Privacy Policy - Equator Design

Privacy

1. INTRODUCTION

Equator Design is committed to protecting your personal information. The purpose of this Privacy Policy is to outline how we deal with any personal information you provide to us which is either collected by us through this Website (“equator-design.com”) (“Website“) and/or via the services we provide to you.

For individuals located in the European Economic Area (“EEA”), Equator Design is the controller of your personal information via our Website and the services we provide pursuant to the EU General Data Protection Regulation.

Please read this Privacy Policy to understand how Equator Design may process your personal information via our Website and/or through the services we provide to you.

Any external links to other websites is clearly identifiable as such, and we are not responsible for the content or the privacy policies of these other websites.

2. COLLECTION OF YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION

We may process your personal information when you submit it to us in the following ways:

>> Communications via our Website: We collect personal information when you provide it to us through communications via our Website. This includes where you have contacted us through the “Contact” page on our Website and similar situations in which you have chosen to provide the information to us, including for customer services support.

>> Products or Services you request: Where you request a good or service from us, we will collect your personal information to process your request and otherwise contact you following a purchase.

We may ask you to provide personal identifiers, such as your e-mail address, name, work address, or telephone number. In order to access some Equator Design services, you will be asked to sign in with an e-mail address and password.

>> Careers: We also process your personal information if you apply to work at Equator Design or at any of the Equator Design group of companies via our career’s pages at https://careers.matw.com, https://careers.matw.com/SGK, and/or sjobs.brassring.com.

The type of information we may process about you may include contact details, personal details, education and training details (including qualification, attendance at educational establishments and training received), professional and employment details (including details of previous employment roles), background check and public records information, job preference information, and any other information you submit in connection with your application.

If you are a California resident, please also see the California Notice of Collection of Personal Information for Job Applicants, which is posted on our careers pages and can also be found here.

>> Interaction with our Website and use of our services: when you use our Website, we will automatically receive information using cookies and similar technology, including IP address, device identifiers, browser details, and information about usage of the Website and related Internet activity (such as the site you came from, search engine(s) and keywords you used to find our Website, the pages you view within our Website, and access times). To offer you a consistent and personalized experience in your interactions with us, information collected through one service we provide may be combined with information obtained through other services. For example, we may use services from other companies that enable us to derive a general geographic location based on your IP address or other factors in order to customize certain services to your geographic area.

>> Inferences. We draw inferences from the personal information we collect, and we use such inferences for the same purposes as the purposes for which the information was collected.

USE OF YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION

Equator Design processes your personal information to enable us to perform the contract entered into between you and us, to ensure compliance with local legal and regulatory requirements and for the purposes of our legitimate business interests, including the following:

>> to enable us to carry out our obligations arising from any contracts and to provide you with the information, products and services that you request from us;

>> to operate and improve our Website and services including making them easier to use by eliminating the need for you to repeatedly enter the same information;

>> to enable us to respond to an enquiry or other request you make when you contact us via our Website, including for customer service support;

>> to provide you with more effective customer service;

>> performing research and analysis aimed at improving our products, services and technologies;

>> displaying content and advertising that are customized to your interests and preferences;

>> to communicate with you to provide you information about other products and services we offer that are similar to those that you have already purchased or enquired about as we feel may interest you, as described in the “Marketing” section below;

>> when you receive newsletters or promotional e-mail from us, to determine whether the e-mail has been opened and which links you click in order to provide you more focused e-mail communications or other information; and

>> to enable us to process and consider your application to join Equator Design.

MARKETING

We may contact you to provide you with information about products and services similar to those which were the subject of a previous sale or negotiations of a sale to you. You may be contacted by us, our affiliated companies, or by one of our selected third parties. For individuals in the EEA, we will only contact you for marketing purposes where you have consented to receive these communications.

You may opt out of receiving our marketing communications at any time by contacting us at privacy@equator-design.com or by using the unsubscribe link in any of our marketing communications.

We will continue to contact you for transactional or other non-marketing related purposes, such as where we need to issue a field corrective or safety notice, or to where we need to send certain information to you under a legal, regulatory, or ethical requirement.

