PRIVACY POLICY
Sterling Motorcars and its affiliates believe that privacy and trust are cornerstones of our customer relationship. In operating our businesses we strive to find methods to guard your privacy while affording you opportunities to find the automobile that suits your needs and obtain credit for the purchase of the automobile. This privacy statement for U.S. consumers lets you know how we handle personally identifiable information you share with Sterling Motorcars through Sterling Motorcars.com and certain other Sterling Motorcars web sites.
It also applies to information about you and your vehicle that we obtain from our affiliate's sites. Sterling Motorcars our affiliates, our licensees, and dealers may use the information you share with us. It may be used by our suppliers exclusively to provide services for Sterling Motorcars and by our business partners to conduct joint marketing programs.
We will not share your personal information with third parties other than these or with any third party for their independent use without your permission.
We do not sell information about our customers, their accounts or transactions to others for their use. We do share information as described in this Privacy Policy.
When we do share information it is limited to the information necessary for the particular circumstance and only under strict controls to prevent misuse.
We restrict access to the information we obtain about you to only those service providers who need to know that information for the purpose of purchasing an automobile or obtaining credit.
We maintain physical, electronic and procedural safeguards that comply with all state and federal regulations to guard against misuse of the information we obtain.
GRAHAM-LEACH-BLILEY ACT
Sterling Motorcars complies with the requirements of the Graham-Leach-Bliley Act, 15 U.S.C. SS6801 through 6810 (“GLB Act”), and the Federal Trade Commission's implementing regulation, Regulation P, 16 C.F.R. Part 313 (“Regulation P”), in particular, as both relate to the disclosure and protection of Non-Public Personal Information (“NPI”) for customers with regard to the authorized distribution and intended use of customers financial information to other parties. Sterling Motorcars will substantially comply with the GLB Act and Regulation P for all customer NPI received, transferred or obtained from the use of this site or from a party.
INFORMATION COLLECTION
Sterling Motorcars collects customer information from a variety of sources:
Application information (the information you provide us on your applications and other such forms such as names, addresses, telephone numbers, birth date, Social Security numbers, level of family income, employers name, and employers address); Credit Reports (information from consumer reporting agencies); Correspondence (the information you provide when communicating in writing, online or by phone with our customer service representatives, as well as our response and follow-up correspondence with third parties concerning; marketing partners and publicly available databases (we receive information from our marketing partners e.g. financial institutions, auto dealerships and other businesses and public databases, our websites, sweepstakes entries, test drive registrations, surveys, vehicle sales records, and other public sources which is used to help us serve you.
While you may use the Sterling Motorcars websites to learn about our products and services without disclosing any information about you or your vehicle, we may ask you to provide us with personal information including: contact information (name, address, city, state and zip code, e-mail address, and telephone number) vehicle information (vehicle identification number (VIN), make, model, model year, mileage, etc.) demographic information (age range, marital status, household composition, etc.) non-credit related marketing profile information (when you plan to purchase or lease; the vehicle in which you're interested, etc.)
In addition, Sterling Motorcars and other sources such as those that provide lists of potential vehicle purchasers or current users may give the information they have regarding you or your vehicle to us so that we may serve your needs better.
We use this information to evaluate your applications, locate an appropriate lender, provide you with high quality service, and prevent fraud. We may also use this information to confirm your identity when you call us to inquire about your accounts.
You authorize Sterling Motorcars to contact you with marketing information through written communications, calling or texting you at the phone number(s) you've provided. You understand these calls or text may use computer-assisted dialing and/or prerecorded messages. This authorization is not required to complete the purchase or lease of any of our products.
COOKIES AND OTHER TRACKING DEVICES
Sterling Motorcars may use cookies and other tracking devices on our websites. “Cookies” are small computer files which are automatically placed on your computer's hard drive when you are connected to a website or remote server so that the website can recognize you upon your return to the website and tailor your experience based on your earlier use of the site. “Action tags” (also known as Web Beacons, Trackers, or Bugs) are invisible pixel .gif files placed on webpages that are used to track Web navigation to those pages.
Using cookies on our sites provides benefits to you, such as allowing you to maintain your account information between visits. The use of cookies also allows us to measure site activity to provide a better user experience. Cookies and other tracking devices may be used to tell us the time and length of your visit, the pages you look at on our site, the site you visited just before coming to ours, and the name of your Internet service provider.
