Privacy Policy of ARE Telecom Incorporated

ARE Telecom Incorporated dba ARE Telecom + Broadband and dba ARE Structures (“ARE Telecom”, “we”, “us” or “our”) has developed this Privacy Policy to explain who we are, how we collect, use and share personal information about individuals (“you”) who access our any of our websites (the “Site”), as well as in connection with any of our products, services, sales, or marketing activities (“Interactions”).

This Privacy Policy describes how we collect and use personal information in the usual course of business. This Privacy Policy applies to your use of the Site (however accessed and/or used, whether via personal computers, mobile devices or otherwise) or any other means or applications in which engage with us regarding an Interaction.

This Privacy Policy is subject to our Website Terms of Use. Each time that you access, register and/or use the Site or engage in an Interaction, you signify that you have read, understand, and agree to be bound by the Website Terms of Use and this Privacy Policy, where permitted by law.

ARE Telecom operates https://aretelecom.com and may operate other websites (collectively the “Site”). Our policy is to respect your privacy regarding any information we may collect while operating our Site.

Who we are

ARE Telecom Incorporated, dba ARE Telecom + Broadband and dba ARE Structures, is a Minnesota corporation and a U.S. based company that provides complete pole and foundation solutions (such as our ARE Ballasted Foundations & Self-Raising Poles).

What information we collect

Personal Information. We collect personal information that you provide to us when you access our Site, engage in an Interaction with us, contract our customer support or send us an email or communicate with us in any way (each an Interaction). The personal information we may collect includes: your contact information (such as your name, address, telephone number, business address, proposed site address, and email address) and contact preferences when you complete our contact form, or otherwise connect with us; login information (such as your username and password); and if you make a purchase, payment details (card information, alternative payment method information, invoices, order information and transaction history). If you communicate directly with us, we may maintain a record of those communications and responses.

Information Collected Automatically. We may also automatically collect information about your usage our Site or Interactions, which may include personal information or may include non-personally identifiable information about you. Such automatically collected information may be acquired through the Applications (defined below), cookies, web beacons, log files and other technologies: domain name, operating system, pages viewed, links clicked and other activities on our Site; traffic statistic; your Internet Protocol (IP) address; and/or browser and device characteristics/ID; length of time accessing our Site; date and time of access; and language preferences, referring URLs, country, location, information about how and when you use our Site and other technical information. This information is primarily needed to maintain the security and operation of our Site, and for our internal analytics and reporting purposes to assess and improve our Site.

Public Forum, Social Media, and Blogs. We may create or host a public discussion forum or blog either through our Site or Interactions (e.g., social media accounts). Such discussion forum or blog would be for the general public, and all information submitted through the same should be public, not confidential and appropriate for public discourse. We do not assume responsibility for any information you may choose to post in such discussion forum or blog, but we reserve the right to remove posts which are threatening, inappropriate, in violation of law, or otherwise harmful to others. If you make a post, all of the information that you post will be available to all visitors to our Site. If you post your own content on our Site, your posting may become public and we cannot prevent such information from being used in a manner that may violate this Privacy Policy, the law, or your personal privacy rights.

Most web browsers and some mobile operating systems and mobile applications include a Do-NotTrack (“DNT”) feature or setting you can activate to signal your privacy preference not to have data about your online browsing activities monitored and collected. At this stage, no uniform technology standard for recognizing and implementing DNT signals has been finalized. As such, we do not currently respond to DNT browser signals or any other mechanism that automatically communicates your choice not to be tracked online. If a standard for online tracking is adopted that we must follow in the future, we will inform you about that practice in a revised version of this Privacy Policy.

We do not collect or process any data regarding race or ethnic origin; political opinions; religious or philosophical beliefs; trade union memberships; genetic or biometric data; health or mortality; sexual orientation.

