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Consumers Union Privacy Policy
Consumers Union does not sell or rent any information provided
by you via this web site with any unaffiliated third party. Our affiliates are the Consumers Union Foundation and the Consumers Union Action Fund. No such information
is shared with any unaffiliated third party except in limited circumstances
to provide products and service to you or in response to
a request from law enforcement (see
here for more details).
INFORMATION WE COLLECT AND HOW WE COLLECT IT
Much of the information on our site can be accessed without
our collecting any personally identifiable information from
you. You can surf ConsumerUnion.org and related advocacy
sites and view much of our content anonymously. For instance,
you can access information on policy issues affecting consumers
without giving out any personally identifiable information.
The information we gather on our site falls into two categories:
(1) personal information you supply when you "take
action" on a policy issue or register to receive email
updates, etc., and (2) tracking information collected as
you navigate through our site.
Personally identifiable information
To use certain features on our site, we ask you to subscribe
or register. When you do this, we will collect personally
identifiable information about you such as your name, mailing
address, e-mail address, and telephone number. In addition,
we may ask you for the same type of information when you
transmit letters to decision-makers or corporations on a
policy issue, or complete a survey. We use this information
to complete the transaction you requested, to provide you
information relevant to your interests or to help improve
our site.
Aggregate information
When you use our site, we may collect tracking information
such as your browser type, the type of operating system
you use, the domain name of your Internet service provider,
and pages visited on the site. None of this information
identifies you personally; we collect it for aggregate reporting
on site activity. For example, we may want to know how long
the average user spends on our site, or which pages or features
get the most attention. We use this information to make
the site more useful to you.
We use "cookies" to store and sometimes to track
user information. Cookies, by themselves, do not tell us
e-mail address or other personally identifiable information
unless you choose to provide this information to us by,
for example, taking action on one of our advocacy campaigns
and agreeing to be part of our advocacy network or subscribing
to our site. A cookie is a small amount of data that is
sent to your browser from a web server and stored on your
computer's hard drive. A cookie contains a unique number
that allows our site to recognize your computer. For example,
cookies allow us to keep track of your user name and password
(if you are a subscriber) so you don't have to re-enter
that information each time you visit our site. The "help"
function on most browsers contains information on how to
set your browser to notify you before accepting cookies
or to disable cookies entirely. However, if you don't accept
cookies, you won't be able to take advantage of various
features on our site that are available to other visitors
HOW YOUR INFORMATION WILL BE USED
ConsumerUnion.org and related advocacy web sites use personally
identifiable information in a limited number of ways. We
use the information to provide you with news and action
alerts based on the interests you have expressed by taking
action on an advocacy campaign through our web site or through
an online form that you have filled out. We also use the
information you provide to send you e-mail on Consumers
Union advocacy issues, programs or services that we believe
may be of interest to you.
Sharing your personally identifiable
information
In some instances, we use third party companies to help
us provide our products and services to you, like an e-mail
delivery service that sends out our e-mails and e-newsletters.
In those instances we need to share your information with
them. We require that those companies use the information
only to deliver the product or service.
We may occasionally release personal information as required
by law, for example, to comply with a court order or subpoena.
HOW YOU CAN CORRECT YOUR INFORMATION
Consumers Union believes in providing you with the ability
to access and edit the personal information that you have
provided to us. To
update your information you have provided if you took action
on one of our advocacy campaigns through our web site, follow
the links at the bottom of our newsletter ConsumerLine,
or access your profile and update your contact information
and user preferences by following the instructions at http://cu.convio.net/site/UserLogin.
OUR E-MAIL POLICIES
Account and services related e-mail: If you have taken
action on a policy issue, we will send you e-mails relating
to your account. For example, these include confirmations
that the email you sent through our web site has been delivered.
E-mail newsletters and action alerts: You may request updates
or news about Consumers Union's activities, which will be
sent to the email account you identified. To unsubscribe,
follow the instructions included in every email we send
you. If you have taken an action on a policy issue, we may
send you e-mail about other policy issues that may be of
interest to you. You can choose not to receive additional
types of messages in the future by following the 'unsubscribe'
instructions located near the bottom of each e-mail.
HTML verification: When receiving an e-mail from CU, we
may place a one-pixel gif in that e-mail to understand whether
or not you can accept HTML images and, if you can accept
HTML, whether or not you viewed the e-mail. This process
does not leave any information on your computer, nor does
it collect information from your computer. Consumers Union
does not share or sell this information with others, and
we only use it to improve our e-mail communications with
you.
