Privacy Policy

Effective and last modified: January 1, 2020

At Kao USA Inc. we respect your privacy and are committed to protecting it.
This notice covers all personal information collected in the use of this website, as well as any other websites, applications, or connected products on which it is posted. If in any case our privacy practices differ from those explained in this policy, we will let you know you at the time we ask for or collect your information.

Some pages on our websites may contain links to third-party websites. We do not endorse and have no control over the privacy practices or content of such websites. We recommend you carefully read the privacy policy of each site you visit – including ours.

2.What Information We Collect About You

Personal information, or personal data, means any information about an individual from which that person can be identified. It does not include data where the identity has been removed (anonymous data), which we can use for any purpose.

We may collect, use, store and transfer different kinds of personal information about you which we have grouped together as follows:
 

• Identity or Contact Data includes your name, mailing or delivery address, email address, telephone numbers, username, or similar identifiers or contact information. 

• Financial information may include your billing address and other payment-related information.

• Transaction Data includes details about payments to and from you and other details of products you have purchased from us or other details about your transactions with us.

• Technical Data includes internet protocol (IP) address, your login data, browser type and version, time zone setting, location, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform, and other technology on the devices you use to access our websites, applications, or connected products.

• Profile Data includes your username and password, purchases or orders made by you, your interests, preferences, feedback, age, gender, product reviews, survey responses, information about your experiences with our products, contact preferences, and other similar information. 

• Usage Data includes information about how you use our websites and our products and services.

• Marketing and Communications Data includes your preferences in receiving marketing from us and your communication preferences.

3. Children’s Online Privacy

We do not direct our websites to minors, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you are under 13, do not use or provide any information on this website. If we learn we have collected or received personal information from a child under 13 without verification of parental consent, we will delete that information. If you believe we might have any information from or about a child under 13 please contact us using our Contact Us page.

4. How we collect personal information about you

We use different methods to collect information from and about you including through:
 

• Direct interactions. You may give us information about you by filling in forms or by communicating with us by text, e-mail, or otherwise. This includes information you provide when you register for an account, subscribe to one of our newsletters or other communications, conduct a search, place an order, engage in a promotional event, complete a survey, or when you contact us about one of our websites, products, or services. We may also collect information when you respond to our request to voluntarily provide information regarding your personal or professional interests, demographics, experience with our products, and contact preferences.

• Automated technologies or interactions. As you interact with our websites or websites employing our cookies, we may automatically collect Technical Data about your equipment, browsing actions and patterns. We collect this information by using cookies, server logs, web beacons, and other similar technologies. Our Cookies and automatic data collection technologies section contains more information and options to control or opt-out of certain data collection or uses.·        

• Third parties or publicly available sources. We may receive information about you from third parties including, for example, our affiliated companies, business partners, sub-contractors, analytics providers, and service providers. If you enter a co-branded promotion, that is being sponsored by Kao and another party, our co-sponsor may provide us with information about you. 

• User contributions. You also may provide information to be published or displayed (“posted”) on public areas of the websites or transmitted to other users (collectively, “User Contributions”). For example, if you review one of our products, then your product review may be made available on public areas of our websites.  

5. Cookies and automatic data collection technologies

Our websites use automatic data collection technologies to distinguish you from other website users. This helps us deliver a better and  more personalized service when you browse our website. It also allows us to improve our websites by enabling us to:
 

• Estimate our audience size and usage patterns.       

• Store your preferences so we may customize our websites according to your individual interests.

• Speed up your searches.        

• Recognize you when you return to our website.

We also may use these technologies to collect information about your online activities over time and across third-party websites or other online services (behavioral tracking). For more information, see the Interest Based Advertising section of this privacy policy. 
The technologies we use for this automatic data collection may include: 
      

• Cookies (or browser cookies). A cookie is a small file placed on the hard drive of your computer. For information about managing browser settings to refuse cookies, see Your Rights and Choices.

