Lin Tax Law, PC (“Firm”) is a California professional corporation that provides legal services in the area of tax law (the “Services”).  The Firm is committed to protecting the privacy of confidential and personal information, including personal data relating to individuals who may be clients, staff, agents, lawyers, law students, job applicants or others inside or outside the Firm. The policy of the Firm is to comply with the rules of professional conduct which impose a duty to preserve and protect confidential client information upon lawyers and their associated personnel.

This Privacy Statement is based on the privacy and data protection principles common to California, the only state in which the Firm operates. The Firm applies it in light of its overarching obligations to comply with law, to preserve client confidentiality and to represent its clients as effectively as possible within the bounds of the law. This Privacy Policy is intended to summarize the Firm’s data protection practices generally, and to advise its clients, interested law students, job applicants, website visitors, and other third parties about our policies and procedures regarding the collection, use, and disclosure of personally identifiable information received from users of this website located at www.lintaxlaw.com (the “Website”) and/or  received in the course of providing the foregoing Services.

Changes.   This Privacy Policy may be updated from time to time for any reason, at our sole discretion.  We will notify you of any material changes to our Privacy Policy by posting the new Privacy Policy on our Website.  You are advised to consult this Privacy Policy regularly for any changes.

Incorporation into Terms of Service.   By using or accessing the Website or the Services, you are accepting the practices described in this Privacy Policy, and you are consenting to our processing of your information as set forth in this Privacy Policy now and as amended by us. This Privacy Policy is incorporated into, and considered a part of, the Firm’s Terms of Service.

Confidentiality of Client Information.  Consistent with its professional obligations, the Firm’s policy is to exercise the utmost discretion regarding the information our clients entrust to us. The Firm accepts and processes client information always subject to the client’s direction and control, and the Firm maintains reasonable and appropriate, although not infallible, security precautions. It never trades, sells or shares your information with any unrelated parties except as necessary or appropriate to conduct the Firm’s legal and business activities, subject to appropriate confidentiality, privacy and information security commitments provided by the receiving party, or to further your interests or as permitted or required by law or as authorized or directed by you. Please feel free to raise any questions, concerns or specific directions you may have regarding the privacy and security of your information to the attorney who is handling your matter or to info@lintaxlaw.com.

Personal Information.   “Personal Information” may include, but is not limited to information that identifies you as an individual or relates to an identifiable person, such as name, postal address, telephone number, email address, etc.  The Firm does not collect any personal data from visitors to its website that is not voluntarily provided.  The Firm only collects your Personal Information if you register for an account with the Firm’s Website, when you use the Firm’s Services, and when you send the Firm communications in connection with your use of the Services.

Use and Sharing of Personal Information.  As a client or prospective client, we use the information we collect from your visit to our Website and/or your use of our Services to provide and improve our Services.  Additionally, we may collect personal information from prospective or ongoing consultants, suppliers, and vendors to support our provision of legal services to our clients.

Whether you are a prospective or existing client, or one of our consultants, suppliers, and vendors, we will not share your personal information with anyone except for our Firm’s authorized service providers,[1] business affiliates,[2] and/or business partners[3] for business purposes; or unless we specifically inform you and give you an opportunity to opt out of our sharing your personal information.  The Firm requires its business service providers, affiliates, and/or partners to maintain data protections consistent with reasonable and appropriate obligations of data processors.

In general, we may use and/or share your Personal Information:

  • To respond to your inquiries and your requests regarding our Services.
  • To send you information regarding our services and changes to our terms, conditions, and policies.
  • To send you marketing communication and newsletters about our Services. The Firm may keep its clients, personnel and other interested parties informed of legal developments of interest to them.  If you do not wish to receive publications or details of events or seminars that we consider may be of interest to you, please let us know by emailing info@lintaxlaw.com.
  • In connection with our business purposes, including but not limited to data analysis, audits, fraud monitoring and prevention, developing or enhancing new and existing products and/or services, expanding our business activities, etc.

We will not use and/or share your Personal Information to run interest-based advertising campaigns that collect personal data such as email addresses, telephone numbers, and credit card numbers; or for any other reason unless otherwise stated herein.

However, we reserve the right to disclose Personal Information that we believe to be necessary or appropriate in the following circumstances:

  • As required by law, such as to comply with a subpoena, or similar legal process.
  • When we believe in good faith that disclosure is necessary to protect our rights, protect your safety or the safety of others, investigate fraud, or respond to a government request.
  • To enforce our Terms and Conditions.
  • To allow us to pursue available remedies or limit the damage we may sustain.

