Privacy Policy
How Future Automotive Group collects, uses, shares, and safeguards personal information across our dealerships, websites, mobile experiences, and the Titan assistant.
This Privacy Policy includes an agreement to arbitrate disputes and a class-action waiver in §19. Review that section before continuing to use our sites or services. The arbitration agreement includes a 30-day opt-out window described in our Terms & Conditions §15.
Overview & scope
Future Automotive Group, Inc. (“Future Automotive Group”, “we”, “us”) operates the Future Bay Area website at futurebayarea.com, the five franchised dealerships listed in our footer (Concord Ford, Future Lincoln, Future Hyundai, CDJR Concord, CDJR Fairfield), the Titan in-store and online assistant, and the related apps, forms, telephone, SMS, chat, in-vehicle, and physical-location experiences (together, the “Services”). This Policy explains what personal information we collect, why, who we share it with, the choices and legal rights you have, and how to contact us.
It applies to everyone who interacts with us: prospective shoppers, customers, service guests, finance and lease applicants, trade-in sellers, employment applicants, and visitors to any of the above. If you do not agree with this Policy, please do not use the Services.
Section headings below are numbered for reference. Where the law requires specific language, we have adopted that language; everywhere else we have tried to write in plain English.
Information we collect
The categories of personal information we collect depend on how you interact with us. Across all interactions in the last 12 months, we have collected the following categories, as those terms are defined by the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) and California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA):
| Category | Examples |
|---|---|
| Identifiers | Real name, postal address, email, phone number, IP address, driver’s license number, account login, cookies and similar device identifiers. |
| Customer records | Signatures, payment card and bank account details, insurance policy numbers, credit and financial information you provide on an application. |
| Commercial information | Vehicles, parts, accessories, and services you have purchased, leased, financed, considered, or had repaired; trade-in history; service history. |
| Internet & electronic activity | Pages you viewed on our sites, links you clicked, vehicles you saved or compared, time-on-page, referring URL, search queries, ad interactions. |
| Geolocation (non-precise) | Approximate location derived from IP address — typically resolves to a city or postal code. |
| Audio, video, electronic | Photos you submit (e.g., for a trade-in appraisal), recorded inbound and outbound phone calls used for quality assurance and training, chat transcripts, voicemails. |
| Professional / employment | Job title, employer, occupation, and employment history, used for credit applications, military or first-responder rebate eligibility, and our own hiring processes. |
| Education | Diploma or transcript when used to verify eligibility for a college-graduate rebate program offered by a manufacturer. |
| Inferences | Profiles we (or our analytics vendors) derive about your vehicle preferences, likely purchase window, financing fit, and similar predictions used to surface relevant inventory and offers. |
| Age & veteran status | Date of birth and military service for rebate eligibility and Military Lending Act compliance. |
We collect these categories from you directly (forms, in-store conversations, phone calls), from your device automatically (cookies, server logs), and from third parties such as credit bureaus, vehicle manufacturers, the DMV, prior service-history databases (e.g., Carfax), lead providers, and social-advertising platforms.
Sensitive personal information
The CCPA defines a narrower set of “sensitive personal information”. In the course of processing a financing application, verifying identity, or administering employment-related programs, we may collect the following sensitive categories:
- Government-issued identifiers (Social Security number, driver’s license, passport).
- Account login credentials in combination with a security or access code.
- Financial account numbers in combination with a security or access code.
- Citizenship or immigration status (only as appears on a credit application or government ID).
- Precise geolocation — only when you affirmatively enable it (e.g., a “use my location” button in our trade-in flow).
- Contents of communications addressed to a party other than us (e.g., SMS forwarded to us by a third party).
We do not use sensitive personal information to infer characteristics about you for advertising or profiling purposes. You have a right to limit our use of sensitive personal information — see §10.
How we use information
We use the categories above for the following business and commercial purposes:
- Process the transaction you came in for — generate quotes, place reservations, accept trades, build deal jackets, originate financing or leases, schedule service, deliver parts.
- Customer service and account maintenance — answer questions, follow up on service appointments, send recall notices, administer extended warranties and prepaid maintenance plans.
- Marketing — send you offers via email, direct mail, push notification, and (with separate opt-in) SMS that we think are relevant to you. We perform marketing research and measure campaign performance.
- Personalization and recommendations — surface vehicles and offers the Titan assistant believes will be useful, based on your stated preferences and on-site activity.
- Advertising — including measurement (ad impressions, conversions) and cross-context behavioral advertising via vendors such as Meta, Google, and other ad networks.
- Fraud prevention and security — detect and respond to identity theft, payment fraud, account takeover, and abusive use of our systems.
