Privacy Policy

Effective March 6, 2024

INTRODUCTION

Thank you for visiting this website www.asrtechnews.com (the “Site”), which is owned and provided by ASR Group International, Inc., American Sugar Refining, Inc. and their affiliated companies (collectively, “ASR Group”). All references to we, us, and our in this Privacy Policy (the “Privacy Policy”) refer to ASR Group.

Your access to, and use of the Site is subject to the provisions contained in the terms and conditions (the “Terms and Conditions”) located on the Site, the Terms and Conditions of this Privacy Policy, legal notices or terms on particular pages on the Site and all applicable laws.

This Privacy Policy sets out the basis on which any personal data we collect from you or that you provide to us, will be processed by us. Please read this Privacy Policy to understand our views and practices before you provide us with any information. Certain provisions of this Privacy Policy may be superseded by expressly designated legal notices or terms on particular pages on the Site.

By using the Site, you agree to accept the practices described in this Privacy Policy (as amended from time to time). If you do not agree with these practices, please do not use this Site.

OUR PRIVACY POLICY

ASR Group recognizes that many people who visit the Site are concerned about information they provide online and how such information is maintained and used. To address these concerns and to demonstrate ASR Group’s commitment to privacy, ASR Group has developed and implemented this Privacy Policy. Any information you provide us through the Site will be treated in accordance with this Privacy Policy. ASR Group makes no representation that the materials in the Site are appropriate or available for use in locations other than the United States. If you access the Site from locations other than the United States, you are responsible for compliance with any applicable laws. This Privacy Policy shall be governed by and construed under Florida law without regard to conflict of law provisions. Any action or proceeding arising out of or related to these Terms and Conditions or your use of this Site must be brought in the state or federal courts of Florida and you consent to the exclusive personal jurisdiction of such courts. If you are resident outside of the United States then the laws of the United States may not necessarily be consistent with the laws and regulations of your home country.

CHANGES TO THE PRIVACY POLICY

From time to time, we may make changes to our Privacy Policy. If we do make changes, the changes will be posted on this page, and we will indicate at the top of this Privacy Policy the date such changes went into effect. We encourage you to come back to the Site and review this Privacy Policy frequently so that you are constantly aware of our most current privacy practices.

In the event we want to materially change how we use personal information which you have previously provided to us, we will notify you by email or by way of a notice on the Site and may give you a choice to consent to or opt out from the desired change. Your inaction or continued use of the Site after any such notification, or your explicit consent to any changes for which we require your prior approval, will signify your agreement with these changes.

CONTACT US

If you have any questions or concerns about this Privacy Policy, please contact us at: 

ASR Group International, Inc.

Attention: Legal Department

One North Clematis Street, Suite 200

West Palm Beach, FL 33401

Phone: 561-366-5100

Fax: 561-366-5180

INFORMATION COLLECTION, USE AND DISCLOSURES

Information Collection

ASR Group does not require that you provide us with any information to browse the Site. If you wish to participate in any of the services and opportunities the Site may offer, we may ask you to provide certain personal, demographic or login information. Personal information refers to any information that can be used to personally identify you or contact you online or offline, such as your name, address, email address and phone number. Demographic information includes any non-identifiable information about you or your family, such as your gender, birthdate, product preferences and other related information. Login information refers to information you create or set up when registering for an account through the Site (such as a username, password, and security question and answer). Login information allows you to access and update your online account information and preferences through the Site.

We may process your personal information for our legitimate business interests as described in this Privacy Policy. You have the right to object to this processing. In order to object, please contact us using the Contact Information below.

In addition, we collect and process the following data about you:

Information that you provide by filling in forms on the Site. This includes information provided at the time of registering to use the Site, subscribing to our services, posting material or requesting further services. We may also ask you for information when you report a problem with the Site;

If you contact us, we may keep a record of that correspondence;

We may also ask you to complete surveys that we use for research purposes, although you do not have to respond to them;

Details of your visits to the Site, including but not limited to, traffic data, location data, weblogs and other communication data, the resources that you access, your IP address, operating system and browser type, dates and times you access the Site, any keywords you may have used in a search engine to find the Site and the internet address of the website which brought you directly to the Site.

Information Use

As noted above, personal, demographic, and login information is only collected from you with your knowledge (that is, if you voluntarily provide it to us). We collect this information primarily to communicate and share news with subscribers and to respond to your questions or suggestions. We also use personal, demographic and login information to provide you with marketing and promotions that are tailored to your interests.

ASR Group may use your information to create summary statistics and to determine the level of interest in information available on the Site.

We use an IP address to identify that a user has visited the Site on a specific device. We do not have the ability to connect an IP address with an individual identifiable person.

