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This Privacy Policy discloses the privacy practices for IndependentCenter.org and various related content (together referred to as the “site”). Independent Center, Inc. (“Independent Center”), the provider of the site (referred to as “us” or “we”), is committed to protecting your privacy online, as well as bringing you content targeted to your specific interests. This Privacy Policy describes how we treat information we may collect when you visit the site, register for our email updates, make a contribution, or otherwise interact with us. Please read this notice carefully.
This website does not intend to target any users who are residents of the European Union, nor does intend to provide any goods or services to any users who are residents of the European Union.
You acknowledge that this Privacy Policy is part of our Site Terms of Use, and by accessing or using our site, you agree to be bound by all of its terms and conditions. If you do not agree to these terms, please do not access or use this site.
We reserve the right to change this Privacy Policy at any time. Such changes, modifications, additions or deletions shall be effective immediately upon notice thereof, which may be given by means including, but not limited to, posting the revised Policy on this page. You acknowledge and agree that it is your responsibility to review this site and this Policy periodically to be aware of any modifications. Your continued use of the site after such modifications will constitute your: (a) acknowledgment of the modified Policy; and (b) agreement to abide and be bound by the modified Policy.
In order to enhance your overall user experience, we collect two types of information about our users: Personally Identifiable Information (“Personal Information”) and non-personally Identifiable Information (“Non-Personal Information”). Our primary goal in collecting information from you is to provide you with a smooth, efficient, and customized experience while using our site.
Personal Information: This refers to information that lets us know the specifics of who you are. When you engage in certain activities on this site, such as registering for our email updates, making a contribution, filling out a survey, uploading content or sending us feedback, we may ask you to provide certain information about yourself by filling out and submitting an online form. It is completely optional for you to engage in these activities. If you elect to engage in these activities, however, we may ask that you provide us personal information, such as your first and last name, mailing address (including zip code), email address, telephone number, and other personal identifying information. If you make a contribution or otherwise place an order via the site, you may be asked to provide a credit card number. Depending upon the activity, some of the information we ask you to provide is identified as mandatory and some as voluntary. If you do not provide the mandatory data with respect to a particular activity, you will not be able to engage in that activity. We will not disclose your Personal Information to a third party without your consent, except as described below in Section 3.
Non-personally Identifiable Information: This refers to information that does not by itself identify a specific individual. We gather certain information about you based upon your site visits in several ways. This information is compiled and analyzed on both a personal and an aggregated basis. This information may include the Web site’s Uniform Resource Locator (“URL”) that you just came from, which URL you next go to, what browser you are using, and your Internet Protocol (“IP”) address. It may also include demographic information about you, including your interest areas and age. Supplying this information to us is optional, and you may choose to not share certain information by altering your browser’s privacy settings. If you do share this information with us, you agree that we may share this information with third parties. We will not use this information to identify you on an individual basis, and will only share this information on an anonymized, aggregate basis.
We do not collect any Personal Information about you unless you voluntarily provide it to us. You provide certain Personal Information to us when you: (a) register your email address with us; (b) enter sweepstakes or contests sponsored by us or one of our partners; (c) send email messages, submit forms or transmit other information by telephone or letter to us through our site; or (d) submit your credit card or other payment information when making a contribution or purchase on our site. We may also collect information from you at other points on our site that state that such information is being collected.
In addition, we may also collect, or our third party servers and/or providers may collect, certain Non-Personal Information. This information is ultimately stored in the form of categories, and, in some cases, specific URLs. We use your IP address to diagnose problems with our servers, software, to administer our site and to gather demographic information. Our third party providers may also provide us with summary, but not individual, reports that will tell us how many users interacted with or clicked on certain content on the site, along with aggregate data about the types of users who interacted with that content.
We will primarily use your Personal Information to provide our content to you as requested when you submit that Personal Information. We will also use Personal Information you submit for purposes that include, but are not necessarily limited to, enhancing the operation of our site and our emails, completing transactions as necessary, improving our marketing and promotional efforts, statistically analyzing site use, improving our content offerings, and customizing our site’s content, layout, and services. We may use Personal Information to deliver information to you and to contact you regarding administrative notices. We may also use Personal Information to resolve disputes, troubleshoot problems and enforce our agreements with you, including this Privacy Policy.
In accordance with applicable law and this Privacy Policy, we may sell, trade, or rent your Personal Information to others. We may also provide some of your information to public agencies as required by law. We may also provide your information to affiliates, services providers, partners and other third parties (collectively, “service partners”) through contractual arrangements. We use your Personal Information to operate our sites and to deliver our services.