- Compliance and dispute defense — meet federal and state legal obligations (e.g., dealer licensing, FTC Safeguards Rule, Truth in Lending), respond to subpoenas, and defend against claims.
- Operating the business — internal audits, quality assurance, training, financial reporting, and similar administrative purposes.
For employment-related interactions (job applicants, current employees), we additionally process information for hiring, onboarding, benefits administration, payroll, performance evaluation, driver eligibility, and workplace safety.
SMS / text messaging
By providing your mobile number and opting in, you consent to receive text messages from Future Ford of Concord regarding vehicle inquiries, appointment confirmations, service updates, trade appraisal follow-up, and customer support.
Message frequency varies. Message and data rates may apply. Reply STOP to opt out at any time and HELP for help.
No mobile information will be shared with third parties or affiliates for marketing or promotional purposes. Information sharing with subcontractors providing support services (such as customer service) is permitted. All other use-case categories exclude text-messaging originator opt-in data and consent; this information will not be shared with any third parties.
Program overview
Future Automotive Group operates three SMS programs through our messaging vendor, Twilio. Each program is separately registered with The Campaign Registry (TCR) under the A2P 10DLC framework:
- Customer Care — transactional messages relating to a vehicle you inquired about, an appointment you booked, or service you requested.
- Marketing (planned Q3 2026) — promotional offers from a specific rooftop, only after a separate, explicit marketing opt-in.
- Employee MFA — one-time-passcode SMS to employee phone numbers, used as a second authentication factor for our internal systems.
See /sms-consent/ for the full public reference page that we share with carrier reviewers.
Consent and frequency
You provide consent to receive text messages by checking the SMS consent checkbox on the relevant form, by replying START or YESto an opt-in confirmation message, or by explicitly providing your number to a Future Automotive Group employee for the purpose of receiving texts. Consent is logged with the timestamp, IP address, page URL, disclosure version, and the consent state you selected. Message frequency varies based on your activity. Message and data rates may apply depending on your mobile carrier’s plan.
Opting out
Reply STOP (or CANCEL, END, QUIT, orUNSUBSCRIBE) to any message to opt out of that program. We confirm the opt-out and stop sending you messages on that program within minutes. Reply HELP at any time for assistance information. Reply START to re-enroll after opting out.
Mobile information, phone numbers, and SMS opt-in consent will not be sold or shared with any third parties or affiliates for marketing or promotional purposes. All categories above this exclusion in this Privacy Policy — including the categories of data we collect and the parties we share with — exclude mobile opt-in data and consent. SMS consent is not shared with third parties under any circumstances.
We share your mobile number only with the service providers strictly required to deliver the messages you have asked for — currently Twilio, Inc. for message transport, and Okta, Inc. for employee MFA only — and only for that purpose. These providers are contractually prohibited from using your number or message content for their own marketing, from selling it, and from sharing it onward.
Consent to receive text messages is never a condition of purchase, service, financing, or any other Future Automotive Group product or transaction.
Future Automotive Group, our messaging carrier (Twilio), and your mobile carrier are not liable for delayed, misdirected, or undelivered messages.
Who we share information with
We disclose personal information to the following categories of recipients, only for the purposes stated in §4 and only under contracts that restrict their further use of it:
- Vehicle manufacturers we are franchised to sell (Ford, Lincoln, Hyundai, Stellantis brands) — for warranty registration, recalls, rebate processing, and CRM programs.
- Captive finance companies (Ford Credit, Hyundai Motor Finance, Stellantis Financial, etc.) and third-party lenders or credit unions you apply with — to process and service your financing or lease.
- Credit reporting agencies — Experian, TransUnion, Equifax, and similar — to evaluate creditworthiness.
- F&I product administrators — for vehicle service contracts, GAP insurance, and similar protection products you purchase.
- Service providers and software vendors who operate parts of our infrastructure under contract (web hosting, analytics, CRM, DMS, chat, digital retailing, e-signature, payment processing, fraud detection).
- Advertising networks and analytics providers — for measurement and cross-context behavioral advertising. You can opt out as described in §10.
- Transportation and logistics — vehicle haulers, towing companies, and delivery partners as needed to fulfill your transaction.
- Government agencies — the DMV for title and registration; the IRS for tax-related reporting; and federal or state agencies as required by law.
- Insurance companies — to verify coverage, process claims, or coordinate post-collision repairs.
- Professional advisors — attorneys, auditors, accountants — bound by their own professional obligations of confidentiality.
- Law enforcement — in response to a valid subpoena, search warrant, or other lawful request.
We do not sell personal information for money. We do, however, disclose certain identifiers and online activity to advertising and analytics partners in ways that California law treats as “sharing for cross-context behavioral advertising.” You can opt out of this sharing — see §10.
