Privacy Policy

PRIVACY POLICY NOTICE

The purpose of this Privacy Policy (“Privacy Policy”) is to inform you of how The Towbes Group (“TG”) and its family of companies, including its affiliates, subsidiaries, and other related entities operating apartment communities owned or managed by TG (collectively, “The Towbes Group”), protect and use your personal information. We are committed to respecting your privacy rights. Please read this Privacy Policy carefully. It gives you important information about how we handle your personal information.

This Privacy Policy covers information practices of websites that link to this Privacy Policy, including towbes.com and any subdomains thereof (collectively, the “Sites”). We may maintain pages for the Towbes Group on social media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, Google, LinkedIn, Instagram, and other third party platforms. When you visit our pages on those platforms, the platform provider’s privacy policy will apply to your interactions and their collection, use and processing of your personal information. You or the platform may provide us with information through the platform, and we will treat such information in accordance with this Privacy Policy.

This Privacy Policy is effective as of April 1, 2021 and has been developed with the recognition that applicable laws regarding privacy and personally identifying information, and the dissemination thereof, are evolving. Accordingly, this Privacy Policy is subject to change at any time and The Towbes Group expressly reserves the right to modify the terms of this Privacy Policy at any time and in our reasonable discretion. Your continued use of any Sites that links to this Privacy Policy following our posting of a change notice will constitute binding acceptance of this Privacy Policy and all changes thereto.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Compliance with Law
2. Personal Information We Collect
3. How We Use Your Personal Information
4. How We Share Your Personal Information
5. Children’s Privacy
6. Cookies
7. Third Party Analytics Tools
8. Third Party Advertising Tools
9. Usage Information; IP Addresses
10. Aggregate Information
11. Disclosure of Personally Identifiable Information
12. Third Party Sites, Mobile Applications and Services
13. Security Practices
14. Privacy Notice for California Residents
15. Notice to Residents of Certain States
16. Notice to Users Located Outside of the United States
17. Do-Not Track Disclosures; Third Party Tracking
18. Consent
19. Contact Us
20. Our Doors Are Open

1. Compliance with Law

We protect your privacy in accordance with the requirements of applicable state and federal laws and this Privacy Policy. We will take commercially reasonable measures to ensure that the personal information you submit to us remains secure and is used and shared only for the purposes as set forth herein. This Privacy Policy provides you with a notice of our privacy policies and practices, informing you of the types of information that we collect from you and the persons or entities to whom your personal information may be disclosed.

2. Personal Information We Collect

In the course of your use of the Sites, you may voluntarily share personal information about yourself with us in several ways. You may provide personal information to us on applications or other forms when communicating or transacting with us in writing, electronically, or by phone, and through requests for forms or literature in connection with your renting an apartment from The Towbes Group. This personal information may include, but is not limited to, your name, address, telephone number, e-mail address, social security number, driver’s license number, bank account information, gender, marital status, employment history, income, assets, credit score, credit history, lines of credit information, property you currently own or rent, the size of your household, and date of birth (collectively, “Personal Information”). In addition to any Personal Information that you may voluntarily provide, the Site collects information using cookies and other third-party tools. Please refer to the sections below on “Cookies” and “Third Party Analytics Tools” and “Third Party Advertising Tools” for more information about the information these tools collect and use.

When you visit the Sites, we also collect technical and usage information that does not identify you personally (“Other Information”), including information about your computer and Internet connection such as the IP address of your computer and/or Internet service provider, the date and time you access the Sites, the Internet address of websites from which you linked to our Sites, the type of device, browser and operating system you are using, and your movements and preferences on our Sites.

3. How We Use Your Personal Information

We may use your personally identifiable information to deliver our services or information you have requested, verify your authority to enter certain password protected areas of the Site, verify that you are a customer or prospective customer, send you information that you have signed up to receive, notices about our products and/or services that you have used or that may be of interest to you and notices about events, and improve the content and general administration of the Site and our services. If you are a user of our services, we may use your personally identifiable information to provide the services to you.

