Privacy Policy

Piedmont Office Realty Trust, Inc.
Privacy Policy
for www.piedmontreit.com Web site
August, 2007

At Piedmont Office Realty Trust, Inc. (“Piedmont”), we hold three cardinal principles in high regard:

  1. We value the privacy of your personal information and take steps to safeguard it.
  2. We do not sell your personal information to third parties.
  3. We share your personal information only under very limited circumstances described in greater detail in the document below.

Piedmont wants you to be fully informed and protected.  Please read this document carefully for a more detailed description of policies related to our handling of private information belonging to customers, financial professionals, and other users of our Web site.

This Privacy Policy should be read in conjunction with, and is incorporated by reference to, the Terms of Use Agreement for the Piedmont Web site, www.piedmontreit.com. Our objective in offering these sites is to provide better service to our customers and financial professionals, while respecting the privacy of their personal information.

How We Protect Your Privacy

At Piedmont, we understand that the security of information that personally identifies you is important.
As far as practicable, Piedmont takes steps to prevent unauthorized parties from accessing secure data through our Web site or servers. Our servers utilize encryption and authentication to protect your sensitive information. Our staff members also are trained to follow confidentiality policies designed to protect your personal privacy.

At Piedmont:

  1.  We promote information privacy principles and fair information practices.
  2. We do not gather highly sensitive information (such as race, sexual preferences, or religious beliefs) about any person.
  3. We do not disclose identifiers that any government agency has assigned to a person (such as a Tax File Number) for any purpose, other than in compliance with government law.  We do not collect, store, use, or disclose personal or domestic credit information about individuals, except in compliance with the credit reporting provisions of the Privacy Act or as otherwise provided by law.
  4. We do not sell or lease personal customer information to anyone, nor do we buy or rent personal information from third parties.
  5. We do not disclose personal information (such as name or postal address) to any third party not defined in this document unless we determine, in good faith, that the law requires it to collect or report debts, in consideration of our property or rights, or in compliance with other regulatory responses.  In such cases where disclosure is necessary to cooperate with regulatory or law enforcement authorities, we have permission from our investors through their investment agreements to report personal information.
  6. We use personal customer information in ways that are consistent with the purposes for which it was originally requested.
  7. We limit the collection and use of your personal information to what is necessary to administer our business and to deliver superior service to you.
  8. We may disclose your personal information – on a confidential basis – to external service providers for the purposes of our business operations. Under certain circumstances, we share information with outside vendors who provide services to us such as the mailing of statements and proxy solicitation. In those cases, the firms with which we do business enter into confidentiality agreements with us, and the information we provide to them is limited only to that which is necessary to process transactions and perform other services related to your account. (If you are a financial advisor or broker/dealer with a Piedmont selling agreement, this also applies to your clients’ account information.)  We may also share information with affiliated companies that service your account or provide you with information about other Piedmont products or services. It is also our policy to share account information with your financial advisor and his or her authorized agents, acting at your request or on your behalf, in an effort to provide service to you or your account(s).

Use of Cookies

Our server utilizes “cookies” stored on your computer to handle member logins and to permit authorized users to access several Web servers without re-authenticating. Our servers may also use “cookies” to maintain user preferences and to help protect the security of confidential data.  Cookies are small text files that your browser stores on your hard drive to facilitate use of a web site.  Cookies are used by most major commercial web sites and do not damage your computer, computer files or programs. Unique information is stored to verify the user’s identity for future access to particular features or functionality of the site. For some of these features, we will also retain data that you enter, so that you do not need to re-key the information when you return to the site and attempt to re-use that feature.   If you do not want information collected through the use of cookies, you can set your Internet browser to block cookies.  If you opt to restrict the placement of cookies through your browser or any other means, you will still have access to the functionality of this Web site.

Site Monitoring

In an ongoing effort to monitor usage trends and improve our Web site, we may opt to collect data such as IP address, domain name, access times, and other technical data.  Computer IP addresses are generally linked to your Internet Service Provider (ISP) and may be shared with other unique identifiers of the user; this generally available information could be construed as a type of personal information.  This information will be used primarily as a research tool to improve the site’s functionality and usefulness.  However, at our sole discretion, we reserve the right to utilize this information to investigate users whom we suspect to be acting in violation of this Agreement and/or the Terms and Conditions of our sites.  This information is intended for internal use only. The release of such data will occur only when authorized by the user or to the extent required by legal process, law, or regulation.

E-mail Queries

E-mail query forms on our Web site require you to supply your e-mail address. We use this information to provide you with an accurate and prompt response. We strongly recommend avoiding the placement of your private information or anyone else’s private information within the contents of the e-mail.

Piedmont will use your e-mail address — and the contents of any e-mail messages you originate — for correspondence purposes only.  Our only intent is to provide you with outstanding customer care and to meet our legal requirements concerning customer communications.

Advertisements and Third Party Sites

Our Web site may contain links to sites and resources that are maintained by third parties. If you choose to visit these, please note that Piedmont is not responsible for the privacy practices, content, or availability of such sites or resources, and does not endorse and is not liable for any content, advertising, products, or other documentation available from these third-party sites or resources. Piedmont is not responsible, either directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused, or alleged to be caused by, or in connection with, the use of, or reliance upon, any content or services available on third party sites.

Security

To protect against the loss, misuse or alteration of information under our control, we have put in place physical, electronic, and managerial procedures to protect the information we collect online.  We cannot guarantee the security, accuracy or completeness of any such procedures.  Although we take measures to safeguard against unauthorized disclosures of information, we cannot assure you that personally identifiable information that we collect will never be disclosed in a manner that is inconsistent with this Privacy Policy.

Updates

Modifications to this Privacy Policy may be made from time to time.   When updates are made, notation will be prominently made on our Web site so that you will be aware of the changes.  This notation will specify ‘updated as of (date).’ We encourage you to periodically review this policy so that you will know what information we collect, how we use it and to whom we disclose it.  If circumstances arise that relate to disclosure of information about users that is not within the scope of this Privacy Policy, Piedmont will use its judgment in deciding how to proceed.

What To Do If You Have Concerns

If you have questions regarding this Privacy Policy, the Terms of Use Agreement, or anything relating to our Web site, please contact our friendly Investor Services team at investor.services@piedmontreit.com or 866-354-3485.