Privacy

Gypsum Management & Supply (GMS) strives to achieve the highest standards of integrity for every online visitor. When you register at the GMS Web site, we aim to respect your privacy. This Privacy Policy sets forth how we handle information we obtain from you and learn about you when you visit our Web site, including:

• The choices that are available to you regarding how the information is used and to whom it is disseminated;
• Your rights to access and correct or update your personally-identifiable information; and
• Our pledge to have reasonable security procedures that are in place to protect the loss, misuse or alteration of information under our control.

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time in order to reflect, for example, changes to our privacy practices or for other operational, legal, or regulatory reasons. If we decide to change our Privacy Policy, we will post those changes on our Web site so you will always be aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances we disclose it.  We will use information in accordance with the Privacy Policy under which the information was collected.  By continuing to use the Web site after these changes are posted, you agree to the revised Privacy Policy. If you have any questions or comments about the GMS Privacy Policy, please contact us here. NOTICE: Information We Collect and How We Use It GMS collects two types of information about you when you visit our site: personal information (including, by way of example only, your name, address, telephone number and email address) and non-personal, aggregate information (such as information regarding the pages on our Web site that you have visited and your IP address).  Personal information does not include information that has been anonymized or aggregated in such a way that it can no longer be used to identify a specific natural person, whether on its own or in combination with other information.

The only personally identifying information we collect and store about you is the information that you choose to provide to us.  This may include personally identifying information such as: 

• Contact Information - This may include your name, company name, user name, passwords, purchase history, billing and shipping addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, and other digital contact information.
• Payment Information - For business partners and professional visitors, when you make a purchase, we will collect information about the purchase or transaction such as billing details and credit card information, account and authentication information.
• Demographic Information – We may collect information about products or services you like, information you submit, or your age or gender.
• Other information – We may collect other information that you otherwise choose to provide us when you fill in a form, contact our customer support, respond to surveys, or use other features of our Web site.

Why do we collection this information and how do we use it?

We use the information we collect for our business purposes, including: 

• Responding to your requests and questions, such as fulfilling an order, ensuring proper delivery or providing services, or providing you with information regarding our services and products;
• Improving our services and products;
• Providing you with information about new products, services, newsletters, informative e-mails, and research on future product ideas or improvements;
• Assisting us in creating or providing content on our Web sites that is relevant to you;
• For security purposes or authenticating your account;
• Providing you with support and looking at website trends and customer interests;
• Customizing your experience with us;
• Sending transaction-related communications such as product order confirmations;
• Communicating with you about your account or our relationship;
• For other uses we may disclose to you or when you have given your consent; or
• As otherwise permitted or required by law.

Electronic Mail

We will also gather your personally identifiable information when you send us an email. We will use this information to respond to your email. We may also use the information to send you notifications about our services. 

When providing your email address to GMS, you agree to receive information from GMS and its subsidiary companies. We may provide you with updates on products and services by mail, fax, email or text. We also may provide your email address to third party companies when necessary to provide you with the services.  For example, we may provide your email address to a third party shipping service in order for you to track a package. You may unsubscribe from emails at any time by clicking the link at the bottom of each email you may receive. Please allow sufficient time for your preferences to be processed. Even if you opt out of receiving email messages, we may still contact you for transactional purposes like confirming or following up on an order or service request, or responding to customer service inquiries. This notice does not constitute an obligation by GMS to provide any specific information via email.

Business Partners / Professional Visitors

Business partners and professional visitors requesting access to specialized content areas of this Web site may be required to provide identifying information. In addition, business partners and professional visitors may be required to submit their Federal Express or UPS account numbers if requesting printed materials or placing an order.

Sharing Your Information

We may share your personally identifiable information with companies that are within the GMS organization and with related and subsidiary companies. 

If applicable, we may use outside shipping companies to ship commercial orders, as well as overnight shipments. If you order from us, we may share your personally identifiable information (such as name, address, telephone number and email address) with these companies to fulfill your order. We may also share our customers’ Federal Express and UPS account numbers with these companies in order to fulfill orders. 

We may use an outside company responds to requests for additional information about our products. We will share your personally identifiable information with any such company in order to respond to your request. 

We may also provide your personally-identifiable information with service providers (including payment processors) we engage to perform functions or provide services to us, where those service providers are subject to obligations that are consistent with this privacy notice and to appropriate confidentiality and security measures; where we believe that it is reasonably necessary to comply with a law, regulation or if we are otherwise legally required to do so, such as in response to court orders or legal process, or to establish, protect, or exercise our legal rights or to defend against legal claims or demands; or if we are acquired by or merged with another entity, if we are involved in a bankruptcy, or if the ownership or control of all or part of our services or their assets changes. 

We collect and use non-personally identifiable information about you in the following ways: 

Cookies

At certain points in your visit to the GMS site, our server (or the servers of our unaffiliated service providers) may send a “cookie” file to your computer. Cookies are small text files placed on your device when you visit a website, in order to track use of the site and to improve your user experience. Your Web browser may prompt you to accept this file unless you have set your browser preferences to accept all cookies automatically. Cookies are employed primarily as a service to our customers, to extend the relevance and responsiveness of the GMS site. We may link cookie information with any personally identifiable information you provide us.  We use cookies to help us recognize you across different Web sites, to monitor usage and Web traffic routing for the Web Sites, and to customize and improve the Web Sites. By visiting the Web site, you agree to the use of cookies in your browser and HTML-based emails. 

Other Non-Personally-Identifiable Information

The GMS Web site may collect non-personally identifiable information during your visit, such as type of browser, operating system, domain name, or IP address. An IP address is a number that is automatically assigned to your computer whenever you are surfing the Web. Web servers—the big computers that “serve” up Web pages—automatically identify your computer by its IP address. When you visit pages on the GMS Web site, our Web servers log your IP address. We do not link IP addresses to any personally identifiable information.

