Privacy

Introduction

Foundation Surety & Insurance Solutions and its affiliated entities (“Foundation Surety” or “We”) respect your privacy and are committed to protecting it through our compliance with this privacy policy (“Privacy Policy”).
This Privacy Policy describes the types of information we may collect from you or that you may provide when you visit the website FoundationSurety.com, any of its domain aliases, and/or the websites of any of our affiliated entities (our “Website”) and our practices for collecting, using, maintaining, protecting and disclosing that information.

This Privacy Policy applies to information we collect:

  • On this Website.
  • In e-mail, text and other electronic messages between you and this Website.

It does not apply to information collected by:

  • Us offline or through any other means, including on any other website operated by Foundation Surety or any third party (including our affiliates and subsidiaries); or
  • any third party (including our affiliates and subsidiaries), including through any application or content (including advertising) that may link to or be accessible from or on the Website

Please read this Privacy Policy carefully to understand our policies and practices regarding your information and how we will treat it. If you do not agree with our policies and practices, your choice is not to use our Website. By accessing or using this Website, you agree to this Privacy Policy. This Privacy Policy may change from time to time (see “Changes to our Privacy Policy”). Your continued use of this Website after we make changes is deemed to be acceptance of those changes, so please check the Privacy Policy periodically for updates.

Information We Collect About You and How We Collect It

We may collect several types of information from and about users of our Website, including information:

  • that identifies, relates to, describes, is reasonably capable of being associated with or reasonably can be used to identify an individual or household and other data that is linked to personal information (“personal information”). The types of personal information we collect about you depend on your interactions with us and include, but are not limited to, name, postal address, e-mail address, telephone number, commercial information, including records of personal property, products or services purchased, obtained, or considered, or other purchasing or consuming histories or tendencies, or any other information the Website collects that is defined as personal or personally identifiable (“personal information”).
  • about your internet connection, the equipment you use to access our Website and usage details, including browsing history, search history, and information regarding a consumer’s interaction with an internet web site or application.

We collect this information:

  • Directly from you when you provide it to us.
  • Through your transactions with us, our affiliates, or other third parties, including consumer reporting agencies.
  • Automatically as you navigate through the site. Information collected automatically may include usage details, IP addresses and information collected through cookies, web beacons, and other tracking or web analytics technologies.

Information You Provide to Us

We collect personal information directly from you on or through our Website when you:

  • Register for an account, create a profile, participate in interactive areas of our Website, or fill out forms on our Website.
  • Request additional information about products and services, registering to use any linked services provided or subscribe to our service, or post material.
  • Sign up for and participate in events, contests, promotions and special programs that we provide
  • Report a problem with our Website.
  • When you correspond, interact with or make submissions to us.
  • Participate in or respond to surveys or requests for opinions, feedback and preferences.
  • Make search queries on the Website; and
  • Use other features of our Website that may be offered from time to time, which may require information in order to utilize the features.

You also may provide information to be published or displayed (hereinafter, “posted”) on public areas of the Website, or transmitted to other users of the Website, or third party websites, such as social media websites associated with the Website (collectively, “User Contributions”). Your User Contributions are posted on and transmitted to others at your own risk. We cannot control the actions of other users of the Website with whom you may choose to share your User Contributions. Therefore, we cannot and do not guarantee that your User Contributions will not be viewed by unauthorized persons.

Inapplicability of Privacy Statements of Any Linked Sites or Other Third Parties

This Privacy Statement only addresses Foundation Surety’s use and disclosure of your personally identifiable information. As this Website may contain links to other websites, please be aware that we are not responsible for the privacy practices of such other sites, and we are not liable for their misuse of personal information. We encourage you to be aware that when you go to another site you should carefully read their privacy policy.

