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PRIVACY POLICY
American Debt Foundation,
together with its related and affiliated entities, (collectively “ADF”,
“we”, “our” or “us”) is committed to protecting the privacy of our
online visitors. In compliance with Federal and State Law, industry
standards and administrative regulations, this privacy policy
discloses the privacy practices governing our collection and use of
information submitted by you (“you”, “your” or the “user”) to ADF
through this web site. We want you to know that we take our legal
and ethical responsibilities regarding your privacy seriously.
Therefore, we abide the following privacy policy.
Information Collection & Use
Registration
We restrict access to
nonpublic personal information about you to those employees and
other parties who must use that information to provide products and
services to you. Their right to further disclose and use the
information is limited by our company policies, applicable law, and
nondisclosure agreement agreements where applicable. We also
maintain physical, electronic, and procedural safeguards in
compliance with applicable laws and regulations to guard your
nonpublic personal information. In the event that we are compelled
to involuntarily disclose any of your information, we will act on
the advice of counsel should our records be subpoenaed or otherwise
sought through legal means.
When using this
Web site, you may opt to complete our registration form and you may
create a user name and password. This involves your disclosure of
contact information (such as name and email address). We use this
information to contact you about the services on our site in which
you have expressed interest.
If you do not want
your nonpublic personal information disclosed to nonaffiliated third
parties, you may “opt out” of those disclosures, meaning that you
may tell us not to make those disclosures (other than those
disclosures permitted by law even if you do opt out). If you opt
out, we will not disclose this information to nonaffiliated third
parties to independently market products or services to you, but we
may include their offers in billing statements and other routine
communications that we send you in connection with servicing your
business relationship with us. To opt out, simply reply by
electronic mail to
jloor@americandebtfoundation.com by
placing “opt out” in the subject line of the email. Once you opt
out, there is no need to do so again for the same business
relationship. You may also telephone us at 888.411.3328 to opt out.
You also have the option to provide
demographic information (such as income level and gender) to us; we
encourage you to submit this information so we can provide you a
more personalized experience on our site. For example, by using
this information we can provide you with newsletters, updates, and
e-mails regarding matters which are relevant and useful to you.
We are the sole owner of the information
collected on our site. We collect personally identifiable
information from our users at several different points on our Web
site.
Orders
If you purchase
a product or service from us, we request certain personally
identifiable information from you on our order form. You must
provide contact information (such as name, email, and shipping
address) and financial information (such as credit card number,
expiration date).
We use this
information for billing purposes and to fill your orders. If we
have trouble processing an order, we will use this information to
contact you. Additionally, if you so choose, you may receive updates
from our site.
Application
Forms
If you apply
for any of our products or those of our affiliates or simply request
information regarding products promoted on our site, we require that
you provide certain personally identifiable information, including
your name, address, phone number, credit card number and sometimes
your Social Security number. This information is necessary to
process your application and to contact you.
Social
Security Numbers
Although we attempt to do
so on a strictly necessary basis, we do, at times, require your
social security number in furtherance of providing services. When
you enter your social security number on our registration order
form, application form, we encrypt it using secure socket layer
technology (SSL).
Surveys or
Contests
We may provide you the
opportunity to participate in contests or surveys on our site. If
you participate, we will request certain personally identifiable
information from you. Participation in these surveys or contests is
completely voluntary and you therefore have a choice whether or not
to disclose this information. The requested information typically
includes contact information (such as name and shipping address),
and demographic information (such as zip code).
This information is used
to notify contest winners, track traffic, personalize user
experience and to keep our customers up to date regarding company
and industry news.
We sometimes use third
party service providers to conduct these surveys or contests. They
are prohibited from using our users’ personally identifiable
information for any other purpose. We will not share the personally
identifiable information you provide through a contest or survey
with other third parties unless we give you prior notice and choice
to refuse.
Tell-A-Friend
If you choose
to use our referral service to tell a friend about our site, we will
ask you for your friend’s name and email address. We will
automatically send your friend a one-time email inviting him or her
to visit the site. We store this information for the sole purpose
of sending this one-time email and tracking the success of our
referral program. Our e-mail will contain an easy opportunity for
your friend to contact us to request that we remove this information
from our database.
How
Collected Information is Used
Aside from the ways mentioned above, we
sometimes use your personally identifiable information in many ways,
including sending you promotional materials, and sharing your
information with third parties so that these third parties can send
you promotional materials. (By "promotional materials," we mean
communications that directly promote the use of Web sites, or the
purchase of products or services.). However, you may "opt-out" of
certain uses of your personal information by simply contacting us as
indicated below.
Communications from the Site
Special Offers
and Updates
We will occasionally send
you information on products, services, special deals, promotions.