We will encourage our service partners to adopt and post privacy policies. However, the use of your Personal Information by our service partners is governed by the privacy policies of those service partners, and is not subject to our control.
Occasionally we may be required by law enforcement or judicial authorities to provide Personal Information to the appropriate governmental authorities. We will disclose Personal Information upon receipt of a court order, subpoena, or in order to cooperate with a law enforcement investigation, or on our good faith belief that we are required to disclose your Personal Information to comply with the law. We fully cooperate with law enforcement agencies in identifying those who use our services for illegal activities or to aid and abet in illegal activities. We reserve the right to report to law enforcement agencies any activities that we in good faith believe to be unlawful.
We may also provide Non-Personal Information about our customers’ contributions, traffic patterns, use of our site and related site information to third party advertisers or other third parties, but these statistics do not include any Personal Information.
All above exclude text messaging originator opt-in data and consent; this information will not be shared by any vendor to Independent Center with any third parties, but may be shared by Independent Center for the purposes requested by the user.
We believe you should have the ability to access and edit the Personal Information that you have provided to us. If you have a user account with us, you may change any of your Personal Information in your account online at any time by linking to your account in accordance with instructions that may be posted on this site. Should that portion of the site be inaccessible or not functional, or at your discretion, you may instead access and correct your personal information and privacy preferences by writing us at privacy@independentcenter.org.
Please include your name, address, and/or email address when you contact us.
We encourage you to promptly update your Personal Information if it changes. You may ask to have the information on your account deleted or removed; however, because we keep track of past interactions with our site, you cannot delete information associated with those past interactions on this site. In addition, it may be impossible to completely delete your information due to our data backup procedures.
Under California law, a California resident who has provided Personal Information to a business with whom he/she has established a business relationship for purposes related to personal, family, or household use (“California user”) is entitled to request information about whether the business has disclosed Personal Information to any other entities for that other entity’s own marketing purposes. Should you request it, the information we would provide you under this law would include the categories of Personal Information disclosed, along with our best efforts to provide the names and addresses of the business with whom we shared your Personal Information for that business’s own marketing purposes. A California user may make such a request once per year. We will respond to such a request from a California user with information about the immediate prior calendar year. We do not share information with outside businesses for their direct marketing purposes unless you affirmatively agree for us to engage in those activities when you submit your Personal Information to us.
To request information available under California law, a California customer can email privacy@independentcenter.org with “California Privacy Information” as the subject line. We are not required to respond to requests made by means other than through this email address. We will respond to your request with only that applicable information required to be disclosed to you under California law.
Independent Center does not currently engage in activities that constitute a “sale” for purposes of California’s privacy law. However, if you are a California user and would like to request that we either (1) delete all information we have obtained about you; or (2) not sell that information in the future to any third party whatsoever, [click here](privacy@independentcenter.org) to make that request: DO NOT SELL MY PERSONAL INFORMATION. A California user’s exercise of the rights described in this Section will not result in discriminatory treatment by Independent Center.
Under Nevada law, a Nevada resident who has provided Personal Information to a business with whom he/she has established a business relationship for purposes related to personal, family, or household use (“Nevada user”) is entitled to request that we not make any sale, as defined in applicable law, of any Personal Information collected, or to be collected, about you to any third party whatsoever contact privacy@independentcenter.org to make that request.
We may, from time to time, send you email correspondence regarding our activities, products and services. In addition, if you indicated upon registration that you are interested in receiving offers or information from us and our partners, we may occasionally send you direct SMS messages, email or postal mail about content that we feel may be of interest to you. Only the Independent Center (or agents working on behalf of Independent Center and under confidentiality agreements) will send you these direct mailings and only if you indicated that you do not object to these offers. If you do not want to receive such mailings, simply do not provide us authorization to contact you when you give us your Personal Information. Or, at any time you can easily edit your account information to no longer receive such offers and mailings by following the opt-out instructions on our website or contained in each marketing message.
You also have choices with respect to cookies, as described below. By modifying your browser preferences, you have the choice to accept all cookies, to be notified when a cookie is set, or to reject all cookies. If you choose to reject all cookies some parts of our site may not work properly.
At our site we make reasonable efforts to ensure that your Personal Information is secure, consistent with current industry standards. The importance of security for all Personal Information associated with our users is of utmost concern to us. Your Personal Information is protected in several ways. Your Personal Information resides on a secure server that only selected Independent Center personnel and contractors have access to via password. We encrypt your Personal Information and thereby prevent unauthorized parties from viewing such information when it is transmitted to us.
