Privacy Policy
Your privacy is important to us. This Privacy Policy describes the types of information that solaramerica.com (“we,” or “us”) collects from and about you when you visit any one of our websites where this privacy policy is posted (each as “Site”). This Privacy Policy also describes how we may use and disclose such information, as well as your ability to control certain uses of it.
By using this Site, you agree to the collection, use, and disclosure of your information as described in this Privacy Policy. This Privacy Policy is incorporated into and is made part of the website Terms of Use located at solaramerica.com/terms-of-use. If, for any reason, you do not agree to these terms, please do not use the Site.
1. INFORMATION COLLECTED
There are several ways we may collect information about you, including through (A) information you provide to us; (B) information that we automatically collect; and (C) information we receive from third parties. This includes data that identifies you personally whether directly (i.e., your name) or indirectly (i.e., information about your online use).
A. Information You Provide to Us
We collect personal information from you when you choose to share it with us. This may include when you use our Site, create an online account with us, request a solar consultation or quote, post a request for information about products or services, request support, or otherwise contact or communicate with us.
The personal information we collect may include, but may not be limited to, your contact information, such as name, email address, address or ZIP code, and telephone number; information about your solar activities, such as home ownership, home statistics, home energy usage or utility provider; or demographic information, such as geographic area, and preferences, when any of this information is linked to personal information that identifies you; and other interests or preferences that you provide.
Information You Provide Through Social Media. If you connect or link to us through a social media account, we may automatically receive certain information about you based on your registration and privacy settings on those third party websites or services. This may include, but may not be limited to, name, user name, demographic information, updated address or contact information, location, interests, and publicly-observed data, such as from social media and online activity.
B. Information Automatically Collected
Whenever you visit or interact with the Site, we may use a variety of technologies such as cookies, clear GIFs (also known as “Web beacons”), pixel tags, log files, and other technologies or third party services (such as Jornaya’s LeadID) to automatically or passively collect certain information about users of our Site and interactions with our emails and online advertisements. If we link or associate any information automatically collected on the Site with personal information, we will treat the combined information as personal information under this Privacy Policy.
Please note that we automatically collect the following information about you:
Computer or Device Information: We may automatically collect your Internet Protocol (“IP”) address or other unique identifier or information from the computer, mobile device, tablet or other device you use to access the Site, including but not limited to your browser type, device type, system type, and the domain name from which you accessed the Site.
Usage Information: We may collect information about your use of the Site, including the date and time you visit the Site, the content, areas, or pages of the Site that you visit, the website from which you navigated to the Site, the page you visit after leaving the Site, the amount of time you spend viewing or using the Site, the number of times you return to the Site, as well as other click-stream or site usage data, emails that you open, forward or click-through to our Site. For legal compliance purposes, we may also capture or record your interactions with the Site to confirm that your information was submitted to us through this Site.
Via Our Third-Party Service Providers: We may use third-party service providers to support our Site. Some of these service providers may use technology such as cookies, web beacons, pixel tags, log files, Flash cookies, or HTML5 cookies to receive, collect, and store information.
Use of Third-Party Analytics and Technologies: We may use third parties’ analytic and tracking tools, such as Google Analytics for Display Marketing to better understand who is using the Site, how people are using the Site and how to improve the effectiveness of the Site and its content, and to help us or those parties serve more targeted advertising to you across the Internet. These tools may use cookies, web beacons, pixel tags, log files, Flash cookies, or other technologies to collect and store non-personal information. They may also combine information they collect from your interaction with Site with information they collect from other sources. We do not have access to, or control over, these third parties’ use of cookies or other tracking technologies.
To learn more about our interest-based advertising and your advertising choices relating to the collection and use of your information, please see the “How We Use Your Information” and “Your Choices and Opting Out” sections below.
C. Information We Collect from Other Sources
We may acquire information from other sources as follows:
From Our Partners and Service Providers: We may obtain information from our third-party partners and service providers (including, for example, business partners, analytics vendors, advertising networks and search information providers).
From Other Third Parties: We may obtain information about you from other third-party sources, including commercially-available sources, such as data aggregators and public databases. This information may include your name, demographic information, interests, and publicly-observed data, such as from social media, online activity, and shopping behavior.
We may use this information to help us maintain the accuracy of the information we collect, personalize your experience with the Site, target our communications so that we can inform you of products, services or other offers that may be of interest to you, to measure ad quality and responses, and for internal business analysis or other business purposes.
D. Combination of Information
We may combine the information that we receive from and about you, including information you provide to us and information we automatically collect through the Site, as well as information collected from other online or offline sources, or from third-party sources.
