Settlement Notices

Privacy policy

Updated

This site asks you for nothing. There are no forms, no accounts, no newsletter and no comments, and today it sets no cookies. What you type into the tools never leaves your browser. There is no analytics of any kind. The only personal information involved is the technical minimum needed to deliver the page to you, and whatever you choose to write if you send an email.

The operator of this site lives in Mexico and the site's readers are in the United States. Two sets of rules can therefore matter at the same time, and this page has two clearly separated parts:

Both parts describe the same handling of information, which is minimal, each in the vocabulary its own rules use. If something in one part appears to contradict the other, it is a drafting error: tell me at hello@settlementnotices.com.

Part A: information for readers in the United States

A.1. Who is responsible

Responsible for the personal information described here
Sergio Padilla, a natural person resident in Mexico, owner of the domain settlementnotices.com and of the site published on it.
Contact
hello@settlementnotices.com. This is the address for exercising your rights and for any question about this policy.
Establishment in the United States
None. The site is operated from Mexico for readers in the United States.

A.2. What is handled, why, and on what basis

Only two things are actually handled: delivering the page to you, and reading an email if you send one. Two more headings follow them because readers reasonably expect them, and in both cases the honest answer is that there is nothing there.

A.2.1. Delivering the page: technical connection data

What: for your browser to receive this page, the infrastructure of Cloudflare, Inc. necessarily processes your IP address and the technical data of the request (date and time, the address requested, the type and version of browser and operating system, the response code and the volume of data transferred).

Why: to deliver the content you asked for, to protect the site against attacks and abuse, and to keep it available and secure.

Basis: handling this minimum is unavoidable in any communication over the internet, and it is what you are asking for when you open the page. These records are not combined with any other information, are not used to build a profile and are not used to identify anyone.

Who handles it: Cloudflare, Inc., as a service provider acting for the operator under its own data processing terms. On the free plan this site uses, the operator has no access to the raw server logs and cannot download them. The provider's control panel does show traffic and security information, which can include the IP address of individual requests; that information is not used to identify anyone, is not exported and is not combined with anything else.

A.2.2. Analytics: there is none

As of this site has no analytics of any kind. There is no audience measurement, neither the operator's own nor a third party's. Nothing counts how many visits a page receives, where they come from or which browser they use. Under this heading there is no handling of personal information at all.

That follows from a promise you can check yourself: the site makes no request to any outside domain. Open your browser's developer tools, go to the network tab and reload the page: everything that downloads comes from settlementnotices.com. The Content Security Policy the site is served with would block an external script even if one were added by mistake.

A.2.3. If you send an email

What: your email address, your name if you include it, and whatever you decide to tell me in the message. Nothing is asked of you and nothing needs to be provided: to report a date or a fact that looks wrong, I do not need to know who you are.

Please do not send information that is not needed. In particular, I do not need and do not want your Social Security number or taxpayer ID, your notice ID or confirmation code, a photo or copy of your notice, your claim form, your bank or payment card details, or any document about your health or your household. If something like that arrives, it is deleted as soon as I see it and I tell you so.

Why: to read your message and reply to it; and if it is a report of an incorrect fact, to check it and correct the site.

Basis: you provide the information knowingly when you write, for the purpose of getting an answer. You may ask me at any time to delete the exchange, and anything in the message that was not needed is deleted.

Who handles it: messages sent to hello@settlementnotices.com are received through the domain's email forwarding, which is provided by Cloudflare, and are answered from the editor's own mailbox, which is hosted by Google (Gmail). Both Cloudflare and Google handle the message in transit and at rest as service providers.

A.2.4. The tools: nothing is handled here

What you type into the tools on this site, including the dates on your notice, the kind of deadline, a case number, a web address, a company name or your answers to a question, is processed entirely inside your browser and never leaves it. It is not sent to any server, it is not saved in any system of the operator, it is not shared with anyone and it does not travel in the page's address. The operator does not see it, does not receive it and cannot recover it.

This is possible because the official information a tool needs is already inside the page when it downloads, so the tool has nothing to look up while you use it. You can check it: disconnect your device from the network after the page has loaded and the tool keeps working.

The tools also store nothing on your own device: no cookies, no local storage, no session storage. What you type lives only in the memory of the tab while it is open, and disappears when you close it or reload the page. This is the same thing you can verify as described in the cookie policy: the site's storage in your browser should be empty.

A.2.5. What this site does not do

A.3. Who receives the information

No personal information is disclosed to anyone except the service providers the site needs to work, and except where the law requires it. The table separates two roles that are not the same: a service provider acts for the operator and on the operator's instructions, while an independent controller decides for itself what it does with the information and answers for it to you directly.

