CALIFORNIA APPLICANT: NOTICE AT COLLECTION

Last Updated: 08/21/2026

Table of Contents

• Personal Information Collected and Processed
• Sources of Personal Information
• Use of Cookies and Other Technologies
• Third-Party Source of Personal Information
• Purposes for Processing Personal Information
• Disclosure of Personal Information
• Categories of Personal Information Collected and Disclosed
• Notice of Monitoring
• Security of Personal Information
• Links to Other Websites and Social Media
• Sales and Sharing of Personal Information
• Deidentified Data
• Retention of Personal Information
• Sensitive Personal Information
• California Residents’ Rights
• Notice to California Residents Under 18 Years of Age
• Contact for Privacy Questions
• Changes to This Notice

This California Applicant Notice at Collection (“Applicant Notice”) explains how Ace Hardware Corporation collects, uses, and discloses certain personal information relating to external job applicants and candidates who reside in California (“Applicants”). For California residents, this Applicant Notice is intended to satisfy applicable notice requirements under the California Consumer Privacy Act, as amended by the California Privacy Rights Act of 2020 (“CCPA”). Applicants may also receive additional privacy notices when required by other laws or circumstances, such as during a background check process or upon receipt of an employment offer.

This Applicant Notice applies to personal information collected by Ace Hardware Corporation and its U.S.-based affiliates (collectively, “Ace Hardware,” “Ace,” “we,” “our,” “us,” or the “Company”) in connection with employment applications submitted by California residents, including applications submitted through our websites and other digital platforms (collectively, the “Services”). This Applicant Notice applies solely to information collected as part of the employment application and recruiting process. It does not apply to personal information collected from customers or other users of Ace Hardware products and services, including Applicants acting in their personal capacity as consumers.

Please note this Privacy Policy does not apply to applicants for employment outside of California, applicants to positions with Ace affiliate franchisees or applicants to positions with Ace Hardware’s retailers. The posting for the job you are applying for will tell you whether it is being offered by Ace Hardware, a franchisee, or by a retailer. If you apply for employment with a franchisee or retailer, that franchisee or retailer uses your personal information pursuant to its own privacy practices. Please contact that franchisee or retailer to learn more about its privacy practices.

Our careers page may contain links to other websites, applications, or services operated by others. Please be advised that the practices described in this Privacy Policy do not apply to information gathered through these other websites, applications, or services, including websites, applications, or services operated by Ace stores, most of which are independently owned and operated, although some may be owned by Ace affiliates.

Personal Information Collected and Processed

We collect the personal information you provide during the application process, which may include the following:

• Contact information, such as your name (first, middle, last), home address/country, telephone number, email address, and your birthday;
• Your work experience (e.g., employment history, company, location, highest level of education, major area of study, degree, GPA), professional certifications, relevant prior trainings or courses, language capabilities, your area/department/role of interest within Ace Hardware, total compensation expectation, work schedule preferences, first possible start date, the fact that you may be subject to a non-compete, applicable termination/notice periods, restrictive covenant or any other agreement that might affect your ability to accept a position and work at Ace Hardware, references, letters of recommendation, interview notes, the source you heard about the job vacancy, and availabilities to schedule an in person interview;
• Volunteering experience, family members who work at Ace Hardware and the nature of your relationship to them, your eligibility to work in the United States and/or your selected location, and any limitations on your eligibility to work associated with your employment sponsorship, if applicable;
• Attachments and supporting materials, such as resumes, CVs, cover letters, certifications, letters of recommendation, language proficiency documentation, and other information you choose to provide;
• Recordings of interviews and assessments or transcripts of interviews;
• Optional demographic information that is not part of your application, e.g., gender, race/ethnicity, veteran status and disability, etc.;
• Additional pre-employment information, such as ability to perform the requirements of the position, workplace accommodation needs, and the results of background checks, education verification, drug and alcohol testing, and other pre-employment screenings; and
• Virtual and live communications (e.g., with our interactive chat bot assistants). Please note that conversations with our chatbot assistants are monitored and retained by us and our third-party providers for our business purposes;
• Information we need if we provide you with an offer (e.g., rate of pay, start date, job title); and
• The results of other application-related assessments.