DONATIONS
If you make a tax-deductible donation to Consumer Reports
or Consumers Union, your name or any information from that
donation will not be sold or exchanged with any other company
or organization. No additional emails will be sent to you
based on this donation. You will be contacted by mail to
subscribe to our publications, books or other services which
includes future donations. If you do not wish to receive
mail solicitations from us, please write:
Consumer Reports Development Office
“ No Promotional Mail”
101 Truman Ave
Yonkers, NY 10703
SECURITY
We work to protect your personal information from loss,
misuse or unauthorized alteration. We have put in place
appropriate physical, electronic and managerial procedures
to safeguard and help prevent unauthorized access, maintain
data security, and correctly use the information we collect
through all channels.
Security Of The Personal Information You Provide
Credit card information. Your donation will be processed
through the Consumer Reports donation system. We use data
encryption technology to help protect against loss, misuse
or alteration of your sensitive credit or debit card information.
We use Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) software, which creates
an encrypted connection for the transmission of any credit
or debit card information you input online and we use the
same encryption protection for any payment authorizations
for transactions we request through any channel. Once we
collect your credit card or debit card information, it is
stored on restricted-access computers that are not directly
accessible via the Internet.
Personal Information. We protect the confidentiality
and security of your personal information by using industry-recognized
security safeguards such as firewalls, coupled with security
procedures to protect your information from loss, misuse
or unauthorized alteration.
Please keep in mind that any information you include in
a message you post online to any discussion group, or other
public posting area on our sites is available to anyone
with Internet access. If you don't want people to know your
name or email address, for example, do not include them
in any message you post publicly.
Information use by our employees and agents. Our
employees are trained and required to safeguard your information.
Using physical, electronic and procedural safeguards, our
policies restrict access to personal information only to
those employees who need to access it for business purposes.
Security Enforcement
Any unauthorized access to any Consumer Reports or Consumers
Union web sites or to the information collected and maintained
by us should be immediately brought to our attention by
contacting us via email at cuwebsite@consumersunion.org
or by writing to us at Consumers Union Customer Relations,
Attn: Security, 101 Truman Avenue, Yonkers, NY 10703. We
will investigate, and, if necessary, take action to halt
any violation of the security of your personal information
of which we become aware.
In the unlikely event that we believe the security of your
sensitive personal information, such as payment card information,
in our possession or control may have been compromised,
we will apply the same notification policy to all of those
individuals affected. We will endeavor to provide required
notice as soon as possible under the circumstances and will
ensure that in addition to any other methods, notices are
posted on our ConsumerReports.org and (if applicable) our
Consumers Union web sites.
Security Of Access To Your Online Account Information
If you sign up to receive Consumers Union Advocacy email,
we maintain the information you provide to us (Name, email
address, physical address and sometimes phone number) in
a secure database. In order to change that information,
click
here, and you will be instructed how to access your
username and then receive your password by email. Then you
may log on to your profile, enter your username and password
and make any changes to your account information. If you
want to change your password or other Advocacy account information,
you may do so at any time and there is a link at the bottom
of every email to help you. If you wish to change your email
preferences (for example, you wish to get action alerts
but not a monthly newsletter), click
here.
If you have forgotten your username, we will ask you for
the e-mail address you used when you signed up for email
(or an updated e-mail address that you have previously provided
to us), and we will promptly e-mail your user name to that
e-mail address. If you have forgotten your password, we
will ask you for both your e-mail address and your user
name.
It is your responsibility to control the dissemination
and use of your user name and password and to control access
to and use of your Advocacy account. We urge you to keep
your user name and password confidential and not disclose
them to anyone. We will not be responsible or liable for
any loss or damage arising from your failure to comply with
this provision, for example, a third party’s unauthorized
access to certain of your account information, such as your
physical address.
IMPORTANT - Although we take these steps to protect
your personal information, no method of transmitting or
storing electronic data is ever completely secure, therefore
we cannot promise or guarantee that such information will
never be accessed, used or released in a manner that is
inconsistent with this policy.
HOW TO CONTACT US
If you have any questions or concerns about the ConsumerUnion.org
and related advocacy sites Privacy Policy or its implementation,
contact us at wcrowebmaster@consumer.org
or at Consumers Union West Coast Regional Office, 1535 Mission
St., San Francisco, CA 94103.
If you are a subscriber to Consumer Reports or ConsumerReports.org,
contact us at Consumers Union, Customer Relations, 101 Truman
Avenue, Yonkers, NY 10703.
If you feel that we have not followed our privacy policy
please let us know. Additionally, you may contact your state
or local consumer protection office, The Direct Marketing
Association's Committee on Ethical Business Practices at
mgoldberger@the-dma.org,
the Better Business Bureau, or The Federal Trade Commission
by phone at (202) FTC-HELP (202/382-4357) and online at
www.ftc.gov.
If
you are a subscriber to Consumer Reports or any of our other
publications, click here to review Consumer Reports privacy
policy.
This policy was last revised April 2007.
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