Williams Companies
Energy
20
out of 100. Number 498 of 512, counting from the worst.
Where Williams Companies does well
- Arbitration 0 of 20. Nothing found.
- Renewals 0 of 20. Nothing found.
- Data sharing 4 of 20. Few problems found.
- NO forced arbitration or class-action waiver anywhere — williams.com has no consumer Terms of Use at all, and the privacy policy contains no dispute-resolution clauses (notable for SNEAKINDEX, where forced arbitration is the single most common abuse).
- Explicitly states 'We do not sell or share applicant personal information as sell or share are defined under California law' and says it does not do cross-context behavioral advertising or targeted advertising in the applicant context.
- Commits that hiring decisions are never made by automation alone: 'We do not make hiring decisions based solely on automated processing that produce legal or similarly significant effects without meaningful human involvement.'
- Recruiting texts are strictly opt-in: 'With a candidate's consent, Williams and its service providers may send text messages... consent is not a condition of applying or being considered for employment,' and opting out of texts does not affect your application.
- The policy is plainly organized with applicant-specific disclosures (CCPA notice at collection, GDPR bases) — more transparent than many peer B2B energy companies.
Williams says it does not sell your personal data, but it can still hand it to vendors (hosting, Workday, background checkers), hand it over to authorities, and pass it along if the company is bought or merged.
The fine print
6 clauses and findings from the draft archive, dated 1 October 2026. The plain English comes first; the small print is the company's own words. None of these has been checked yet.
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Williams says it does not sell your personal data, but it can still hand it to vendors (hosting, Workday, background checkers), hand it over to authorities, and pass it along if the company is bought or merged. De-identified copies can be shared freely.
"We do not disclose, sell, share, trade, or give away personal information except as described here or with consent. We share information with service providers that perform services on our behalf under written agreements, including hosting, applicant tracking (e.g., Workday), background screening, communications, scheduling, and security... We may disclose information when required by law, in connection with legal processes, to protect the rights and safety of Williams or others, or in the context of corporate transactions, and we may provide aggregated or de-identified information that does not identify individuals."
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If you apply for a job at Williams, they can keep your application, interview notes, and background check results for up to 5 years — even if you never got hired.
"In general, we may retain pre-employment and applicant records, including employment applications, resumes/CVs, transcripts, interview notes, assessment results, background check information, and related recruiting files for up to five (5) years, unless a longer period is required due to legal holds or regulatory obligations."
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Williams can change the privacy rules at any time. If you keep using their site after a change, that counts as you accepting the new rules — you do not get an opt-in click.
"We may update this Policy from time to time, and when we do we will post the updated version on the Sites and indicate the effective date, and material changes will be highlighted or otherwise communicated as appropriate. Continued use of the Sites or Services after an update constitutes acknowledgement of the revised Policy to the extent permitted by law."
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If you ask Williams for a copy of your data or ask them to delete it, they reserve the right to charge you a fee for handling the request.
"We will respond to any requests from you (or your authorized agent) to exercise your rights within the timeframes required by law. We may charge a fee to facilitate your request where permitted by law."
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Your personal data can be moved to countries with weaker privacy protections than where you live, with only generic contractual safeguards.
"Williams is headquartered in the United States and may transfer personal information to the U.S. and other countries where we and our service providers operate, which may have privacy laws that differ from those where an individual resides."
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Williams says outright it cannot guarantee the security of your personal data — a standard industry disclaimer, but worth knowing before uploading a resume.
"No system can be guaranteed to be completely secure, and we cannot warrant the absolute security of information transmitted to or stored by us or our service providers."
How these were found
Source document: Williams Companies, Inc. Privacy Policy read in full via browser_open at https://www.williams.com/privacy-policy/ on Oct 1, 2026 (sections 1-24 read directly). Search-index metadata reported the page was last updated ~336 days before the search (~Oct 30, 2025); no version/effective date is displayed on the page itself, so treat the version as 'current as read Oct 1, 2026'. williams.com publishes NO consumer-facing Terms of Use — the site is a B2B corporate/pipeline site with no accounts, no checkout, and no subscriptions, so the arbitration and auto-renew categories genuinely score zero. Excluded lookalike companies: wwwilliams.com (W.W. Williams Company, diesel service), williams-sonomainc.com, williamshandmade.com, williams-int.com, london-williams.com, williamsauction.com. FERC tariffs and purchase-order T&Cs on williams.com are B2B transport/vendor contracts (e.g., UEOM NGL propane/ethane tariffs), not consumer-facing terms, and were not scored.
These notes come from the original draft and are not independent verification.