Personally Non-Identifiable Information.  Throughout the course of providing you with the Services, we may collect personally non-identifiable information, including but not limited to demographic data, age, education level, profession, geographic location or gender, from you. This information is not, by itself, sufficient to identify or contact you.  The Firm may store such information, or it may be included in databases owned and maintained by partners, affiliates, agents, or service providers of the Firm.  The Firm may use such information and pool it with other information to track data related to growing the business, such as the total number of visitors to our Website, and the domain names of our visitors’ Internet service providers.

Links to Other Websites.   This Privacy Policy applies only to this Website and the Firm’s Services.  This Privacy Policy does not address, and we are not responsible for, the privacy, information or other practices of any third parties.  Please note that we are not responsible for the collection, data usage and disclosure policies and practices (including the data security practices) of third parties, as it may relate to any Personal Information you disclose in connection with our Website or Services.  The mere inclusion of a link does not imply endorsement of the linked website or the website’s services.

Specifically, this Privacy Policy does not apply to Practice Panther (https://www.practicepanther.com), a third-party website to which this Website may redirect you in the course of your dealings with the Firm and/or when you submit information on our Website.  The Firm is not responsible for the way in which Practice Panther handles your data.  You are advised to review Practice Panther’s Privacy Policy here: https://www.practicepanther.com/privacy/.

Credit Card Information.   The Firm uses a third party service provider, LawPay (https://lawpay.com), to process your payments for our Services.  The Firm does not keep a protected copy of your credit card number.  The Firm is not responsible for the way in which LawPay handles your data.  If you submit payment to the Firm via LawPay, you agree to LawPay’s Privacy Policy here: https://lawpay.com/privacy/.

Tracking and Advertising.   The Firm’s Website may use the foregoing technologies to track your activity on our Website:

  • When you visit our Website or otherwise interact with the Service, we may send one or more “cookies” to your computer or other devices.  Cookies are alphanumeric identifiers stored on your computer through your web browser and are used by most websites to help personalize your web experience.  Some cookies may facilitate additional site features for enhanced performance and functionality such as remembering preferences, allowing social interactions, analyzing usage for site optimization, providing custom content, allowing third parties to provide social sharing tools, and serving images or videos from third party websites.  Some features on this site will not function if you do not allow cookies.  We may link the information we store in cookies to any Personal Information that you submit while visiting our Website.

We may use both session ID cookies and persistent cookies.  A session ID cookie expires when you close your browser.  A persistent cookie remains on your hard drive for an extended period of time.  Persistent cookies enable us to track and target the interest of our users to enhance the experience on our site.

Functional cookies, persistent and session type, store information to enable core site functionality, such as Live Chat and Client ID remembrance.

Analytics cookies allow us to count page visits and traffic sources so we can measure and improve the performance of our site and our marketing campaigns.

Advertising cookies may be set through our Website by our advertising partners. Data may be collected by these companies that enable them to serve up advertisements on other sites that are relevant to your interests.

If you do not want information collected through the use of cookies, there is a simple procedure in most browsers that allows you to automatically decline cookies, or be given the choice of declining or accepting the transfer to your computer of a particular cookie (or cookies) from a particular site.  You may also wish to refer to http://www.allaboutcookies.org/manage-cookies/index.html.

If you reject cookies, you may still use our site, but some features on the site will not function properly.

  • Web Beacons. Web beacons are electronic files that signal when a webpage, advertisement, video, other content, an email or newsletter has been viewed.  They are usually invisible to you.  We may use web beacons alone or in conjunction with cookies to compile information about our Service.  Web beacons may be used within the Service to track email open rates, web page visits or form submissions.  In some cases, we tie the information gathered by web beacons to your Personal Information to gauge the effectiveness of certain communications and our marketing campaigns.
  • Log Files. A Log File is a file that records either events that occur in an operating system or other software runs, or messages between different users of a communication software.  Log file information is automatically reported by your browser or mobile application each time you access the Website or our Services.  Along with cookies and web beacons, log files help provide additional functionality to the Website and Services and help us analyze Website and Services usage more accurately.  We and our third party tracking-utility partners may use log files on our Service to gather automatically gather and store information including, but not limited to, internet protocol (“IP”) addresses, browser type, internet service provider (ISP), referring/exit pages, operating system, date/time stamp, and clickstream data, for business purposes.  We may use Google Analytics, which uses cookies and other, similar technologies to collect and analyze information about use of the Service and report on activities and trends.  This service may also collect information regarding the use of other websites, apps and online resources.  You can learn about Google’s practices by going to google.com/policies/privacy/partners/, and opt out of them by downloading the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on, available at https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.
  • Embedded Scripts. An embedded script is programming code that is designed to collect information about your interactions with the Service, such as the links you click on. The code is temporarily downloaded onto your Device from our web server or a third party service provider, is active only while you are connected to the Service, and is deactivated or deleted thereafter.
  • Browser Fingerprinting. Collection and analysis of information from your Device, such as, without limitation, your operating system, plugins, system fonts and other data, for purposes of identification.
  • ETag, or entity tag. A feature of the cache in browsers. It is an opaque identifier assigned by a web server to a specific version of a resource found at a URL. If the resource content at that URL ever changes, a new and different ETag is assigned. Used in this manner ETags are a form of Device Identifier. ETag tracking may generate unique tracking values even where the consumer blocks HTTP, Flash and/or HTML5 cookies.