We may use third parties to serve Sterling Motorcars advertisements on other websites. In serving Sterling Motorcars advertisements, these companies may use cookies and other tracking devices to collect certain information about your visits to other websites (such as browser type, IP address, which page was visited, and time of day). This information may be used to evaluate our online advertising campaigns or to tailor promotions and other marketing messages to you.
Sterling Motorcars uses a cookie for each computer that visits its site. The cookie is integral to the customer experience and is necessary to use our online services. It allows Sterling Motorcars to customize the website presentation based on your accounts. Sterling Motorcars cookie does not collect information from your hard drive; rather, it allows us to recognize you and know how you navigated through our site. It is also part of our effort to detect and stop fraud.
While cookies, including Sterling Motorcars can be disabled, if you disable our cookie you will not be able to use our website. Please refer to your browser help instructions to learn more about cookies and how to manage their use.
REMARKETING WITH GOOGLE ANALYTICS
Sterling Motorcars uses analytical data and the DoubleClick cookie to serve ads based on a user's prior visits to our website. Site visitors may opt out of the DoubleClick cookie by visiting the Google advertising opt-out page or they may opt out of Google analytics by visiting the Google analytics opt-out page. Please visit Google to obtain additional information about their Remarketing Privacy Guidelines, Policies, and Restrictions.
SHARING INFORMATION
Sterling Motorcars may disclose information about you to the following types of third parties: Sterling Motorcars affiliates; service companies (companies that provide services to Sterling Motorcars in order to process your application); financial institutions, credit bureaus and collection agencies. Your information is disclosed to the foregoing entities solely for the purpose of locating a vehicle that meets your criteria and obtaining credit for the purchase of such vehicle. Outlined below is the information shared with each type of third party and as appropriate, your options.
Sharing Information with Service Companies — In order to provide quality service, Sterling Motorcars contracts with service providers for essential roles in processing your application. We may disclose some or all of the information we collect to these service providers but only in order to obtain credit for you. All of Sterling Motorcars service providers have entered into a contract with Sterling Motorcars that forbids them from using information provided by Sterling Motorcars for any purpose other than providing the service for Sterling Motorcars customers. Sterling Motorcars takes security precautions to monitor the use of the information and prevent the use of the information for any other purpose.
Information Sharing with Merchants — Sterling Motorcars does not share any information with unrelated merchants for the purpose of extending offers of goods and services without your consent.
Information Sharing with Partners — Sterling Motorcars offers its products in conjunction with financial institutions and other businesses (collectively, Sterling Motorcars). By completing a credit application with Sterling Motorcars for the purpose of locating a vehicle that meets your criteria and obtaining credit for the purchase of such vehicle, you agree to the sharing of information with that partner. These relationships are clearly stated in the application and by completing the application you agree to the information sharing by Sterling Motorcars and the partner which may include: your name, address, phone number, e-mail address, and personal financial information.
Credit Reports and Other Uses of Information — In applying for credit, you agree that we may request consumer credit reports from one or more credit reporting agencies in connection with your application and the administration of such application. You also authorize us to exchange credit information concerning you or your use of the Account with (and answer questions and requests from) others, such as merchants, other lenders and credit reporting agencies.
Sterling Motorcars does not knowingly offer its products and services to minors. Similarly, Sterling Motorcars does not collect information about children. Our application approval process is designed to identify applications submitted by children and to prevent their use of Sterling Motorcars websites.
Sterling Motorcars businesses covered by this Privacy Policy include:
BMW of Sterling
MINI of sterling
Rolls-Royce Motor Cars Sterling
Lamborghini Sterling
McLaren Sterling
Privacy Policy
Last Updated: 10/21/2020
Thank you for visiting our BMW of Sterling website, including our mobile device-ready version. BMW of Sterling and our affiliates (together, "BMW of Sterling" or "we") strive to make our website a useful tool and a rewarding experience for our customers by tailoring the content to your personal needs and interests. This way, the content of our website will be as relevant as possible for you, the customer. We hope that you find our website to be a useful part of your car-buying experience.
To accomplish this, we responsibly collect and utilize personally identifiable information. We respect your privacy, and this Privacy Policy documents our commitment to safeguard and treat your privacy and the personal information that we collect online with reasonable care and in strict compliance with applicable law for the protection of personally identifiable information.