Information We Collect through Automatic Data Collection Technologies

As you navigate through and interact with our Website, we may use automatic data collection technologies to collect certain personal information about your equipment, browsing actions and patterns. The types of information we collect may include:

  • Networking and device information, such as your browser type, IP address, operating system version, and language settings.
  • Information about your activity on our Website, such as your access times, pages viewed, the routes by which you access our services, your use of any hyperlinks available within our services, traffic data, location data, logs and other communication data and the resources that you access and use on the Website.
  • Information collected via cookies, web beacons, and other tracking technologies, including internet service provider (ISP), Mobile Advertising ID, medial access control (MAC) address, or identifier associated with browser cookies, web beacons and similar technologies we deploy on our Website.

The information we collect automatically is statistical data and does not/may include personal information, but/or we may maintain it or associate it with personal information we collect in other ways or receive from third parties. It helps us to improve our Website and to deliver a better and more personalized service, including by enabling us to:

  • Estimate our audience size and usage patterns.
  • Store information about your preferences, allowing us to customize our Website according to your individual interests.
  • Speed up your searches.
  • Recognize you when you return to our Website.

The technologies we use for this automatic data collection may include:

  • Browser Cookies. A cookie is a small file that a website you are visiting places on the hard drive of your computer through your internet browser. Cookies have the ability to identify your computer and store information like web pages visited, advertisements viewed, frequency, and type of browser used. From time to time, certain features of our Website may use browser cookies to collect and store information about your preferences and navigation to, from and on our Website. We do not use browser cookies to gather personal information and we do not link “cookies” to identifiable information, such as a policy number. The “cookies” only enable you to use our website more easily. Many web browsing software contains software settings which allow you to manage browser cookies. You may refuse to accept browser cookies by activating the appropriate setting on your browser, but please be advised that if you disable browser cookies, you may at times be unable to access certain parts of our Website.
  • Web Beacons. Pages of our the Website and our e-mails may contain small electronic files known as web beacons (also referred to as clear gifs. pixel tags and single-pixel gifs). Web beacons are normally used to monitor website traffic. Web beacons can also be used with cookies to gain an understanding of how website users navigate and process the content contained in websites. Web beacons, for example, permit Foundation Surety to count and recognize users who have visited those pages or opened an e-mail and for other related website statistics, such as allowing us to personalize users’ visits, make them more user-friendly, recording the popularity of certain website content and verifying system and server integrity.

Do Not Track Disclosure

Foundation Surety does not track its customers over time and across third party websites to provide targeted advertising and therefore does not respond to Do Not Track (DNT) signals. However, some third party sites, including social media sites linked from the Website, do keep track of your browsing activities when they serve you content, which enables them to tailor what they present to you. If you are visiting such third party sites, please be aware that certain updated web browsers allow you to set a DNT signal in the software settings of your browser so that third parties (particularly advertisers) know you do not want to be tracked.

Third-party Use of Cookies and Other Tracking Technologies

From time to time, we may serve content or applications on the Website through a third party. These third parties may use cookies alone or in conjunction with web beacons or other tracking technologies to collect information about you when you use our Website. The information they collect may be associated with your personal information or they may collect information, including personal information, about your online activities over time and across different websites and other online services. They may use this information to provide you with interest-based (behavioral) advertising or other targeted content.
We do not control these third parties’ tracking technologies or how they may be used. If you have any questions about an advertisement or other targeted content, you should contact the responsible provider directly.

How We Use Your Information

We use information that we collect about you or that you provide to us, including any personal information:

  • To present our Website and its contents to you.
  • To provide you with information, products or services that you request from us.
  • To complete transactions that you request.
  • Send notifications related to your account.
  • Respond to your requests and any other communications from you, including to provide customer service.
  • To fulfill any other purpose for which you provide it.
  • To carry out our obligations and enforce our rights, and any other obligations otherwise anticipated arising from any contracts entered into between you and us.
  • Send advertising or marketing communications about products, services, offers, and promotions offered by us and others, and provide news and information that we believe may be of interest to you.
  • To notify you about changes to our Website or any products or services we offer or provide though it.
  • To allow you to participate in any interactive features which we may from time to time place on our Website.
  • Conduct internal research and development.
  • Analyze your engagement with our brand and your use of our services to better understand your interests and behaviors and customize your experience.
  • Detect security incidents and protect against malicious, deceptive, or illegal activity, including fraudulent transactions, error, negligence, and breach of contract, and to protect against harm to our rights, property or safety and our users, customers, employees or the public.
  • Debug, identify and repair errors that impair existing intended functionality of our services.
  • Comply with our legal obligations, including tax obligations, those relating to the prevention of fraud, and those required for you to benefit from rights recognized by law, or any regulatory requirements or provisions.
  • Carry out certain short-term activities and other reasonable internal purposes realted to the products and services you purchase from use or your ongoing relationship with us.
  • In any other way we may describe when you provide the information.
  • For any other purpose with your consent.

Disclosure of Your Information

Information about our customers is an important part of our business, and we are not in the business of selling it to others, however, we may disclose aggregated information about our users, and information that does not identify any individual, without restriction.
In addition, we may disclose personal information that we collect or you provide as described in this Privacy Policy:

  • To our subsidiaries and affiliates.
  • To contractors, service providers and other third parties we use to support our business, including but limited to, to insurance companies, general agencies, and other insurance-related entities that perform marketing services on our behalf or with whom we have joint marketing agreements. We only share with service providers the personal information that they need to perform services for us.
  • To fulfill the purpose for which you provide it.
  • For any other purpose disclosed by us when you provide the information.
  • To a buyer or other successor in the event of a merger, divestiture, restructuring, reorganization, dissolution or other sale or transfer of some or all of Foundation Surety’s assets, whether as a going concern or as part of bankruptcy, liquidation or similar proceeding, in which personal information held by Foundation Surety about our Website users is among the assets transferred.
  • We share personal information with our legal, financial, insurance and other advisors in connection with the kinds of corporate transactions described above or in connection with the management of all or part of our business or operations.
  • With your consent or at your direction.

We may also disclose your personal information:

  • To comply with any court order, law or legal process, including to respond to any government or regulatory request.
  • To respond to claims, including inquiries by you in connection with your interaction with us, our products and services, and the Website.
  • To enforce or apply our Website terms of use.
  • If we believe disclosure is necessary or appropriate to protect the rights, property, or safety of Foundation Surety, and its affiliated entities, our customers, or others. This includes exchanging information with other companies and organizations for the purposes of fraud protection and credit risk reduction.

Children Under the Age of 13

Our Website is not intended for children under 13 years of age. No one under age 13 may provide any personal information to/or on the Website. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you are under 13, do not use or provide any information on this Website or on or through any of its features/register on the Website, make any purchases through the Website, use any of the interactive or public comment features of this Website or provide any information about yourself to us, including your name, address, telephone number, e-mail address or any screen name or user name you may use. If we learn we have collected or received personal information from a child under 13 without verification of parental consent, we will delete that information. If you believe we might have any information from or about a child under 13, please contact us at info@FoundationSurety.com.

Our Security Procedures

Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure. Although we do our best to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee the security of your personal information transmitted to our Website. Any transmission of personal information is at your own risk. We have implemented measures designed to secure your personal information from accidental loss and from unauthorized access, use, alteration and disclosure. All information you provide to us is maintained with commercially reasonable physical, electronic, and procedural safeguards to appropriately protect personal information.

The safety and security of your information also depends on you. Where we have given you (or where you have chosen) a password for access to certain parts of our Website, you are responsible for keeping this password confidential. We ask you not to share your password with anyone. We urge you to be careful about giving out information in public areas of the Website. The information you share in public areas may be viewed by any user of the Website. We are not responsible for circumvention of any privacy settings or security measures contained on the Website.

