Please read this Privacy Policy (“Privacy Policy”) carefully to learn how the American Coatings Association (“ACA,” “we,” “us,” or “our”) collects, uses, shares, and otherwise processes information relating to individuals or entities that provide personal data to ACA (“you”, “attendee” or “applicant”). ACA is the controller of the personal data we receive from you (“Personal Data”) and is responsible for the collection, use, and storage of your Personal Data, as specified herein.

How We Collect Information

This Privacy Policy applies to the following activities in which you provide ACA with your information:

• Visiting our website located at paint.org and other websites that are owned or operated by ACA and are linked to on the paint.org website or the mobile and social media versions thereof (“ACA Website(s)” or “Website(s)”)
• Visiting our offices
• Registering for and/or attending our events
• Purchasing and/or signing up for our products and services, including any publications and membership benefits
• Subscribing to our newsletters or other communications

Our Website(s) or forms may contain links to other websites or services that are managed by a third party and governed by that party’s own privacy policies. We do not have control over the information you supply directly to these sites or services.  We encourage you read the privacy statements of each party that collects your information.

Types of Information Collected

The Personal Data that we collect directly from you or from one of our affiliated organizations includes the following:

• If you visit our offices, you may be required to sign in as a visitor and provide us with your full name, email address, and other basic contact information;
• If you contact ACA using the contact information included on the “Contact Us” tab on paint.org or similar features, sign up for one of our events, or subscribe to one of our newsletters or other communications, we generally require you to provide us with your basic contact information, such as your full name, email, company name, job title, phone number, mailing address, business address, username and password for the ACA Websites, and your organization’s web address;
• If you visit the ACA Website(s), the type of data collected by ACA will vary with your use of the Website(s). A representative, non-exhaustive list of the types of data ACA may collect includes: Internet Protocol (IP) addresses from all users of our Website(s), the date and time of access, the web page(s) accessed, your log-in information, and the type of computer, browser, or operating system used by you; and
• If you register for one of our events or membership groups or make any purchase on the ACA Websites, in addition to your basic contact information, we may also require you to provide us with financial information and billing information, such as billing name and address, payment card number, bank account information, and, for registration or renewal of your ACA membership, your company’s stated annual U.S. net sales total for the purpose of calculating membership dues.

The ACA Websites are cookie-enabled, including cookies from third-party service to providers, to give you a more customized user experience. A “cookie,” or other tracking technology, is a small piece of information stored in your computer’s browser and later used to recognize a user. We use “cookies” to understand Service usage, and to improve or customize the products, content, offerings, services or advertisements on our websites. We may also use “cookies” to help us offer you products, content offerings or services that may be of interest to you and deliver relevant advertising when you visit ACA Websites or when you visit other websites or applications. These “cookies” contain no information intended to identify you personally. “Cookies” may be either persistent or session cookies: a persistent cookie will be stored by a web browser and will remain valid until its set expiration date, unless deleted by the user; a session cookie, in contrast, will expire at the end of the user’s session, when the web browser is closed. Users can personalize their browser settings to reject cookies, although certain features of the ACA Websites may not function as intended.  Please be informed that aggregate data – such as the number of hits per page – is also collected from users of the ACA Websites and may be used by ACA for any purpose. ACA may use this aggregate data for marketing, advertising, administrative, and support purposes to provide or improve any software solutions, programs, events, products or services that ACA may offer.  In addition, ACA may also share, license, and/or sell such aggregate data (which will not identify any particular user) with or to third parties, including, without limitation, advertisers or business partners.   We also may use Google Analytics to analyze the use of our Website(s). Google Analytics gathers information about website use by means of cookies. The information gathered relating to the ACA Website(s) is used to create reports about the use of our Website(s). Google’s privacy policy is available at: https://www.google.com/policies/privacy/.

By visiting an ACA Website, whether as a registered user or otherwise, you give your consent to track your activities and your use of the Service through the technologies described above, as well as similar technologies developed in the future.