This policy was implemented as of September 23, 2014 and applies to information collected on this website and those of our affiliates (together, "our website" or "the website") and covers the following areas:
- What personally identifiable information is collected by BMW of Sterling or by any third party through our website;
- How BMW of Sterling uses this information;
- With whom BMW of Sterling may share this information;
- What choices are available to you as a user of our website with respect to collection, use and distribution of the information; and
- What types of security procedures are in place to protect the loss, misuse or alteration of information under our control.
This Privacy Policy applies only to our website and information collected for us or by us through our website and through various features and online offerings on our website. It does not apply to any third party site or service linked to our website or recommended or referred by our website or by our staff. Further, it does not apply to any other type of online site or online service operated by BMW of Sterling or its affiliates, or to any of our offline activities.
1. Information Collection and Use
BMW of Sterling collects two different types of information through our website: anonymous information and personally identifiable information.
Anonymous Information. First, we collect and store anonymous, aggregate information (such as internet protocol (IP) addresses, browser types, search engines, internet service provider (ISP), referring/exit pages, platform type, date/time stamp, and number of clicks) from all visitors to our website. You may search our website for car models, prices and other information provided through our website without ever submitting your name, email address or any other personally identifiable information. The anonymous information that we do collect from your visit is never linked to any of your personally identifiable information until you voluntarily submit that personal information, in which case some otherwise anonymous information may be connected to your website activity and personal account. Otherwise, the anonymous information is only used in the aggregate to analyze trends, administer the website, diagnose any problems, track a visitor's movement in the aggregate, and gather broad demographic information for aggregate use. We may provide this anonymous information in aggregate form to other parties or use it for our own insight or marketing purposes. Our ability to use this information is not restricted in any way.
We also use "cookies" and "image tags" to collect certain usage information from all customers and visitors to our website. A "cookie" is a small text file that a website can place on your computer’s hard drive or on your mobile device’s memory in order to collect information about your activities on our website. An "image tag," also known as a clear GIF or web beacon, works together with cookies and is a small image file that may be located in various areas of our website. Most browsers automatically accept cookies, but you have the option to change your browser setting to decline them.
Accepting cookies in no way gives us access to your computer or any personal information about you, since cookies are not used to identify anonymous website visitors. Our cookies enable you to proceed smoothly through our website and know whether you’ve used it before, so as to eliminate some steps that apply to new visitors. Cookies also give us usage data like how often you visit, where you go on our website, and what you do while here.
Similarly, a cookie may be placed by our third-party advertising companies. These companies may use aggregated statistics about your use of our website and third party media in order to provide you with advertisements about goods and services that you may be interested in. The information they collect does not include your personal information.
The third-party advertising companies may also employ technology that is used to measure the effectiveness of ads. Any such information is anonymous. They may use this anonymous information about your visits to this and other sites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services of potential interest to you. No personal information about you is collected during this process. The information is anonymous and does not link online actions to an identifiable person.
BMW of Sterling partners with third-party advertising company Google to collect information about how users navigate our website and we use many or all of their products to enhance our website experience. Like BMW of Sterling, Google is very much committed to consumer protection, to maintaining the privacy of your personal information and to making ads safe, unobtrusive and relevant for you.
Google uses this information only to generate anonymous visitor profiles, which do not contain personally identifiable information. These anonymous profiles are used to provide you content specifically tailored to you. To learn more about how Google collects and manages information, or to opt out of Google’s collection of information about how you navigate our website, please go to https://www.google.com/policies/privacy/.
Google’s technologies and products, including AdSense, AdWords, Google Analytics, and a range of DoubleClick-branded services, also use cookies. When you visit a page that uses one of these products, various cookies may be sent to your browser.
Among the Google products we use is Google Analytics, a web analytics service provided by Google. Information generated by cookies about your use of our website (including your shortened IP address) is transmitted to a Google server in the U.S. and stored there. Google uses this information to evaluate your use of our website, compile reports on website activity for our website operators and to provide other services related with the website and internet use. Google may also transfer this information to third parties if required by law, or where third parties process these data on behalf of Google. For more information about Google Analytics and how it collects and processes data, please go to "How Google uses data when you use our partners' sites or apps", located at http://www.google.com/policies/privacy/partners/. To opt out of Google Analytics, please go to https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.
