Privacy Policy

Updated December 11, 2018

Your privacy is fundamental to EBMUD

In this policy, we'll discuss how we collect, use, disclose, transfer, and store your personal information and other topics affecting your personal information. Please take some time to read about our privacy practices and let us know if you have any questions.

Your personal information

"Personal information" as used in this Policy means any information collected by us that may identify you individually.

What personal information we collect

We collect customer information having to do with our business relationship with you and your use of our water, wastewater, or other services. This information may include:

  • Contact information that allows us to communicate with you, including your name, address, telephone number, account number, and email address.
  • Information about your financial relationship with us, including your payment data, credit history, credit card data, or all or part of your Social Security number.
  • Your physical description and birthdate when applying for a trail use permit.
  • Your water usage statistics when using the My Water Report Program.
  • Your residential/landscape information when applying for rebates

When we collect personal information

We gather personal information at different times, including:

  • When you set up your account and interact with us about it or about your water service and your participation in our programs.
  • When you choose to engage with us through our website, www.ebmud.com.
  • When we interact with third parties, such as credit agencies, in providing services to you.

How we use personal information

We use personal information to administer your account and inform you about your water usage. We also use it to manage and improve our services and business operations. Some examples include:

  • To prepare your customer billing statement and in connection with billing and payment on your account.
  • To enable you to see your water usage data via secure access on the Internet at https://www.ebmud.com/
  • To communicate with you about your water use or specific programs or opportunities we offer that may help you to conserve water
  • To provide you services or to complete your transactions or requests.
  • To administer contests, or similar promotions in which you've entered your name.

How we protect personal information

We take precautions -- including administrative, technical, and physical measures -- to safeguard your personal information against loss, theft, and misuse, unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration, and destruction.

To make sure your personal information is secure, we communicate our privacy and security guidelines to our employees and to third party vendors and strictly enforce privacy safeguards within our organization.

We use Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption on all EBMUD web pages where personal information is collected. Doing so protects the confidentiality of your personal information while it is transmitted over the Internet.

How we share your personal information with third party service providers

We may share your personal information with third party companies that provide services in support of our programs. In some instances, when you're on www.ebmud.com, we may transfer you to an outside service provided by a third-party operator. Occasionally, this new content may still seem to be a part of www.ebmud.com.

In all cases where we share your personal information with a third party company, we'll have an agreement in place with the company that it will keep your personal information confidential and use it only to help us serve you.

To ensure your privacy, we don’t release your personal information to third parties without your written consent. The only exception is for information that's reasonably required to meet EBMUD's business needs, for example:

  • To provide or bill for water or wastewater services.
  • To maintain or operate EBMUD's infrastructure.
  • To plan, implement or evaluate EBMUD’s programs, such as water conservation and rebates.
  • To assess interest in our services and conducting customer research or satisfaction surveys.
  • To comply with a law, regulation, legal process or governmental request, such as a request from law enforcement, or a government agency when necessary for the performance of official duties, or a court order.
  • For purposes of national security, law enforcement, or other issues of public importance, where EBMUD determines disclosure is necessary or appropriate.

Your use of third-party websites

While browsing www.ebmud.com, you may encounter hypertext links to other websites. These third-party websites may send their own cookies to you, log your IP address, and otherwise collect data or solicit personal information. We do not control and are not responsible for what third parties do with their websites, or how they handle your personal information. Please be cautious and consult the privacy policies posted on each third-party website for further information.

How we collect and use customers' non-personal information

We may also collect and combine data about your water use in various formats so that it cannot be identified personally with you. For example, we could summarize total water use for all homes and businesses in a certain geographic area. This kind of aggregated data is not subject to privacy restrictions. We use the information to manage, provide, and improve our services and business operations. Here are some examples:

  • To analyze rates and rate structures.
  • To project consumption patterns.
  • To improve our water supply planning and to better design and engineer our water distribution systems.

We collect other non-personal information in a form that does not identify specific individuals and we use, transfer, and disclose it for many purposes. The following are some examples of non-personal information that we collect and how we may use it:

  • We may gather information — such as language, and zip code — so that we can better understand customer behavior and improve our services.

  • We also may collect information regarding customer activities on our website. We combine this information and use it to learn what's most useful to our customers and to understand which parts of our website and services are of most interest.

If we do combine non-personal information with personal information, we protect the combined information as private and personal for as long as it is combined.

How we use cookies and other technologies

Our website may use "cookies" and other technologies. These technologies help us better understand user behavior, tell us which parts of our website people visit most often, and measure the effectiveness of advertisements and web searches. We treat information collected by cookies and other technologies as non-personal information.

As is true of most websites, we gather some information automatically and store it in log files. This information includes IP addresses, browser type and language, Internet service provider (ISP), referring and exit pages, operating system, date/time stamp, and "clickstream" statistics. We use this information to understand and analyze trends, to administer the site, to learn about customer behavior on the site, and to gather aggregate demographic information about those who use the website.

Our use of Google Analytics

Google cookies may be used to collect information about the use of our site and services and to provide that information to Google Analytics. This cookie tracks web site usage information such as how often users visit this site, what pages they visit, and what other sites they visited prior to coming to this site (similar to the cookies described above). We use the information we get from Google Analytics only to improve our web-based experience. Google Analytics collects your device's IP address, rather than your name or other identifying information, and we do not combine the information collected through the use of Google Analytics with any other information you may have provided to us.

Although it may result in a less desirable experience, you can prevent Google Analytics from recognizing you on subsequent visits to our website by disabling cookies in your browser. You may visit our website anonymously.

How we respond to Do Not Track signals

You may configure your browser to send a “Do Not Track” (DNT) signal to websites you visit. We honor DNTs and do not plant or track cookies when a DNT has been received from your browser.

How you may review and correct your personal information:

If you are a registered account holder with EBMUD, you can log into your account and update your personal information here: https://www.ebmud.com/customers/account/.

How we notify you of any changes to this privacy policy:

EBMUD may update its Privacy Policy from time to time. Whenever our Privacy Policy is updated, the update date will appear at the top of the Policy and the link to the Policy on our website homepage will indicate the Policy has been “updated.”

Your acceptance of these terms

By using this website, you signify your acceptance of this policy. If you do not agree to this policy, please do not use our website. Your continued use of the website following the posting of changes to this policy will be deemed your acceptance of those changes. You can always refuse to supply personal identification information through our website, except that this may prevent you from engaging in certain website-related activities.

If you have a question about this privacy policy or our handling of your personal information, please contact us: