Last updated 27.10.2022
This privacy notice for The Semrad Law Firm also known as DebtStoppers (“company,” “we,” “us,” or “our“), describes how and why we might collect, store, use, and/or share (“process“) your information when you use our services (“services“), such as when you:
Questions or concerns? Reading this privacy notice will help you understand your privacy rights and choices. If you do not agree with our policies and practices, please do not use our services. If you still have any questions or concerns, please contact us at office@semradlaw.com.
Summary of key points
This summary provides key points from our privacy notice, but you can find out more details about any of these topics by clicking the link following each key point or by using our table of contents below to find the section you are looking for. You can also go directly to our table of contents.
What personal information do we process? When you visit, use, or navigate our services, we may process personal information depending on how you interact with The Semrad Law Firm and the services, the choices you make, and the products and features you use.
Do we process any sensitive personal information? We do not process sensitive personal information.
Do you receive any information from third parties? We do not receive any information from third parties.
How do you process my information? We process your information to provide, improve, and administer our services, communicate with you, for security and fraud prevention, and to comply with law. We may also process your information for other purposes with your consent. We process your information only when we have a valid legal reason to do so.
In what situations and with which parties do we share personal information? We may share information in specific situations and with specific third parties.
How do we keep your information safe? We have organizational and technical processes and procedures in place to protect your personal information. However, no electronic transmission over the internet or information storage technology can be guaranteed to be 100% secure, so we cannot promise or guarantee that hackers, cybercriminals, or other unauthorized third parties will not be able to defeat our security and improperly collect, access, steal, or modify your information.
What are your rights? Depending on where you are located geographically, the applicable privacy law may mean you have certain rights regarding your personal information.
How do I exercise my rights? The easiest way to exercise your rights is by contacting us. We will consider and act upon any request in accordance with applicable data protection laws.
Want to learn more about what The Semrad Law Firm does with any information we collect?
Table of contents
1.What information do we collect?
Personal information you disclose to us
In short: we collect personal information that you provide to us.
We collect personal information that you voluntarily provide to us when you express an interest in obtaining information about us or our products and services, when you participate in activities on the services, or otherwise when you contact us.
Personal information provided by you. Personally identifiable information ("PII") collected with your consent may include, for example, name, mailing address, e-mail address, telephone number, fax number, occupation, any information you provide to us when using the services on our websites, any responses you choose to provide to survey questions, information provided in connection with subscribing to a newsletter, any inquiries you may make through our websites, or any other PII you provide to us through our websites.
In addition, we collect information, including PII, in connection with attempts to log-in to our products and services through our websites and the actions taken by users while they are logged into our online products and services. This may include, for example, collecting information pertaining to searches conducted, the pages visited during the online session, and any or all other interactions that the user may have with our systems while the user is logged into one of our products or services.
The personal information we collect may include the following:
We strive to maintain the accuracy of the PII collected through our websites. We will provide you (whether you are a consumer or a customer) with access to PII you provide through our websites for as long as we maintain that information in a readily accessible format. We will also work with you to correct any PII you submitted to us.
If you wish to access PII that you have submitted through our websites or to request the correction of any inaccurate PII you have submitted through our websites, please use the mechanisms provided by our websites.
The access and correction provisions of this Online Privacy Policy only apply to PII collected from you through our websites.
All personal information that you provide to us must be true, complete, and accurate, and you must notify us of any changes to such personal information. Some occasions may require us to collect sensitive information in order to proceed further with the services you chose to use with the Semrad Law Firm, also known as DebtStoppers.
From whom do we collect personal data?
Non-personally identifiable Information.
Our websites also may collect non-personally identifiable information. For example, as you browse our websites we may collect information about your visit. Via Web server logs, for example, we may monitor statistics such as: the number of people that visit our websites, which page(s) are visited on our websites, from which domain our visitors come (e.g., google.com, microsoft.com), and which browsers people use to visit our websites (e.g. Safari, Microsoft Internet Explorer, etc.). We also may compile statistics that show the numbers and frequency of visitors to our websites and its individual pages. These aggregated statistics may be used internally to improve our websites and for product development and marketing purposes generally. The aggregated statistics may also be provided to advertisers and other third parties, but again, the statistics contain no PII.