We do not sell or share the personal information of consumers we know to be under 16.
Cookies & similar technologies
We and our service providers use cookies, web beacons, tracking pixels, local storage, and similar technologies on our sites (together, “cookies”). We categorize them as follows:
- Essential. Required to operate the site — session, authentication, fraud prevention, accessibility, and consent storage. These cannot be disabled.
- Functional. Remember preferences (language, recently viewed vehicles), power optional features (payment calculator, service scheduler, chat module), and track errors so we can fix them.
- Analytics. Tell us aggregate traffic patterns (which pages are popular, how users navigate) so we can improve the site.
- Targeting / advertising. Used by our ad partners to show you relevant ads on other sites, including retargeting, and to measure campaign performance.
Use the cookie banner that appears on your first visit (or the “Your Privacy Choices” link in the footer) to opt out of analytics and targeting cookies. Browser tools can also block or delete cookies — instructions vary by browser. Disabling essential cookies will break parts of the site.
The site uses Google Analyticsto measure traffic. Google’s privacy practices are described at policies.google.com/privacy. To opt out of Google Analytics, install the Google Analytics Opt-Out browser add-on.
Do Not Track & Global Privacy Control
We honor the Global Privacy Control (GPC) signal. If your browser or browser extension sends a GPC header with your request, we treat it as a valid opt-out of the sale and sharing of your personal information for cross-context behavioral advertising — for that browser, going forward, until you change the setting.
We also honor the Do Not Track (DNT) header from browsers that still send it. Note that the DNT standard was never formally adopted; if both DNT and a separate cookie-banner choice exist, GPC and DNT take precedence over the banner choice for advertising opt-outs.
Chat modules & session replay
Our sites include an interactive chat module (the Titan assistant, plus vendor-supplied chat where enabled). When you use chat, we (and our chat vendor on our behalf) collect the contents of the conversation, the identifiers you provide (name, email, phone), and the metadata of your visit (geolocation, IP, browsing history). Chat transcripts are stored for quality assurance and to follow up on questions you raised.
We use session replay tools that record (visually) how visitors interact with our sites — page navigation, clicks, scrolls, form interactions. We use this to find usability bugs and to improve the site. The replay tool masks sensitive fields (passwords, full payment card numbers, SSN inputs) automatically. By using the site you consent to this collection.
Your California privacy rights
If you are a California resident, the CCPA and CPRA give you the following rights:
- Right to know. Request the categories and specific pieces of personal information we have collected about you, the categories of sources, the business or commercial purposes for collecting it, and the categories of third parties we shared it with.
- Right to delete. Request that we delete the personal information we hold about you, subject to legal exceptions (for example, we must keep deal jackets for the retention period required by motor-vehicle dealer regulations).
- Right to correct. Request that we correct inaccurate personal information we hold.
- Right to opt out of sale or sharingfor cross-context behavioral advertising — see the “Your Privacy Choices” link in the footer.
- Right to limit use of sensitive personal information. Direct us to stop using your sensitive personal information for any purpose beyond what is strictly necessary to perform the service you asked for.
- Right to non-discrimination. We will not deny you service, charge you a different price, or provide a different level of quality for exercising any of these rights.
To exercise any of these rights, use the consumer request portal linked from the “Your Privacy Choices” link, or contact us at privacy@futurebayarea.comor by toll-free phone at (855) 880-4201. We will respond within the timeframes required by law (generally 45 days, extendable to 90 in complex cases).
California Shine the Light
California Civil Code §1798.83 (the “Shine the Light” law) allows California residents to request a list of the personal information we shared with third parties for those third parties’ direct marketing purposes during the prior calendar year. Send your request to privacy@futurebayarea.com with the subject line Shine the Light Request. We respond once per calendar year per person.
Verifying requests & authorized agents
To protect your information against unauthorized access or deletion, we verify the identity of anyone submitting a CCPA request. Verification typically combines SMS or email confirmation with one or more questions about your previous interactions with us. If we cannot verify you to a reasonable degree of certainty, we will deny the request and tell you why.
You may designate an authorized agent to submit a request on your behalf. The agent must provide either (a) a power of attorney signed by you under California Probate Code §§4300–4310, or (b) other signed permission from you plus our independent verification of your identity. We may deny requests from agents who do not provide proof of authority.
Data security
We use administrative, technical, and physical safeguards designed to protect personal information from unauthorized access, alteration, disclosure, and destruction. These include encryption in transit (TLS) and at rest for sensitive fields, role-based access controls, monitored data centers, employee background checks, written information security policies, vendor due-diligence under the FTC Safeguards Rule, and regular penetration testing.