• Flash Cookies. Certain features of our websites may use Flash cookies (local stored objects) instead of browser cookies to collect and store information about your preferences and navigation to, from, and on the website. For information about managing Flash cookies see Your Rights and Choices.

• Web Beacons. Our website pages and e-mails may contain small transparent embedded images or objects known as web beacons (also referred to as clear gifs, pixel tags, and single-pixel gifs) that permit us, for example, to count website page visitors or email readers, or to compile other similar statistics such as recording website content popularity or verifying system and server integrity. For information about managing web beacons, see Your Rights and Choices.

Depending on which website this notice is posted on, we may use Google Analytics to provide certain analytics services for us. More information about Google Analytics can be found in the Google Analytics Terms of Use and the Google Analytics Privacy Policy. 
On some of our websites, we use Adobe Analytics (a service available from the web analysis provider Adobe Systems Software Ireland Limited (“Adobe”), to 1) help us measure the performance of the website, 2) allow us to share relevant information and advertising with you based on your and other visitors’ past visits to this website when you surf the web, and 3) help us measure your interactions with any Kao advertising you see on other websites. Finally, Kao may use data from Adobe’s interest-based advertising or third-party audience data, such as age, gender and interests, together with our own data, to deliver relevant advertising to you based upon your demographic profile and interests.  More information can be found in Adobe’s Privacy Policy.  

We do not respond to or honor “do not track” (a/k/a DNT) signals or similar mechanisms transmitted by web browsers.

6. How we use your personal information

We use your information to provide you with products, offer you services, communicate with you, deliver advertising and marketing, and to conduct other business operations, such as using information to improve and personalize your experiences. Examples of how we may use the information that we collect include:
 

• To register you as a new customer.

• To send you products that you have ordered, including to process payment, provide you updates about the status of your order, and process product returns.

• To manage our relationship with you which may include notifying you about changes to our terms or privacy policy, providing you notices about your account, asking you to leave a review or take a survey, addressing any concerns you may have about our products or services.

• To send samples that you have requested or to contact you for market research purposes.

• To provide you with the information, products, services or support that you request form us or to fulfill any other purpose for which you provide it.

• To deliver relevant content, advertisements, and messaging to you and to measure or understand the effectiveness of such content, advertisements, and messaging. We believe that content, messages and advertising are more relevant and valuable to you when they are based upon your interests, needs and demographics. Therefore, we may deliver content, messages and advertising specifically to you that are based upon your prior activities on our websites and information provided to us or gathered as described in this policy. For example, if you have previously expressed an interest in hair care products through your activities on our website, we may deliver more information to you about hair care products than other products for which you have not expressed an interest or interacted with on the website.

• To allow you to enter a sweepstake, contest or promotion that we may offer. If we plan to make additional uses of data collected in connection with any sweepstake, contest, or promotion, we will inform you at the time of entry. If we offer a co-branded promotion, then our co-sponsor may have different privacy practices, which we will inform you about before you provide your information.

• To use data analytics to improve our website, products or services, marketing, customer relationships, and experiences.

• To make suggestions and recommendations to you about our own and third-parties’ products or services that may be of interest to you. If you do not want us to use your information in this way or for more information on how to adjust your preferences, see Your Rights and Choices.

• To carry out our obligations and enforce our rights.

• In any other way we may describe when you provide the information. 

• For any other purpose with your consent.

We may use information that is not personal information for any purpose. For example, we may aggregate usage data from many people in a way that does not identify any individuals to calculate the percentage of users accessing a feature on the website.  

7.  Disclosure of Your Information

We may share non-personal information without restriction. We may share your personal information with:
 

• Any member of our corporate group, which means our subsidiaries, affiliates, our ultimate holding company and its subsidiaries, and affiliates.

• To contractors, service providers, and other third parties we use to support our business.

• To an actual or prospective buyer or other successor in the event of merger, divestiture, restructuring, reorganization, dissolution or other sale or transfer of some or all of our assets, where one of the transferred assets is the personal information we hold.

• If we offer a co-branded promotion, to our co-sponsor.

• To fulfill the purpose for which you provide it.

