Sharp Electronics Corporation Online Privacy Policy
This is the privacy policy ("Privacy Policy")
for the online web site of Sharp Business Systems, http://www.sharp-sbs.com,
("SBS Website" or “Site”) and explains when and how your personal
information is collected, used, disclosed and protected. This Site is owned
and administered by Sharp Electronics Corporation (“Sharp”). This Privacy
Policy is a part of the SBS Website Terms and Conditions and governs your
use of this Site. We recognize your need to control personal information
you share with us and Sharp is committed to respecting your privacy.
Your California / Rhode Island Privacy Rights
Individual customers who reside in California or
Rhode Island and have provided personal data to SBS may obtain information
about our disclosures of certain categories of personal information to third
parties for their “direct marketing” purposes. These requests must be submitted
to us at: californiaprivacy@SharpUSA.com or rhodeislandprivacy@SharpUSA.com.
Promptly upon receiving such a request, we will provide a list of the types
of personal information disclosed to third parties for third-party direct marketing
purposes during the immediately proceeding calendar year and names and addresses
of these parties. This request may be made no more than once per calendar year.
Use of Your Information
You are free to browse through the SBS Site to learn
more about our products and services without providing any information about
yourself or your company. However, if you decide to share any information
about yourself or your company, such information may be used in furtherance
of your business relationship with Sharp, including, but not limited to,
any or all of the Sharp Business System branches. For instance, the information
may be used to provide customer support to you in the form of business needs
assessment or additional information about our new or existing products and
product upgrades, special offers, network evaluations and/or other services
available from Sharp; the information may also be used to otherwise enhance
your experience on the Site. Sharp may share your information, which may
include personally identifiable information, with third parties: (1) who
perform functions, as our agent or contractor, including, but not limited
to, analyzing data, providing marketing assistance, providing customer service,
processing orders, etc.; (2) to comply with the law, applicable regulations,
court orders or subpoenas, to enforce our Terms and Conditions of Use or
other agreements, or to protect our rights, property or safety or the rights,
property or safety of our users or others (e.g., to a consumer reporting
agency for fraud protection etc.); (3) if the disclosure is done as part
of a purchase, transfer or sale of services or assets (e.g., in the event
that substantially all of our assets are acquired by another party, customer
information may be one of the transferred assets); or (4) as otherwise described
in this Privacy Policy. Sharp’s agents and contractors who have access to
your personally identifiable information in connection with the above described
activities are required to keep the information confidential and not to use
it for any purpose other than to carry out the services they are performing
for Sharp. Further, Sharp may share your information, including personally
identifiable information, with third parties, whereby the third parties may
use your information for their own activities, including, but not limited
to, market research, marketing and/or sales of product.
Cookies
A 'Cookie' is a text-only string of characters that
is temporarily stored in your computer's memory. Our Cookies are time sensitive.
If the expiration of a Cookie is set to be longer than the time you spend
on a site, then this string is saved in a Cookie on your hard drive for future
reference, otherwise it disappears from your computer when your browser is
closed. Cookies such as we use cannot retrieve information from your computer's
hard drive, destroy files, or send viruses. When a Cookie is placed on your
hard drive, it does not allow access to your personal information although
it may be used to identify your computer. Sharp uses Cookies to track the
pages that a user visits so that information can be customized to the visitor
on a session-by-session basis, and so that future visits may be enhanced.
It is a quick and convenient means of keeping site content fresh and relevant
to the viewer.
Our web server automatically collects information from
your computer and navigation patterns when you visit our site, including
your Internet Protocol (IP) address, the computer’s operating system, the
type of browser you use, and the specific web pages visited using your connection.
We may also track data such as the total number of visits to our website
and the number of visitors to each page or our website.
We may use this information, in aggregate form, for
system maintenance and to better understand how our visitors use our site
and services so that we can make them better. Sharp may also share statistical
or demographic information in aggregate form with third parties for marketing
or research purposes. This aggregate data will not contain any information
that personally identifies you.
Security
Maintaining the privacy of your personal information
is of utmost importance to us. In order to provide services to you, we must
maintain certain information about you that we collect from account applications
or other forms that you complete, transactions that you conduct, communications
with us and our affiliates, and information we receive form third parties
such as credit reporting agencies.
Sharp takes precautions – including administrative,
technical and physical measures – to safeguard your personal information
against loss, theft and misuse as well as unauthorized access, disclosure,
alteration and destruction. We restrict access to your non-public personal
information to those employees who need to know that information to provide
services to you, and to service providers who are involved in providing products
and services to our customers. SBS uses Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption
on all web pages where personal information is required. This assists in
protecting the confidentiality of your personal information while it is being
transmitted over the internet. All of the customer data collected by SBS
is stored on secured servers to protect against unauthorized use and access.
If you contact us regarding identity theft or some other form of unauthorized
use, SBS may disclose pertinent information to law enforcement agencies and
other third parties with responsibility and authority to investigate such
a claim. SBS does not sell or license personal information to third parties.
Although we will use all reasonable efforts to safeguard the confidentiality
of any personal information collected, we will not be liable for disclosure
of personal information obtained due to errors in transmission or the unauthorized
acts of third parties. Please be aware that e-mails you send to us are not
transmitted in a secure environment. Therefore we recommend that you do not
send sensitive or financial information to us in an e-mail.
Third Party Sites
This Privacy Policy only applies to the SBS Site and
does not pertain to any other site including local SBS branch sites/forms
accessible via the SBS Site. There may be links on the SBS Site to other
websites which may collect personal information about you. The information
practices of those third-party or local SBS branch sites are not
covered by this Privacy Policy; you should view the privacy policies of such
sites before providing personal or confidential business information. Other
Internet sites you visit – including those linked from the Sharp website
– may have their own privacy policies or no policy at all. Other websites
might use personal information differently than our policy permits. We strongly
encourage you to review the privacy policies of any site before providing
any personal information.
Updating this Policy
Sharp may revise or update this Privacy Policy as we
change or add new services or develop better ways to serve our customers.
Please review our Privacy Policy for updates periodically. When we make a
change we will post a new effective date on the Privacy Policy. If your personal
information will be used in a manner materially different from that stated
at the time of collection we will notify users via a posting on this page
for 30 days before the material change is made. Users will always have a
choice of opting out if they do not want their information used as set forth
in this or any future Privacy Policy.
Questions or Concerns
If you have any comments or concerns regarding this
Privacy Policy, you may contact us through the Contact
Us page, write to us at SBS Privacy Policy, c/o Sharp Electronics Corporation,
Sharp Plaza, Mahwah, New Jersey 07495-1163; or call us toll free at 1-877-742-7704.
Effective: 9/13/2010