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| TRUSTe Privacy Statement Introduction Protecting personal information is a core TRUSTe value. This privacy statement describes how TRUSTe collects and uses the personal information you provide on our Web sites: www.truste.org and www.truste.com. It also describes the choices available to you regarding TRUSTe’s use of your personal information and the steps you can take to access this information and to request that we correct or delete it. TRUSTe abides by the safe harbor framework as set forth by the U.S. Department of Commerce regarding the collection, use, and retention of data from the European Union. If you have questions about this privacy statement, please send them to us by email to privacyquestions@truste.org or write to us at the following address: 685 Market Street, Suite 270
If you have technical difficulty using either of our Web sites, please contact our Webmaster at trustewebmaster@truste.org. To return to the TRUSTe home page, click here. For Consumers: Watchdog Complaints We encourage you to use TRUSTe’s Watchdog Dispute Resolution process to report and resolve privacy complaints you may have concerning TRUSTe Sealholders or to report misuse of TRUSTe trademarks. If you choose to file a Watchdog complaint about a TRUSTe Sealholder, we require that you provide your name, email address, city, state, country, postal code, name of the Web site, URL, and a description of the privacy issue you are reporting. Any additional personal information you provide on the Watchdog Complaint Form is optional; we will use the information you provide to investigate your complaint and to send you a Watchdog Customer Satisfaction Survey once your complaint is resolved. We encourage you to complete the survey; whether you do so or not is entirely up to you. We will not share your name or email address with the TRUSTe Sealholder that is the subject of your privacy complaint, or anyone else outside TRUSTe, unless you give us explicit permission to do so. Please be aware, however, that if you do not permit us to share your name and email address, our ability to successfully resolve your complaint may be limited. If you are a resident of a European Union Member State, and your Watchdog complaint concerns the offline information practices of a TRUSTe EU Safe Harbor Program Sealholder, you have two other options for filing your complaint: you may fax your complaint to us at (415) 520-3420, or mail it to TRUSTe Watchdog Program, 685 Market Street Suite 270, San Francisco, CA 94105. We will use the personal information you provide in the manner described above for all Watchdog Complaints. We post information about Watchdog Complaints on our “For Consumers” page on a monthly basis, but only in aggregated form (i.e., without identifying individual complainants). Consumer Opinion Surveys We occasionally conduct online consumer surveys to learn about your views on important privacy issues. We do not collect personally identifying information in these surveys. We use the survey data to improve our programs and services, and may publicize the results as a public service. Learn More about our Web site information practices in the “For all Visitors” section of this privacy statement. For Businesses: Sign-Up for TRUSTe Programs and Services If you apply to become a TRUSTe Web Seal Program Sealholder through our online Certification Center, we will use the personally identifying information you provide there (e.g., your name, address, email address and company information) to follow up with you about your application and to assist you in the certification process. If you use our “Invite Participants” function to provide us the name and email address of a colleague who will assist you in completing your application, we will use that information only for the purpose of sending your colleague a user name and password to access your application. If your company is certified as a TRUSTe Web Seal Program Sealholder, we will use the information in your application to provide you ongoing TRUSTe support and to communicate regularly with you. From time to time we will also offer you the opportunity to receive information about privacy-related products or services offered by our third-party partners. We will not share your personally identifying information with these third parties, other than service providers, unless we have your explicit permission to do so. We will use information submitted through our online Certification Center to analyze the characteristics of our Sealholders, in order to improve our services to them. We will occasionally provide aggregated statistics about our Sealholders in reports made available to them, to third parties, or to the general public. These reports will not identify individual TRUSTe Sealholders. If you wish to sign up for TRUSTe programs other than the Web Seal Program, or to simply obtain information about TRUSTe programs and services, click on our “How to Sign Up” page and then on “Learn More”. We will collect your name, email address, phone number, and additional company information. We use this information to contact you about your request, to assist you in the application process or to follow up with you about the programs and services in which you have expressed an interest. We will not share the information you provide with third parties, other than service providers, without your explicit permission. You can ask us to delete the information you provided on our “Learn More” page by emailing us at escargot@truste.org. If you use the form we provide to “Generate an Invoice” to mail to TRUSTe with your application materials, we will use the personal information you provide to process your application. The Invoice is a printable form for your convenience. We also store the information you provide in the Invoice on our servers for accounting purposes. Learn More about our Web Site information practices in the “For all Visitors” section of this privacy statement. TRUSTe Sealholders If you are currently a member of a TRUSTe program, you can begin the process of renewing your TRUSTe seal by clicking on our “How to Renew” page. If you provide information on our “Learn More” page, for example, because you are requesting information about additional TRUSTe programs, we will use the contact information you provide there to respond to your request. We will not share this information with third parties, other than service providers, without your explicit permission. If you are currently receiving the TRUSTe Policy Flash, but no longer wish to receive it, follow the unsubscribe link at the bottom of the Policy Flash email, or go to our “Unsubscribe” page. Occasionally we conduct customer satisfaction surveys so that our Sealholders can provide feedback on their experience in the TRUSTe certification process and their participation in our programs. Contact information requested in these surveys is optional. We use the survey responses to improve our programs and services to Sealholders. We also occasionally share this survey data with third parties, but only in aggregate form, i.e., without disclosing personal information or identifying individual Sealholders. TRUSTe Newsletter If you sign up for the TRUSTe Newsletter on our home page, we will collect your email address to fulfill your request. We will not share your email address with third parties other than a service provider that mails the TRUSTe Newsletter for us.