Web analysis tools

We may use web analysis tools that are built into our Site to measure and collect anonymous session information. We may collect through any third-party application or third-party sites, social networks, or social media sites (such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Google, etc., collectively “Applications”). Services providing analytic tools (“Analytic Services”), including without limitation Google Analytics® may be used with the Site which transmits website traffic data to servers in the United States. Analytic Services do not collect personal information which identifies individual users or associate your IP address with any other data. We do not share your personal information with our Analytic Services in connection with their performing of any services on our Site. We use reports provided by Analytic Services to help us understand website traffic and webpage usage. We may use third party services, such as Google AdWords, to send users targeted ads, based on their use of our Site. We may also participate in third-party ad networks and allow third parties to use cookies, pixel tags and other tracking technologies on our Site to display targeted ads. These third parties may use cookies and other technologies to track your activities and display ads to you; they also may be able to associate the information they collect with other information they have about you from other sources. For information about Google AdWords, including how to opt out, visit Google’s Ads Settings page. You may also opt-out of many third-party ad networks.

How we use your information

We process your personal information in compliance with our lawful basis to do so. The lawful basis may include: our legitimate interests to provide our Site or Interactions; performance of a contract if we contract with you; your specific consent if required and provided for a specific purpose; our legal obligations; and our vital interests.

Legitimate Interests. We may send you emails in response to a request for a quote, or in relation to your interest in ARE Telecom + Broadband. We may also use your email to provide you information about our products and services. We may send you marketing communications, including via email and SMS in compliance with applicable laws and in accordance with your preferences, that we believe may be of interest to you.

Vital Interests. We may use your information for our business purposes, such as data analysis, audits, fraud monitoring and prevention, developing new products, enhancing, improving or modifying our Site, identifying usage trends, determining the effectiveness of our promotional campaigns and operating and expanding our business activities.

Legal Obligations. We may use your information as we believe to be necessary or appropriate: (a) under applicable law, including laws outside your country of residence; (b) to comply with legal process; (c) to respond to requests from public and government authorities; (d) to enforce our Website Terms of Use; (e) to protect our operations or those of our marketing partners; (f) to protect our rights, or the privacy, safety or property of you or others; and (g) to allow us to pursue available legal remedies or limit the damages that we may sustain.

We may use your information for other reasons that we describe to you at the time of collection.

How We Share Your Information

We may disclose your personal information to the following categories of recipients and for the following reasons:

I. Service providers. In order to provide Interactions with you, it is necessary for us to disclose your information to our contractual service providers who perform certain functions on our behalf. Examples include our cloud hosting providers (to provide data storage and processing services); communications providers (to process new queries and to manage our emails); and fulfillment providers (to send you products or provide access to our services). Our current service provide for data hosting is SiteGround. SiteGround is a platform that is built on the Google cloud infrastructure. For more insight, you may also want to contact SiteGround at https://www.siteground.com.

II. Change of Control. The ownership or control of ARE Telecom may change at some point in the future. Should that occur, we want to be able to maintain a relationship with you. In the event of a change in ownership, merger, or in the event of bankruptcy, your information may be shared with the person or business that owns or controls this Site after such event.

III. Compliance with laws. We may disclose information where we are legally required to do so in order to comply with applicable law, governmental requests, a judicial proceeding, court order, or other legal process (including in response to public authorities to meet national security or law enforcement requirements).

IV. Vital interests and legal rights. We may disclose information where we believe it is necessary to investigate, prevent, or take action regarding illegal activities, to verify the authenticity of any transaction, suspected fraud, situations involving potential threats to the safety of any person, violations of our Website Terms of Use or this Privacy Policy, or as evidence in litigation in legal proceedings

V. Consent. We may share your information with any other person with your consent to the disclosure.

Your Data Protection Rights

Depending on where you reside, you may have certain data protection rights associated with your personal information. For example, there are several states which have implemented data protection laws similar to California’s Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). In addition, some countries have data protection laws (i.e., the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) or Canada’s PIPEDA). Under data protection laws you may have the right to:

I. Access to Information. Request that we disclose the categories and specific information collected about you. Please note that if you have elected to create a login with ARE Telecom, you can correct, update, and delete any personal information that you have provided to us by logging into your account and going to the preference center and your personal information. If you do not want to go into your account, you can email us at sales@aretelecom.com.

