SEVERSON & WERSON PRIVACY POLICY
Maintaining client, employee and user privacy is central to Severson & Werson’s mission, our ethical duties and our commitment to excellence. This notice explains our information practices.
This website generally and this Blog specifically is for adults aged 18 and over and data subjects in the United States only, and by accessing the website generally or the Blog specifically, users represent and warrant that they meet the criteria for accessing and/or using the Blog. Access or use of the website generally or the Blog specifically by individuals who do not meet this criteria is expressly prohibited and unauthorized.
Personally Identifiable Information (PII), such as names, address, social security number, driver’s license number, account number, telephone number, fax number, e-mail address, etc. will be confidential and secured at all times. Personal health information (PHI), also referred to as protected health information, such as, medical history, test and laboratory results, insurance information and other data that a healthcare professional or insurance carrier that may be related to a matter shall be protected and encrypted.
Employee and Client related PII and PHI may be used by third parties such as insurance carriers, consultants, co-counsel, expert witnesses and others providing operational services to the Firm. Severson & Werson will not, under any circumstances, provide such information to any third party for its own commercial or other use. We will make all reasonable efforts to insure third parties protect this data. However, for obvious reasons we cannot guarantee the practices of these parties are maintained and followed.
Severson & Werson cannot guarantee the privacy of personal information you transmit over the web or that may be collected in transit by third parties, including vendors who provide services to you.
Severson & Werson reserves the right to disclose Personally Identifiable Information and or Personal Health Information in response to legal process or when we believe in good faith that the law requires it, for example, in response to a court order, subpoena or a law enforcement agency’s request.
Personal Information which users in the European Union provide to us may be transferred to other countries (including the United States), the data protection laws of which may differ from those of the European Union, and you expressly agree to such transfer.
How internet data is used
We use Google Analytics to automatically collect certain non-personally identifiable information when you visit our site – such as the type of browser you are using, the type of operating system you are using, and the domain name of your Internet service provider (eg, America Online, Comcast), your Geo targeted location, and other non-personally identifiable information.
Severson & Werson and its web host may use non-personally identifiable information to analyze site usage (such as information on the pages visited by our users), which allows us to improve the design and content of our site.
Collection of information by third-party sites and sponsors
Severson & Werson cannot guarantee the privacy of personal information you transmit over the web or that may be collected in transit by third parties, including vendors who provide services to you.
Our site may contain links to other sites whose information practices may be different than ours. Visitors should consult the other sites’ privacy notices as we have no control over information that is submitted to, or collected by, these third parties.
Severson & Werson may post information about programs and events that are sponsored by or co-sponsored by other firms or organizations. Should you choose to register electronically or attend any of these events, Severson & Werson will have no control over the third-party sponsors’ use of this information.
Our website uses cookies. A cookie is a text-only string of information that a website transfers to the cookie file of the browser on your computer’s hard disk so that the website can remember who you are. A cookie will typically contain the name of the domain from which the cookie has come, the “lifetime” of the cookie, and a value, usually a randomly generated unique number. This helps us to provide you with a good experience when you browse our website and also allows us to improve our site and services.
We may use cookies in the following ways:
- Where they are essential to make our site work
- To enable the personalization features on our site (which give you the ability to recall recently viewed pages and see information which you have input on line)
- To compile anonymous, aggregated statistics that allow us to understand how users use our site and to help us improve the structure of our site. We cannot identify you personally in this way.
Disabling/enabling cookies
You have the ability to accept or decline cookies by modifying the settings in your browser. However, you may not be able to use all the interactive features of our site if cookies are disabled.
We employ security measures to prevent unauthorized access to information that we collect online. However, we cannot guarantee the security of your personal information.
Cookies
_ga - 2 years -Used to distinguish users.
_gid - 24 hours -Used to distinguish users.
_gat - 1 minute – Used to throttle request rate. If Google Analytics is deployed via Google Tag Manager, this cookie will be named _dc_gtm_<property-id>.
AMP_TOKEN - 30 seconds to 1 year – Contains a token that can be used to retrieve a Client ID from AMP Client ID service. Other possible values indicate opt-out, inflight request or an error retrieving a Client ID from AMP Client ID service.
_gac_<property-id> - 90 days – Contains campaign related information for the user. If you have linked your Google Analytics and AdWords accounts, AdWords website conversion tags will read this cookie unless you opt-out. Learn more.
_hjIncludedInSample – session – used to track the session.
_hjid – 1 year – used to collect and send data to the data analytics site
cookie_notice_accepted – 1 year – used to track whether the user accepts the cookie tracking pop-up
Revisions to our Privacy Policy
We reserve the right to revise this policy or any part of it from time to time. Please review the policy periodically for changes.