Children.   The Website and our related Services are not intended for anyone under 18, and we do not knowingly collect information from anyone under the age of 18.  Anyone aged 18 or under should not submit any Personal Information without the permission of their parents or guardians.  By using the Website and our related Services, you are representing that you are at least 18 years old.

Security.   We maintain reasonable and appropriate, although not infallible, security precautions.  However, we cannot guarantee that hackers or unauthorized personnel will not gain access to your Personal Information, despite our reasonable efforts.  You should note that in using the Website and our Services, your information will sometimes travel through third party infrastructures which are not under our control.  Please feel free to raise any questions, concerns or specific directions you may have regarding the privacy and security of your information to info@lintaxlaw.com.

Data Retention.   We will retain your Personal Information for as long as needed to provide the Services.  If you are a client and you do not request the return of your Personal Information upon the conclusion of our representation, we will retain your Personal Information for a period of three (3) years, after which we may have your Personal Information destroyed.  If you desire to have your Personal Information maintained beyond three (3) years after the conclusion of this matter, separate arrangements with us must be made.  In the event you wish us to transfer possession of your Personal Information to you or a third party, you shall make the request in writing and you or the third party shall acknowledge receipt of the file in writing. We are authorized to retain a copy of your Personal Information for a reasonable period of time in order to create a copy of the file at your expense.

Do Not Track.   Your browser setting may allow you to automatically transmit a “Do Not Track” signal to websites and online service you visit.  The Firm’s Website does not respond to “Do Not Track” signals or other mechanisms from a visitor’s browser.  If, in the future, we create a program or protocol to respond to such web browser “Do Not Track” signals, we will inform you of the details of that protocol in this Privacy Policy.  To find out more about “Do Not Track,” please visit https://www.allaboutdnt.com.

Your California Privacy Rights.   Under California Civil Code Section 1798.83, California customers are entitled to request information relating to whether a business has disclosed personal information to any third parties for the third parties’ direct marketing purposes.  This Code Section, often called the Shine the Light Law, is not applicable to our Firm, as we have less than 20 employees.  However, as a courtesy to you, you may request and obtain from us once a year, free of charge, certain information about the personal data (if any) we disclosed 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 data that was shared and the names and addresses of all third parties with which we shared information in the immediately preceding calendar year.  If you are a California resident and would like to make such a request, please submit your request in writing to info@lintaxlaw.com.

 Opt-Out Policy.   If, at any time after registering, you change your mind about receiving information from us or about the use of information volunteered by you, or if you prefer that we do not share your Personal Information with third parties for marketing purposes, please contact us at info@lintaxlaw.com.

Contact Us.   If you have any questions or concerns relating to our use of your Personal Information, please email info@lintaxlaw.com   Additionally, you may reach us by postal mail at: Lin Tax Law, PC, 1655 N. Main Street, Suite 350, Walnut Creek, CA 94596.

[1] Authorized service providers are companies that perform certain services including, but not limited to, fulfilling orders, processing credit card payments, delivering packages, providing customer service and marketing assistance, performing business and sales analyses, supporting the functionality of the Services, and supporting contests, sweepstakes, surveys and other features we offer, on our behalf.  These service providers may have access to your Personal Information, but to the extent necessary to perform or fulfill their business purpose.  We do not permit them to share or use any of your Personal Information for any other purpose.

[2] Affiliate businesses are those businesses with whom we may affiliate to sell our products or Services.  We may share information we collect, including Personal Information, with affiliated businesses.  Sharing such information with our affiliates enables us to provide you with information about a variety of products and services that might interest you.  We instruct all affiliated businesses to comply with applicable privacy and security laws and, at a minimum, in any commercial e-mail they send to you, to give you the opportunity to choose not to receive such email messages in the future.

[3] Business partners are typically merchants offering the products or services in connection with or somehow related to our own Services.  We will not share your Personal Information with business partners without your consent or request.