2. HOW WE USE YOUR INFORMATION
A. Information Use By or For Us
We may use the information we collect from and about you for any of the following purposes:
To respond to your inquiries, and provide the services and information you request;
To analyze, improve, operate, and maintain the Site, our programs, services, website, and other systems, and to develop new products and services;
To tailor or enhance your user experience, including as a way to recognize and welcome you to the Site, and to provide customized Site content, targeted offers, and advertising on the Site, or across other third-party websites, mobile applications, social media, or online services, or via email;
To maintain a record of our interactions with you;
To contact you via direct mail, email and/or telemarketing regarding offers, contests, events, news, programs, and other retail opportunities from us and/or selected third parties that we believe may be of interest to you;
To use your data in an aggregated non-specific format for analytical and demographic purposes;
To address problems with the Site or our business;
To protect the security or integrity of the Site and our business, such as by protecting against and preventing fraud, unauthorized transactions, claims and other liabilities, and managing risk exposure, including by identifying potential hackers and other unauthorized users;
To comply with our legal obligations; and
As otherwise described to you at the point of data collection.
Additionally, if you use the Site to connect with third party services you authorize us to use information from and about you, on your behalf, to interact with these third-party services based on your requests.
B. How We Use Your Information for Interest-Based Advertising
We may use third parties to measure and target advertisements for us about our products and services that are tailored to your online interests. We allow these third-party companies to use cookies, web beacons, pixel tags and similar technologies to collect certain data and other information about your online activity. This information is used to display advertisements for us on the Site or across other websites, mobile applications, social media or online services that you use.
We also may display interest-based ads through Facebook, Twitter, or other social media platforms or websites. This is done through the Facebook Custom Audiences, Twitter Tailor Audiences, or other similar business tools. These tools allow us to personalize our ads based on your shopping experience with us, without having to share your personal information with these social media platforms. We do this only by sharing hashed information (which converts your email or phone number to a unique string of numbers and letters) that the social media platform then matches data against its own data for the limited purpose of serving advertisements (either directly to you or to other lookalike audiences). The matched and unmatched hashes are then deleted, and are not used for any other purpose.
For information on your choices with respect to interest-based ads, see the “Interest Based Advertising Choices” section below.
3. HOW WE SHARE YOUR INFORMATION
We may share or disclose the information we collect from and about you as described below.
A. Sharing of Information by You
The Site offer many ways to find, enjoy, and share content. Your activity in connection with the Site may include filling out surveys, reviewing and rating products or services, inquiring about or purchasing products or services, participation in online communities, “liking” or “sharing” our content to your social media accounts or pages or otherwise interacting with the Site. Any information you may disclose on our Site, in blogs, on message boards, in chat rooms, or on other public areas on the Site or other third-party websites, applications, or services that this Site may link to, becomes public information. Please exercise caution when disclosing personal information in these public areas.
B. Sharing of Information by Us
We may share or disclosure your personal information as follows:
Affiliate Companies or Subsidiaries: We may share your information with any parent company or any subsidiaries, joint venture partners, or other companies that we control or are under common control with us.
Selling Personal Information: We are a lead generation company and are in the business of selling personal information about our users and visitors to third parties, such as, without limitation, solar energy providers and energy efficiency consultants/auditors. When you request a solar consultation or quote, or otherwise request that clean energy service providers contact you, we may sell, disclose, or otherwise share your information to solar energy providers, clean energy service providers or other third party service providers not affiliated with us. The third parties that purchase or receive your information from us may then (i) use your personal information for their own purposes (including for commercial purposes), (ii) contact you regarding their products and services, and/or (iii) further disclose your personal information to other third parties for their own commercial purposes.
Marketing Partners and Other Third Parties: We may share your information with our marketing partners or other third parties to bring selected retail opportunities, offers, contests, programs, events or news to you via direct mail, email and/or telemarketing. You may have no relationship with these other companies. We are not responsible for the content of any third party communications sent to you and you will need to opt out of those communications separately, if desired.
Service Providers: We may share your information with our third party service providers that provide business, professional or technical support functions for us, including to the extent necessary or desirable to help run promotions, fulfill orders, complete your transaction, or provide customer service. These service providers may have access to personal information about our site visitors if it is needed to perform their functions for us, but they are not authorized by us to use or disclose the information, except as necessary to perform services on our behalf or to comply with legal requirements.