We may use Other Information, which does not identify you personally, for any reason we deem appropriate, including for purposes of administering, protecting and improving our Sites and systems, to better understand the preferences of our Site visitors, to identify server problems, to compile aggregated statistics about Site usage, and to help personalize your experience on our Sites. We and our service providers may use the IP address of your device to approximate your general physical location such as city and state for purposes such as providing information on local promotions and events.

4. How We Share Your Personal Information

We do not share your personal information with third parties without your consent, except in the following circumstances or as described in this Privacy Policy:

• Affiliates. We may share your personal information with our corporate parent, subsidiaries, and affiliates, for purposes consistent with this Privacy Policy.
• Service providers. We may share your personal information with third party companies and individuals that provide services on our behalf or help us operate the Sites (such as customer support, hosting, analytics, shipping, payment processing, email delivery, marketing, and database management services). These third parties may use your personal information only as directed or authorized by us and are prohibited from using or disclosing your information for any other purpose.
• Partners. We may sometimes share your personal information with partners or enable partners to collect information directly via our Sites. For example, we may share your personal information to selected third party entities that may review and use that information to send email messages or contact you in other ways to provide information to you about their products and services. These third parties include, without limitation, residential homebuilders and other businesses.
• Professional advisors. We may disclose your personal information to professional advisors, such as lawyers, bankers, auditors and insurers, where necessary in the course of the professional services that they render to us.
• For compliance, fraud prevention and safety. We may share your personal information for the compliance, fraud prevention and safety purposes described above.
• Business transfers. We may sell, transfer or otherwise share some or all of our business or assets, including your personal information, in connection with a business transaction (or potential business transaction) such as a corporate divestiture, merger, consolidation, acquisition, reorganization or sale of assets, or in the event of bankruptcy or dissolution.

If we disclose personal information to a third party for a business purpose, we enter into a contract that describes the purpose and requires the recipient both to keep that personal information confidential and not to use it for any purpose except performing the contract.

5. Children’s Privacy

The Towbes Group recognizes the privacy interests of children and we encourage parents and guardians to take an active role in their children’s online activities and interests. The Sites are not directed at or intended to be used by children, and The Towbes Group will not intentionally collect or maintain Personal Information about anyone under the age of 13, except for information provided by the relevant parent(s) or guardian(s). If we discover that we have collected any other Personal Information about anyone under the age of 13, we will take reasonable steps to promptly delete such information from our systems.

6. Cookies

Cookies are pieces of information that a website transfers to an individual for record-keeping purposes. Cookies make web use easier for you by saving your preferences while you are at our sites. The use of cookies is an industry standard, and as such, you will find them at most major websites. By showing how and when users use a site, cookies help us see which areas are popular and which are not. Many improvements and updates to our sites are based on such data as total number of visitors and pages viewed. This information is most easily tracked with cookies. We use the information from cookies only to provide services better tailored to your needs and for the protection of our websites and users from potential harm. We never save passwords or credit card information in cookies.

We use persistent tracking cookies on our websites which are cookies that stay in your web browser between visits. These cookies can also be used to show us which sites you have visited before entering our sites and which sites you may go to if you leave, especially if you access the registered user parts of our sites by using your social media log-in credentials. We use these to capture analytical information about our visitors that helps us to improve the performance of our website and create a better experience. These cookies allow us to recognize and count the number of visitors, to provide content related to a prior visit to our websites, to see how visitors move around the sites and the products and services they are interested in when they are using them and to see what other types of products and services they may be interested in. This helps us to improve the way our websites work, for example by making sure users are finding what they need easily.

We may also use cookies which allow us or third parties to advertise our products and services on websites that you access after you have visited our sites. You may also see advertisements from us if other websites you visit capture through a cookie that you have been on our sites. These ad preference cookies are often used by search engine sites. Our cookies can be disabled as indicated below. To prevent this advertising, you may also need to review the cookies disabling information on the other sites you visit.