Our Purposes for Collecting Your Information and Our Bases for Collecting It

We collect your Personal Data for the purposes and on the legal bases identified as follows:

Performance of a Contract

• Membership communications and providing access to membership benefits, including members-only resources, notifications, and industry-specific features: We may process your Personal Data by managing your membership account for the purpose of providing you with membership services that you have purchased and/or requested;
• Managing event registrations and attendance: We may process your Personal Data to enable you to fully participate in the events you have registered for and to adequately operate such events; and
• Managing paid transactions: We may process your financial Personal Data, as provided, to verify the financial qualifications and collect payments to the extent this is necessary for completing transactions with you.

Consent

• Managing subscriptions: We may process your Personal Data to ensure that you receive all subscriptions and correspondence you have elected to receive;
• Marketing: Upon receiving your consent, we may process your Personal Data to market products, events, or other services to you; and
• Allowing fellow event participants to contact you: Upon receiving you consent, we may share your Personal Data with event participants to allow them to engage with you directly.

Legitimate Interests

• Managing office visitors: We may process your Personal Data to keep a record of who has visited our offices based on our legitimate business interests, including security purposes;
• Handling contact and user support requests: We may process your Personal Data to communicate with you as necessary to respond to your inquiry based on our legitimate interest to fulfill your request;
• Investigating a crime: We may process your Personal Data to investigate a possible crime, such as fraud or identity theft;
• Enforcing ACA’s Terms and Conditions: We may process your Personal Data to enforce our Terms and Conditions or other agreements that govern your use of the ACA Website(s);
• Maintaining data security safeguards: We may process your Personal Data to assist with security or fraud prevention or response measures and to protect against misuse or unauthorized use of the Website(s);
• Assessing and mitigating ACA’s legal risk: We may process your Personal Data to limit legal liability, protect or defend our rights, property, or interests, or protect the safety, rights, or property of others;
• Managing ACA’s information systems: We may process your Personal Data to help diagnose problems with our servers, analyze Website(s) usage trends, track user movements on the Website(s), and to otherwise improve, manage, and monitor our Website(s); and
• Assisting in business transactions: In the event that ACA goes through a business transaction, such as a bankruptcy event, merger, investment transaction, or acquisition by another entity involving the sale of all or a portion of its assets, we may process your Personal Data in the transfer or review of our assets.

Legal Obligations

• Complying with legal obligations: We may process your Personal Data to respond to a court order or subpoena or to otherwise comply with the law.

Where we intend to process your Personal Data for a purpose other than the purpose for which it was collected, we will provide you with information regarding the purpose for the processing, as well as other relevant information, prior to processing your Personal Data for the new purpose.

Sharing Your Information

We share your Personal Data with the following recipients:

• ACA’s affiliate organizations to ensure continuity and efficiency in our operations;
• Our contracted service providers and third-party business partners which provide services such as IT and web-hosting, credit card processing, marketing, advertising, subscription and order fulfillment, and cloud services; and
• If you attend an event organized by us, we may share your information with exhibitors, registrants, and/or sponsors of the event, provided that you consent to such sharing.

Your Personal Data may be collected, stored by, and processed by us in the United States and by our service providers and third-party business partners in other countries where they operate.The United States and such other countries may not have the same level of data protection as those that apply in the jurisdiction where you live.If you reside in the European Economic Area, Switzerland or the United Kingdom, we will transfer your Personal Data across national borders with your consent.

How We Store Your Data and Data Security

All Personal Data collected from you is stored on our servers and/or third-party servers and online cloud storage systems for the purpose of archiving and backing up the information we receive from you. We will determine how long we will retain your Personal Data by factoring the time needed to achieve the purposes of processing your Personal Data, the nature and sensitivity of your data, whether such data is required to be retained by law, and whether we can achieve the same data processing purposes through other means.  After weighing these factors, if we determine that your Personal Data is no longer needed for the legitimate purposes discussed herein, we will delete your data.If there is any information that we are unable, for technical reasons, to delete entirely from our systems, we will put in place appropriate measures to prevent any further use of the data.