Legal Matters; Safety: We may access and disclose your information to respond to judicial process or provide information to law enforcement or regulatory agencies or in connection with an investigation on matters related to public safety, as permitted by law, or otherwise as required by law. We also may disclose your information as necessary, if we believe that there has been a violation of our Terms of Use, or if it is in our interest to protect our property or other legal rights (including, but not limited to, enforcement of our agreements) or the rights or property of any third party.
Sale or Transfer of Business or Assets: Information about our users, including personal information, may be disclosed and/or sold as part of any merger, acquisition, debt financing, sale of company assets, or similar transaction by us, as well as in the event of an insolvency, bankruptcy or receivership in which personal information could be transferred and/or sold to third parties as one of our business assets.
Aggregate or Anonymous Non-Personal Information: We may share aggregate, anonymous, or de-identified non-personal information with third parties for their marketing or analytics uses.
Other: We may share your information as described to you at the point of collection.
4. SPECIAL NOTICE TO CALIFORNIA RESIDENTS
California residents may also take advantage of the following rights:
You may request, up to two times each year, that we disclose to you the categories and specific pieces of personal information that we have collected about you, the categories of sources from which your personal information is collected, the business or commercial purpose for collecting your personal information, the categories of personal information that we disclosed for a business purpose, any categories of personal information that we sold about you, the categories of third parties with whom we have shared your personal information, and the business or commercial purpose for selling your personal information, if applicable.
You may request that we delete any personal information that we have collected from or about you. Note that there are some reasons we will not be able to fully address your request, such as if we need to complete a transaction for you, to detect and protect against fraudulent and illegal activity, to exercise our rights, or to comply with a legal obligation.
You may request to opt out of solaramerica.com’ sale of your personal information to third parties, and to our affiliated companies that do not share the same brand name, for their direct marketing purposes. This means that, if you opt out, going forward, we will not share your information with such third parties to use for their purposes unless you later direct us to do so. To effect the opt out, please click on the Do Not Sell My Personal Information link on our website footer or contact us at 1-855-478-6786.
To take advantage of your access and deletion rights, please click here or contact us at 1-855-478-6786. For verification purposes, please provide your name, address, telephone number and email address. Further information may be required for verification. We value your privacy and will not discriminate in response to your exercise of your privacy rights. We will respond to your access and deletion requests within 45 days of receipt of your request, after proper verification, unless we need additional time, in which case we will let you know. We will respond to your opt of sale requests as soon as reasonably possible.
For purposes of compliance with the California Consumer Privacy Act, in addition to the further details as described throughout this Privacy Policy, we make the following disclosures:
We collect the following categories of personal information: Identifiers/Contact Information (like your transaction history and service usage), Commercial information, Internet or other electronic network activity information, geolocation, visual and audio information, and profiles and inferences drawn from the above.
We sell the following categories of personal information: Identifiers/Contact Information, Internet or other electronic network activity information, and inferences drawn from the above. We have sold these categories of information in the preceding 12 months.
We disclose the following categories of personal information for a business or commercial purpose: Identifiers/Contact Information, Commercial information, Internet or other electronic network activity information, geolocation, visual and audio information, and inferences drawn from above.
5. YOUR CHOICES AND OPTING OUT
A. Cookies, Tracking Options and California Do Not Track Disclosures
Certain parts of our Site require cookies. You may adjust your device or Internet browser settings to limit certain tracking or to decline cookies, but by doing so, you may not be able to use certain features on the Site or take full advantage of all of our offerings. Please refer to your device’s settings or your Internet browser’s “Help” section for more information on how to delete and/or disable cookies or to control your tracking preferences.
Our system may not recognize “do not track” (DNT) requests or headers from some or all browsers. We may use cookies or other technologies to deliver more relevant advertising and to link data collected across other computers or devices that you may use.
B. Interest-Based Advertising Choices
To understand your choices for receiving more relevant advertising provided on the Service or across other websites and online services, please review the information below:
To learn more about such interest-based advertising, and to opt out of such collection and use for interest-based advertising by the Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA) participating companies, please visit http://www.aboutads.info/choices/.
To opt out from the use of information about your online activities for interest-based advertising by Network Advertising Initiative (NAI) member companies, please visit http://www.networkadvertising.org/choices/.
To opt out of the use of your mobile device ID for targeted advertising, please see http://www.aboutads.info/appchoices.
If you wish to prevent your data from being used by Google Analytics, Google has developed the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on available at https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout/.
On your mobile device, you may also adjust your privacy and advertising settings to control whether you want to receive more relevant advertising.
Even if you opt out, you still may receive advertising from us that is not customized based on your Service or usage information, or advertising from other third parties if they are not a DAA or NAI participating company.