We may also use information about you:

To ensure that content from the Site is presented in the most effective manner for you and for your computer;

To allow you to participate in interactive features of our services, when you choose to do so;

When you contact us with business opportunities, product questions or concerns, career inquiries or for media contacts; and

To notify you about changes to our services or the Site.

Information Disclosures

We may transfer or disclose personal information to certain outside companies, agents or contractors (“Vendors”) that assist ASR Group in maintaining and managing the activities on the Site. Such sharing is consistent with our legitimate business interests. These Vendors are only given access to the information they need in order to perform the specific tasks they have been hired to do and are prohibited from using your personal information for any other purpose.

We may also share personal, demographic, login, and usage information with certain affiliates of ASR Group. Doing this allows us to introduce you to products and services offered by our affiliates.

ASR Group may share non-identifiable, aggregate demographic or usage information about the Site and its users with advertisers, business partners, sponsors and other third parties in an effort to customize or enhance the Site’s content and advertising for our users.

Legal and Business Transfers

We may also disclose your personal information to others if we are required to do so by law or a regulatory authority, or, if in our good faith judgment, such action is reasonably necessary to comply with our legal obligations, respond to any claims, enforce or apply our Terms and Conditions or protect the safety or rights of ASR Group, our consumers or the public.

In the event of a merger or acquisition of all or part of ASR Group or our parent company(ies) by another company, or in the event ASR Group or our parent company(ies) were to sell or dispose of all or a part of the ASR Group business, the acquirer may have access to the information previously maintained by ASR Group, which could include your personal information. Similarly, any information in our possession, including your personal information, may be transferred to a third party entity as part of a corporate reorganization, insolvency proceeding or other similar event.

RETENTION

We will retain personal information for no longer than is necessary for the purposes for which such personal information was originally collected.

CHILDREN AND PRIVACY

ASR Group does not knowingly solicit or collect personal or other information from children under the age of 13 through the Site. If we learn at any time that we have inadvertently collected personal information from a child, we will promptly delete the information from our records.

As a parent, you can always ask to review any personal information about your child that has been collected by the Site, have us delete this information (if ASR Group still has the information in our databases), and/or instruct us not to collect or use your child's information in the future. If you are a parent and wish to exercise this right, simply contact us at the address stated below.

THIRD PARTY OFFERS AND INFORMATION FROM ASR GROUP

From time to time, we are approached by reputable third party companies and organizations that provide products or services that we believe may be of interest to you. As a result, these third party products may be delivered to you together with some of our own products or services, for example, as inserts. We see this as a value-added service helping you find special offers on products and services that may be of interest to you. Please remember that the products we send you in connection with this particular service come directly from ASR Group and, therefore, do not require us to share your personal information with third party companies. If you would prefer not to receive these third party products from ASR Group, you must request to opt-out from receiving communications from ASR Group.

WEB BEACONS AND COOKIES

We may also use web beacons or other similar technology (“Beacons”) on the Site or include them in an email message we send you. Beacons are small strings of code that provide a method of delivering a graphic image on a web page or in an email message for the purpose of transferring data back to us. The information collected via Beacons may include information about how a user responds to an email campaign from ASR Group (for example, the time the email is opened, where does the user link to from the email, etc.). We use Beacon information for a variety of purposes, including but not limited to, Site traffic reporting, unique visitor counts, advertising and email auditing and reporting and personalization.

ASR Group may also use “cookie” technology on the Site. A “cookie” is a non-executable element of data that a website stores on your browser or your computer's hard drive. These cookies help us to provide you with a good experience when you browse the Site and also allow us to improve the Site.

The cookie does not extract personal information about you. Most browsers provide a simple procedure that will enable you to control whether you want to receive cookies by notifying you when a website is about to deposit a cookie.

We use the following cookies:

Strictly necessary cookies: These are cookies that are required for the operation of the Site. They include, for example, cookies that enable you to log into secure areas of the Site.

JQuery Cookies: A plugin for reading, writing and deleting cookies.

Datepicker Cookies: Allows users to sort events by date.

Big Pipe Module Cookies: Allows us to flush the initial page first, and then stream the replacements for the placeholders. This results in hugely improved front-end/perceived performance.

Comment Module Cookies: When enabled, the Drupal comment module creates a discussion board for each Drupal node. Users can post comments to discuss a forum topic, weblog post, story, collaborative book page, etc.

Cookies for testing: Uploads a test to a private node and checks access for development purposes.

Hal Module: When enabled, the HAL module serializes entities using HAL (Hypertext Application Language).

History Module: Verifies that the history endpoints work.