Most browsers are set up to accept cookies. If you want to change your cookie preferences, you can do so through your browser settings or refuse the cookies when you enter any of our websites. You may also limit the information we gain from certain cookies by logging directly into the registered areas of our sites rather than by logging in by using your social media login credentials. Please remember that our cookies are often used to give you certain functionality and without them you may not be able to use some of our websites e.g. save properties from our listings.

You can also remove cookies that have already been set in your browser via your browser settings.

7. Third Party Analytics Tools

Beyond the personally identifiable information you voluntarily provide to us directly, The Towbes Group utilizes analytics tools including third party technologies, such as Google Analytics, to collect information utilizing cookies. Certain types of information, including geolocation, device type, onsite website usage and behavior, demographic data, and purchase history, is collected and aggregated across The Towbes Group’s Sites for users for our analysis and advertising efforts.

8. Third Party Advertising Tools

The Towbes Group uses Google Analytics and Google Ads and similar types of technologies to display relevant advertisements to users who have previously visited the Site. Referred to as remarketing or retargeting, The Towbes Group may utilize previous session information to serve display advertisements to you on the Site and based on such session information Google may set a cookie and serve ads to you on third party websites on the Google Display Network. Third party vendors such as Google may display ads for The Towbes Group on websites across the Internet. Aggregated user data may be utilized to create remarketing/retargeting “lists,” or groups of users with similar onsite behaviors or demographics. The Towbes Group also uses Google tools to display advertisements to users based on their inferred interests and demographics.

Users may learn more about Google’s use of cookies by visiting the Google Privacy and Terms page at http://www.google.com/policies. You may opt out of being tracked by Google Analytics by:

• Turning off cookies in the preferences settings in your browser;
• Downloading the Google Analytics opt-out browser add on available at: https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout;
• Opting out of user interest and demographic categories in the Settings for Google;
• Ads feature to manage or opt out of Google interest based ads; or
• Managing cookies used for online advertising across multiple companies at the US-based Network Advertising Initiative at http://www.networkadvertising.org/choices/.

9. Usage Information; IP Addresses

We automatically collect information about your interactions with the Site, including information about the device you use to interact with and/or access the Site, such as: IP address, access dates and times, information about your approximate location (as determined through your IP address), hardware and software information, mobile, computer or hardware device information (e.g., operating system version, Hardware model, IMEI number and other unique device identifiers, MAC address, and device settings), device event information, and crash data. This information allows The Towbes Group to understand how you’ve used the Site (which may include administrative and support communications with us or whether you have clicked on links to External Web Sites), and other actions you have taken in connection with your use of the Site. We automatically collect log data when you access and use the Site, even if you have not created an account or logged in.

10. Aggregate Information

Page We may collect and track the total number of visitors to the Site, the number of visitors to each page of the Site, External Web Sites (defined below) linked to and other aggregated data collected through our services and we may analyze this data for trends and statistics in the aggregate but such information will be maintained, used and disclosed in aggregate form only and it will not contain personally identifiable information. We may use such information for purposes such as analyzing trends, administering the Site, and to understand how users interact with the Site.

11. Disclosure of Personally Identifiable Information

We may provide your personally identifiable information and the data generated by cookies and third party analytics tools (i.e. Google Analytics and Google Ads) and the aggregate information to the vendors and service agencies that we may engage to assist us in providing our services to you.

We will disclose your personally identifiable information if we reasonably believe we are required to do so by law, regulation or other government authority or to assist in any investigation, to protect our or our users’ rights or to enforce our terms of use. We will not sell your personally identifiable information to any company or organization except we may transfer your personally identifiable information to a successor entity upon a merger, consolidation or other corporate reorganization in which The Towbes Group participates or to a purchaser of all or substantially all of The Towbes Group’s assets to which this Site relates.