II. Opting-Out of Sharing or Restricting Use. Request that we not share your personal information or restrict use of your personal information. For example, you can opt out of receiving marketing emails from us by clicking the “unsubscribe” or “preference center” link in the email, or if you are a member by logging into your account and going to email preference communications. You can also email us at sales@aretelecom.com. If you choose to no longer receive marketing information, we may still communicate with you regarding such things as security updates, product functionality, responses to service requests, or other transactional, non-marketing purposes.

III. Deletion of Information. Request that we delete your personal information that we have collected (please note that we may be legally permitted or obligated to retain the information in which case we will treat the request as a request to stop sharing.

IV. Correction of Information. Request that we correct any personal information that is inaccurate. As noted in I above, you may correct any of your information in your user account.

If you would like to exercise any of this rights, you may contact us as outlined below. We will not discriminate against you if you exercise any of your rights under applicable data protection laws.

Third Party Links

This Privacy Policy only applies to our Site and your Interactions with us. Any access to and use of any linked websites or services not owned or controlled by us are not governed by this Privacy Policy. We do not have any control over these third-party websites and do not endorse them; such websites or services are instead governed by the privacy policies of those third parties. We are not responsible for the information practices of such third parties.

How We Keep Your Personal Information Secure

We have implemented appropriate physical, technical and administrative safeguards against unauthorized access, use, modification and disclosure of personal information in our custody and control. Your personal information, as noted above, is hosted by our service provider in the United States. Our service provider is committed to using industry standard physical, electronic, and organizational safeguards to protect information against loss or theft as well as unauthorized access and disclosure to protect individuals’ privacy and to employ security techniques to protect such data from unauthorized access. However, no data transmission over the Internet or information storage technology can be guaranteed to be 100% secure, so you should take care in deciding what information you share with us. If you are concerned that your personal information has been breached due to our Site or Interactions, please contact us promptly.

The safety and security of your personal information also depends on you. Where we have given you (or where you have chosen) a password for access to certain parts of our Site, you are responsible for keeping this password confidential. We ask you not to share your password with anyone. Any transmission of personal information is at your own risk. We are not responsible for circumvention of any privacy settings or security measures contained on our Site through your user credentials such as your password.

Retention of Your Personal Information

We retain your personal information to comply with applicable legal, tax or accounting requirements, to maintain records of fraud, to enforce our agreements or comply with our legal obligations or in accordance with our standard business practices. We reserve the right to delete your personal information when we no longer have a need to retain it.

Children Online Privacy Protection Act (“COPPA”) Notification

In compliance with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, 15 U.S.C. § 6501.06 and 16 C.F.R. §§ 312.1 – 312.12, we do not knowingly solicit data from or market to children under 18 years of age. The Site is intended for a general audience and are not directed or intended for anyone under 18 years of age. You must be 18 years of age to use the Site or engage in Interactions with us. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under the age of 18. If you are under 18, do not use or provide any information through our Site or through any of the features, register on our Site, make any purchases through our Site, use any of the interactive or public comment features of our Site, or provide any information about yourself to us, including your name, address, telephone number, email address, or any screen name or user name you may use. If we obtain actual knowledge that any information we collect has been provided by an individual under the age of 18, we will promptly delete that information. If you believe we might have any information from or about a child under 18, please contact us as outlined below.

Changes to Our Privacy Policy

ARE Telecom will review and update this Privacy Policy periodically and will note the date of its most recent update below. We encourage you to review this Privacy Policy frequently to be informed of how we are using your information. Your continued use of the Sites after any change in this Privacy Policy will constitute your acceptance of any change that we make.

How to Contact Us

If you have any questions, comments or concerns about this Privacy Policy or our privacy practices you may contact us by email at sales@aretelecom.com by phone at +1(651)330-1263. When contacting us, please include your full name and email address, and indicate the specific nature of your request or inquiry. We will use commercially reasonable efforts to promptly acknowledge receipt and resolve any such request or inquiry.

Revisions

This Privacy Policy was last revised on August 27, 2024.