those in different countries. Moreover, we rely on various third-party service companies to provide certain services (e.g., shipping, credit card billing) for which it may be necessary to provide your personal information.
Business Partners. We may sometimes share your personal information with partners or enable partners to collect information via our web site. For example, if we receive an order for repair service, we may share your information with an agent, retailer or external repair company. These entities may have their own privacy practices. Please review these entities’ privacy notices for a description of how they may use your personal information.
Professional Advisors. We may disclose your personal information to professional advisors such as lawyers, bankers, auditors and insurers, where necessary in the course of the professional services that they render to us.
Law Enforcement and Other Regulatory Bodies. We may also disclose and exchange your personal information with law enforcement agencies, regulatory bodies and governmental agencies including law enforcement and other public authorities, which may include such authorities outside your country of residence when we are legally required with or without prior notice to you.
For Compliance, Fraud Prevention and Safety. We may disclose your personal information to public and private bodies for compliance, fraud prevention and safety purposes as described in the How we use your information section above.
With Consent. We may make disclosures of your personal information with your affirmative consent.
Business Transfers. We may sell, transfer or otherwise share some or all of our business or assets, including your personal information, in connection with a business transaction (or a potential business transaction) such as a corporate divestiture, merger, consolidation, acquisition, reorganization or sale of assets, or in the event of bankruptcy or dissolution.

We may share anonymized or aggregated information which will not identify you internally, with our group companies and with third parties for any purpose.

How we store and secure personal information

We maintain reasonable safeguards designed to prevent personal information from being accidentally lost or used or accessed in an unauthorized way and, designed to protect the security and confidentiality of your personal information against unauthorized disclosure, misuse, or alteration. However, we cannot guarantee the security of information provided over the Internet and will not be responsible for breaches of security.

Other sites, mobile applications and services

Please note that although we may seek to require that third party service providers, sales representatives, agents, distributors and business partners use information regarding our users only in the ways permitted by this Privacy Policy, we do not control and are not responsible for their privacy practices, or those of any other party.

Through our web pages, you may connect to third parties’ web sites or other online services via hyperlinks, and the connections may or may not be obvious. These links are not an endorsement of, or representation that we are affiliated with, any third party. We are not responsible for the collection, use, maintenance, sharing, or disclosure of data and information by such third parties.

In addition, our content may be included on web pages or in mobile applications or online services that are not associated with us. We do not control third party websites, mobile applications or online services, and we are not responsible for their actions. Other web sites and services follow different rules regarding the collection, use and sharing of your personal information. We encourage our users to be aware of the varied privacy policies of web sites that they visit.

Retention periods

Your personal information will be held in accordance with the Company’s retention policy or policies. There could be a wide range of retention periods that may be relevant to you. We retain personal information for as long as necessary to fulfill the purposes for which we collected it, including for the purposes of satisfying any business, legal, accounting or reporting requirements to establish or defend legal claims, or for fraud prevention purposes. To determine the appropriate retention period for personal information, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal information, the potential risk of harm from unauthorized use or disclosure of your personal information, the purposes for which we process your personal information and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal requirements.

Your choices

In this section, we describe the rights and choices available to all web site visitors. Web site visitors who are located within California can find additional information about their rights below.

Access or Update Your Information. You have the right, at any time, to review and/or modify any of your personally identifiable information that you provide during registration, or any other voluntarily provided information. If you have registered for an account with us, you may review and modify this information by emailing us at privacypolicy-kac@kowa.com.

Opt Out of Marketing Communications. You may also remove yourself from our active databases of e-mail lists. To do so, you should send an e-mail to “unsubscribe@kowa.com” requesting that you be removed from our databases of active e-mail lists. We will endeavor to comply with your request as soon as reasonably possible.

Cookies. Most browsers let you remove or reject cookies. To do this, follow the instructions in your browser settings. Many browsers accept cookies by default until you change your settings. Please note that if you set your browser to disable cookies, the web site may not work properly. Similarly, your browser settings may allow you to clear your browser web storage.

Do Not Track. Some Internet browsers may be configured to send “Do Not Track” signals to the online services that you visit. We currently do not honor the “Do Not Track” or similar signals. To find out more about “Do Not Track”, please visit http://www.allaboutdnt.com.