You can sign up for these types of emails from us on our
registration page.
Out of respect for your
privacy, we present the option not to receive these types of
communications. Please see the “Choice and Opt-out” section for
further details.
Newsletters/Promotional Updates
If you wish to subscribe
to our newsletter(s) and promotional updates, we will use your name
and email address to send the newsletter to you. Out of respect for
your privacy, we provide you a way to unsubscribe. Please see the
“Choice and Opt-out” section.
Service-related
Announcements
We will send you strictly
service-related announcements on rare occasions when it is necessary
to do so. For instance, if our service is temporarily suspended for
maintenance, we might send you an email.
Generally, you may not
opt-out of these communications, which are not promotional in
nature. If you do not wish to receive them, you have the option to
deactivate your account. You may opt-out of these communications.
Please see “Choice and Opt-out.”
Customer
Service
Based upon the personally
identifiable information you provide us, we will send you a
welcoming email to verify your username and password. We will also
communicate with you in response to your inquiries, to provide the
services you request, and to manage your account. We will
communicate with you by email or telephone, in accordance with your
wishes.
Profile
We store information that we
collect through cookies, log files, clear gifs, and/or third party
sources to create a “profile” of your preferences. We tie your
personally identifiable information, and your purchasing history, to
information in the profile, in order to provide tailored promotions
and marketing offers and to improve the content of the site for
you.
We sometimes share your profile
with other third parties who, according to your history with us, may
provide useful opportunities to you.
Supplementation of Information
In order to provide certain
services to you, we may on occasion supplement the personal
information you submitted to us with information from third party
sources.
Enhancement of
Profile Information
We purchase marketing data from
third parties and add it to our existing user database, to better
target our advertising and to provide pertinent offers in which we
think you would be interested. To enrich our Profiles of individual
customers, we tie this information to the personally identifiable
information they have provided to us.
Information Sharing
and Disclosure
Aggregate
Information (non-personally identifiable)
We share aggregated
demographic information about our user base with our partners and
advertisers. This information does not identify individual users.
We do not link aggregate user data with personally identifiable
information.
Personally
identifiable information:
Although we do share demographic information
for the purposes of assisting you meet your needs and interests, we
do not share Personally Identifiable Information with Third Parties.
We provide opt out opportunities with regard to all information
sharing practices.
Agents
We may contract with an
outside shipping company to promulgate correspondence and packages,
as well as a credit card processing company to bill you for goods
and services. These companies do not retain, share, store or use
personally identifiable information for any other purposes.
Service Providers
We use other third
parties to provide certain clerical and information processing and
shipping services on our site. When you sign up for our services,
we will share only as much information as is necessary for the
provision of those services.
These third parties are
prohibited from using your personally identifiable information for
any other purpose.
Legal
Disclaimer
We reserve the right to disclose
your personally identifiable information as required by law and when
we believe that disclosure is necessary to protect our rights and/or
to comply with a judicial proceeding, court order, or legal process
served on our Web site
Choice/Opt-out
We provide you the
opportunity to ‘opt-out’ of having your personally identifiable
information used for certain purposes, when we ask for this
information. For example, if you purchase a product/service but do
not wish to receive any additional marketing material from us, you
can indicate your preference on our order form.
If you no longer wish to
receive our newsletter and promotional communications, you may
opt-out of receiving them by following the instructions included in
each newsletter or communication or by emailing or calling us per
the information contained on our contact page.
You will be notified when
your personal information is collected by any third party that is
not our agent/service provider, so you can make an informed choice
as to whether or not to share your information with that party.
Opting Out
If you do not want
your nonpublic personal information disclosed to nonaffiliated third
parties, you may “opt out” of those disclosures, meaning that you
may tell us not to make those disclosures (other than those
disclosures permitted by law even if you do opt out). If you opt
out, we will not disclose this information to nonaffiliated third
parties to independently market products or services to you, but we
may include their offers in billing statements and other routine
communications that we send you in connection with servicing your
business relationship with us. To opt out, simply reply by
electronic mail to
jloor@americandebtfoundation.com by
placing “opt out” in the subject line of the email. Once you opt
out, there is no need to do so again for the same business
relationship. You may also telephone us at 888.411.3328 to opt out.
Log
Files
As is true of
most Web sites, we gather certain information automatically and
store it in log files. This information includes internet protocol
(IP) addresses, browser type, internet service provider (ISP),
referring/exit pages, operating system, date/time stamp, and
clickstream data.
We use this
information, which does not identify individual users, to analyze
trends, to administer the site, to track users’ movements around the
site and to gather demographic information about our user base as a
whole.
We do not link
this automatically-collected data to personally identifiable
information.