Zend: Provides methods for parsing HTTP response strings, collecting cookies, and easily accessing their properties. It also allows checking if a cookie matches against a specific scenario, i.e., a request URL, expiration time, secure connection, etc.

Symfony: Facilitates long-term maintenance and scalability by complying with standard development rules.

Squizlabs: A client-side JavaScript application that checks a HTML document or source code, and detects violations of a defined coding standard.

Phantom JS: Used for automating web page interaction.

Guzzle: A PHP HTTP client that makes it easy to send HTTP requests and trivial to integrate with web services.

Analytical/performance cookies: These allow us to recognize and count the number of visitors and to see how visitors move around the Site when they are using it. This helps us to improve the way the Site works, for example, by ensuring that users are finding what they are looking for easily.

Google Analytics: Allows anonymous recognition, counts number of visitors and sees visitor movement around the site to help improve how the website works. To disable Google Analytics in your browser click here.

Hotjar: Anonymously tracks movement and user behavior on the Site. To disable Hotjar in your browser, click here.

Optimizely: Allows us to do A/B testing of assets and gather data anonymously on how certain assets performed. To opt out of Optimizely A/B testing, click here.

ShareThis: Allows users to share pages from the site to their social channels or email while anonymously gathering data on which social channels are used most frequently. To disable ShareThis data tracking, you can opt out here.

Skyglue: A Google Analytics extension that allows anonymous recognition and tracks how users are interacting with the site. To disable Skyglue in your browser, you can opt out here.

Functionality cookies: These are used to recognize you when you return to the Site. This enables us to personalize our content for you, greet you by name and remember your preferences.

Targeting cookies: These cookies record your visit to the Site, the pages you have visited and the links you have followed. We will use this information to make the Site and the advertising displayed on it more relevant to your interests. We may also share this information with third parties for this purpose.

DoubleClick: This a product from Google that allows the personalization of ads based on pages a consumer visits. To disable DoubleClick in your browser, you can opt out here.

AGKN: Enables real time targeting and aggregates anonymous ads based on the user’s preferences. To disable AGKN in your browser, you can opt out here.

Depending on your region, a pop-up window may appear the first time you visit our website, informing you that our website uses cookies, and allowing you to set your cookie preferences for your device. Please be aware that this does not apply to strictly necessary cookies.

You may also control cookies by deleting existing cookies from your browser and activating the appropriate setting on your browser. Note that if you use your browser settings to block all cookies (including strictly necessary cookies) certain features of the Site may not function properly and your experience of the Site may be less enjoyable. These websites provide information on how to adjust the cookies settings on some of the browsers:

Apple Safari
Google Chrome
Microsoft Edge
Microsoft Internet Explorer
Mozilla Firefox

SECURITY OF INFORMATION

ASR Group employs appropriate security measures to protect the loss, misuse and alteration of the information under our control. For certain areas of the Site, Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) software is employed, which encrypts information you input, as an additional security measure.

Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure. Although we will do our best to protect your personal data, we cannot warrant or guarantee the security of your data transmitted to our Site; and any transmission is at your own risk. Once we have received your information, we will use strict procedures and security features to try to prevent unauthorized access.

Where we have given you (or where you have chosen) a password which enables you to access certain parts of the Site, you are responsible for keeping this password confidential. We ask you not to share a password with anyone.

You always have an option not to give us any of your personal information. If you do not want to receive communications, products or materials from ASR Group, one of our affiliates or our third party partners, please opt-out from the relevant communications, products or materials at the time of registration or when the information is collected. Further, when you receive the requested communication, you are given the opportunity to unsubscribe from receiving any future communications or to change your information. If, at the time of registration, you also agreed to receive information directly from one of our affiliates, or directly from our third party partners, you may need to contact these other companies separately to opt-out from their communications. Please note that after making an opt-out request, you may continue to receive residual communications from ASR Group for a short time thereafter. Please note that regardless of your opt-out selections, we reserve the right to continue sending you administrative or operational communications, such as important email confirmations (e.g., in response to an online registration or offline order) or to inform you about updates to the Site (e.g., updates to our Terms and Conditions or Privacy Policy, Site maintenance, etc.).

EU RESIDENTS

This Site is intended for residents of the United States only as ASR Group does not sell or advertise its products outside the United States. If you are a resident of the European Union, please visit tateandlylesugars.com, Sidul.es or Sidul.pt for products available in the European Union. ASR Group makes no representation that the products in the Site are appropriate or available for use in locations other than the United States. If you access the Site from locations other than the United States, you are responsible for compliance with any applicable laws.