Targeted Online Advertising. Some of the business partners that collect information about web site visitors’ activities on or through the web site may be members of organizations or programs that provide choices to individuals regarding the use of their browsing behavior or mobile application usage for purposes of targeted advertising.

Web site visitors may opt out of receiving targeted advertising on websites through members of the Network Advertising Initiative by clicking here or the Digital Advertising Alliance by clicking here.

If you choose to opt-out of targeted advertisements, you will still see advertisements online but they may not be relevant to you. Even if you do choose to opt out, not all companies that serve online behavioral advertising are included in this list, so you may still receive some cookies and tailored advertisements from companies that are not listed.

International Data Transfers

We are headquartered in the United States and may have service providers in other countries, and your personal information may be transferred to the United States or other locations outside of your state, province, or country where privacy laws may not be as protective as those in your state, province, or country.

Changes to the Privacy Policy

We reserve the right to change our policies regarding the privacy of your personally identifiable information in the future. If that happens, we will endeavor to promptly update this Privacy Policy. We may also attempt to provide a message to our customers whose e-mail addresses we have, in conformity with this Privacy Policy, advising of any such change(s). Any modifications to this Privacy Policy will be effective upon our posting the new terms and/or upon implementation of the new changes on the web site (or as otherwise indicated at the time of posting). Your continued use of the web site following changes to this policy will indicate that you accept the changes. For ease of your review of any changes, the following is a list of the date of all revisions to this Privacy Policy:

We hope that this Privacy Policy helps you to make an informed decision whether to visit our web site and/or to provide us with certain information.

Additional Information for California residents

The California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 (the “CCPA”) requires KAC to disclose certain additional information to California residents. This Section provides such additional information applicable to visitors, users and others who reside in the State of California, which do not apply to users in other geographies.

Information We Collect.

Our web site collects information that identifies, relates to, describes, references, is capable of being associated with, or could reasonably be linked, directly or indirectly, with a particular consumer or household (“Personal Information” as defined in the CCPA). In particular, our web site has collected the following categories of personal information from its consumers within the last twelve (12) months:

Statutory Category of Personal Information	Personal Information Collected
A. Identifiers.	A real name, alias, postal address, unique personal identifier, online identifier, Internet Protocol address, email address, and account name
B. Personal information categories listed in the California Customer Records statute (Cal. Civ. Code § 1798.80(e)).	A name, signature, address, telephone number, bank account number, credit card number, debit card number, or any other financial information. Some personal information included in this category may overlap with other categories.
D. Commercial information.	Records of personal property, products or services purchased, obtained, or considered, or other purchasing or consuming histories or tendencies.
F. Internet or other similar network activity.	Browsing history, search history, or information on a consumer's interaction with a website.

How We Collect Information About You.

We obtain the categories of Personal Information listed above either directly from you (e.g., from forms you complete or products and services you purchase), indirectly from you (e.g., from observing your actions on our web site) or from others.

Use of Personal Information.

We may use the Personal Information we collect for any legitimate and lawful business purpose, including those listed in the Section below titled “How we may use your information.”

Sharing Personal Information.

We may share your Personal Information as described in the Section below titled “How we may share your information.”

Disclosures of Personal Information for a Business Purpose.

In the preceding twelve (12) months, KAC has disclosed the following categories of Personal Information for a business purpose:

Category A: Identifiers.
Category B: California Customer Records personal information categories.
Category D: Commercial Information.
Category F: Internet or other similar network activity.

Sales of Personal Information.

In the preceding twelve (12) months, KAC has not sold any Personal Information.

Your Rights and Choices.

The CCPA provides California residents with specific rights regarding their personal information. The following describes your CCPA rights and explains how to exercise those rights.

Right to Know and Access to Specific Information.

You have the right to request that we disclose certain information to you about our collection and use of your Personal Information over the past twelve (12) months; in other words, the “right to know.” Once we receive and confirm your verifiable consumer request (see Exercising Knowledge, Access, and Deletion Rights), subject to certain permitted exceptions, we will disclose to you:
The categories of personal information we collected about you.

