California Privacy Policy

This California Privacy Policy applies only if you reside in the State of California in the United States and purchase or lease products (a) for personal use either at a retail branch of Linde Gas & Equipment Inc., or through the portal, lindedirect.com, or (b) as a representative of one of the Company’s customers (“California Consumer").  As used in this Policy, “Personal Information" means information that identifies, relates to, describes, is capable of being associated with, or could reasonably be linked, directly or indirectly, with a particular California Consumer or household, and “Company” refers to Linde Gas & Equipment Inc. and its corporate affiliates.

California Notice at Collection: Unless we inform you otherwise, this Policy also serves as our “notice at collection.”   More specifically, the Company collects the categories of personal information identified in the section entitled, “The Company’s Collection, Use and Disclosure of Personal Information”, for the purposes stated in that section.  The Company retains your personal information for the period described in the section entitled, “The Company’s Retention of Personal Information”.  We will not, and do not, sell the personal information of California Consumers, including those under the age of 16, or disclose it for cross-context behavioral advertising (“sharing”).  We also do not collect or process sensitive personal information for the purpose of inferring characteristics about you.

Assistance For The Disabled

Alternative formats of this Privacy Policy are available to individuals with a disability.  Please contact LindeDirect@linde.com for assistance.

The Company’s Collection, Use and Disclosure of Personal Information

The Company collects the following categories of Personal Information about, and directly from, California Consumers:

Identifiers, including: real name, corporate affiliation, and, as applicable, business or home address, email address, phone number, and mobile phone number.

Commercial Information, including: products or equipment purchase and payment information, such as credit card number, CVV code, card expiration date.

The Company collects Identifiers and Commercial Information when the California Consumer purchases and/or leases products through our website or at a retail branch.  The Company collects Identifiers only when the California Consumer (1) creates an account on our website; (2) subscribes to receive marketing emails from us, (3) submits inquiries or comments to our website, (4) establishes an account at one of our retail branches, or (5) purchases and/or leases products or equipment from one of our retail branches.  The Company does not collect your personal information other than directly from you.

The Company discloses the categories of Personal Information listed above to Service Providers, including providers of the Company’s website and e-commerce platform.  The Company discloses these categories of Personal Information to these third parties for the business purposes of (1) auditing compliance with policies and applicable laws, (2) helping to ensure security and integrity, (3) debugging, (4) short-term transient use, (5) performing services on behalf of Company, (6) internal research, and (7) activities to maintain or improve the quality or safety of a service or device.

The Company’s Retention of Personal Information

The Company retains your personal information for the duration of the customer relationship, if any.  The Company also retains your personal information for as long as reasonably necessary, but no longer than 12 months after our last interaction with you, unless a longer retention period is necessary to comply with legal, administrative, or procedural requirements, for example, a litigation hold.

Your California Privacy Rights

California Consumers have the following rights:

Right to Know: The right to submit a verifiable request to know the categories and specific pieces of Personal Information that the Company has collected about them, sold or disclosed to a third party, and the purposes for the Company’s collection or disclosure of the Personal Information.

Right to Correct: The right to submit a verifiable request for the correction of inaccurate personal information maintained by the Company, taking into account the nature of the personal information and the purpose of processing the personal information.        

Right to Delete: The right to request a verifiable request to delete Personal Information that the Company has collected from the Consumer.

How to Exercise Your Rights

The Company will respond to requests in accordance with applicable law if it can verify the identity of the individual submitting the request. California Consumers can exercise their rights in the following ways:

Send an email to the following email address: LindeDirect@linde.com

Contact by telephone: 1-800-773-4877

Requests By Authorized Agents

You may designate an authorized agent to exercise your right to know, right to correct, or your right to delete. If an authorized agent submits a request to know, to correct, or request to delete on your behalf, the authorized agent must submit with the request another document signed by you that authorizes the authorized agent to submit the request on your behalf. In addition, we may ask you or the authorized agent to follow the applicable process described below for verifying your identity.  In the alternative, you can provide a power of attorney compliant with the California Probate Code.

How We Will Verify Your Requests

To prevent anyone other than you, or your authorized agent, from exercising the right to know, the right to correct, or the right to delete with respect to your personal information, we follow procedures to verify your, or your agent’s, identity. These procedures seek to confirm that the person making a request is the person about whom we have collected personal information or that person’s authorized agent. The verification procedures involve matching data points that you provide with your request against information about you we already have in our records and that we have determined to be reliable for purposes of verifying your identity. We will use information you provide in your completed request form to verify your identity, and we may request additional information, if necessary, to complete the verification process.

The Company’s Non-Discrimination Policy

California Consumers have the right not to be subject to discriminatory treatment by the Company for exercising their privacy rights under the California Privacy Rights Act, and the Company will not discriminate on that basis. However, the Company may charge a California Consumer a different price or rate or provide a different level or quality of goods or services if the difference is reasonably related to the value provided to the California Consumer by the Consumer’s Personal Information. If the Company does so, it will provide Consumers with any legally required notice.

Your Right to Information About Disclosures of Personal Information for Direct Marketing Purposes:

Under California law, California Consumers can request that we confirm whether we have disclosed Personal Information to any third parties for those third parties' direct marketing purposes.

Your ‘Do Not Track’ Browser Setting

Our portal, lindedirect.com, collects personally identifiable information about your online activities over time and across third-party websites or online services. We support the Do Not Track (DNT) browser setting. DNT is a preference you can set in your browser’s settings to let the websites you visit, including our portal, know that you do not want those websites collecting your personally identifiable information.

Updates to this Policy

If we change this California Privacy Policy, we will post those changes on this page and update the California Privacy Policy modification date above. 

For More Information

For questions or concerns about the Company’s privacy policies and practices, please contact us at LindeDirect@linde.com.

June 8, 2023