TRUSTe Press Room If you sign up for TRUSTe Press Releases on our “Press Room”, we will collect your email address to fulfill your request. We will not share your email address with third parties other than a service provider that mails the TRUSTe Press Releases for us.
If you wish to change your email address for purposes of receiving the TRUSTe Newsletter or Press Releases, you may unsubscribe and then re-subscribe with a new email address. Contact Us If you submit personal information, such as your email address, to us by following the “Contact Us” link located throughout our Sites, we will use that information to respond to your question or request for information. We will not share your information with third parties without your explicit permission. You can also contact us by email at privacyquestions@truste.org or by writing us at the following address: 685 Market Street, Suite 270
Cookies A “cookie” is a small text file that a Web site can place on your computer's hard drive in order, for example, to collect information about your activities on the site or to make it easier to use certain site functions. The cookie transmits this information back to the Web site's computer. Many users do not know that "cookies" are being placed on their computers when they visit Web sites. If you want to know when this happens, or prevent it from happening, you can set your browser to warn you when a Web site attempts to place a "cookie" on your computer. We use cookies on our Web sites in the following ways: When you complete a Watchdog Consumer Satisfaction Survey or respond to other surveys that TRUSTe posts from time to time, we use a cookie to make it easier for you to use the survey form, and to ensure that we do not receive duplicate survey responses from any one respondent. When you apply for certification as a TRUSTe Web Seal Program Sealholder in our Certification Center, we use a cookie to enable you to navigate easily through the application process. We also use cookies to analyze how visitors, in the aggregate, use our Sites, in order to make our Sites as useful as possible for them. We do not use cookies to collect or store personally identifiable information. Information automatically collected by our Sites Our servers automatically collect certain non-personally identifying information, such as your computer’s IP address, the type of browser in use, and pages viewed, when you visit our Sites. We use this information to understand how visitors navigate through our Sites, to enhance your experience while using our Sites, and to make the materials we post as valuable to visitors as possible. We do not link this information to personally identifiable information. Personal Information Sharing We will share your personal information with third parties in the ways that are described above in this privacy statement. We will also share your personal information if we are required to do so by law, or if we believe that doing so is necessary in order to conform to the law, cooperate with law enforcement agencies, comply with legal process served on TRUSTe, or otherwise protect TRUSTe’s legal rights. From time to time we employ service providers to perform various functions involving personal information on our behalf. These service providers are prohibited from using this personal information for any other purpose. Access to your Personal Information TRUSTe will provide you reasonable access to your personally identifiable information, at no cost to you, within 30 days of your access request. If we cannot provide access within the 30-day period, we will tell you when we will provide access. In the unlikely event that we cannot provide you access to this information, we will explain why we cannot do so. To request access to your personally identifying information, contact us by email at privacyquestions@truste.org or by writing us at the following address: 685 Market Street, Suite 270
Security Providing security for the personal information you submit via our Site is a top priority for TRUSTe. We use Secure Socket Layer (SSL) encryption for information you may provide on our Watchdog Complaint Form or in our Certification Center. Please be aware, however, that no transmission of information via the Internet can be entirely secure. You should, therefore, always use caution when submitting personal information online. We take commercially reasonable steps to provide security for your information once we receive it. Links to Other Web Sites Our Sites include links to other Web sites whose privacy practices may differ from those of TRUSTe. If you submit personal information to any of those sites, your information is subject to their privacy statements. TRUSTe’s privacy statement does not apply to information you may submit to those sites. We encourage you to carefully read the privacy statement of any Web site you visit. Changes in this Privacy Statement If we change this privacy statement in ways that affect the personally identifying information we have collected through our Sites, we will post those changes in this space and advise you of choices you may have as a result of those changes. We will also post a notice on our home page that this privacy statement has changed. Privacy Statement Compliance If you feel that TRUSTe has not complied with this privacy statement, please use the Watchdog Complaint Form to submit your concerns to us. |
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