Sources of Personal Information

We collect personal information from you or about you in a variety of ways, which may include: directly from you; from advertising networks; from advisors and agents; from benefits providers; from affiliates and subsidiaries; from regulators, government entities and law enforcement; from internet service providers; and from operating systems and platforms.

You actively share personal information with us in various ways when you utilize the careers page. For example, you may share personal information when you:

• Browse the site;
• Apply for a job;
• Communicate and interact with us or our Services: When you email, call, chat or otherwise communicate with us and with members of our team, we collect and maintain a record of your contact details, communications, and our responses;
• Passively provide via your technical interactions;
• Interact with our AI-Powered Job Assistant: If you have questions while applying, you can ask Grace, our AI-powered assistant. Grace can answer questions about open roles and guide you through the application process.

When you chat with Grace, both Ace and our trusted service provider collect the information that you share so we can provide you with this support. Grace is only designed to help you with job-related questions and can’t help you with other topics.

• When you show interest in a job ad or job board post.

Use of Cookies and Other Technologies

Like many online services, we and other service providers may collect and store certain information automatically whenever you interact with our Services, chatbots, and other online services. For example, we may collect your IP address, browser and device information, including operating system, application software, and reference site domain name, when you access or use the website. We may also use personal information to derive aggregated information regarding traffic patterns and usage and mobile application usage data. We may use this information in combination with other information we have about you, including personal information.

Ace uses cookies, which are small data files created by a web server and stored by your browser. We also use pixel tags, which are tiny graphic images, also known as web beacons, action tags, or transparent GIF files. Some cookies and pixel tags permit the careers page to function properly. For example, we may use cookies and other technologies to store your preferences and provide a personalized experience on the Services. In addition, we may use certain technologies to determine whether you have opened an e-mail or clicked on a link contained in an e-mail, and how you use the pages and content on our websites. Sharing through cookies may be deemed a sale or sharing under California law. To opt out, please see California Residents’ Rights below.

If you do not want cookies to be dropped on your device, you can adjust the setting of your Internet browser to change the settings of all or some cookies and to alert you when a cookie is placed on your device. For further information about how to do so, please refer to your browser ‘help’, ‘tool’, or ‘edit’ section or see www.allaboutcookies.org. Please note that if you use your browser settings to block all cookies, including strictly necessary cookies, you may not be able to access or use all or parts of the functionalities of the Ace websites. To continue to allow all cookies, select “Manage Choices” below and select “Allow All Cookies”. To reject further placement of any non-necessary cookies, select “Necessary Cookies Only”. To opt out of the Sale or Sharing of Personal Information online, click on the “Share or Sale of Personal Information” tab and toggle to the left. Then select “Confirm My Choices”. This will stop further cookies from being placed on your device. These choices are device and browser specific. Manage Choices

Analytics: Ace may also use cookies and other technologies to implement analytics tools, including, but not limited to, Google Analytics, that help us understand how the Services are performing, how you engage with the Services, and how you interact with our advertisements and communications. The personal information we collect using Google Analytics may include IP addresses and activity on the Services. You can opt-out of having your site activity available to Google Analytics by installing the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on. The add-on prevents the Google Analytics JavaScript (gtag.js, analytics.js) that is running on websites from sharing information with Google Analytics about visit activity. Using the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on will not prevent Ace from using other tools to measure site analytics. It does not prevent data from being sent to the website itself or in other ways to web analytics services.

Third-Party Sources of Personal Information

We may receive personal information about you from other sources to help us correct or supplement our records, improve the quality or personalization of the Services and marketing to you, and prevent or detect fraud.