The data that we collect from you will be stored at and processed in the United States. It may also be processed by staff operating in the United States who work for ASR Group or for one of our suppliers. By submitting your personal data, you agree to this transfer, storing or processing. ASR Group will take steps reasonably necessary to ensure that your data is treated securely and in accordance with this Privacy Policy.

You have a right under the General Data Protection Regulation to request a copy of the information we hold about you. You can always ask to review any personal information that ASR Group may have collected from you on the Site, have it updated, corrected or deleted (if ASR Group still has the information in our databases), and/or instruct ASR Group not to use this information in the future. If you wish to exercise these rights, simply contact us at the address stated below. We may charge a small fee for this service to meet our costs in complying with your request.

You also have the right to register a complaint with the appropriate supervisory authority.

For the purpose of the Data Protection Act 1998, the data controller in respect of the Site is ASR Group.

CALIFORNIA RESIDENTS

The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) provides consumers that are California residents with specific rights regarding their personal information (“CCPA Consumer Rights”). This section describes your CCPA Consumer Rights and explains how to exercise those rights.

You have the following rights concerning your information:

  1. Right to Know. You can ask us to give you information about our collection and use of your personal information. Specifically, you can request we provide you one or more of the following: the categories of personal information we collected about you; the categories of sources from which we collected your personal information; our purposes for collecting, selling, or sharing your personal information; the categories of third parties to whom we disclose your personal information; and the specific pieces of personal information we collected about you. You can also ask that we provide you a copy of your information in a commonly used, machine-readable format.
  2. Right to Delete. You can ask us to delete your personal information that we collected from you.
  3. Right to Correct. You can ask us to correct any inaccurate personal information that we have about you.
  4. Right to Opt Out of Personal Information Sales or Sharing. You can ask us to not share or sell personal information to third parties.

We will not discriminate against you for exercising those rights. You can submit a request to exercise your right to know, delete, or correct your personal information by sending an email to [email protected].  Subject to some exceptions, we will honor verified requests. To verify a request, we may ask you to provide us with information that we match to the personal information we have collected from you.

You can also have an authorized agent submit a request on your behalf. If you have an agent submit the request, we require that (1) the agent provide us proof that you have to permission to submit the request and (2) you to verify your identity with us and confirm you gave the agent permission to submit the request. Those conditions, however, do not apply if you have given the agent power of attorney pursuant to California Probate Code sections 4121 to 4130.

To opt out of sales and sharing of personal information, you must toggle cookies off in our cookie preference center.

Please see the sections above for a more details about what information we collect and disclose to third parties, for what purposes, the categories of sources from whom we may collect information, and the third parties with whom we may disclose such information for our business and commercial purposes. Please see below for a list of the information we have collected about individuals in the last 12 months:

Categories

Example

Collected

Identifiers

Name, alias, postal address, unique personal identifier, online identifier, internet protocol (IP) address, email address, account name, social security number, driver’s license number, passport number or other similar identifiers.

Yes

Personal information categories listed in the CA Customer Records statute Cal. Civ. Code § 1798.80(e).

A name, signature, social security number, physical characteristics or description, address, telephone number, passport number, driver’s license or state identification card number, insurance policy number, education, employment, employment history, bank account number, credit card number, debit card number, or any other financial information, medical information, or health insurance information, etc. Some personal information included in this category may overlap with other categories.

Yes

Protected classification characteristics under CA or federal law.

Age (40 years or older), race, color, ancestry, national origin, citizenship, religion or creed, marital status, medical condition, physical or mental disability, sex (including gender, gender identity, gender expression, pregnancy or childbirth and related medical conditions), sexual orientation, veteran or military status, genetic information (including familial genetic information), etc.

Yes, if you are logged in to Google.

Internet or other similar network activity

Browsing history, search history, information on a consumer’s interaction with a website, application or advertisement.

Yes

Inferences drawn from other personal information

Profile reflecting a person’s preferences, characteristics, psychological trends, predispositions, behavior, attitudes, intelligence, abilities and aptitudes.

Yes, if you are logged in to Google.

Certain of these data elements may be deemed “sensitive” under the CCPA. To the extent that we collect and use sensitive personal information, we do so consistent with the business purposes permitted by the CCPA and its implementing regulations.

California Civil Code Section 1798.83, also known as the “Shine The Light” law, permits the Site visitors who are California residents to request and obtain from us once a year, free of charge, information about the personal information (if any) we disclose to third parties for direct marketing purposes in the preceding calendar year. If applicable, this information would include a list of the categories of personal information that was disclosed and the names and addresses of all third parties with whom we disclosed such information in the immediately preceding calendar year. If you are a California resident and would like to make a request, please submit your request in writing to the address listed in the Contact Us section, immediately below.