Providers and recipients of personal information
Provider Role and service What it handles
Cloudflare, Inc. (United States) Service provider. Hosting of the static site on Cloudflare Pages, content delivery network, DNS, domain registration and email forwarding. Technical connection data, including the IP address; email messages in transit.
Google (Gmail personal mailbox) Service provider. Receipt and storage of the messages forwarded from hello@settlementnotices.com, and the mailbox the replies are written from. The content of the email you choose to send, and of the reply.
Google (AdSense) Independent controller, not a service provider. Advertising: not active today. If it is activated, Google decides for itself the purposes and means of what it does with browsing data and answers for it under its own policies. See section A.4. Nothing, for now. No advertising tag is loaded on this site today.

Information may also be disclosed to a public authority or a court where the law requires it.

A.4. Advertising, which comes later

As of this site shows no advertising, loads no file from Google or from any other network, and earns nothing.

The declared intention is to carry Google AdSense advertising when the site meets the requirements of the program, using the account the operator already holds. When that happens, and before any advertising tag is loaded:

Until then, everything on this page about advertising describes the future, not the present, and it is written that way on purpose.

A.5. Handling outside the United States

Part of the handling connected with this site happens outside the United States, and that is stated plainly here. Where information is held in another country, it may be accessible to the courts and authorities of that country under its own law.

If you would rather not have your information handled outside the United States, the way to achieve that is simple: read the site without writing to it. Reading it still involves the technical connection data described in A.2.1, which no website can avoid.

A.6. How long information is kept

Technical connection data
Kept by Cloudflare according to the periods described in its own documentation. The operator does not hold these records and can neither extend nor shorten their retention.
Analytics data
None: there is no analytics. If any is ever activated, the retention period of the service is stated here first.
Email
Kept while the exchange lasts and while it is useful for following the matter up. As a general rule it is deleted about a year after the last message, unless the law requires it to be kept longer or it is needed to document a correction made to the site, in which case only the note of the correction is kept, without your personal information.
What you type into the tools
Nothing is kept, because it never reaches any system of the operator. What the tool holds in your browser disappears when you close the tab, and is under your control.

A.7. Your choices and rights

Some states, California among them, have privacy laws that give residents specific rights over personal information. Those laws usually apply only to businesses above certain size or data thresholds, and the operator does not expect to be covered by them, but a request made under one of them is answered in the same way as any other, at the same address.

How to exercise them: write to hello@settlementnotices.com saying what you want. There is no form and no procedure to follow first. A reply is sent within 30 days of receiving the request, and there is no charge.

One practical consequence of how this site is built: since nothing is collected, in all likelihood there is no information about you to access, correct or delete, unless you have written to me. If that is the case, I will tell you so in those words.

A.7.1. If you have a complaint

You may complain to the operator first, and I would welcome the chance to fix the problem. You are not required to. If you believe your personal information has not been handled as this page says, you may also complain to:

Each of those bodies publishes on its own website how to file a complaint, and none of them charges for it.

A.8. Children

This site is not directed at children and has no content designed for them: it deals with class action settlement notices. It does not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 13, and it has no forms through which a child could provide any. If you are a minor, please do not send personal information by email; ask a parent or guardian to write instead.

A.9. Security

The site is served over HTTPS with a valid certificate, and the network provider is configured to redirect any unencrypted connection to HTTPS. This is a static site: there is no database, no administration panel reachable from the internet, no user accounts and no store of personal information that could be breached, because none exists. Security headers restrict what the page may load and run.

A.10. Changes to this policy

This policy is updated whenever the handling of information changes, and in particular before advertising is activated. Substantial changes are flagged visibly for a reasonable time, and the date of the last change to the site is shown on the What's new page.

Part B: privacy notice (Mexico)

This part is the privacy notice required by Mexican data protection law, which applies to the operator because of the operator's residence. It is written with the terminology of that law and kept in English, because that is the language of this site. If you are in the United States, the information addressed to you is Part A; both parts describe the same handling.

This comprehensive privacy notice is issued under the Federal Law on the Protection of Personal Data Held by Private Parties (Ley Federal de Protección de Datos Personales en Posesión de los Particulares), as currently in force in Mexico, together with the provisions that develop it. The powers formerly held by the National Institute for Transparency, Access to Information and Personal Data Protection were transferred to the Secretaría Anticorrupción y Buen Gobierno, which is the competent authority in this field.

B.1. Identity and domicile of the responsible party

Responsible party: Sergio Padilla, a natural person resident in Mexico, owner of the website settlementnotices.com.

Domicile: Avenida Adolfo López Mateos 424A, Colonia Campestre, C.P. 77030, Chetumal, Quintana Roo, Mexico (address for receiving notices).