To help us manage our advertising and website, Google offers many products in addition to Google Analytics, including Google’s Analytics for Display Advertisers, AdSense, AdWords, and a range of DoubleClick-branded services. BMW of Sterling participates in an integrated version of Google Analytics and DoubleClick products or services and/or other Google display ad products or services, known as Google Analytics for Display Advertisers. As with Google Analytics, you can learn more about Google Analytics for Display Advertisers, or you can opt out, by going to https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.
We have or may enable interest-based advertising features, including remarketing, with Google Analytics in connection with other Google services. This kind of advertising based on consumer interests and your precise geographic location may, in addition to remarketing, include Google’s Adword product features known as: interest categories, similar audiences, other types of interest-based advertising and demographic and location targeting. DoubleClick advertising cookies or mobile advertising identifiers, associated with your use of our website, are or may be employed by us in all aspects of remarketing in online advertising.
"Remarketing" is simply a feature of interest-based advertising that lets us reach people who have previously visited our website. Remarketing helps us match interested people, like you, with a relevant message on our website or even when you search on Google using our keywords, use Google products like Gmail, or visit other websites. We gather information through cookies for remarketing, and similar audiences feature in AdWords, simply to make your visits relevant and allow us both to pick up where we left off on your last visit.
Our partners, including Google, use cookies to serve ads based on your past visits to our website and to show our ads on sites across the Internet. You can opt out of Google's use of cookies by visiting Google's Ads Settings. Alternatively, we may use Google DoubleClick's remarketing pixels to participate in remarketing and create a remarketing list of potential customers (this involves adding a remarketing tag, a small snippet of code that we get from Gooogle’s Ad Exchange, across all our website pages). In such case, instead of the previous link, you can opt out of DoubleClick's use of cookies by visiting the DoubleClick opt-out page or the Network Advertising Initiative opt-out page. Finally, you can opt out of any other third-party advertising partner's use of cookies by visiting the Network Advertising Initiative opt-out page.
With respect to unrelated, third party web sites, such as third party online retailers, advertisers, or unrelated sites that we may happen to link to, or web sites that link to our website, those third parties may collect personal information directly from you. The information policies and practices of these unrelated parties are not covered by this privacy policy. We do not control the privacy policies of third parties even if we may provide hyperlinks or other access to their web sites. We are not responsible or liable for their independent policies and practices. Please review their privacy policies and practices. It is your responsibility to review them and decide if you are satisfied with their protections.
Some browsers have a "do not track" feature that lets you tell websites that you do not want to have your online activities tracked. These features are not yet uniform, so we are not currently set up to respond to those signals.
Personally Identifiable Information. Second, we require the submission of certain personally identifiable information when you use some services available on our website. For example, your use of your user name and password allows us to identify you as our customer who is seeking information in connection with our services. Our website uses a variety of contact forms and tracking phone numbers for visitors to request information, products, and services. We collect a visitor's contact information (like his or her email address or phone number) and in some cases, demographic information (like his or her zip code). In limited circumstances, such as when a visitor fills out an online credit application, we collect unique identifiers (like a social security number), and/or financial information (like age, income level, bank account or credit card numbers). We use this information to get in touch with our prospective customers about their requests, and to send them additional information about our products and services.
Note that once you have created an order or otherwise voluntarily provided personally identifiable information to us, we may use cookies to help identify you. Personally identifiable information received from you (such as IP address, phone number, email address, zip code, etc.) may be contained in or linked to a cookie. The only time that we receive such personally identifiable information is when you volunteer it by submitting it to us.
We may use cookies with personally identifiable information so that our website can remember you, enhance your online visit with us, and provide you with the information you're most likely to need. For instance, cookies allow our website to remind you of your past vehicle search interests and website activity and to suggest similar products and services. In some cases, cookies may improve your shopping experience and we use information gained through cookies to track your website activity and to deliver you content specific information
Any financial information we collect is used to check the qualifications of our prospective customers and bill for products and services ordered. If you apply for financing or wish to purchase or lease a car through our online system, we may collect personal information such as your name, address, driver's license number and state, social security number and other credit information. This information goes into a secure database and is used solely to provide the service you requested. The collection, use and storage of your financial information for credit checks, for arranging credit and loans or for purchasing products and services may be subject to additional privacy policies and if so, you will be notified of them at the time of any such collection, use or storage of your financial information as required by law.
Our online surveys may ask visitors for contact information (like an email address or phone number) which they may voluntarily provide. We also may run contests on our website in which we ask visitors for similar contact information in order to participate. We use contact information from our surveys and contests to send information about products and services to these participating visitors.