ACA maintains data security measures to protect information against unauthorized access and disclosure.  These measures include the implementation of reasonable technical, physical and administrative data security safeguards.  ACA also verifies that any vendors we engage employ reasonable safeguards when carrying out their services on our behalf.

Data Rights of Individuals from the EEA or Switzerland

This section applies to those individuals from the European Economic Area or Switzerland. You have many rights with regards to your Personal Data, subject to local data protection laws. These may include the following rights:

• to access your Personal Data held by us (right to access);
• to correct inaccurate Personal Data and ensure it is complete (right to rectification);
• to erase/delete your Personal Data to the extent permitted by other legal obligations (right to erasure);
• to transfer your Personal Data to another data controller to the extent possible (right to data portability);
• to object to and restrict any processing of your Personal Data by us (right to object);
• to not be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing, including profiling, which produces legal effects (“Automated Decision-Making”); Automated Decision-Making or profiling currently does not take place on our websites; and
• to the extent we base the collection, processing and sharing of your Personal Data on your consent, such as your consent to the terms of this Privacy Policy, to withdraw your consent at any time.

To exercise these rights, contact our Data Protection Officer using the information in the “Contact Us” section below.  Please be aware that ACA may be unable to afford these rights to you under certain circumstances, such as if we are legally prevented from doing so.

Additionally, you have the right to lodge a complaint against us.  To do so, contact the supervisory authority in your country of residence.

Photography/Videography Disclaimer

ACA reserves the right to use photographs/video taken at ACA-sponsored events, without the expressed written permission of those included within the photograph/video. ACA may use such photographs/video in publications or other ACA (or its affiliates) media material, including but not limited to: brochures, invitations, books, magazines, websites, etc. To ensure privacy, images will not be identified using names or personally identifying information, without written approval from the photographed subject. A person attending an ACA event who does not wish to have their image recorded for distribution should make their wishes known to the photographer and/or the event organizers. By entering an ACA event, you consent to ACA and its affiliated companies for the foregoing use of your image, voice, and/or likeness.

Changes in Our Privacy Policy

We reserve the right to change or modify this privacy statement at any time.  If we revise our privacy statement, we will post those changes on the homepage of each of the ACA Websites so you are always aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances, if any, we disclose it.

Use of Minors

ACA cares about the safety of children on its Website(s) and encourages parents and guardians to monitor their children’s use of the Internet.  Although the Website(s) is suitable for a general audience, the Website(s) is intended for use only by users who are over eighteen (18) years of age.  Accordingly, ACA does not knowingly solicit Personal Data from children or send them requests for personal information.  If you become aware that your child has provided Personal Data to ACA, please contact ACA immediately so that such information can be deleted, and ACA otherwise discontinues any further services provided to such child.

Governing Law

This Privacy Policy shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the District of Columbia, U.S.A.  If you are located outside of the United States when you use the Website(s), any information you submit thereto will be transferred to the United States. Accordingly, by using the Website(s) and submitting Personal Data thereto, you therefore authorize the transfer of your Personal Data to the United States.  If any part of this Privacy Policy is determined to be invalid or unenforceable pursuant to applicable law, then the invalid or unenforceable provision or part will be deemed suspended by a valid, enforceable provision that most closely matches the intent of the original provision or part and the remainder of this Privacy Policy shall continue in full force and effect.

Contact Us

If you have questions about this Privacy Policy or to exercise your rights regarding your data, please contact us in our role as data controller at:

American Coatings Association
901 New York Avenue, NW
Suite 300 West
Washington, DC 20001
Phone: (202) 462-6272

To contact our Data Protection Officer, please send an email to dataprotectionofficer@paint.org.

To contact our webmaster regarding any other concerns, please send an email to webmaster@paint.org.

REVISED: July 2019