No security program is perfect. If a breach of personal information occurs and the law requires us to notify you, we will do so by the means and within the timeframe the law requires. Information you transmit to us travels at your own risk.
Retention
We retain personal information for as long as we have a continuing business reason or legal obligation to do so. Specific retention rules include:
- Deal jackets and related financing records — for the period required by California Vehicle Code and federal Truth-in-Lending rules (currently no less than 7 years).
- SMS consent records — for the duration of the customer relationship plus 7 years, to satisfy potential CTIA / TCPA audit obligations.
- Opt-out records (SMS STOP replies, manual unsubscribes) — kept indefinitely so we don’t accidentally re-contact you.
- Service records — for the manufacturer warranty period plus an additional 5 years.
- Web server and security logs — typically 90 days, longer if needed for incident response.
- Marketing engagement data — until you opt out, or 3 years of inactivity, whichever is earlier.
Children under 13
Our sites and Services are not directed to children under the age of 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone we know to be under 13. If you believe we have collected information from a child under 13, contact us at privacy@futurebayarea.com and we will delete it.
Third-party links
Our sites link to third-party sites we do not control — manufacturer pages, finance company portals, consumer-review sites, social media. This Policy does not cover those sites. Review their privacy policies directly for how they handle your information.
Business transfers
If Future Automotive Group is involved in a merger, acquisition, divestiture, bankruptcy, asset sale, or similar corporate transaction, personal information may be one of the assets transferred or evaluated as part of the transaction. Your information will continue to be governed by a policy that protects it to at least the same degree as this Policy.
Changes to this policy
We may update this Policy from time to time. The “Effective” and “Last updated” dates at the top reflect the most recent change. Material changes will be highlighted in a banner at the top of the page for at least 30 days after they take effect. Continued use of the Services after the effective date constitutes acceptance of the updated Policy.
Dispute resolution & arbitration
Informal notice and 30-day cooling-off period
Before either of us starts litigation or arbitration over a dispute arising out of this Policy or your use of the Services, we both agree to first try to resolve it informally. The party raising the dispute will send a written notice describing it to the other party. We then have 30 calendar days to respond and to try in good faith to resolve the dispute. Notice to Future Automotive Group goes to: Attn: Legal, Future Automotive Group, 2285 Diamond Blvd., Concord, CA 94520, copy legal@futurebayarea.com. Notice to you goes to the email or mailing address we have on file.
Binding individual arbitration
If a dispute remains unresolved after that 30-day period, we both agree that it will be resolved by binding individual arbitration before a single neutral arbitrator under the Federal Arbitration Act, governed by the American Arbitration Association’s Consumer Arbitration Rules (or, where you are using the Services on behalf of a business, the Commercial Arbitration Rules). The current rules are at adr.org/rules. The arbitrator’s decision is final and binding on both of us.
Class-action waiver
We both agree that any dispute will be brought on an individual basis only. Neither of us may bring or join a class, collective, or representative action against the other. The arbitrator may not consolidate the claims of more than one person or preside over any form of class or representative proceeding. This class-action waiver is a fundamental part of the arbitration agreement.
Small claims
You or we may bring any qualifying dispute in small-claims court instead of arbitration. If the amount in controversy exceeds the small-claims court’s jurisdiction, this arbitration agreement applies.
Opting out of arbitration
You can opt out of this arbitration agreement by sending written notice to legal@futurebayarea.com within 30 days of first accepting it. The notice must include your full name, address, and a clear statement that you wish to opt out. Opting out has no effect on any other part of this Policy or our relationship.
Conflicts with other arbitration agreements
If you have a separate arbitration agreement with us in a retail installment sale contract, lease agreement, repair order, or similar document, that other arbitration agreement controls for disputes covered by it. This arbitration agreement covers only disputes arising out of this Policy or your use of the Services.
Venue and choice of law
This Policy is governed by the laws of the State of California, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. Any dispute not subject to arbitration may only be brought in the state or federal courts located in Contra Costa County, California, and you consent to the personal jurisdiction of those courts. If any part of this section is found to be unenforceable, the rest of it remains in effect.
Contact us
For questions about this Policy or your personal information:
- Privacy questions and CCPA requests: privacy@futurebayarea.com · toll-free (855) 880-4201
- Legal: legal@futurebayarea.com
- A2P / SMS compliance: compliance@futurebayarea.com
- Security / incident response: security@futurebayarea.com
- Mailing address: Future Automotive Group · 2285 Diamond Blvd. · Concord, CA 94520
This Policy was prepared in English. If we provide a translation, the English version controls in the event of any conflict.