12. Third Party Sites, Mobile Applications and Services

The Sites may contain links to other websites, mobile applications, and other online services operated by third parties. These links are not an endorsement of, or representation that we are affiliated with, any third party. In addition, our content may be included on web pages or in mobile applications or online services that are not associated with us. We do not control third party websites, mobile applications or online services, and we are not responsible for their actions. Other websites, mobile applications and services follow different rules regarding the collection, use and sharing of your personal information. We encourage you to read the privacy policies of the other websites, mobile applications and online services you use.

13. Security Practices

The security of your personal information is important to us. We employ a number of organizational, technical and physical safeguards designed to protect the personal information we collect. However, security risk is inherent in all internet and information technologies and we cannot guarantee the security of your personal information.

14. Privacy Notice for California Residents

The California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”) provides California residents (as defined in the CCPA) with certain rights regarding their Personal Information (as defined below). These rights and the methods for exercising them are described in more detail below. Please note that this section applies only to California residents and the rights described in it can only be exercised by such California residents.

For more information, please visit https://oag.ca.gov/privacy/ccpa.

(a) Personal Information We Collect

For purposes of this section “Personal Information” means information that identifies, relates to, describes, is reasonably capable of being associated with, or could reasonably be linked, directly or indirectly, with a particular consumer or household. Personal information does not include:

• Information that is lawfully made available from federal, state, or local government records;
• De-identified or aggregated information; and
• Information excluded from the scope of the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 (“CCPA”) such as health or medical information covered under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (“HIPAA”) and financial information covered under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (“FCRA”) or GrammLeach Bliley Act (“GLBA”).

(b) Description of Rights

• Right to Opt-Out of Sale
  • The Towbes Group does not sell your information to third parties.
• Right to Know
  • You have the right to request that we disclose any Personal Information about you that The Towbes Group collects, uses, discloses, and sells (if any at all). Once we receive and confirm your verifiable consumer request, we will disclose to you:
  • The categories of information we have collected about you.
  • The categories of sources for the Personal Information we have 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.
  • If we sold or disclosed your Personal Information, we will let you know and list the categories of Personal Information that were disclosed or sold to third parties for a business or commercial purpose.
  • Whether or not we sell the Personal Information of minors under 16 years of age without affirmative consent.
• Right to Delete
  • You have the right to request that The Towbes Group delete any Personal Information that we collected from you and retained, subject to certain exceptions. Once we receive and confirm your verifiable consumer request, we will delete (and direct service providers to delete) your Personal Information from our records. The Towbes Group may deny your deletion request if retaining the 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 already requested by the consumer or reasonably anticipated to be requested, taking into account our ongoing relationship with the consumer, or to otherwise perform a contract between us and the consumer.
    • Detect security incidents, protect against malicious, deceptive, fraudulent, or illegal activity; or to prosecute those responsible for that activity.
    • Debug to identify and repair errors that impair existing functionality.
    • Exercise free speech, ensure the right of another consumer to exercise his or her free speech, or exercise another right provided for by law.
    • Comply with the California Electronic Communications Privacy Act.
    • Engage in public or peer-reviewed scientific, historical, or statistical research in the public interest, if the deletion of the information is likely to render impossible or seriously impair the achievement of such research, if the consumer has provided informed consent.
    • Enable solely 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 manner that is compatible with the context in which the consumer provided the information.
• Right to Non-Discrimination
  • The Towbes Group will not discriminate against a consumer for exercising any of their privacy rights under the CCPA by doing any of the following:
  • Denying goods or services.
  • Charging different prices or rates for goods or services, including applying discounts or imposing penalties.
  • Providing a different level or quality of goods or service. Suggesting that a consumer will receive a different price or rate for goods or services or a different level or quality of goods and services.