Our websites also may use outsourcing programs to assist us in analyzing this data to better our websites.
Information automatically collected
In short: some information — such as your internet protocol (ip) address and/or browser and device characteristics — is collected automatically when you visit our services.
We automatically collect certain information when you visit, use, or navigate the services. This information does not reveal your specific identity (like your name or contact information) but may include device and usage information, such as your ip address, browser and device characteristics, operating system, language preferences, referring urls, device name, country, location, information about how and when you use our services, and other technical information. This information is primarily needed to maintain the security and operation of our services, and for our internal analytics and reporting purposes.
Like many businesses, we also collect information through cookies and similar technologies.
The information we collect includes:
2.How do we process your information?
In short: we process your information to provide, improve, and administer our services, communicate with you, for security and fraud prevention, and to comply with law. We may also process your information for other purposes with your consent.
We process your personal information for a variety of reasons, depending on how you interact with our services, including:
3. What legal bases do we rely on to process your information?
In short: we only process your personal information when we believe it is necessary and we have a valid legal reason (i.e., legal basis) to do so under applicable law, like with your consent, to comply with laws, to provide you with services to enter into or fulfill our contractual obligations, to protect your rights, or to fulfill our legitimate business interests.
If you are located in the EU or UK, this section applies to you.
The general data protection regulation (GDPR) and UK GDPR require us to explain the valid legal bases we rely on in order to process your personal information. As such, we may rely on the following legal bases to process your personal information:
If you are located in Canada, this section applies to you.
We may process your information if you have given us specific permission (i.e., express consent) to use your personal information for a specific purpose, or in situations where your permission can be inferred (i.e., implied consent). You can withdraw your consent at any time.
In some exceptional cases, we may be legally permitted under applicable law to process your information without your consent, including, for example:
4. When and with whom do we share your personal information?
In short: we may share information in specific situations described in this section and/or with the following third parties.
We may need to share your personal information in the following situations:
We share your information with third parties to perform ad measurement services on our behalf, and we obtain customer consent for such sharing and use where legally required. You may consult this list to find the Privacy Policy for each of the advertising partners of The Semrad Law Firm. Third-party ad servers or ad networks use technologies like cookies, JavaScript, or Web Beacons that are used in their respective advertisements and links that appear on The Semrad Law Firm, which are sent directly to users’ browsers. They automatically receive your IP address when this occurs. These technologies are used to measure the effectiveness of their advertising campaigns and/or to personalize the advertising content that you see on websites that you visit. Note that The Semrad Law Firm has no access to or control over these cookies that are used by third-party advertisers.
5. Do we use cookies and other tracking technologies?
In short: we may use cookies and other tracking technologies to collect and store your information.
We may use cookies and similar tracking technologies (like web beacons and pixels) to access or store information. Specific information about how we use such technologies and how you can refuse certain cookies is set out in our cookie notice.
Our websites may use browser "cookies", local shared objects (also known as "Flash cookies") or other technologies.
Browser cookies are small pieces of information that are stored by your browser on your computer. Browser cookies, for example, may be used by our websites to help us manage your visit to our websites or determine whether a visitor is unique or whether a visitor has viewed our websites before. While most browsers are set to accept cookies by default, you can set yours to refuse cookies or to alert you before accepting them. Your browser manufacturer has information on changing the default setting for your specific browser. Deleting or refusing to accept cookies from our websites, however, may limit your ability to use some portions of our websites which require the use of cookies to operate effectively.
Our websites also may use local shared objects, also known as "Flash cookies" to store your preferences or display content based upon what you view on our websites to personalize your visit. Flash cookies are different from browser cookies because of the amount of, type of, and how data is stored. Cookie management tools provided by your browser will not remove Flash cookies.