SHARING OF PERSONAL INFORMATION

We may share personal information to assist us in providing products and services to you, including to process transactions, to help us market our products and services and those of our affiliates, for any of the purposes listed in the “Use of Your Personal Information” section above, and for other business and commercial purposes. We may share personal information for these purposes with:

>> our affiliated companies, to enable us to carry out our obligations arising from any contracts and/or to provide you with the information, products and services that you request from us;

>> our service providers that we engage to provide services for us to help us further our business objectives. Where we provide your personal information to third-party service providers, they are required to keep your personal information confidential and secure, and must only use your personal information as instructed by us; and

>> our distributors, business partners, or other third parties to whom you have directed that we share your personal information.

Note that, from time to time, we may offer services in a co-branded manner with an unrelated company. Unless otherwise specified, personal information may be collected and used in connection with such services both by us and by that unrelated company, subject to each of our respective privacy policies.

We may also disclose your personal information (a) where required to respond to authorized requests from government authorities or where required by law; (b) where it is necessary to protect the rights, property or safety of Equator Design and our affiliated companies, our customers, distributors, or business partners. This may involve the enforcement of our agreements, preventing or taking action regarding illegal activities or fraud, addressing situations involving potential threats to the safety of any person, or preserving or providing evidence for litigation.

In the event of a merger, acquisition, financing due diligence, reorganization, bankruptcy, receivership, sale of company assets, or transition of service to another entity (whether by private sale, through operation of law, as part of a divestiture plan, or otherwise), we may provide personal information associated with each such business unit to the persons and/or entities assuming control of such business unit or as otherwise necessary to complete the transaction as permitted by law or contract.

SECURITY OF YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION

Equator Design is committed to protecting the security of your personal information. We take reasonable steps (including appropriate technical and organizational measures) in an effort to ensure your personal information is processed securely to protect the confidentiality, integrity and availability of your personal information in accordance with this Privacy Policy. The nature of the internet is such that we cannot guarantee or warrant the security of any information you transmit to us via the internet and any transmission is at your own risk.

If a password is used to help protect your accounts and personal information, it is your responsibility to keep your password confidential. You should update your password periodically to help reduce the risk of unauthorized access to your account with us. When you do, you should strengthen your password with the combination of uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, punctuation and other symbols. Do not share your password with anyone. If you are sharing a computer with anyone you should always log out before leaving a site or service to protect access to your information from subsequent users.

STORING YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION

Personal information collected through our Website and services will be stored on servers located in the U.S. It may also be processed by our affiliates, including in the U.S., or by one of our service providers. This includes individuals engaged in, among other things, the fulfilment of your order, administration of an enquiry or request you make via our Website or the provision of support services.

Individuals located in the EEA should take note that some of the recipients of your personal information may be located in countries outside the EU/EEA that do not offer the same level of protection with regard to personal information as required in the EU/EEA and where there is no adequacy decision by the European Commission. In that case, we have implemented appropriate safeguards, to protect your personal information when it is transferred, including the execution of data transfer agreements with recipients of the information. For more information concerning these agreements please contact us by email at privacy@equator-design.com. We will process any request in line with any local laws and our policies and procedures.

Equator Design will store your personal information for as long as we have to by law, and where there is no legal requirement, we will only store your personal information for as long as necessary to fulfill the purpose for which the personal information was collected.

COOKIES

Equator Design websites use cookies and similar technologies (together referred to as “cookies”, unless otherwise stated) to provide you with an efficient experience in using our Website.

A cookie is a small data file that is placed on your computer or mobile device by your web browser. Cookies are not used to run programs or deliver viruses to your computer. One of the primary purposes of cookies is to store your preferences and other information on your computer in order to save you time by eliminating the need to repeatedly enter the same information and to display your personalized content and appropriate advertising on your later visits to these sites.