• For any other purposes that we disclose when you provide the information.

• With your consent.

We may also disclose your personal information:
 

• To comply with any court order, law, or legal process, including responding to any government or regulatory request.

• To enforce Terms of Use [A1] and other agreements including for billing and collections purposes.

• To protect the rights, property, or safety of our business, our employees, our customers, or others. This includes exchanging information with other companies and organizations for the purposes of cybersecurity, fraud protection and credit risk reduction.

• To investigate suspected violations of any law, rule or regulation, or the terms or policies for our website.

8. Interest-Based Advertising

Our websites may integrate technology of trusted advertising partners (third-party companies) that allows the recognition of your device and the collection of information about your browsing activity in order to provide advertisements about our products and services likely to be of greater interest to you. In particular, these partners collect information about your activity on our websites or websites owned by other companies to enable us to show advertisements for our products and/or service to you on third-party websites or apps.
We may share data, such as technical identifiers derived from your registration information on our websites or our CRM system with our trusted advertising partners. This allows them to link your devices or browsers and to provide you a seamless experience across the different environments used or likely used by you.

Our partners may use non-cookie technologies on which browser settings that block cookies might have no effect. Your browser may not permit you to block such technologies. For this reason, keep in mind that you can block the collection and use of information related to you by advertising companies for the purpose of serving interest based advertising by visiting the following platforms of self-regulatory programs of which those companies are members:
 

• The NAI’s opt-out platform: www.networkadvertising.org/choices
• The DAA’s opt-out platform: www.aboutads.info/choices

9. Third Party Content, Apps, and Links

Some content or applications on our websites may be served by third parties, content providers and application providers including the following:

a. Plugins

Our websites make available the option for you to use “plugins” that are operated by social media companies. If you choose to use one of these plugins, then it may collect information about you and send it back to the social media company that owns it. This may happen even if you do not click on the plugin, if you are logged into the social media website that owns the plugin when you visit our website. Information collected by a plugin is subject to the privacy policy and terms of the social media company that makes it. If you do not want the social media company who owns a plugin to collect information about you when you visit our websites, sign out of the social media network before visiting. By interacting with a plugin when you are on our websites (for example, clicking the Facebook “Like” button), you are intentionally transferring information to that social media company. Further, if you are logged into a social media website when you visit our websites, then you are directing us to share your data with the social media company that owns the plugin.

We may use the following plugins on our websites: Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, Instagram, and SnapChat. 

Facebook
We use the plugins of social network facebook.com, operated by Facebook Inc., 1601 S. California Ave, Palo Alto, CA 94304, USA. The link to Facebook’s data privacy declaration can be found here: Data Privacy Information Facebook.

Twitter
We use the plugins of social network twitter.com, operated by Twitter, Inc., 1355 Market Street, Suite 900, San Francisco, CA 94103 U.S.A. The link to Twitter’s data privacy declaration can be found here: Data Privacy Information Twitter

Pinterest
We use the plugins of social network Pinterest, operated by Pinterest Inc., 635 High Street, Palo Alto, CA, USA (“Pinterest”).The link to Pinterest’s data privacy declaration can be found here: Data Privacy Information Pinterest.

YouTube
We use the plugins of the YouTube website, operated by Google Inc., 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, United States.
The link to YouTube’s data privacy declaration can be found here: Data Privacy Information YouTube.

Instagram
We use the plugins of social network Instagram, operated by Instagram, LLC Instagram Inc., 1601 Willow Road, Menlo Park, CA 94025, USA. The link to Instagram’s data privacy declaration can be found here: Data Privacy Information Instagram.

SnapChat
We use the plugins of the social network Snapchat, owned by Snap, Inc., 2772 Donald Douglas Loop North, Santa Monica, CA 90405. The link to SnapChat’s Privacy Center can be found here: Privacy Center.
 
b. User Content. Our websites may allow you to upload your own content to public areas of the website. Any information you submit becomes public information, and we do not control how others may use the content you submit. We are not responsible for uses that may violate our privacy policy, the law, or your intellectual property rights.

c. Third-party links. Our websites may contain links to other sites, which we do not control. Those websites have their own privacy policies and terms.