C. Unsubscribing from Our Marketing Communications
We provide our customers with the opportunity to opt out of having their information used for purposes not directly related to placement, processing, fulfillment, or delivery of a product or service. To opt out of marketing communications or to request to be added to our Do Not Call List or Do Not Mail List, you may use one of these convenient methods:
Electronic Promotional Offers: If you receive commercial email from us, you may unsubscribe at any time by following the instructions contained within the email. You may also opt out from receiving commercial email from us by sending us an email or by writing to us at the address given at the end of this policy. You should note that unsubscribing from our electronic mailings will not automatically unsubscribe your information from electronic communications sent by any third party, and you will need to separately unsubscribe from such third party’s communication, if desired.
Direct Mail Offers: If you do not wish to be notified by postal mail regarding products, services, events, programs, and offers that we believe you may find of interest, you may opt out from such communications by sending us an email or by writing to us at the address given at the end of this policy.
Telemarketing: If you do not want to receive marketing phone calls from us, you may: (i) email us at contact@solar-america.org with “Do Not Call” in the subject line; (ii) call customer care at 800-680-8554; (iii) ask to be placed on our Do Not Call list when you receive a call from us; or (iv) mail us at the address given at the end of this policy. Once we place your name on our internal “Do Not Call” list, we will no longer call you for marketing purposes (unless you submit another inquiry or request another consultation/quote from us subsequent to your initial request). Your instructions to limit the use of your information for these purposes will be processed as soon as reasonably practicable. Also, our Do-Not-Call process applies to calls made by us or by entities on our behalf. You may still receive calls from third parties who are not calling on our behalf regarding their products and services in which case you will need to request that those parties not call you, on a case-by-case basis.
D. Unsubscribing from Third Party Communications
Any third parties to whom we may disclose personal information may have their own privacy policies which describe how they use and disclose personal information, and your choices. If you want to learn more about their privacy practices, we encourage you to visit the websites of those third parties.
6. CHILDREN’S PRIVACY
Protecting children’s privacy is important to us. We do not direct the Site to, nor do we knowingly collect any personal information from, children who are under the age of 16. If we learn that a child under the age of 16 has provided personal information to the Site, we will use reasonable efforts to remove such information from our files.
7. THIRD-PARTY CONTENT, LINKS, AND PLUGINS
For your convenience, the Site may contain links to other websites, products, or services that we do not own or operate and which have privacy policies that differ from our own. If you choose to visit or use any third-party products or services, please be aware that this policy will not apply to your activities or any information you disclose while interacting with third parties, and we are not responsible for the practices of such third parties or websites.
The Site also may offer you the ability to interact with social plugins from social media sites, which may allow us and/or the social media site to receive data from or about you. In some cases, we may know that you clicked on a social plugin, such as a Twitter Follow button, or receive other information from the social media sites. Similarly, if you have previously provided personal information to a third-party operating a plug-in on the Site, then such third-party may recognize you on the Site. Your choice to use social network plugins and provide your information to them is subject to each social media site’s privacy policy, which may be different from ours, so please read these policies carefully to understand their policies and your options. As with linked sites, we have no control over the information that is collected, stored, or used by social network plugins, and are not responsible for the practices of such sites.
8. INTERNATIONAL VISITORS
The Site is hosted in the United States and is generally intended for United States visitors. If you visit from the European Union or other regions with laws governing data collection and use that may differ from U.S. law, please be aware that you are transferring personal information to the United States. The United States does not have the same data protection laws as the EU and some other regions. By providing personal information to us, you consent to the transfer of it to the United States and the use of it in accordance with this policy.
9. DATA SECURITY
We use reasonable security measures that are designed to protect personal information from loss, misuse, and unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration, or destruction. Please note, however, that no data security measures can be guaranteed to be completely effective. Consequently, we cannot ensure or warrant the security of any personal information or other information. You transmit personal information to us at your own risk.
10. UPDATES TO THIS PRIVACY POLICY
We may occasionally update this Privacy Policy. When we do, we will we will post the change(s) on the Site also update the “last updated” date at the end of this Privacy Policy. Your continued use of the Site following the posting of changes means you accept the changes. We encourage you to periodically review this policy to stay informed about how we collect, use, and disclose personal information. If we change the Privacy Statement in a material way, we will provide appropriate notice to you.
11. CONTACTING US
If you have any questions, comments, or concerns about this privacy policy, email us at contact@solar-america.org
This policy was last updated December 23, 2021.