GMS also collects information through “referrers” and various environmental variables. A “referrer” is information the Web browser passes along to our Web server that references the URL from which you came. “Environmental variables” include, among other things, the domain from which you access the Internet, the time you accessed our Web site, type of Web browser and operating system or platform used, the Internet address of the Web site you left to visit GMS, the names of the pages you visit while at our Web site, and the Internet address of the Web site you then visit. We collect all of this information to allow us to detect broad demographic trends, to provide information tailored to your interests and to enhance your experience on the GMS Web site. GMS may store “referrer” information for a limited period of time prior to deleting this information. 

At times, the GMS Web site may use what are commonly referred to as “pixel tags,” “web beacons,” or “clear GIFs,” including other similar methods (collectively, “Pixel Tags”) to collect aggregated information about website usage. Pixel Tags allow GMS to measure the amount of users who have visited specific pages on our site and help determine the effectiveness of advertising campaigns. The information collected from Pixel Tags contains no personally identifiable information and is used for statistical analysis only. 

In certain situations, the use of Pixel Tags and Cookies may be controlled by unaffiliated entities in order to manage programs or promotions. GMS cannot be responsible for third-party uses of Pixel Tags and Cookies, however, when we are able; we employ our best efforts to assure that these unaffiliated entities do not collect personally identifiable information.

Profiling

To help improve our Web site and to ensure that we make every effort to provide you with information and offers that are of interest to you, we may merge your personally-identifiable information with click-stream data and other data we have (including cookies and offline data). We will provide notice of this, as well as an opportunity to opt-out of it, at the time and place of information collection and before data is entered on our system. We may also develop a non-identifiable profile on you based on the pages within our site that you visit 

Why do we collection this information and how do we use it?

We use the information we collect for our business purposes, including:

• To track visitors to our Web sites and to recognize returning customers;
• To better understand our customers and our Web site visitors and their needs;
• To learn what site referred you to our Web site;
• To store your password if you are registered on our Web sites;
• To personalize your experience on our Web sites;
• To collect and store geographic data determined by the IP address of your computer;
• To optimize and tailor our Web sites and to diagnose problems, analyze trends, perform analytics, conduct research and improve the features and usability of the Web sites;
• To create aggregate (non-identifiable) statistics about visitors to the Web sites, with a view to introducing improvements and improving usability of the Web sites; and/or
• To make product recommendations and provide you with advertising content in which we think you will be interested. As part of this customization, we may observe your behaviors on our Web site or on other websites.

DO NOT TRACK REQUESTS

Some web browsers incorporate a “do not track” feature that, when enabled, signals to websites and online services that you do not wish to be tracked. Because there is not yet an accepted standard for how to respond to such a do-not-track signal, we do not recognize or respond to these signals.

This Web site may contain links to other sites. Please be aware that we are not responsible for the privacy practices of such other sites. We encourage our users to read the privacy statements of each and every Web site that they visit. This privacy statement applies solely to information collected when you visit our Web site.  

Special Policy Regarding Information from Children Under Thirteen

This Web site is not targeted to children under the age of 13, and we do not knowingly request personally identifiable information from any child under the age of 13 without parental consent. When we do receive such information, we delete it as soon as we discover it and do not use it or share it with third parties. 

CHOICE

GMS provides the following choices regarding the use of your information.

• You may set your browser to reject cookies and to erase cookies that have already been placed on your hard drive. However, if you do so, your ability to navigate this site will be limited.
• You may choose not to provide us with any contact information.
• If you would like us to manage your contact status or be removed from any of our on-line mailing lists, every email will contain an unsubscribe link, allowing you to unsubscribe from emails.
• If you do not want your personal or non-personal information merged with cookie and other information, you should not use the GMS Web site.
• If you would like GMS to delete any personal information you have provided, please send an email at webmaster@gms.com.

ACCESS

We understand that you have rights over your personal information, and we take reasonable steps to allow you to access, correct, amend, delete, port, or limit the use of your personal information. You may request to see personally identifiable information that we have collected about you via the Internet to update it or to have factual inaccuracies corrected by contacting us here. When requesting access to your personal information, please note that we may request specific information from you to enable us to confirm your identity and right to access, as well as to search for and provide you with the personal information that we hold about you. This information will be provided to you within thirty (30) business days from the date your written request is received so long as it is reasonably locatable and retrievable by us. You may also request the correction, amendment or deletion of any recorded personal information that we have in our possession.  We will notify you of our decision to comply with your request or our reasons for refusal within thirty (30) business days from the date your written request is received.  In the event we refuse your request, you will be provided with the opportunity to file a concise statement setting forth what you believe to be the correct, relevant or fair information and the reasons you may disagree with our determination. 

SECURITY

We make every effort to have reasonable security procedures in place to protect the loss, misuse or alteration of information under our control. However, no method of transmission over the Internet, or method of electronic storage, is 100% secure. Therefore, we cannot guarantee the absolute security of your personal information. 
If you have any questions about the security at our Web site, you can send an email to webmaster@gms.com. 

YOUR CALIFORNIA RIGHTS

California Civil Code Section 1798.83 entitles California users to request information concerning whether a business has disclosed certain information about them to any third parties for the third parties’ direct marketing purposes. California residents who wish to request further information under this law or have questions or concerns about our privacy practices and policies may contact us here. 

For how long do we retain your information?

We store your information for as long as it is necessary to provide services to you as described in this Privacy Policy and for as long as we are using it for our internal business purposes.  If you would like us to delete information, you may contact us here. We will make reasonable efforts to delete your information from our records, but may need to keep a copy for administrative purposes (e.g. documenting that a transaction occurred).