California Privacy Policy

LAST UPDATED: December 2022

Edmund Optics Inc wants you to be familiar with how we collect, use and disclose information in our capacity as a Data Controller. We want you to be in control of how we use your personal data and to make you aware of your rights, and our legal basis for using this information.

This privacy policy complies with the requirements of the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), the Proposition 24 amendment (aka CPRA) and the California Online Privacy Protection Act (CalOPPA). It applies to all persons within the state of California (CA). Persons in other US regions should refer to the US privacy policy here:

https://www.edmundoptics.com/privacy-policy/?changeCountryID=232

If you are not a resident in the US region, then please see the relevant privacy policy by selecting your country from the dropdown box at the top of the page.

This Privacy Policy describes our data collection practices in connection with information that we collect from Californian residents through:

Our "Websites", including, but not limited to:
- http://www.edmundoptics.com
- http://www.edmundoptics.co.uk/
- http://www.edmundoptics.eu
- http://www.edmundoptics.de
- http://www.edmundscientific.com/

Our “Social Media Pages”, located at:

Email messages that we may send to you.

Offline, through interactions with our staff, for example when you contact us for Customer or Technical support by telephone or fax or when you visit us at a trade show.

1. What is Personal Information?

“Personal Information” (PI) is information that identifies you as an individual or relates to another identifiable living individual, CCPA and CalOPPA lists the following as examples of PI:

Your Name (real or alias)
Your Postal Address (including billing and shipping addresses)
E-Mail Address
IP Address
Social Security Number
Passport Number
Unique Personal or Online Identifier
Driver’s License or other form of official ID
Account Names or ID
Credit Card Details
Phone Numbers
Birth Dates/Places

2. Collection of Personal Information

We, and our service providers (see Annex 1), may collect Personal Information (PI) in a variety of ways, known collectively as “Edmund Optics Services”, including:

Through our “On-line Services”: We may collect PI through one or more on-line services provided by Edmund Optics:

When you visit our website:

via Cookies (Cookie Policy)
MAC address
IP address information.

When you sign up for a newsletter.
When you request a catalogue, quotation or on-line chat.

When you make a purchase on our website or by e-mail.
When you communicate with us via e-mail.

Through our “Off-line Services”: We may collect PI from you offline, such as:

When you attend one of our trade shows.
When you place an order by telephone, by fax or by postal mail.
When you contact customer services by telephone, by fax or by postal mail.
When you visit one of our offices.

When Making Payments: We use a third-party payment service to process payments made through our On-line and Off-line Services. If you wish to make a payment through these Services, your PI will not be held or stored by us, it will be collected by our third-party payment processors, who specialize in the secure capture and processing of credit/debit card transactions.

3^rd Party Information: If you disclose any PI, relating to other people, to us or to our service providers, in connection with these Services, you confirm that you have the authority to do so and that you permit us to use this information for legitimate purposes in accordance with this Privacy Policy.

3. Use of Personal Information and the Basis for Processing.

We, and our service providers, may use PI as follows:

To fulfil your online or offline orders, your quotation or catalogue requests or to provide you with any other related customer services.

To send administrative information to you, such as changes to our terms, conditions and policies.

For legitimate business purposes such as fraud monitoring and prevention, identity checks, audits, adherence to local strategic export controls surrounding transfer of technical data, accountancy related filings or security alerts in connection with your Edmund Optics account.

To send you Marketing communications that we believe may be of interest to you including:

Educational content: Whitepapers, e-books etc.
Product Announcements and promotions
Webinar Invites
Local Events including Trade Shows, training sessions etc.
Monthly Newsletter
Company news flashes and initiatives.

To personalize your experience of our On-line Services by presenting products and offers tailored to you, both on our Websites and on Social Media Pages.

To assist us in developing new products, enhancing, improving or modifying our Services, identifying usage trends, determining the effectiveness of our promotional campaigns and operating and expanding our business activities.

To investigate any issues reported to us via the web feedback form and to forward to other offices and/or affiliates to follow up as necessary, in order to resolve the issue.

To periodically send, by postal mail, our latest product catalogue unless you have previously opted out of receiving this catalogue.

Please see section 10 for additional information in relation to your rights and the Personal Information that you provide to us.

4. Use of your Personal Information

Your Personal Information may be disclosed:

Between Edmund Optics offices and/or our affiliates for:
- The purposes of order fulfilment.
- Local contact follow-up.
- Local marketing related purposes.
- To our third-party service providers who provide services such as:
  - Website Hosting
  - Data Analysis
  - Payment Processing
  - Order/Delivery Fulfillment
  - Information Technology and Related Infrastructure Provision
  - Customer Services
  - E-mail Delivery
  - Catalogue Delivery
  - Auditing and other services.
  - Publicy by you, on message boards, chats, profile pages, blogs and other services to which you are able to post information and content hosted by Edmund Optics.
  - To the following third parties:

Content providers, to permit them to send you electronic marketing communications.
Sponsors of award programs, contests and similar promotions.
Companies in a related subject interest field, grouped at a regional level.