The categories of sources for the personal information we collected about you.
Our business or commercial purpose for collecting or selling that personal information.
The categories of third parties with whom we share that personal information.
The specific pieces of personal information we collected about you (also called a data portability request).
If we sold or disclosed your personal information for a business purpose, two separate lists disclosing:
sales, identifying the personal information categories that each category of recipient purchased; and
disclosures for a business purpose, identifying the personal information categories that each category of recipient obtained.

You have a right to request a copy of the Personal Information that we have collected about you during the past 12 months.

Deletion Request Rights.

You have the right to request that KAC delete any of your personal information that we collected from you and retained, subject to certain exceptions. Once we receive and confirm your verifiable consumer request (see Exercising Knowledge, Access, and Deletion Rights), we will delete (and direct our service providers to delete) your personal information from our records, unless an exception applies.
Without limitation, we may deny your deletion request if retaining the information is necessary for us or our service provider(s) to:

Complete the transaction for which we collected the personal information, provide a good or service that you requested, take actions reasonably anticipated within the context of our ongoing business relationship with you, or otherwise perform our contract with you.
Detect security incidents, protect against malicious, deceptive, fraudulent, or illegal activity, or prosecute those responsible for such activities.
Debug products to identify and repair errors that impair existing intended functionality.
Exercise free speech, ensure the right of another consumer to exercise their free speech rights, or exercise another right provided for by law.
Comply with the California Electronic Communications Privacy Act (Cal. Penal Code § 1546 et. seq.).
Engage in public or peer-reviewed scientific, historical, or statistical research in the public interest that adheres to all other applicable ethics and privacy laws, when the information's deletion may likely render impossible or seriously impair the research's achievement, if you previously provided informed consent.
Enable solely internal uses that are reasonably aligned with consumer expectations based on your relationship with us.
Comply with a legal obligation.
Make other internal and lawful uses of that information that are compatible with the context in which you provided it.

Exercising Knowledge, Access, and Deletion Rights.

To exercise the knowledge, access, and deletion rights described above, please submit a verifiable consumer request to us by either:
Emailing us at privacypolicy-kac@kowa.com ; or
Calling us at Toll Free: (800) 966-5692 from US, +1-310-327-1913 from outside of US.
Only you or a person registered with the California Secretary of State that you authorize to act on your behalf, may make a verifiable consumer request related to your personal information. You may also make a verifiable consumer request on behalf of your minor child. You may only make a verifiable consumer request for knowledge or access twice within a twelve (12) month period. The verifiable consumer request must:

Provide sufficient information that allows us to reasonably verify you are the person about whom we collected personal information or an authorized representative.
Describe your request with sufficient detail that allows us to properly understand, evaluate, and respond to it.

We cannot respond to your request or provide you with personal information if we cannot verify your identity or authority to make the request and confirm the personal information relates to you. Making a verifiable consumer request does not require you to create an account with us. We will only use personal information provided in a verifiable consumer request to verify the requestor's identity or authority to make the request.

Response Timing and Format.

We endeavor to respond to a consumer request within applicable time limits. If you have an account with us, we will deliver our written response to that account. If you do not have an account with us, we will deliver our written response by mail or electronically, at your option. Any disclosures we provide will only cover the twelve (12) month period preceding the verifiable consumer request's receipt. The response we provide will also explain the reasons we cannot comply with a request, if applicable. For data access requests, we will select a format to provide your personal information that is readily useable and should allow you to transmit the information from one entity to another entity without hindrance. We do not charge a fee to process or respond to your verifiable consumer request unless it is excessive, repetitive, or manifestly unfounded. If we determine that the request warrants a fee, we will tell you why we made that decision and provide you with a cost estimate before completing your request.

Non-Discrimination.

We will not discriminate against you for exercising any of your CCPA rights. Unless permitted by the CCPA, we will not:

Deny you goods or services.
Charge you different prices or rates for goods or services, including through granting discounts or other benefits, or imposing penalties.
Provide you a different level or quality of goods or services.
Suggest that you may receive a different price or rate for goods or services or a different level or quality of goods or services.