(c) Exercising Your Rights

• How to Exercise Your Rights
  • To exercise any of your rights described above, please submit a request to The Towbes Group by emailing us at [email protected] or by calling 1(877) 869-2371.
  • Only you, or a person registered with the California Secretary of State that you have authorized to act on your behalf, may make a consumer request related to your Personal Information. You may, however, make a consumer request on behalf of your child.
  • The Towbes Group 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. All requests must provide enough information for us to reasonably verify you are the person about whom we collected Personal Information or an authorized representative. The amount of information necessary will depend on the request but we will only use Personal Information provided with a request to verify your identity and authority to make the request.
  • If you have any questions or concerns regarding the exercise of your rights or The Towbes Group’s privacy policies and practices, please let us know. You can contact us by using the “Contact Information” details below.
• Exercising Rights for Someone Else
  • Only you, or a person registered with the California Secretary of State that you have authorized to act on your behalf, may make a verifiable consumer request related to your Personal Information. You may, however, make a verifiable consumer request on behalf of your child.
• Response Timing and Format
  • We will make our best effort to respond to a verifiable consumer request within 45 days of its receipt. Within ten (10) days of receiving the request, The Towbes Group will confirm receipt and provide information about its verification and processing of the request. If we require more time, we will inform you of the reason and an extension period in writing. For requests that seek the disclosure of specific pieces of information about the consumer, we will select a format that is readily useable and should allow consumers to transmit the information from one entity to another entity without hindrance. We do not charge a free to process requests, unless they are manifestly unfounded or excessive. The Towbes Group will maintain records of consumer requests made pursuant to CCPA as well as our response to said requests for a period of at least twentyfour (24) months.

(d) Business Purposes for Collection and Use of Personal Information

• Fulfilling Our Obligations: We process Personal Information to fulfill or meet the reason you provided the information to us, such as contracting with us as a tenant or applying for a position with us.
• Advertising and Marketing: We process Personal Information to communicate with you about The Towbes Group products and services you have expressed an interest in and to provide you with information on other similar Towbes Group products and services we believe will be of interest to you.
• Service Performance: We process Personal Information for the performance of services and to better understand how we can help prospective residents, current residents and employees.
• Security and Legal Obligations: We process Personal Information to detect security incidents, protect against malicious, deceptive, fraudulent, or illegal activity. We also process Personal Information in accordance with our legal rights and obligations under applicable laws.

(e) Third Parties with Whom We Share Personal Information

• Contracted service providers who provide IT, system administration and hosting, payment processing, research and analytics, marketing and data enrichment for the purposes set forth above.
• Our affiliates where required based on the affiliate’s relationship with you or where sharing of data is necessary to fulfill a request you have submitted.
• Sponsors of events, contests and promotions in which you have expressed interest or for which you have registered.
• Third-party advertising networks and websites so that The Towbes Group can market and advertise on third party platforms and sites.
• Professional advisors such as lawyers, bankers, auditors and insurers.
• Third parties who are part of a business transition such as a merger, reorganization or the sale of all or a part of our business.

In the last twelve (12) months, we have collected the categories of personal information described and shown in the chart below:

• Identifiers: name, user/account name, postal address, email address, contact information, internet protocol address, internet cookie identification number, social security number, taxpayer identification number, bank account/credit card number, driver’s license number, passport number, date of birth, picture, resident identification number, device identification number, emergency contact details.
• Personal Information Categories Listed in California Civil Code § 1798.80(e): name, signature, social security number, address, telephone number, passport number, insurance policy number, education, employment, employment history, financial information, medical or health insurance information.
• Protected Classification Characteristics Under California or Federal Law: age, race, color, ancestry, national origin, citizenship, marital status, sex, veteran or military status.
• Commercial Information: records of products or services purchased, obtained, or considered, other purchasing histories or tendencies, utility bills, insurance claimant name and contact information, credit history, lease information, rental history, rent amount.
• Internet or Other Electronic Network Activity Information: browsing history, search history, internet protocol address, cookie identification number, information regarding consumer’s interaction with a website, internet postings.
• Sensory Data: pictures, videos, and sounds.
• Employment or Other Professional Information: current job and past job history, job title, and, in the case of prospective and current residents or tenants, pay history, income.