2. Our Use Restrictions on Your Personally Identifiable Information
BMW of Sterling does not sell, rent, or share personally identifiable information to or with any third party not affiliated with or owned by BMW of Sterling, except service providers who may assist us in such areas as our promotions, credit checks, data storage and order processing (See Agents and Vendors below). BMW of Sterling will never give or sell your personally identifiable information to unaffiliated third parties to be used for the purposes of sending you unsolicited commercial offers, such as spam. We may, however, use your personal information to send you commercial offers in e-mails from BMW of Sterling or its affiliated companies, which do not relate to the products or services you have ordered. You may altogether avoid or opt out of these marketing campaigns (see "Opting Out" below).
We may also need to contact you for purposes other than marketing, for example to provide notice about the status of our website or the specific services you have requested. We also use this information to the extent necessary to enforce our website terms of service and to prevent imminent harm to persons or property. You may not opt-out of these kinds of communications. Consistent with our change policy (see "Your Consent and Notification of Changes" below), we will post any updates or notices about material changes in our policies on collection and use of your personally identifiable information to this Privacy Policy page.
3. Third Party Information About You
Our website supplements the information that you provide with information that we obtain about you from third parties, such as credit bureaus and other sources. To the best of our knowledge, we only deal with reputable providers who gather and maintain information in accordance with all applicable state and federal laws. Any such information will be maintained by us in accordance with the standards set forth in this Privacy Policy along with other personal information you've provided.
4. Our Agents and Vendors
BMW of Sterling may use other companies and/or individuals to perform any functions described in this Privacy Policy, on our behalf. Examples include marketing, credit checking, data and network hosting, service reminders, verification of sales, order processing and fulfillment, administering contact information and e-mail services and running special promotions. Such parties only have access to the personal information needed to perform these functions and may not use or store the information for any other purpose. We obtain commitments from these agents and vendors working on our behalf to refrain from using any information provided by BMW of Sterling to send you unsolicited e-mail messages from third parties or similar communications and from sharing your information with unrelated parties.
5. Disclosure of Personal Information As Required By Law or Otherwise
We will disclose personal information when required by law, or if we have a good-faith belief that such action is necessary to (a) comply with a current judicial proceeding, a court order or legal process served on us or to comply with the request of a law enforcement agency, (b) protect and defend our rights, or (c) protect the rights, property, and other interests of our users or others.
6. Links
Our website may contain links to websites not operated by us, as well as third party widgets and applications. Once you leave our website, we suggest that you review the applicable privacy policy of the third party website or application. BMW of Sterling is not responsible for the privacy practices or content of these other sites. We encourage you to be aware when you leave our website and to read the privacy statements of each and every site that collects personally identifiable information from you. Our Privacy Policy applies solely to information collected by our website.
7. Security
BMW of Sterling takes commercially reasonable precautions to protect your personally identifiable information. For example, we encrypt communications through our website with commercial strength encryption generally used by our industry. However, given the nature of the Internet and the fact that network security measures are not perfect, we cannot guarantee the absolute security of your information. If we are required to provide notice to you of a data security breach, the notice will be provided in electronic form.
8. Your Consent and Notification of Changes
By using any of our website or submitting information to us online, you agree that we may collect and use this information as stated in this Privacy Policy at the time we collect the information. If we decide to change our Privacy Policy in any material way, for a reasonable time we will post a concurrent notice to this Privacy Policy page on our website to alert you about the change in our privacy and information collection practices. In addition, if we make any material changes in our privacy practices that affect your personally identifiable information already stored in our database, we apply those changes to the personally identifiable information in our possession only as permitted by applicable law.
9. Opting Out
Visitors and customers have the opportunity to opt-out of receiving specific types of communications from us and our partners, such as e-mail, by not providing personally identifiable information at the point where our website requests such information about you. In addition, you may unsubscribe or opt out of all future e-mails from us, that do not relate to the products and services you have ordered, by clicking the unsubscribe link on any email marketing communication you receive.
10. Further Information about Our Privacy Policy and Practices
This Privacy Policy applies to all visitors and customers of our website. We may delete any or all of your information at any time without notice to you for any reason or no reason unless otherwise required by law to retain it. You may have other privacy protections under state laws and we will comply with any applicable state laws when we disclose information about you. This Privacy Policy replaces any previous policy on this topic and any statements or disclosures to you about our information practices.