We use cookies for a variety of purposes and to enhance your online experience, for example, to identify your device, distinguish you from other visitors, record your IP address and understand your use of our Website to determine the usefulness of our Website information and to see how effective our navigational structure is in helping you reach that information. We also use cookies to identify the name of the website from which you linked to the Website of our brands. We do not otherwise track any information about your use of other websites.

Note that you may encounter cookies from our third-party providers, that we have allowed on our Website that assist us with various aspects of our site operations and services. In addition to cookies, similar or related technologies are used on the Website. For example, electronic images known as web beacons – sometimes called single-pixel gifs – may be used to assist in delivering cookies on our Website and allow us to count users who have visited those pages and to deliver co-branded services. We may include web beacons in promotional e-mail messages or our newsletters in order to determine whether messages have been opened and acted upon. Equator Design may also employ web beacons from third parties in order to help us compile aggregated statistics regarding the effectiveness of our promotional campaigns or other operations of our Website. We prohibit web beacons on our Website from being used by third parties to collect or access your personal information.

(A) TYPES OF COOKIES USED ON OUR WEBSITE

We use various types of cookies, including session and persistent cookies and similar technologies, local shared objects, pixels, and gifs, and we permit some third-party cookies. Persistent cookies remain on your computer until you delete them, while session cookies are based on your browsing session and are deleted once you close your browser. First party cookies are used and controlled by us to provide services on our Website, while third-party cookies are placed by our service providers and/or trusted third parties.

Our use of cookies falls into four categories:

Strictly necessary cookies: these are essential in order to enable you to move around the Website and use its features. Without these cookies, the services you have asked for cannot be provided.
Performance cookies: also known as “analytical” cookies. These cookies allow us to recognize and count the number of visitors and to see how visitors move around and use the Website. For example, they allow us to understand which pages are visited most often, and if visitors get error messages from web pages. All information collected by these cookies is aggregated and therefore anonymous.
Functionality cookies: these cookies are necessary for the Website to operate and allow us to remember what choices you make and provide enhanced, more personal features. The information these cookies collect is typically anonymized and is not used to track your browsing activity on other websites.
Advertising and marketing cookies: these cookies are used to send you advertising and marketing-related material tailored to you and your interests. They are also used to limit the number of times you see an advertisement as well as help measure the effectiveness of the advertising campaigns. They are usually placed by advertising networks with the website operator’s permission. The third parties that provide these cookies may collect and combine information about your online activities over time, on other devices, and on other websites or online services, if those websites and online services also use the same advertising partners. Thus, although we do not track your website usage activity across non-affiliated websites over time, some third-party cookie providers may do so when you use the Website.

We may change our use of cookies over time, but our use of cookies will generally fall into the above categories.

(B) SPECIFIC COOKIES WE USE

We use the following cookies on our Website:

STRICTLY NECESSARY COOKIE

Cookie File	Description	Retention
N/A

PERFORMANCE COOKIES

Cookie File	Description	Retention
_ga	Analytics	2 years
_gat	Analytics	1 day
_gid	Analytics	2 days

FUNCTIONALITY COOKIES

Cookie File	Description	Retention
N/A

THIRD PARTY COOKIES

Cookie File	Description	Retention
_seg	ShareThis	2 weeks
_stid	ShareThis	9 months
_unam	ShareThis	9 months

As stated above, this Website uses Google Analytics to collect information about how users use the Website. The information generated by the cookie about your use of the Website will be transmitted to and stored by Google on servers in the United States. Because IP-anonymization is activated on this Website for Google services, your IP address will be used in a redacted form within the European Union. You may refuse the use of cookies by selecting the appropriate settings on your browser; please note, however, that if you do this you may not be able to use the full Website.

You can opt-out from being tracked by Google Analytics in the future by downloading and installing ‘Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on’ for your current web browser: https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout. An opt-out cookie will be stored on your device, which means that you will have to click this link again if you delete your cookies.

You can find more information about Google privacy practices under the following link: http://www.google.com/intl/en/privacypolicy.html.