4b. Transfer of your Personal Information

We share our US mailing records, with selected companies in related subject fields. This type of PI use is covered by the CCPA “Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information” clause. Section 10 contains information on how you can use this clause to restrict use of your PI.

5. Other Uses and Disclosures

We also may use and disclose your PI as we believe to be necessary or appropriate:

To comply with any legal obligations to which we are subject. This may include laws outside your country of residence.
To enforce our terms and conditions.
To protect our rights, privacy, safety or property, and/or that of our affiliates, you or others.
We may use, disclose or transfer your information to a third party in the event of any reorganization, merger, sale, joint venture, assignment, transfer or other disposition of all or any portion of our business, assets or stock (including in connection with any bankruptcy or similar proceedings).

6. Other Information

“Other Information” is any information that does not reveal your specific identity or does not directly relate, or can be linked to, to an identifiable individual, such as:

Browser and Device Information.
Demographic Information and Other Information provided by you that does not reveal your specific identity.
Information that has been aggregated in a manner that it no longer reveals your specific identity.

If we are required to treat Other Information as PI under applicable law, then we may use and disclose it for the purposes for which we use and disclose PI as detailed in this Privacy Policy.

Collection of Other Information

We and our service providers may collect Other Information in a variety of ways, including:

Through your browser or device: Certain information is collected by most browsers or automatically through your device, such as your:

Computer type (Windows or Mac).
Screen resolution.
Operating system name and version.
Device manufacturer and model.
Language.
Internet browser type and version and the name and version of the Services you are using.

We use this information to ensure that our On-Line Services function properly.

Uses and Disclosures of Other Information

We may use and disclose Other Information for any purpose, except where we are required to do otherwise under applicable law. In some instances, we may collect Other Information together with PI. If we do, we will treat the combined information as PI as long as it is combined or can be linked to PI.

7. Do Not Track

Web browsers have incorporated a "Do Not Track" (DNT) option to help protect user privacy. When enabled, the browser will signal to a website you visit, that you do not wish to be tracked. However, as there is currently a lack of common industry standard on how to interpret DNT, we do not respond to any DNT signals at this time. For additional information on the tracking features used throughout our website, please see our Cookie Policy.

8. Third Party Services

Third Party Service Providers

We may pass your Personal Information to our third-party service providers for the purposes of completing specific tasks and/or to provide services to you on our behalf, as specified above. When we utilize these third-party service providers, we will only disclose the Personal Information necessary to complete the task or deliver the service as instructed by Edmund Optics. All of these third-party service providers are required to keep your Personal Information secure and to only use it for the particular purposes provided.

Third Party Linking

This Privacy Policy does not address, and we are not responsible for, the privacy, information or other practices of any other third parties, including any third party operating any website or service, to which Edmund Optics’ “On-line Services” link. The inclusion of a link on our “On-line Services” does not imply endorsement of the linked website or service by us or by our affiliates.

In addition, we are not responsible for the information collection, use, disclosure or security policies or practices of other organizations, such as Facebook, Apple, Google, Microsoft, RIM or any other app developer, app provider, social media platform provider, operating system provider, wireless service provider or device manufacturer, including with respect to any Personal Information you disclose to other organizations through or in connection with our Social Media Pages.

9. Security

We are committed to using all reasonable organizational, technical and administrative measures to protect the Personal Information that you provide to us. When inputting information onto our website, sensitive information (such as credit or debit card information) is encrypted and protected via SSL encryption, and is subsequently transferred and tokenized by our payment provider. Edmund Optics does not store your credit or debit card information on any of our systems.

Unfortunately, no data transmission or storage system can be guaranteed to be 100% secure. If you have reason to believe that your interaction with us is no longer secure, please immediately notify us in accordance with section 17 “Contacting Us”, below.

10. Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information - Choices and Access

For CA Residents - Section 1798.135 of the CCPA grants you the right to instruct us to NOT use your Personal Information for the purposes specified in section 4b of this privacy policy. You can excise this right by using any of the communication options listed below or in section 17 of this privacy policy.

Please note that we will make best efforts to action your request as soon as possible but due to the nature and scale of the marketing processes it may take up to 45 days for your request to be fully actioned across all of our marketing platforms.

