Privacy policy

DAPE Solutions Incorporated is a New Jersey corporation and a licensed United States customs broker, operating from Linden, New Jersey. To file an entry for you we have to hold information that most businesses never ask for: a taxpayer identification number, proof of who signed the power of attorney, and the commercial terms of your purchase. This page says plainly what that is, why it is needed, and where it goes.

01 · What this covers

This policy applies to dapecustoms.com, the power of attorney portal, the duty estimator, and to the information we handle when we act as your broker. If you have signed a separate service agreement or a confidentiality agreement with us, that document controls for the subject it addresses, and this policy fills the gaps.

02 · The POA portal

This is the part worth reading. The power of attorney form collects the most sensitive material we hold, and it collects it because CBP will not accept a filing without it.

• Entity identity. Legal name, any trade names, entity type, state of formation, and the principal business address.
• Employer identification number. The EIN is what CBP uses to identify the importer of record on every entry we transmit for you. Without it there is no importer number, and without an importer number there is no entry.
• Social Security number, sole proprietors only. An individual importing in their own name with no EIN has no other identifier in the CBP record. We ask for an SSN in that situation and in no other. We do not ask corporations, LLCs or partnerships for the personal numbers of their officers, and the SSN is used for one purpose: establishing the importer number your entries are filed under.
• Signer identity and authority.The name, title and signature of the person granting the power of attorney, government-issued photo identification for that person, and where the grantor is an entity, evidence that the signer can bind it. CBP requires brokers to establish who their client actually is before transacting customs business on that client’s behalf, and to keep the evidence. It is the requirement that stops a broker’s filing credentials from being used by a shell importer.
• Bond information. Existing continuous bond details, or the financial information a surety needs if we are placing one for you.
• Operational contacts. Names and email addresses of the people who should receive entry, exam and hold notices.

If you would rather not type an SSN or upload an identity document into a web form, tell us and we will arrange another way to get it to us. What we cannot do is file for an importer whose identity has not been established.

03 · Shipment documents

Once we are filing, a second stream of information arrives with each shipment: commercial invoices, packing lists, bills of lading and air waybills, arrival notices, certificates of origin, mill certificates and melt-and-pour statements for metal articles, manufacturer and grower identifiers, FDA registration and prior notice data, other partner agency data sets, and the valuation detail behind the declared price, including assists, royalties and any relationship between you and the seller.

Much of this is commercially sensitive: it shows what you pay, who makes your goods, and how much you buy. It is treated as confidential, and under 19 CFR 111.24 a broker’s records relating to a client are confidential as a matter of regulation, not just courtesy.

04 · The website itself

Visiting the site generates ordinary server log data: IP address, browser and operating system, the page requested, the referring page, and a timestamp. Contact and quote forms collect whatever you type into them. The duty estimator collects the product description, value and country you enter, and we may keep those inputs in aggregate to see which commodities importers are asking about.

We do not run advertising trackers, we do not embed third-party ad pixels, and we do not sell audience data. There is no behavioural profile of you being assembled here.

05 · Why we ask for it

Almost everything above is collected because a filing fails without it, not because a richer customer record is useful to us. An entry summary with no valid importer number is rejected. An ISF missing the manufacturer or the consolidator draws a liquidated damages claim. Prior notice without an FDA registration number is refused at the port. Section 232 duties on derivative articles turn on the melt-and-pour origin of the metal, which only your supplier can state.

Where a law requires us to name a legal basis for processing, ours are: performing the engagement you asked us to perform, complying with our own legal obligations as a licensed broker and as a recordkeeper, and our legitimate interest in operating, billing for and securing the business. Marketing email is sent only where you have agreed to receive it, and stops the moment you say so.