10. Your Rights and Choices

Your rights may vary depending on where you are located. We have created mechanisms to provide you with the following control over your information.   
    

• Marketing. If you do not want us to use your email address or other contact information to promote or recommend our own products and services, or third parties’ products or services, you can opt-out by checking the relevant box located on the form where we collect your contact information or, if presented with the option to
  opt-in, do not opt-in. If you have an account with our website, you may be able to log in and check or uncheck relevant boxes. If you do not have an account,
  you can adjust your preferences by contacting us as set forth below in the Contact Us section. You may also opt-out of further marketing communications by replying to any promotional email we have sent you or following the opt-out links on that message. This opt-out may not apply to information provided to us as a result of a product purchase, warranty registration, product service experience or other transactions.

• Accessing, Updating and Deleting Your Information. If you have an account with us, you may have the ability to access your information and make updates to or delete your data. If not, you can contact us as set forth in the Contact Us section below to request access to, correction of, or deletion of personal information that you have provided to us. We may not accommodate a request to change information if we believe the change would violate any law or legal requirement or negatively affect the information’s accuracy.

• Cookies and Automatic Data Collection Technologies. You can set your browser to refuse all or some browser cookies, or to alert you when websites set or access cookies. Flash cookies are not managed by the same browser settings as are used for browser cookies. To learn how you can manage your Flash cookie settings, visit the Flash player settings page on Adobe’s website. However, if you disable or refuse cookies, please note that some parts of this website may become inaccessible or not function properly. If you do not want Google Analytics to be used in your browser, Google Analytics provides an op-out tool which can be found here. You can opt-out of
  Adobe Analytics by using Adobe’s opt-out browser add-on at http://www.adobe.com/privacy/opt-out.html. In some cases, you may be able to set your browser or email program to not download web beacons.

Cookie Settings

• Interest Based Advertising. Please see Interest Based Advertising above for information on how to opt-out of interest-based advertising.

• California Residents. If you are a California resident, you may have additional personal rights and choices with regard to your personal information. Please see Your
  California Privacy Rights for more information.

• Nevada Residents. If you are a Nevada resident, you may have additional personal rights and choices with regard to your personal information. Please see our Nevada
  Privacy Rights section below for more information.
  

11. Data Security

The security of your personal information is very important to us. We use physical, electronic, and administrative safeguards designed to protect your personal information from loss, misuse and unauthorized access, use, alteration or disclosure.

The safety and security of your information also depends on you. Where we have given you (or where you have chosen) a password for access to certain parts of our website, you are responsible for keeping this password confidential. We ask you not to share your password with anyone. We urge you to take care when providing information in public areas of our websites like message boards, which any website visitor can view. 

12. Your California Privacy Rights

If you are a California resident, California law may provide you with additional rights regarding our use of your personal information. To learn more about your California privacy rights, you can view our Privacy Notice for California Residents.

California’s “Shine the Light” law (Civil Code Section § 1798.83) permits users of our website that are California residents to request certain information regarding our disclosure of personal information to third parties for their direct marketing purposes. At this time, we do not engage in this type of disclosure.

13. Nevada Privacy Rights 

Nevada residents have the right to opt out of the sale of certain "covered information" collected by operators of websites or online services. We currently do not sell covered information, as "sale" is defined by such law, and we don't have plans to sell this information.

14. Changes to Our Privacy Policy

We will post any changes we may make to our privacy policy on this page. If the changes materially alter how we use or treat your information we will notify you by email to the primary email address specified in your account (if you have an account with us) and/or through a notice on the website home page. The date the privacy policy was last revised is identified at the top of the page. You are responsible for ensuring that we have an up-to-date email address for you and for periodically visiting our website and this page to check for any changes.

15. Contact Us

If you have any comments or questions about our privacy policy, please use our Contact Us page to reach out to us.