Cookies
A cookie is a small text
file that is stored on a user’s computer for record-keeping
purposes. We use cookies on this site. We do not link the
information we store in cookies to any personally identifiable
information you submit while on our site.
We use session ID
cookies. We use session cookies to make it easier for you to
navigate our site. A session ID cookie expires when you close you
browser.
We can at your option set
a persistent cookie to store your passwords, so you don’t have to
enter it more than once. Persistent cookies also enable us to track
and target the interests of our users to enhance the experience on
our site.
If you reject cookies,
you may still use our site, but your ability to use some areas of
our site, such as contests or surveys, will be limited.
Some of our business
partners (e.g., advertisers) use cookies on our site. We have no
access to or control over these cookies.
This privacy statement
covers the use of our cookies only and does not cover the use of
cookies by any advertisers.
Clear Gifs
(Web Beacons/Web Bugs)
We employ a software technology called clear
gifs (a.k.a. Web Beacons/Web Bugs), that help us better manage
content on our site by informing us what content is effective.
Clear gifs are tiny graphics with a unique identifier, similar in
function to cookies, and are used to track the online movements of
Web users. In contrast to cookies, which are stored on a user’s
computer hard drive, clear gifs are embedded invisibly on Web pages
and are about the size of the period at the end of this sentence. We
do not tie the information gathered by clear gifs to our customers’
personally identifiable information.
We use clear gifs in our HTML-based emails to
let us know which emails have been opened by recipients. This
allows us to gauge the effectiveness of certain communications and
the effectiveness of our marketing campaigns. If you would like to
opt-out of these emails, please see “Choice and Opt-out.”
Third
Party Advertisers
The ads appearing on this Web site are
delivered to users by our advertising partner. We share Web site
usage information about users with a reputable third party for the
purpose of targeting our Internet banner advertisements on this
site. The information collected and shared through this technology
is not personally identifiable.
Links
to Other Sites
This Web site contains
links to other sites that are not owned or controlled by us. Please
be aware that we are not responsible for the privacy practices of
such other sites.
We encourage you to be
aware when you leave our site and to read the privacy statements of
each and every Web site that collects personally identifiable
information.
This privacy statement
applies only to information collected by this Web site.
Co-branded sites
We may, in certain
circumstances co-brand with “partners and affiliates”. These
business to business relationships are helpful to us and to you as
they afford all concerned with greater product and service
opportunities. We always provide opt-out opportunities regarding the
sharing of your information with such partners and affiliates.
Please note the sites linked to our site are governed by their own
privacy policies which may or may not reach the standards set by our
company.
Bulletin Boards/Chat
Rooms
If you use a bulletin
board or chat room on this site, you should be aware that any
personally identifiable information you submit there can be read,
collected, or used by other users of these forums, and could be used
to send you unsolicited messages. We are not responsible for the
personally identifiable information you choose to submit in these
forums. We hereby reserve the right to terminate services of those
who use these services in a manner inconsistent with the policies
articulated herein as well as those articulated in our terms of use
page.
Access to
Personally Identifiable Information
If your personally
identifiable information changes, or if you no longer desire our
service, you may correct, update, delete or deactivate same by
making the change on our member information page or by emailing our
Customer Support by contacting us by telephone or postal mail at the
contact information listed below.
Security
The security of your personal
information is important to us. When you enter sensitive
information (such as credit card number and/or social security
number) on our registration or order forms, we encrypt that
information using secure socket layer technology (SSL).
We follow generally accepted
industry standards to protect the personal information submitted to
us, both during transmission and once we receive it. No method of
transmission over the Internet, or method of electronic storage, is
100% secure, however. Therefore, while we strive to use
commercially acceptable means to protect your personal information,
we cannot guarantee its absolute security.
If you have any questions about
security on our Web site, please feel free to e-mail us.
Business Transitions
In the event we
go through a business transition, such as a merger, acquisition by
another company, or sale of all or a portion of its assets, your
personally identifiable information will likely be among the assets
transferred. You will be notified via e-mail and/or a prominent
notice on our Web site for 30 days of any such change in ownership
or control of your personal information.
Changes in
this Privacy Statement
We will not
jeopardize your privacy. However, if we decide to change our privacy
policy, we will post those changes to this privacy statement, the
homepage, and other places we deem appropriate so that you are aware
of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what
circumstances, if any, we disclose it.
We reserve the
right to modify this privacy statement at any time, so please review
it frequently. If we make material changes to this policy, we will
notify you here, by email, or by means of a notice on our home page.
Contact Us
If you have any
questions or suggestions regarding our privacy policy, please
contact us at: to
customerservice@americandebtfoundation.com or by
telephone: 866.411.3328.
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