Third Parties, with whom we may partner to provide certain features on our websites or to display advertising based upon your Web browsing activity, may use browser cookies or Flash cookies to collect and store information.
Google DoubleClick DART Cookie Google is one of the third-party vendors on our site. It also uses cookies, known as DART cookies, to serve ads to our site visitors based upon their visit to www.website.com and other sites on the internet. However, visitors may choose to decline the use of DART cookies by visiting the Google ad and content network Privacy Policy at the following URL – https://policies.google.com/technologies/ads
6.How long do we keep your information?
In short: We keep your information for as long as necessary to fulfill the purposes outlined in this privacy notice unless otherwise required by law.
We will only keep your personal information for as long as it is necessary for the purposes set out in this privacy notice, unless a longer retention period is required or permitted by law (such as tax, accounting, or other legal requirements). No purpose in this notice will require us keeping your personal information for longer than 2 years.
When we have no ongoing legitimate business need to process your personal information, we will either delete or anonymize such information, or, if this is not possible (for example, because your personal information has been stored in backup archives), then we will securely store your personal information and isolate it from any further processing until deletion is possible.
7.How do we keep your information safe?
In short: we aim to protect your personal information through a system of organizational and technical security measures.
We have implemented appropriate and reasonable technical and organizational security measures designed to protect the security of any personal information we process. However, despite our safeguards and efforts to secure your information, no electronic transmission over the internet or information storage technology can be guaranteed to be 100% secure, so we cannot promise or guarantee that hackers, cybercriminals, or other unauthorized third parties will not be able to defeat our security and improperly collect, access, steal, or modify your information. Although we will do our best to protect your personal information, transmission of personal information to and from our services is at your own risk. You should only access the services within a secure environment.
8.Do we collect information from minors?
In short: we do not knowingly collect data from or market to children under 18 years of age.
We do not knowingly solicit data from or market to children under 18 years of age. By using the services, you represent that you are at least 18 or that you are the parent or guardian of such a minor and consent to such minor dependent’s use of the services. If we learn that personal information from users less than 18 years of age has been collected, we will deactivate the account and take reasonable measures to promptly delete such data from our records. If you become aware of any data, we may have collected from children under age 18, please contact us at office@semradlaw.com.
9.What are your privacy rights?
In short: in some regions, such as the European Economic Area (EEA), United Kingdom (UK), and Canada, you have rights that allow you greater access to and control over your personal information. You may review, change, or terminate your account at any time.
In some regions (like the EEA, UK and Canada), you have certain rights under applicable data protection laws. These may include the right (i) to request access and obtain a copy of your personal information, (ii) to request rectification or erasure; (iii) to restrict the processing of your personal information; and (iv) if applicable, to data portability. In certain circumstances, you may also have the right to object to the processing of your personal information. You can make such a request by contacting us by using the contact details provided in the section “How can you contact us about this notice?” Below.
We will consider and act upon any request in accordance with applicable data protection laws.
If you are located in the EEA or UK and you believe we are unlawfully processing your personal information, you also have the right to complain to your local data protection supervisory authority. You can find their contact details here:
https://ec.europa.eu/justice/data-protection/bodies/authorities/index_en.htm.
If you are located in Switzerland, the contact details for the data protection authorities are available here: https://www.edoeb.admin.ch/edoeb/en/home.html.
Withdrawing your consent: if we are relying on your consent to process your personal information, which may be express and/or implied consent depending on the applicable law, you have the right to withdraw your consent at any time. You can withdraw your consent at any time by contacting us at the aforementioned email.
However, please note that this will not affect the lawfulness of the processing before its withdrawal, nor when applicable law allows, will it affect the processing of your personal information conducted in reliance on lawful processing grounds other than consent.