Email address for personal data matters: hello@settlementnotices.com.

B.2. Personal data collected

The site has no forms and no other mechanism for capturing data. The only personal data that reach the responsible party are:

No sensitive personal data are collected, whether about health, ethnic origin, beliefs, union membership, sexual preferences or anything analogous, and no financial or asset data are collected. Data subjects are expressly asked not to send sensitive data by email; if such data arrive, they are deleted.

The data entered into the tools on this site are never collected: they are processed in the data subject's own browser, they are not transmitted, and the responsible party has no access to them.

B.3. Purposes of the processing

Primary purposes, necessary for the relationship with the data subject:

  1. To receive, follow up on and answer the communications the data subject sends by email.
  2. To check and, where appropriate, correct the information published on the site when a data subject reports an incorrect fact.
  3. To deliver the content of the site, keep it available and protect it against abuse and attack.
  4. To comply with the legal obligations applicable to the responsible party.

Secondary purposes, not necessary for that relationship:

  1. To produce aggregate statistics of site use, to improve its content and its performance. This purpose is not being carried out today, because the site has no analytics. If it is activated, it will use aggregate information without identifiers only, and it will be stated in this notice beforehand.

If you do not wish your data to be processed for the secondary purpose, you may say so by writing to hello@settlementnotices.com. Your refusal will not be a reason to deny you the services of the site, which are free and open to everyone in any case.

No advertising mailings, marketing, commercial prospecting, profiling or automated decision-making about data subjects are carried out.

B.4. ARCO rights

As the owner of the personal data, you have the right to know what data about you are held and what they are used for (Access), to ask for them to be corrected when they are out of date, inaccurate or incomplete (Rectification), to ask for them to be removed from the records when you consider that they are not being used in accordance with the principles, duties and obligations of the law (Cancellation), and to object to the use of your personal data for specific purposes (Opposition).

How to exercise them: by a request sent to hello@settlementnotices.com, which must contain:

  1. The name of the data subject and an address or other means of communicating the answer.
  2. The documents that prove the identity of the data subject or, where applicable, the legal representation.
  3. A clear and precise description of the personal data in respect of which one of the ARCO rights is being exercised.
  4. Any other element or document that makes it easier to locate the personal data.
  5. In the case of a rectification, the changes to be made and the documents that support the request.

Time limits: the answer is communicated within a maximum of 20 business days from receipt of the request, and if the request is well founded it is given effect within the 15 business days following that communication. Exercising ARCO rights is free of charge; only justified costs of postage or of reproduction in copies or other formats may be charged.

Since the site collects data by no other means, in most cases the answer will be that no personal data of the applicant are held by the responsible party, other than the correspondence the data subject has sent.

B.5. Revocation of consent

You may revoke at any time the consent you have given for the processing of your personal data, by writing to hello@settlementnotices.com and saying that you wish to revoke it. The request is dealt with within the same time limits as in B.4, and the deletion is confirmed to you.

Revocation has no retroactive effect on processing already carried out in accordance with the law, and it may not be possible in the cases in which the law itself requires the data to be kept.

B.6. Limiting the use and disclosure of your data

You may limit the use or disclosure of your personal data by the same means. Since the responsible party carries out no marketing, direct advertising or commercial prospecting, no exclusion list is necessary; if one were ever created, it would be stated in this notice before it came into operation.

B.7. Transfers of personal data

The responsible party does not sell, assign or transfer personal data to third parties for commercial purposes, and no consent is required for any transfer other than those listed below, which are disclosures to processors acting for and on the instructions of the responsible party:

The transfers provided for in the law may also be carried out without consent, among them those required by a decision of a competent authority or to comply with a legal obligation.

If advertising is added to the site in the future, the participation of the advertising network will be stated expressly in this notice before it comes into operation, together with the corresponding consent mechanism.

B.8. Use of cookies and tracking technologies

As of the site uses no cookies and no other tracking or persistent identification technology. The detail is in the cookie policy.

B.9. Changes to this privacy notice

This privacy notice may be amended because of changes in the applicable legislation, in the privacy practices of the responsible party or in how the site works. Amendments are published on this same page, which is the means made available to data subjects for that purpose. You are encouraged to consult it from time to time.

B.10. Competent authority

If you consider that your right to the protection of personal data has been infringed by any conduct of the responsible party, or you suspect a breach of the provisions of the law, you may file the corresponding complaint or request for protection of rights with the Secretaría Anticorrupción y Buen Gobierno, which took over the personal data protection powers of the former National Institute for Transparency, Access to Information and Personal Data Protection. Information about the procedure and how to file is available through that Secretariat's official channels.