We also give you choices regarding our use and disclosure of your Personal Information for marketing purposes. You may opt-out from any of these services as follows:

Receiving electronic communications from us: If you would like to withdraw your consent to receive marketing-related emails, you may opt-out by:

Clicking the unsubscribe link in the email
Contacting us in accordance with the section 17 “Contacting Us”, below.
Unsubscribing from our electronic newsletters or other email marketing online at https://www.edmundoptics.com/contact-support/email-newsletter/unsubscribe/

Receiving our catalogue: If you no longer want to receive our product catalogue, you may withdraw your consent by contacting us in accordance with section 17, “Contacting Us”, below or online at: https://www.edmundoptics.com/unsubscribe/

Your Right to be Forgotten: If you would like to withdraw your consent for us to contact you for direct marketing purposes, you may opt-out by contacting us in accordance with section 17 “Contacting Us”, below.

We will comply with your request(s) as soon as reasonably practicable. Please note that if you withdraw consent to receive marketing related emails from us, we may still send you important administrative or order related messages.

11. How you can access, change or suppress your Personal Information

If you would like to review, correct, update, suppress or delete Personal Information that you have previously disclosed to us, you may contact us using any of the options listed in section 17 “Contacting Us”.

If you are a California resident you have the following rights under the CCPA legislation:

The Right to Disclose
- You have the right to request we disclose to you the types and sources of Personal Information collected, as well as the reason for sharing and the type of third party to whom data was shared.

The Right to Delete (or update).
- You have the right to request that we delete (or update) Personal Information that we hold about you, subject to regulatory exceptions (such as auditing, accounting etc).

The Right to Access.
- You have the right to access Personal Information about yourself that is collected, stored and used by us or our third parties.

The Right to Opt Out.
- This is also known as the “Do Not Sell My Personal Information” clause, please see section 9 for further information.

In your request, please make clear what Personal Information is affected and what changes you would like to make, or let us know what limitations you would like to put on our use of your Personal Information. A record of any changes, deletions or withdrawals of consent will be recorded solely for the purposes of complying with our Legal Obligations under CCPA.

For your protection, we may only implement requests with respect to the Personal Information associated with the particular email address or mailing address that you use to send us your request, and we may need to verify your identity before implementing your request.

You may also designate authority to action any of the above on your behalf but we may need to verify your identity and/or granted authority before we can implement your request.

12. Retention Period

We will only use and store your Personal Information for as long as it is required for the purposes for which was collected. How long it will be stored for depends on the information in question, what it is being used for and, sometimes, statutory legal requirements.

13. Use of “Edmund Optics Services” by Minors

Edmund Optics’ “Edmund Optics Services” are not directed to minors. As per CCPA article 1798.120 this includes individuals aged sixteen (16) to thirteen (13) as well as those under thirteen (13). We do not knowingly collect Personal Information from individuals under 16.

14. Sensitive Information

We ask that you not send us, and you not disclose, any sensitive Personal Information (e.g., social security numbers, information related to racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religion or other beliefs, health, biometrics or genetic characteristics, criminal background or trade union membership) on, or through, our Services detailed in section 2. Where unsolicited sensitive Personal Information is received, it will be deleted unless there is a compelling and legitimate reason for it to be retained.

15. Updates to this Privacy Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy periodically as required. The “Last Updated” legend at the top of this Privacy Policy indicates when this Privacy Policy was last revised. Any changes will become effective when we post the revised Privacy Policy on the Services. Your use of the Services following these changes means that you accept the revised Privacy Policy.

16. Complaints

Edmund Optics has committed to refer unresolved privacy complaints to an independent dispute resolution mechanism operated by the Council of Better Business Bureaus. If you do not receive timely acknowledgment of your complaint, or if your complaint is not satisfactorily addressed, please visit https://www.bbb.org/ for more information and to file a complaint. This service is provided free of charge to you.

17. Contacting Us

All CCPA related requests can be submitted to us using any of the following options (CA Residents Only):

www.edmundoptics.com/california-consumer-privacy-act/
Call us toll free at 888-984-2463

The Marketing department, located at the address below, is responsible for collection, use and disclosure of your Personal Information.

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy or how we use your Personal Information then please contact us:

by email at [email protected]
by phone at 1-800-363-1992
by fax at 1-856-573-6295
by post at:

Allison Lloyd – Database Director
Edmund Optics Inc.
101 East Gloucester Pike, Barrington
NJ-08007, USA

Because email communications are not always secure, please do not include credit card or other sensitive information in your emails to us.

Annex 1. List of service providers

Edmund Optics utilizes the services of various third parties in various different functional areas, including, but not limited to, Shipment logistics, Data backup and recovery, IT security and Marketing/Marketing communications.

The following are representative of some of the companies whose services we utilize:

Shipping Logistics:

United Parcel Service of America, Inc.
DHL International GmbH
Fedex Corp
TNT Holdings B.V.
United States Postal Service
Royal Mail

Marketing and Marketing Communications:

Google Inc
LiveChat Inc
Marketo
Meritdirect LLC