Privacy Information Contact and Information for California Residents: Your rights under the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018
The CCPA provides consumers (California residents) with specific rights regarding their personal information. This section describes your CCPA rights and explains how to exercise those rights.
- Right to Know and Data Portability Rights:
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 12 months. Once we receive and confirm your verifiable consumer request for access, based on your request, 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.
We may deny your request for access if we are unable to verify your identity or have reason to believe that the request is fraudulent. We may also deny your request if the personal information is subject to an exemption under Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA), California Financial Information Privacy Act (FIPA), or the Driver’s Privacy Protection Act of 1994 (DPPA).
- Right to Delete:
You have the right to request that we delete any of your personal information that we collected and retained, subject to certain exceptions. Once we receive and confirm your verifiable consumer request, we will delete, de-identify, or aggregate your personal information (and direct our service providers to do the same), unless an exception applies.
We may deny your deletion request if retaining the personal information is necessary for us or our service providers to:
- Complete the transaction for which the personal information was collected, provide a good or service requested by the consumer, or reasonably anticipated within the context of a business’s ongoing business relationship with the consumer, or otherwise perform a contract between the business and the consumer.
- Detect security incidents, protect against malicious, deceptive, fraudulent, or illegal activity; or prosecute those responsible for that activity.
- Debug to identify and repair errors that impair existing intended functionality.
- Exercise free speech, ensure the right of another consumer to exercise his or her right of free speech, or exercise another right provided for by law.
- Comply with the California Electronic Communications Privacy Act pursuant to Chapter 3.6 (commencing with Section 1546) of Title 12 of Part 2 of the Penal Code.
- 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 businesses’ deletion of the information is likely to render impossible or seriously impair the achievement of such research, if the consumer has provided informed consent.
- To enable solely internal uses that are reasonably aligned with the expectations of the consumer based on the consumer’s relationship with the business.
- Comply with a legal obligation.
- Otherwise use the consumer’s personal information, internally, in a lawful manner that is compatible with the context in which the consumer provided the information.
- The personal information is subject to an exemption under Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA), California Financial Information Privacy Act (FIPA), or the Driver’s Privacy Protection Act of 1994 (DPPA).
Additionally, we may deny your request to delete if we are unable to verify your identity or have reason to believe that the request is fraudulent.
- Right to Opt-Out:
You have the right to opt-out of the sale of your personal information. However, we do not and will not sell your personal information . We do not and will not sell the personal information of minors under 16 years of age without affirmative authorization.
- Right to 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.
Submitting a Verified Consumer Request
Only 1) you, 2) a person authorized by you to act on your behalf, or 3) an entity registered with the California Secretary of State and authorized by you 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 access (aka Right to Know) or data portability twice within a 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. Given the sensitivity of your personal information that we collect and retain, we will need to verify your identity with at least 3 separate pieces of information such as name, address, account number, date of birth, last 4 of your Social Security Number, phone number, etc.
- Describe your request with sufficient detail that allows us to properly understand, evaluate, and respond to it.
Before we can respond to a verifiable consumer request submitted by an authorized agent, we need to confirm not only that person or entity’s authority to act on your behalf but also verify the identity of the authorized agent. If you are authorized to submit a request on behalf of a California resident, please email our privacy officer at the link below and provide the following information:
- To verify your authorization to request on behalf of a California resident, please attach a copy of one or more of the following to your request email:
- California Secretary of State authorization,
- written permission from the California resident, or
- power of attorney
2. To verify your identity, please attach copies of the following to your request email:
- Valid Government Issued ID (not expired)
3. To verify the identity of the consumer for whom you are submitting the request, please attach two or more of the following with your request email (three or more are required when requesting a copy of the California resident’s personal information):
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. We will only use personal information provided in a verifiable consumer request to verify the requestor’s identity or authority to make the request.
We will acknowledge receipt of the request within 10 days of its receipt. We will respond to a verifiable consumer request within 45 days of its receipt. If we require more time (up to 90 days), we will inform you of the reason and extension period in writing. We will deliver our written response by mail or electronically, at your option. Any disclosures we provide will only cover the 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 portability requests, we will provide the responsive information in a portable and, to the extent technically feasible, in a readily useable format that allows you to transmit the information 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.
- Changes to Our Privacy Policy
We reserve the right to amend this privacy policy at our discretion and at any time.
- How to Contact Us
To exercise the access, data portability, and deletion rights described above, or to ask any questions regarding the processing of your personal information by Severson & Werson, please submit a verifiable consumer request to us by either contacting our Privacy Officer or contact us at Calling us at 1-877-710-0007.