Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy describes the privacy practices of the Root, Inc. family of companies (“Root”, “us”, “we”, or “our”) in connection with information we collect, use, and share from individuals who visit our websites (“Websites”), such as joinroot.com (the “Site”), social media pages we control (“Social Media Pages”), and software applications we make available for use on or through computers and mobile devices (“Apps”), that include a link to this Privacy Policy, and through any of our offline activities, such as when you provide your information on the phone via our call centers or in person (“Offline Activities”) (collectively, including the Websites, Apps, Social Media Pages, and Offline Activities, the “Services”). (See Root App End User License Agreement). 

This Privacy Policy does not apply to information collected when you apply for or obtain insurance or another financial product or service from Root, which is subject to our Root Consumer Privacy Notice.  This includes driving data that we collect with your consent through the App from your device and/or your vehicle. You should consult the Root Consumer Privacy Notice to understand how Root collects, uses, and discloses non-public personal information about you that is subject to privacy regulations applicable to Root as an insurer.  As an insurer, Root is exempt from many state privacy laws, as further explained below under the Notice of Privacy Rights for Residents of Certain U.S. States.

Subject to this exclusion, this Privacy Policy applies to information collected by our Services and covers the following:

• Sources of Information and What Information We Collect

• Digital Advertising and Analytics

• How We Use and Disclose Your Information

• Sale and Sharing of Your Information 

• How We Secure Your Information

• How Long We Retain Your Information

• Notice of Privacy Rights for Residents of Certain U.S. States

• Your Choices

• Changes to our Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy does not apply to any entities not affiliated with Root. For example, it does not apply to the practices of our licensees or business partners, which could include vendors, data providers, or advertisers. You should review the privacy policies of other services that you use to learn about their data practices. 

In particular, the Services include integrated social media tools or “plug-ins,” such as social networking tools offered by third parties.  If you use these tools to share information or you otherwise interact with these features on the Services, those companies may collect information about you and may use and share such information in accordance with your account settings, including by sharing such information with the general public.  Your interactions with third-party companies and your use of their features are governed by the privacy policies of the companies that provide those features.  We encourage you to carefully read the privacy policies of any accounts you create and use.

Sources of Information and What Information We Collect

We collect information from you when you interact with our Services, you provide it or interact with us.  For example, we collect this information when you join our email list, contact us, call us, or interact with us for any other purpose.

We also collect information about you from third party data providers, ad networks, social media platforms and other marketing or advertising partners.  Some of these entities may be considered data brokers under applicable laws.  

We (and other entities) automatically collect information relating to your interactions with the Services, including through the use of cookies and similar technology.  See the “Digital Advertising & Analytics” section of this Privacy Policy to learn more about the uses of this information and the choices available to you.  

Root is the sole owner of the information collected through our Services. In the preceding 12 months, Root has collected the following categories of information through our Services: 

• Identifiers: including real name, alias, postal address, unique personal identifier, online identifier, IP address, email address, social media account information, or other similar identifiers. 

• Internet or other electronic network activity information: including, for example, your operating system, mobile device identification and/or advertising identification number, IP address, cookie identifiers, activities on the Services including time and date, social media messages, hardware type, language and time-zone setting, and interactions with other features within the Services. 

• Audio, visual or similar information: We may record and collect voice and video recordings of your contacts with Root customer service agents for quality control, training, and other business purposes. 

• Inferences drawn from any of the information identified in this subdivision to create a profile reflecting preferences, characteristics, psychological trends, predispositions, behavior, attitudes, intelligence, abilities, and aptitudes.

Digital Advertising & Analytics

We may partner with ad networks and other ad serving providers (“Advertising Providers”) that serve ads on behalf of us and others on non-affiliated platforms.  Some of those ads may be personalized, meaning that they are intended to be relevant to you based on information Advertising Providers collect about your use of the Websites, App, and other sites or apps over time, including information about relationships among different browsers and devices.  This type of advertising is known as targeted advertising.

You may visit the DAA Webchoices tool at www.aboutads.info to learn more about this type of advertising and how to opt out of this advertising on websites by companies participating in the DAA self-regulatory program.  You can also exercise choices regarding targeted advertising on your mobile device by downloading the appropriate version of the DAA’s AppChoices tool at https://youradchoices.com/appchoices.

If you delete your cookies or use a different browser or mobile device, you may need to renew your opt-out choices exercised through the DAA Webchoices tool.  Note that electing to opt out will not stop advertising from appearing in your browser or applications.  It may make the ads you see less relevant to your interests.  

We may also work with third parties that collect data about your use of the Site and other sites or apps over time for non-advertising purposes.  Root uses Google Analytics and other third-party services to improve the performance of the Site and for analytics and marketing purposes.  For more information about how Google Analytics collects and uses data when you use our Site, visit www.google.com/policies/privacy/partners, and to opt out of Google Analytics, visit tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.