In accessing the Services, you may access portions which contain functions or content licensed by third parties. How such third parties collect, use and share personal information that they collect about you or that you provide to them is solely governed by such third party and any applicable license terms, terms of use or privacy policy. We are not responsible for the content or privacy practices of external internet sites or applications and recommend that you read the privacy policy of external sites and applications before disclosing any personal information.

If you connect or interact with us on third-party sites or applications such as social media platforms or other job or career sites, the third-party platform may send us your information such as your profile or resume information from that platform. The information collected and disclosed to us is controlled by the third-party platform and its terms and privacy policy or as you direct by adjusting your privacy settings on the third-party platform. By directing the third-party platform to share your information with us, you agree to our use of your information in accordance with this Policy.

We may also receive information from you from other third parties, such as third-party background checking companies, sources of publicly available information, and individuals or entities whose information you provide to us as employment references.

Purposes for Processing Personal Information

Ace may use personal information of Applicants for the following purposes:

• Evaluate qualifications for employment and recruitment opportunities.
• Contact applicants regarding application status and recruitment opportunities.
• Contact applicant-provided references.
• Conduct background checks, employment verification, and drug screening, where permitted by law.
• Analyze candidate pools, including diversity analysis, benchmarking, recruitment analytics, and statistical reporting.
• Improve and develop recruiting strategies, processes, training, and quality control initiatives.
• Contact applicants regarding current or future employment opportunities. These communications may occur through our third-party service providers, and may use pre-recorded messages or occur through SMS text messages. Please refer to our third party, Dalia, directly by visiting https://www.dalia.co/dalia-privacy-policy.
• Operate, administer, and improve Ace’s business operations and services.
• Protect Ace’s information, systems, facilities, networks, and assets through security measures, monitoring, access controls, and investigations.
• Support workplace health and safety initiatives.
• Audit and assess business operations, security controls, and compliance activities.
• Administer records management, retention, and corporate governance programs.
• Support mergers, acquisitions, reorganizations, and other business transactions.
• Protect and defend the rights, interests, health, and safety of Ace and third parties, including managing claims, disputes, investigations, and litigation.
• Comply with applicable laws, regulations, legal processes, court orders, subpoenas, employment eligibility requirements, and Ace policies and procedures.
• In other ways, as requested by you.

Disclosure of Personal Information

We may share your personal information in the following circumstances:

• Ace Employees or Affiliates: In order to carry out the application and recruitment process under this Privacy Policy, your personal information may be shared with recruiters and/or other Ace employees such as your potential manager(s), members of the human resources team as well as other individuals within Ace. Ace may also transfer personal information to its subsidiaries and corporate affiliates, including future subsidiaries and affiliates.
• Service Providers: Your personal information also may be shared with service providers that assist us during the recruitment process. For example, we may use service providers to collect your personal information as well as for other services such as carrying out background checks, work-related assessments or pre-employment screenings.
• Social Media and Advertising Platforms: We may use social media and advertising platforms, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google, to serve advertisements to you or to third parties that the platform determines are similar to you. In order to offer these ads, we may share your personal information, such as email addresses or phone numbers, in hashed or unhashed format, with the platform provider, which can match this information to a particular platform user.
• Marketing Agencies: We may make your personal information, together with information about your application, available to affiliates and marketing agencies for purposes of conducting marketing activities and measuring campaign effectiveness.
• Legal Requirements and Protection of Our Company and Others: We may also share personal information with third parties when we believe in good faith that the disclosure is required to comply with a court order, subpoena, warrant or legal process.
• Sale, Transfer, or Reorganization of Business: We may also share your information in the event of a merger, acquisition, asset sale or other related transaction, or when we believe in good faith that disclosure is required by law or to protect the safety of our employees, the public or Ace Hardware’s property.
• Education Institutions: We may share personal information with your education institution in order to verify your application and/or employment status at your or your institution’s request.
• When You Authorize Us: In addition to the foregoing circumstances, we may share your personal information when you authorize us to do so.

