Heritage Solar Privacy Policy

This policy tells you about how we use and protect your personal information.

Scope

This Privacy Policy describes how we handle your personal information for our services on the Heritage Solar, websites. It applies generally to the Heritagesolar.com website and other related websites, if any, where this policy appears in the footer of the page (“the Sites”).

By accepting the Privacy Policy and the User Agreement in registration, you expressly consent to our collection, storage, use and disclosure of your personal information as described in this Privacy Policy. This Privacy Policy is effective upon acceptance for new users and is otherwise effective on April 1st, 2007.

Collection

You can browse the Sites without telling us who you are or revealing any personal information about yourself. Once you give us your personal information, you are not anonymous to us. If you choose to provide us with personal information, you consent to the transfer and storage of that information to our servers located in the United States.

We may collect and store the following personal information:

• email address, physical contact information, and sometimes financial information, such as credit card or bank account numbers;
• transactional information based on your activities on the Sites (such as requests for quotes, requests for proposals, posts, projects and other services that you have purchased in the past, bids, quotes, proposals, storefronts, feedback, ratings and associated comments, acceptances, rejections and content you generate or that relates to your account);
• billing, location, address and other information you provide for a request;
• Heritage Solar community discussions, chats, dispute resolution, correspondence through the Site, and correspondence sent to us;
• computer sign-on data, statistics on page views, traffic to and from the Site, and ad data;
• other information, including IP address and standard web log information, and
• supplemental information from third parties. (For example, if you incur a debt to Heritage Solar, we will generally conduct a credit check by obtaining additional information about you from a credit bureau, as permitted by law. As another example, if the information you provide cannot be verified, we may ask you to send us additional information (such as your driver license, credit card statement, and/or a recent utility bill or other information confirming your address), or to answer additional questions online to help verify your information.)

Marketing

We don't sell or rent your personal information to third parties for their marketing purposes without your explicit consent. We may combine your information with information we collect from other companies (such as demographic data) to improve and personalize our services. If you don't wish to receive marketing communications from us, simply indicate your preference once you sign-in on in Heritage Solar, similar account status page, or by following the directions within the email.

Use

Our primary purpose in collecting personal information is to provide you with a safe, smooth, efficient, and customized experience. You agree that we may use your personal information to:

• provide the services and customer support you request;
• prevent potentially prohibited or illegal activities;
• customize, measure, and improve our services and the Sites' content and layout;
• tell you about targeted marketing, service updates, and promotional offers based on your communication preferences; and compare information for accuracy, and verify it with third parties.

Our Disclosure of Your Information

We may disclose personal information to respond to legal requirements, enforce our policies, respond to claims that a listing or other content violates the rights of others, or protect anyone's rights, property, or safety.

We may also share your personal information with:

• other third parties to whom you explicitly ask us to send your information; (or about whom you are otherwise explicitly notified and consent to when using a specific service)
• law enforcement or other governmental officials, in response to a verified request relating to a criminal investigation or alleged illegal activity; (In such events we will disclose name, city, state, telephone number, email address, User ID history, fraud complaints, and bidding and listing history.)
• individuals under confidentiality agreement, as we in our sole discretion believe necessary or appropriate in connection with an investigation of fraud, intellectual property infringement, piracy, or other unlawful activity; (In such events we will disclose name, street address, city, state, zip code, country, phone number, email, and company name.) and
• other business entities, should we plan to merge with or be acquired by that business entity. (Should such a combination occur, we will require that the new combined entity follow this privacy policy with respect to your personal information. If your personal information will be used contrary to this policy, you will receive prior notice.)

Without limiting the above, in an effort to respect your privacy and our ability to keep the Heritage Solar community free from bad actors, we will not otherwise disclose your personal information to law enforcement, other government officials, or other third parties without a subpoena, court order or substantially similar legal procedure, except when we believe in good faith that the disclosure of information is necessary to prevent imminent physical harm or financial loss or to report suspected illegal activity.

Cookies

We may use "cookies" (small files placed on your hard drive) on certain pages of the Site to help analyze our web page flow, customize our services, measure promotional effectiveness, and promote trust and safety.

A few important things you should know about cookies are that:

• We may offer certain features that are only available through the use of cookies.
• We may use cookies to help identify you and maintain your signed-in status.
• Most cookies are "session cookies," meaning that they are automatically deleted from your hard drive at the end of a session.
• You are always free to decline our cookies if your browser permits, although doing so may interfere with your use of the Sites.
• You may encounter cookies from third parties on certain pages of the Sites that we do not control. (For example, if you view a web page created by another user, there may be a "cookie" placed by that web page.)

No spam, spyware or spoofing

We and our users do not tolerate spam. Make sure to set your Heritage Solar notification preferences so we communicate to you as you prefer. You are not licensed to add other Heritage Solar users to your mail list (email or physical mail) without their express consent. To report Heritage Solar related spam or spoof emails to Heritage Solar, please forward the email to info@heritagesolar.com. You may not use our communication tools to send spam or otherwise send content that would violate our User Agreement. We do filter and automatically scan messages before they are sent for viruses and other illegal or prohibited content but do not permanently store email messages sent through these tools. If you send an email to an email address that is not registered in our Heritage Solar community, we do not permanently store that email or use that email address for any marketing purpose. We do not rent or sell these email addresses.

Account Protection

Your password is the key to your account. Use unique numbers, letters, and special characters and do not disclose your Heritage Solar password to anyone. If you do share your password or your personal information with others, remember that you are responsible for all actions taken in the name of your account. If you lose control of your password, you may lose substantial control over your personal information and may be subject to legally binding actions taken on your behalf. Therefore, if your password has been compromised for any reason, you should immediately notify Heritage Solar and change your password.

Accessing, Reviewing and Changing Your Personal Information

You can see, review and change most of your personal information by logging into the Site. Generally, we will not manually modify your personal information because it is very difficult to verify your identity remotely. You must promptly update your personal information if it changes or is inaccurate. Once you make a public posting, you may not be able to change or remove it. Upon your request, we will close your account and remove your personal information from view as soon as reasonably possible, based on your account activity and in accordance with applicable law. We do retain personal information from closed accounts in order to comply with law, prevent fraud, collect any fees owed, resolve disputes, troubleshoot problems, assist with any investigations, enforce our Heritage Solar User Agreement, and take other actions otherwise permitted by law.

Security

Your information is stored on our servers located in the United States. We treat data as an asset that must be protected and may use various tools (encryption, passwords, physical security, etc.) to protect your personal information against unauthorized access and disclosure. However, as you probably know, third parties may unlawfully intercept or access transmissions or private communications, and other users may abuse or misuse your personal information that they collect from the Site. Therefore, although we work very hard to protect your privacy, we do not promise, and you should not expect, that your personal information or private communications will always remain private.

Third Parties

Except as otherwise expressly included in this Privacy Policy, this document addresses only the use and disclosure of information we collect from you. If you disclose your information to others, whether they are bidders, buyers, or sellers on our Site or other sites throughout the Internet, different rules may apply to their use or disclosure of the information you disclose to them. Since Heritage Solar does not control the privacy policies of third parties, you are subject to the privacy policies of those third parties. We encourage you to ask questions before you disclose your personal information to others.

General

We may amend this Privacy Policy at any time by posting the amended terms on the Site. All amended terms automatically take effect 30 days after they are initially posted on the Site. In addition, we will notify you in accordance with your notification preferences. If your questions are not answered online, you may write to us at: Heritage Solar, Attn: Privacy Practices, 75 Mayfair, Aliso Viejo, CA 92656, or using the Contact Us form.