Additionally, your browser may offer tools to limit the use of cookies or to delete cookies; however, if you use these tools, our Websites may not function as intended.

How We Use and Disclose Your Information

We may use your information for any lawful purpose.  Such purposes may include our business purposes, including to provide you with the Services and our other products or services; fulfill a transaction you requested; market our products or in furtherance of our business relationship with a marketing partner; respond to or communicate with you; log activity on our Websites and App; conduct analysis of our Websites, App, and other electronic tools and services; prevent fraud and ensure security and integrity; debug our offerings; conduct internal research; comply with requests from regulatory and law enforcement authorities; send you push notifications; develop, personalize, or improve the Services; for legal or compliance purposes; or as required or permitted by applicable law. 

We may disclose your information for our business purposes or as required or permitted by law. Persons or organizations to which we disclose your information include our affiliated companies or joint venture partners that we may have in the future, , certain governmental agencies, and parties involved in a litigation. 

We may disclose your information to third-party service providers that perform certain functions or services on our behalf (such as to host the Services, manage databases, perform analyses, provide customer service, provide legal or business advisory services to us, or send communications for us).  These third-party service providers are authorized to use your information only as necessary to provide these services to us.  

We may disclose personal information with another company that buys some, or all, of the assets or stock of Root. We may also disclose personal information to advisors and prospective purchasers to evaluate the proposed transaction.

We may disclose your information without notice for legal or administrative reasons, such as when required by law or to comply with a court order, subpoena, search warrant, or other legal process; to cooperate or undertake an internal or external investigation or audit; to comply with legal, regulatory, or administrative requirements of governmental authorities (including, without limitation, requests from the governmental agency authorities to view your information); to protect and defend the rights, property, or safety of us, our subsidiaries and affiliates, and any of their officers, directors, employees, attorneys, agents, contractors, and partners, and users of the Services; to enforce or apply our terms of use; and to verify the identity of the user of our Services.   

We may also use, share, disseminate, or sell data that is deidentified or aggregated so that it cannot reasonably be associated with any individual.  We maintain and use deidentified information only in deidentified form. We do not attempt to reidentify such information except as needed to determine that the information is appropriately deidentified.

Sale and Sharing of Your Information

For purposes of this Privacy Policy, “sale” means the disclosure of information for monetary or other valuable consideration but does not include the types of disclosures described above.  “Sharing” means disclosing or making available information to a third party for purposes of targeted advertising (also called cross-contextual behavioral advertising).  While we do not sell information to third parties in exchange for money, we disclose identifiers and Internet and network activity information to Advertising Providers for purposes of targeted advertising and to improve and measure our ad campaigns.  Such disclosures may be considered “sales” or “sharing” of information under applicable laws.  We do not sell or share information regulated as sensitive, nor do we knowingly sell or share information about individuals we know are under sixteen (16) years of age.

How We Secure Your Information

Root takes reasonable precautions to protect information about you from loss, misuse and unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration and destruction. For example, our employees are prohibited from using or disclosing information for any purpose other than performing their work for Root. We cannot guarantee absolute security, however.

How Long We Retain Your Information

Please note that in many situations we must retain all, or a portion, of your information to comply with our legal obligations; resolve disputes; enforce our agreements; protect against fraudulent, deceptive, or illegal activity; or for another one of our business purposes. We will store information as long as necessary for the performance of our obligations or to achieve the purposes for which the information was collected, or as may be permitted under applicable law. To determine the appropriate retention period, we will consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the information; the potential risk of harm from unauthorized use or disclosure of the information; the purposes for which we process the information and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means; and the applicable legal requirements. Unless otherwise required by applicable law, at the end of the retention period we will delete or deidentify personal information.

Notice of Privacy Rights for Residents of Certain U.S. States

As an insurer, Root is generally exempt from state privacy laws that provide specific rights with regard to personal information. However, residents of California and Minnesota may have rights and choices regarding their personal information or personal data, as defined under applicable law (collectively referenced in this section as “personal information”).  To the extent that California or Minnesota privacy law applies to our processing of your personal information in connection with our Services, this section of our Privacy Policy outlines the individual rights you may be entitled to and how to exercise those rights. 

Depending on whether you live in California or Minnesota, and subject to certain exceptions and limitations, you may have some or all of the following rights:

• Right to Confirm Processing.  You have the right to confirm whether we are processing personal information about you.

• Right to Know.  You have the right to know the categories and specific pieces of personal information we collect, use, disclose, and sell about you; the categories of sources from which we collected personal information about you; our purposes for collecting or selling personal information about you; the categories of personal information about you that we have sold or disclosed for a business purpose; and the categories of third parties with which we have shared personal information.  