Opting out of marketing and promotional communications: you can unsubscribe from our marketing and promotional communications at any time by clicking on the unsubscribe link in the emails that we send, or by contacting us using the details provided in the section “How can you contact us about this notice?” below. You will then be removed from the marketing lists. However, we may still communicate with you — for example, to send you service-related messages that are necessary for the administration and use of your account, to respond to service requests, or for other non-marketing purposes.
Cookies and similar technologies: most web browsers are set to accept cookies by default. If you prefer, you can usually choose to set your browser to remove cookies and to reject cookies. If you choose to remove cookies or reject cookies, this could affect certain features or services of our services. To opt out of interest-based advertising by advertisers on our services visit http://www.aboutads.info/choices/.
If you have questions or comments about your privacy rights, you may email us at office@semradlaw.com.
10.Controls for do-not-track features
Most web browsers and some mobile operating systems and mobile applications include a do-not-track (“DNT”) feature or setting you can activate to signal your privacy preference not to have data about your online browsing activities monitored and collected. At this stage no uniform technology standard for recognizing and implementing DNT signals has been finalized. As such, we do not currently respond to dnt browser signals or any other mechanism that automatically communicates your choice not to be tracked online. If a standard for online tracking is adopted that we must follow in the future, we will inform you about that practice in a revised version of this privacy notice.
11.Do California residents have specific privacy rights?
In short: yes, if you are a resident of California, you are granted specific rights regarding access to your personal information.
California civil code section 1798.83, also known as the “shine the light” law, permits our users who are California residents to request and obtain from us, once a year and free of charge, information about categories of personal information (if any) we disclosed to third parties for direct marketing purposes and the names and addresses of all third parties with which we shared personal information in the immediately preceding calendar year. If you are a California resident and would like to make such a request, please submit your request in writing to us using the contact information provided below.
If you are under 18 years of age, reside in California, and have a registered account with services, you have the right to request removal of unwanted data that you publicly post on the services. To request removal of such data, please contact us using the contact information provided below and include the email address associated with your account and a statement that you reside in California. We will make sure the data is not publicly displayed on the services, but please be aware that the data may not be completely or comprehensively removed from all our systems (e.g., backups, etc.).
CCPA privacy notice
The California code of regulations defines a “resident” as:
(1) every individual who is in the state of California for other than a temporary or transitory purpose and
(2) every individual who is domiciled in the state of California who is outside the state of California for a temporary or transitory purpose
All other individuals are defined as “non-residents.”
If this definition of “resident” applies to you, we must adhere to certain rights and obligations regarding your personal information.
What categories of personal information do we collect?
We have collected the following categories of personal information in the past twelve (12) months:
|
Category |
Examples |
Collected |
|
A. Identifiers |
Contact details, such as real name, alias, postal address, telephone or mobile contact number, unique personal identifier, online identifier, internet protocol address, email address, and account name |
Yes |
|
B. Personal information categories listed in the California customer records statute |
Name, contact information, education, employment, employment history, and financial information |
Yes |
|
C. Protected classification characteristics under California or federal law |
Gender and date of birth |
Yes |
|
D. Commercial information |
Transaction information, purchase history, financial details, and payment information |
Yes |
|
E. Biometric information |
Fingerprints and voiceprints |
No |
|
F. Internet or other similar network activity |
Browsing history, search history, online behavior, interest data, and interactions with our and other websites, applications, systems, and advertisements |
Yes |
|
G. Geolocation data |
Device location |
Yes |
|
H. Audio, electronic, visual, thermal, olfactory, or similar information |
Images and audio, video or call recordings created in connection with our business activities |
Yes |
|
I. Professional or employment-related information |
Business contact details in order to provide you our services at a business level or job title, work history, and professional qualifications if you apply for a job with us |
Yes |
|
J. Education information |
Student records and directory information |
Yes |
|
K. Inferences drawn from other personal information |
Inferences drawn from any of the collected personal information listed above to create a profile or summary about, for example, an individual’s preferences and characteristics |
Yes |
We may also collect other personal information outside of these categories instances where you interact with us in person, online, or by phone or mail in the context of:
How do we use and share your personal information?