You have the ability to accept or decline most cookies. You can usually modify your browser setting to decline cookies if you prefer. If you choose to decline cookies, however you may not be able to sign in or use interactive or other features of our Website and related services that depend on cookies. Note that, if you accept cookies, you have the ability to later delete cookies that you have accepted. If you choose to delete cookies, any settings and preferences controlled by those cookies will be deleted and may need to be recreated. If your browser settings are set up as ‘Do Not Track’, the use of cookies and tracking technologies will not apply to you.

For more information on cookies and how they can be managed and deleted please visit http://www.allaboutcookies.org/, http://www.networkadvertising.org/choices/, or http://www.aboutads.info/choices/.

YOUR RIGHTS

Generally

Certain jurisdictions impose specific legal requirements and grant privacy rights with respect to personal information, and we will comply with restrictions and any requests you submit as required by applicable law. For example, you may have the right to review, correct, and delete personal information we have about you, or to consent or withdraw consent to certain uses or sharing of personal information. You may be able to use the Website to access and update the information that you have provided to us through your use of the Website or otherwise. If you would like to request access to such information or that we update, correct, or delete any such information, please send an email to us at: privacy@equator-design.com or send us a letter by mail to Two NorthShore Center, Pittsburgh, PA 15212.

When you make a request, we may require that you provide information and follow procedures so that we can verify a request you make and your jurisdiction before responding to it. The verification steps we take may differ depending on your jurisdiction and the request you make. We will match the information that you provide in your request to information we already have on file to verify your identity. If we are able to verify your request, we will process it. If we cannot verify your request, we may ask you for additional information to help us verify your request.

We will respond to your request within the time period required by applicable law. However, we may not always be able to fully comply with your request, and we will notify you in that event.

California Privacy Rights

Under the California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”), California consumers have the following rights: to request additional information about our data collection, use, disclosure, and sales practices in connection with the consumer’s personal information; to request the specific personal information collected about the consumer during the previous 12 months; and to request the deletion of personal information we have about the consumer. California consumers also have the right not to receive discriminatory treatment if they exercise the rights listed above.

To make requests, California consumers may email us at: privacy@equator-design.com, or contact us through the web form located here.

Consumers may be required to submit name, email address, the website they have visited, and their city and state so that we can verify the request.

California law permits California consumers to use an authorized agent to make privacy rights requests. We require the authorized agent to provide us with proof of the California consumer’s written permission (for example, a power of attorney) that shows the authorized agent has the authority to submit a request for the California consumer. An authorized agency must follow the process described above to make a request, and we will additionally require the authorized agent to verify his/her own identity and we will confirm the agent’s authority with the California consumer about whom the request was made.

We do not sell your personal information for money or other consideration. We also do not rent, sell, or share “personal information” as defined by California Civil Code §1798.83 about you that we collect on the Website with other people or unaffiliated companies for their direct marketing purposes.

Please see the section on “COOKIES” above for information about the collection and use of personal information by third parties who process information collected by cookies and similar technologies that we permit them to use on the Website.

California residents who use job application features of the Website should see our Notice of Collection of Personal Information for California Residents, which may be posted on the job application webpage(s) and is also available here.

European Economic Area Privacy Rights

Residents of the European Economic Area (‘EEA’): You may have the right to: (a) request access to your personal information we hold about you; (b) request we correct any inaccurate personal information we hold about you; (c) request we delete any personal information we hold about you; (d) restrict the processing of personal information we hold about you; (e) object to the processing of personal information we hold about you; and/or (f) receive any personal information we hold about you in a structured and commonly used machine-readable format or have such personal information transmitted to another company.

To exercise any of your rights concerning personal information, or for more information about your rights and associated requirements, please contact us using the contact information below. We may ask you for additional information to confirm your identity and for security purposes, before disclosing information requested to you.

If you are located in the EEA, you have the right to lodge a complaint about how we process your personal information with the supervisory authority in your country.

CONTACT US

If you wish to exercise legal rights or have any questions about our processing of personal information, please contact us at the following address: Two NorthShore Center, Pittsburgh, PA 15212; or by email at privacy@equator-design.com. If you contact us, we will do our utmost to address any requests of concerns you may have about our processing of your personal data.