Information that you provide that is not Personal Information, including Non-Personal information, also resides on a secure server and is only accessible via password, viewable to employees and contractors of Independent Center.
In order to most efficiently serve you, any credit card transactions and order fulfillments are handled by established third party banking, processing, and distribution institutions and/or agents. They receive the information needed to verify and authorize your credit card or other payment information, and to process and ship your order.
Unfortunately, no data transmission over the Internet or any wireless network can be guaranteed to be 100% secure. As a result, while we strive to protect your Personal Information, you acknowledge that: (a) there are security and privacy limitations of the Internet which are beyond our control; (b) the security, integrity and privacy of any and all information and data exchanged between you and us through this site cannot be guaranteed; and (c) any such information and data may be viewed or tampered with in transit by a third party.
When you use our site, we will store cookies on your computer in order to facilitate and customize your use of our site. A cookie is a small data text file, which a Web site stores on your computer’s hard drive (if your Web browser permits) that can later be retrieved to identify you to us. Our cookies store randomly assigned user identification numbers, the country where you are located, and your first name to welcome you back to our site. The cookies make your use of the site easier, make the site run more smoothly, and help us to maintain a secure site. You are always free to decline our cookies if your browser permits, but some parts of our site may not work properly in that case.
We may use outside ad serving companies, including Google and Hubspot, to serve ads based on your prior visits to our site and to other sites across the Internet. Google’s use of the DoubleClick cookie enables it and its partners to serve ads to users based on their visit to our site and/or other sites on the Internet. Users may opt out of the use of the DoubleClick cookie for interest-based advertising by visiting Ads Settings. Alternatively, users may opt out of a third-party vendor’s use of cookies for interest based advertising by visiting aboutads.info.
We may also work with other third parties that place a separate cookie on your computer. We will not provide any third-party ad server with any of your Personal Information or information about your transactions with us. We and our third party ad server may collect and use Non-Personal Information about you, such as your IP address, browser type, the server your computer is logged onto, the area code and zip code associated with your server, whether you responded to a particular communication or advertisement, and your browsing history. If advertisers ever place banner ads on our site in the same manner as above, we will not disclose any Personal Information to them.
Except as otherwise discussed in this Privacy Policy, this document only addresses the use and disclosure of information we collect from you. Other sites accessible through our site have their own privacy policies and data collection, use, and disclosure practices. Please consult each site’s privacy policy. We are not responsible for the policies or practices of third parties. Additionally, other companies which place advertising on our site may collect information about you when you view or click on their advertising through the use of cookies. We cannot control this collection of information. You should contact these advertisers directly if you have any questions about their use of the information that they collect.
You must be at least 13 years old to have our permission to use this site. Our policy is that we do not knowingly collect, use, or disclose Personal Information about visitors that are under 13 years of age. We expressly do not target and are not seeking to do business with those under the age of 13.
IndependentCenter.org may include links to third party websites. We make no warranties or guaranties regarding your privacy or your experience at any third party website. To determine how those sites use your information, you must consult the privacy policies specific to those sites.
You should also be aware that when Personal Information is voluntarily disclosed (i.e. your name, email address, etc.) in any discussion forums or other public areas on this site, that information, along with any information disclosed in your communication, can be collected and used by third parties and may result in unsolicited messages from third parties. Such activities are beyond our control and this Privacy Policy does not apply to such information. Any submissions to public areas on this site are accepted with the understanding that they are accessible to all third parties. If you do not want your comments to be viewed by third parties, you are advised not to make any submissions. Ultimately, you are solely responsible for maintaining the secrecy of your voluntarily disclosed Personal Information. Please be careful and responsible whenever you’re online.
IndependentCenter.org has its headquarters in the United States.
Information we collect about you will be processed in the United States. By using the IndependentCenter.org website, you acknowledge that your personal information will be processed in the United States. The United States has not sought nor received a finding of “adequacy” from the European Union under Article 45 of the GDPR.
As described above, we reserve the right to modify this Privacy Policy at any time.
If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, the practices of this site, or your dealings with this site, please contact us by sending a letter to:
Independent Center Inc.
Attn: Privacy Compliance Officer
PO Box 26131
Alexandria, VA 22313
Notification of Changes. Any changes in our Privacy Policy will be posted to this website and will become effective as of the date of posting with respect to information we then collect in the future, but will not apply to information that we have then already collected. It is and will be your responsibility to review our Privacy Policy from time to time to make sure you are aware of any changes.
This Privacy Policy is effective as of 10/30/2023.
Questions. If you have any questions about our Privacy Policy, feel free to contact us by sending an email to: hello@independentcenter.org.
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