More information about our data collection and sharing practices can be found in this privacy notice.
You may contact us by email at office@semradlaw.com, by visiting https://www.debtstoppers.com/contact-us/ or by referring to the contact details at the bottom of this document.
If you are using an authorized agent to exercise your right to opt out we may deny a request if the authorized agent does not submit proof that they have been validly authorized to act on your behalf.
Will your information be shared with anyone else?
We may disclose your personal information with our service providers pursuant to a written contract between us and each service provider. Each service provider is a for-profit entity that processes the information on our behalf.
We may use your personal information for our own business purposes, such as for undertaking internal research for technological development and demonstration. This is not considered to be “selling” your personal information.
The Semrad Law Firm has not disclosed or sold any personal information to third parties for a business or commercial purpose in the preceding twelve (12) months. The Semrad Law Firm will not sell personal information in the future belonging to website visitors, users, and other consumers.
Your rights with respect to your personal data
Right to request deletion of the data — request to delete via email
You can ask for the deletion of your personal information. If you ask us to delete your personal information, we will respect your request and delete your personal information, subject to certain exceptions provided by law, such as (but not limited to) the exercise by another consumer of his or her right to free speech, our compliance requirements resulting from a legal obligation, or any processing that may be required to protect against illegal activities.
Right to be informed — request to know
Depending on the circumstances, you have a right to know:
In accordance with applicable law, we are not obligated to provide or delete consumer information that is de-identified in response to a consumer request or to re-identify individual data to verify a consumer request.
Right to non-discrimination for the exercise of a consumer’s privacy rights
We will not discriminate against you if you exercise your privacy rights.
Verification process
Upon receiving your request, we will need to verify your identity to determine you are the same person about whom we have the information in our system. These verification efforts require us to ask you to provide information so that we can match it with information you have previously provided us. For instance, depending on the type of request you submit, we may ask you to provide certain information so that we can match the information you provide with the information we already have on file, or we may contact you through a communication method (e.g., phone or email) that you have previously provided to us. We may also use other verification methods as the circumstances dictate.
We will only use personal information provided in your request to verify your identity or authority to make the request. To the extent possible, we will avoid requesting additional information from you for the purposes of verification. However, if we cannot verify your identity from the information already maintained by us, we may request that you provide additional information for the purposes of verifying your identity and for security or fraud-prevention purposes. We will delete such additionally provided information as soon as we finish verifying you.
Other privacy rights
To exercise these rights, you can contact us by email at office@semradlaw.com, by visiting https://www.debtstoppers.com/contact-us/ or by referring to the contact details at the bottom of this document. If you have a complaint about how we handle your data, we would like to hear from you.
12.Do we make updates to this notice?
In short: yes, we will update this notice as necessary to stay compliant with relevant laws.
We may update this privacy notice from time to time. The updated version will be indicated by an updated “revised” date and the updated version will be effective as soon as it is accessible. If we make material changes to this privacy notice, we may notify you either by prominently posting a notice of such changes or by directly sending you a notification. We encourage you to review this privacy notice frequently to be informed of how we are protecting your information.
13.How can you contact us about this notice?
If you have questions or comments about this notice, you may email us at office@semradlaw.com or by post to:
The Semrad Law Firm (DebtStoppers)
11101 S. Western Avenue
Chicago, IL 60643
United states
14.How can you review, update, or delete the data we collect from you?
Based on the applicable laws of your country, you may have the right to request access to the personal information we collect from you, change that information, or delete it in some circumstances. To request to review, update, or delete your personal information, please call us +1 844 546-7300 or contact us at this email office@semradlaw.com.
15.SMS Campaigns
No mobile information will be shared with third parties/affiliates for marketing/promotional purposes.
All the above categories exclude text messaging originator opt-in data and consent; this information will not be shared with any third parties.