• Right to Data Portability.  You have the right to receive a portable and readily usable copy of the personal information we have collected about you, to the extent feasible. 

• Right to Correction of Inaccurate Information.  To the extent that we maintain inaccurate personal information, you have the right to request that we correct inaccuracies in the personal information we maintain about you, taking into account the nature of the information and the purposes of the processing of the information.  

• Right to Deletion.  You have the right to request that we delete personal information we have collected about you.  

• Right to Opt Out of the Sale, Sharing, and Processing of Personal Information for Targeted Advertising.  As noted above, while we do not sell information to third parties in exchange for money, we process and disclose certain personal information for targeted advertising.  Such disclosures may be considered “sales” or “sharing” of information under applicable laws.  Depending on your state, you may have the right to opt out of sales of your personal information, sharing of your personal information for cross-context behavioral advertising, and other processing for targeted advertising. Methods of opting out of these practices include:

  • You can opt-out of online targeted advertising (e.g., cookies) by clicking the “Manage cookies” link on our Websites footer. 

  • You may use the Global Privacy Control (GPC) tool to signal your opt-out preferences to Root on our Websites.  The GPC is a third-party tool, and you can activate the GPC by implementing a browser or extension that offers this tool. More information and instructions on implementing this tool are available here. Root has implemented mechanisms to respond to GPC signals that we receive on our Websites, where required, and we treat these signals as requests to opt out of “sales” and sharing for targeted advertising.

• Right to Obtain a List of Third Parties to Which We Have Disclosed Personal Information.  For Minnesota residents, you may have the right to request that we provide you with a list of the specific third parties to which we have disclosed personal information.

• Right to Non-Discrimination.  You have a right to not receive discriminatory treatment for the exercise of the above privacy rights. 

While some state privacy laws provide an opt-out opportunity for certain uses or disclosures of “sensitive” personal information, we use and disclose such information only in ways that do not require an opt-out opportunity.  Likewise, for the practices covered by this Privacy Policy, we do not engage in activities that trigger consumer rights relating to profiling.

To submit a request to exercise your opt-out rights, please use the methods described above.  To exercise any other rights noted in this section, please contact us using any of the methods described below to submit a verifiable consumer request.  A verifiable consumer request must:

• Provide sufficient information that allows us to reasonably verify you are the person about whom we collected personal information, or an authorized representative; and

• Describe your request with sufficient detail that allows us to properly understand, evaluate, and respond to it.

To help protect your privacy and maintain security, we may request additional information if needed to verify your identity before processing your request.  We will respond to requests within the timeline provided under the applicable law.

If permitted by the applicable data protection law, you may use an authorized agent to submit requests on your behalf provided that the authorized agent is a natural person or a business entity that you have authorized to act on your behalf.  If you use an authorized agent, we will require: (1) proof of written permission for the authorized agent to make requests on your behalf, and identity verification from you; or (2) proof of power of attorney pursuant under applicable law.  Only you or your authorized agent may make a verifiable consumer request related to your personal information. We may deny a request from an authorized agent that does not submit proper verification proof.

Please contact us at the following:

Use our form

https://www.joinroot.com/privacy/data-collection

Email us

privacy@joinroot.com

Call us  

(866) 980-9431 

Write us

Root, Inc.

80 E. Rich Street

Suite 500

Columbus, OH 43215

If you have submitted a request that you believe we have not fulfilled, you may contact us to appeal our decision by sending an email with the subject line “Appeal” to privacy@joinroot.com.

Your Choices

Unless you ask us not to, we may contact you via email or postal mail, and via push notification in the App, with promotions to tell you about specials, products, or services.  You can use your device settings if you wish to opt out of push notifications.  To opt out of postal mail marketing, you can contact us at help@joinroot.com and request that we remove you from our marketing distribution lists.  To opt out of email marketing, you can unsubscribe using the link provided in each of our marketing messages. If you opt out of our email marketing, we will still send you messages related to our transactions and relationship with you.  

If we use automated dialing technology to place calls or texts to your mobile phone number, we will do so with your consent as required by applicable law. We may contact you in person, by recorded message, by the use of automated dialing equipment, by text (SMS) message, or by any other means of communication your device is capable of receiving, as allowed by law. You can opt out at any time by texting “STOP”.  We do not share SMS consent or phone numbers for the purpose of SMS with third parties.

Changes to Our Privacy Policy

We may modify this Privacy Policy from time to time. The most recent version is always posted at https://www.joinroot.com/privacy-policy/ and in our App. When we make changes, we will revise the date of the Privacy Policy and post the updated version at https://www.joinroot.com/privacy-policy/ and in our App.