06 · Who receives it

• CBP. Entry, entry summary, ISF, in-bond and post-summary filings all transmit into ACE under our filer credentials. This is the service. It is not something an importer can opt out of and still import.
• Partner government agencies. Depending on the commodity, message sets go to FDA, USDA APHIS, FSIS, EPA, DOT/NHTSA, TTB, CPSC and Fish and Wildlife, among others, through the same ACE interface.
• Sureties. When a bond is being placed, increased or claimed against.
• Your own service providers. Carriers, forwarders, terminals and truckers, limited to what they need to move or release the freight.
• Counsel. Only when you ask us to bring a lawyer in, or when we are required to respond to legal process.

We do not sell personal information. We do not share it for cross-context behavioural advertising. We do not hand your invoice values to anyone outside that list. If we receive a subpoena, court order or government demand for your records, we will comply where we must and tell you that we did, unless we are legally barred from telling you.

07 · Vendors

A short list, and we will confirm the current one if you ask. The website is hosted on Vercel. The power of attorney portal is served by a backend application hosted on Railway. Transactional email is delivered through Resend. Company email and document storage run on Microsoft 365. Each of these providers is bound to use the data only to deliver its service to us, and none of them is given data for its own purposes.

08 · Transmission and storage

Everything you send through this site travels over TLS. POA submissions are stored by providers that encrypt data at rest. Access to a submitted POA package is limited to the people who need it to open the account and file the entries, and staff accounts require multi-factor authentication. Filings reach CBP through the customs software interface into ACE, not by email. Where a sensitive document has to move by email, we would rather send a link than an attachment.

No system is perfectly secure and we will not claim otherwise. If a breach affects your information, we will notify you and the relevant authorities within the time the law allows.

09 · How long we keep it

Customs records are kept for five years from the date of entry. That is not our policy, it is 19 U.S.C. 1508 and 19 CFR Part 163, and a broker who destroys those records early is exposed to penalties. It has a consequence worth stating clearly: if you ask us to delete everything, we will delete what we can and keep what the recordkeeping rules require, including entry packages, invoices, the power of attorney and the identity evidence supporting it.

Accounting and invoicing records are retained for seven years for tax purposes. Web server logs and estimator inputs are retained for a much shorter period and then discarded or aggregated. Marketing contact details are held until you unsubscribe.

10 · Your choices

You can ask us for a copy of what we hold about you, ask us to correct it, ask us to delete it subject to the retention rules above, and opt out of any marketing email at any time. California residents have the specific rights the CCPA and CPRA give them, including the right to know what has been collected, the right to delete, the right to correct, and the right not to be treated worse for asking. We neither sell nor share personal information as those statutes define those terms. Residents of other states with consumer privacy statutes have comparable rights.

One honest caveat: most of what we hold is business information about a company, which many of these statutes do not reach. Ask anyway, and we will answer either way. Write to info@dapecustoms.comwith “Privacy” in the subject line. We reply within thirty days, and we may have to verify who you are before we hand over a file.

11 · Cookies

The site sets cookies that are necessary for it to work, including session and security cookies, and cookies that remember what you typed into the estimator so a refresh does not wipe it. There are no advertising cookies and no cross-site profiling. Your browser can block cookies; if you block all of them, the POA portal will not function. We do not currently act on Do Not Track headers, because there is still no agreed standard for what acting on one would mean.

12 · Other points

Age. This is a business service. It is not directed at anyone under 18 and we do not knowingly collect information from children.

Location of processing. We are a United States broker and our systems are in the United States. If you send us information from outside the country, including as a foreign supplier or a non-resident importer, it will be processed here under United States law.

Links out. We link to CBP, the Federal Register, the US International Trade Commission and other agency sites because that is where the primary sources live. Their privacy practices are theirs, not ours.

13 · Changes and contact

When this policy changes we will post the new version here and change the date at the top. If a change materially affects how we handle your information, we will say so directly rather than relying on you to notice a date.

DAPE Solutions Incorporated
Attn: Privacy
1600 Lower Road, Unit 6, Linden, NJ 07036
info@dapecustoms.com

Our terms of service cover the engagement itself: the power of attorney, responsibility for information, fees and liability.