Categories of Personal Information Collected and Disclosed

Notice of Monitoring

Ace and our service providers and third-party partners may monitor any use of or activity on our websites for our business purposes. This may include records of actions you take while using our websites, records of your sessions on our sites, information you submit on our sites, or communications or information sent through or using our sites. The cookies and similar technologies used on our website (described below in the section titled “Use of Cookies and Similar Technologies”) may also collect these types of information. This information may be collected and retained by us and by our service providers and third-party partners.

Additionally, if you engage with chatbots on our sites, your conversations with our chatbots may be retained by us and our service providers for our business purposes. This can include any interaction between you and our chatbots, information you input into the chatbot (including job applications), and the conversations you have with the chatbots.

If you do not consent to the monitoring described here, you should not use our websites.

Security of Personal Information

We use various security measures to protect personal information that we collect. However, we cannot guarantee that your personal information will be secure from disclosure or misuse, either by accident or by unauthorized access or use.

Links to Other Websites and Social Media

Our websites may offer links to websites that are not run by us but by third parties. If you visit one of these linked websites, you should read the website’s privacy policy, terms and conditions, and their other policies. We are not responsible for the policies and practices of third parties. Any information you give to those organizations is dealt with under their privacy policy, terms and conditions, and other policies.

We may also have providers of other apps, tools, widgets and plug-ins on the Services, such as Facebook “Like” buttons, which may also use automated methods to collect information about how you use these features. These organizations may use your information in line with their own policies.

Sales and Sharing of Personal Information

The CCPA defines “sale” as disclosing or making available personal information to a third-party in exchange for monetary or other valuable consideration, and “sharing” includes disclosing or making available personal information to a third-party for purposes of cross-contextual behavioral advertising.

We do not sell (as defined by the CCPA) Personal Information or Sensitive Personal Information related to Applicants, including those we know who are under the age of 16.

Deidentified Data

In the event we use, disclose, or process deidentified data about applicants, we will do so in deidentified form. We commit to maintaining and using deidentified data in its deidentified form and will not attempt to reidentify it, except as permitted by law.

Retention of Personal Information

Ace will retain the personal information we process pursuant to this Privacy Policy for the duration of time necessary to assess your qualifications for employment, and for the period of time thereafter as provided in our retention policies. You may also elect to have your personal information remain with Ace, for example, if you continue to maintain a career profile on one of our websites.

Sensitive Personal Information

Notwithstanding the purposes described above, we do not collect, use or disclose of sensitive personal information about Applicants beyond the purposes authorized by the CCPA. Accordingly, we use and disclose sensitive personal information about Applicants as reasonably necessary and proportionate: (i) to perform the services requested by you; (ii) to help ensure security and integrity, including to prevent, detect, and investigate security incidents; (iii) to detect, prevent and respond to malicious, fraudulent, deceptive, or illegal conduct; (iv) to verify or maintain the quality and safety of our services; (v) for compliance with our legal obligations; (vi) to our service providers who perform services on our behalf; and (vii) for purposes other than inferring characteristics about you.

California Residents’ Rights

California law grants California residents certain rights and imposes restrictions on particular business practices as set forth below. Subject to certain limitations and exceptions, California residents have the right to make the following requests:

• Right to Delete: California residents have the right to request deletion of their personal information that we have collected about them, subject to certain exemptions.
• Right to Know: California residents have the right to request that we provide them certain information about how we handled their personal information, including the:
  • categories of personal information collected
  • categories of sources which personal information is collected from
  • business or commercial purposes for collecting, selling, or sharing their personal information
  • categories of third parties with whom we have disclosed their personal information
  • specific pieces of personal information we have collected about the resident.

Data access requests are not limited to the 12-month period preceding the request and may include all personal information we maintain about you, subject to verification and applicable exceptions.