Changes to Our Privacy Policy

It is our policy to post any changes we make to our Privacy Policy on this page with a notice that the Privacy Policy has been updated on the Website. If we make material changes to how we treat our users’ personal information, we will notify you by e-mail to the primary e-mail address specified in your account, and/or through a notice on the Website. The date the Privacy Policy was last revised is identified at the top of the page. You are responsible for ensuring we have an up-to-date active and deliverable e-mail address for you, and for periodically visiting our Website and this Privacy Policy to check for any changes.

Information for California Consumers; Your California Privacy Rights

Additional Disclosure Related to Collection, Use and Disclosure of Personal Information

If you are a California resident, the California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”) requires us to disclose the following information with respect to our collection, use and disclosure of personal information.

  • Categories of Personal Information Collected: In the preceding 12 months, we have collected the following categories of personal information: identifiers, characteristics of protected classifications under California or U.S. law, commercial information, internet and electronic network activity, geolocation information, audio and visual information, inferences drawn about your preferences, and other categories of personal information that relates to or is reasonably capable of being associated with you. For examples of the precise information points we collect, please see above.
  • Business or Commercial Purpose for Collecting and Using Information: We collect personal information for the business purposes described above.
  • Categories of Sources of Personal Information: We collect personal information from you and the sources described above.
  • Categories of Personal Information Disclosed: In the preceding 12 months, we have disclosed the following categories of personal information for business or commercial purposes: identifiers, internet and electronic network activity information, commercial information, audio and visual information, geolocation information, demographic information, inferred information, and other information that we have derived or inferred about you or that relates to or is reasonably capable of being associated with you.
  • Categories of Third Parties With Whom We Share Personal Information: We may share your personal information with the third parties as described above.
  • Sale of Personal Information: We do not sell your personal information.

Your Consumer Rights

California consumers have the right to request access to their personal information, additional details about our information practices and deletion of their personal information (subject to certain exceptions). California consumers also have the right to opt out of sales of personal information, if applicable. We describe how California consumers can exercise their rights under the CCPA below. Please note that you may designate an authorized agent to exercise these rights on your behalf by providing written materials demonstrating that you have granted the authorized agent power of attorney. Please note that if an authorized agent submits a request on your behalf, we may need to contact you to verify your identity and protect the security of your personal information. We will not discriminate against you if you choose to exercise your rights under the CCPA.

Right to Know: You may request access to the specific pieces of personal information we have collected about you in the last 12 months. You may also request additional details about our information practices, including the categories of personal information we have collected about you, the sources of such collection, the categories of personal information we share for a business or commercial purpose, and the categories of third parties with whom we share your personal information. You may make these requests by contacting us as set forth below. After submitting your request, please monitor your email for a verification email. We are required by law to verify your identity prior to granting access to your information in order to protect your privacy and security.

Deletion: You may request that we delete the personal information we have collected about you. Please note that we may retain certain information as required or permitted by applicable law. You may make these requests by contacting us as set forth below. After submitting your request, please monitor your email for a verification email. We are required by law to verify your identity prior to deleting your information in order to protect your privacy and security. If you request to delete your personal information, certain of our products and services may no longer be available to you.

 

Changes to Our Privacy Policy

It is our policy to post any changes we make to our Privacy Policy on this page with a notice that the Privacy Policy has been updated on the Website. If we make material changes to how we treat our users’ personal information, we will notify you by e-mail to the primary e-mail address specified in your account, and/or through a notice on the Website. The date the Privacy Policy was last revised is identified at the top of the page. You are responsible for ensuring we have an up-to-date active and deliverable e-mail address for you, and for periodically visiting our Website and this Privacy Policy to check for any changes.

Terms of Use; Privacy Policy

If you choose to visit the Website, your visit and any dispute is subject to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use, including limitations on damages, arbitration of disputes, and application of the law of the state of California.

Contact Information

To ask questions or comment about this Privacy Policy or any of our practices with respect to this Website, contact us by:
E-mail: info@FoundationSurety.com;
Mail: 16701 Melford Blvd., Suite 400, Bowie, Maryland 20715; or
Telephone: (240) 835-0865.