• Right to Correction: California residents have the right to correct inaccuracies in their personal information.
• Right of Portability: California residents have the right to obtain a copy of the personal information that they have previously provided to us in a portable and, to the extent technically feasible, readily usable format that allows them to transmit their personal information to another controller without hindrance.
• Right to Limit Use of Sensitive Personal Information: California residents have the right to request a business limit the use of their sensitive personal information to what is necessary for the business purpose and for purposes permitted by the CCPA. We do not collect or disclose sensitive personal information for the purpose of inferring characteristics about California residents or for any business uses other than those permitted by the CCPA.
• Right to Opt-out of Sales and Sharing: California residents have the right to opt-out of the sale or sharing of their personal information. California defines a “sale” as disclosing or making available to a third-party personal information in exchange for monetary or other valuable consideration, and “sharing” broadly includes disclosing or making available personal information to a third party for purposes of cross-context behavioral advertising. We do not sell (as defined by the CCPA) Personal Information or Sensitive Personal Information related to Applicants, including those we know who are under the age of 16.
• Global Privacy Controls: You can configure certain browsers and other technologies to send opt-out preference signals to a website notifying the website of your express action to stop the sale or sharing of your personal information. For more information, please see globalprivacycontrols.org information.
• Right to No Discrimination: Ace will not discriminate against California residents for exercising their rights under the CCPA.

Submitting Requests

Applicants may be able to exercise many of these rights themselves by logging into the Applicant portal. Otherwise, to submit a request to Ace Hardware to exercise your CCPA rights, you or your authorized agent may submit a privacy request through our Consumer Rights webform, available at https://privacyportal.onetrust.com/webform/08fcfb30-e571-44e6-a1de-eb62fe3d7b00/f45b7f36-6e05-423c-b109-fc9da58fc429, or by clicking the “Your Privacy Choices” button on the bottom of Careers.AceHardware.com. Additionally, individuals may contact the Ace Care Center at 1-888-827-4223. We will respond to verifiable requests received from California consumers as required by law.

Verification of Requests

For your protection, we may require you to log into your account to verify your identity or make requests. In order to process requests to know, delete or correct, we require first name, last name, zip code, email and/or phone number and we may ask for additional information such as position(s) applied to depending on the nature of the request and the need to prevent fraud and protect security. The information provided in the request will be compared to the data Ace maintains for that customer. If the information does not match, we will be unable to process the request.

Authorized Agent Requests

An authorized agent is a person or business who has authorization to request to know what personal information we have about a California resident, to delete the personal information we have about a California resident, to correct the personal information we have about a California resident, or to opt-out of the sale/sharing of personal information on behalf of a California resident. Authorized agents use the same links described above to submit requests.

If you are submitting a request on behalf of another person, we require an authorization, and/or other documentation demonstrating your authority to submit this request. This can be a letter or other documentation signed by the California resident authorizing you to submit this request. Ace reserves the right to contact the resident directly to verify their identity and ensure that they have elected an authorized agent.

Notice to California Residents Under 18 Years of Age

If you are a user of the Services under the age of 18, and we have actual knowledge of your age, then under California law you may request and obtain removal of certain content or information you have posted on our online services. To do so, please contact us at the address, phone number or email address mentioned within this Privacy Policy. Please note that removal does not ensure complete or comprehensive removal of the content. For example, removal may not be possible or permitted if another provision of law requires the content to be maintained, if it was posted or reposted by others, or if we paid compensation to you in exchange for the posting.

Contact for Privacy Questions

If you have any questions or concerns regarding our use of personal information as described in this Applicant Notice, please contact HRCalPrivacy@acehardware.com or call the Ace Care Center at 1-888-827-4223.

Changes to This Notice

This Privacy Policy is in effect as of the date noted at the top of the Privacy Policy. We may change this Privacy Policy from time to time. If we do, we will post the revised version and change the “last updated date” (the date it applies from) at the top of the Privacy Policy. You should check here regularly for the most up-to-date version of the Privacy Policy.