PRIVACY STATEMENT
Louis D. Brandeis for the Harvard Law Review wrote, "The
makers of our Constitution undertook....to protect Americans in their beliefs,
their thoughts, their emotions, and their sensations. They conferred, as against
the Government, the right to be let alone - the most comprehensive of rights
and the right most valued by civilized men. To protect that right, every
unjustifiable intrusion by the Government upon the privacy of the individual,
whatever the means employed, must be deemed a violation of the Fourth
Amendment."
Olmstead v. U.S., 277 US 438 (1928)
This
privacy statement discloses the privacy practices for
www.advanco.net.
Advanco respects the privacy rights of its members and guests and adheres to the
strictest standards of privacy. We believe that the right to privacy is personal
and basic to a free society and not to be constrained by arbitrary
powers. The greatest menace of personal freedom and privacy is apathy. It is the
duty of all citizens who enjoy their right of privacy to seize their rights and
limit sovereign powers before our rights are limited.
Advanco pledges to never sell, rent or disclose your information without
expressed consent, to provide a secure environment to the best of its abilities,
to protect your information and:
1. What personally identifiable information of yours or third party personally identification is collected from you through the web site
2. The organization collecting the information
3. How the information is used
4. With whom the information may be shared
5. What choices are available to you regarding collection, use and distribution of the information.
6. The kind of security procedures that are in place to protect the loss, misuse or alteration of information under Advanco control
7. How you can correct any inaccuracies in the information.
Advanco
is the sole owner of the information collected on this site.
We will not sell, share, or rent this information to others in ways
different from what is disclosed in this statement.
Advanco collects information from our users at several different points
on our website.
Registration
In order to use this website, a user must first complete the registration form.
During registration a user is required to give their contact information
(such as name and email address). This
information is used to contact the user about the services on our site for which
they have expressed interest. It is
optional for the user to provide demographic information (such as income level
and gender), and unique identifiers (such as social security number), but
encouraged so we can provide a more personalized experience on our site.
Order
We request information from the user on our order form.
Here a user must provide contact information (like name and shipping
address) and financial information (like credit card number, expiration date).
This information is used for billing purposes and to fill customer’s
orders. If we have trouble
processing an order, this contact information is used to get in touch with the
user.
Cookies
A cookie is a piece of data stored on the user’s hard drive containing
information about the user. Usage
of a cookie is in no way linked to any personally identifiable information while
on our site. Once the user closes
their browser, the cookie simply terminates.
For instance, by setting a cookie on our site, the user would not have to
log in a password more than once, thereby saving time while on our site.
If a user rejects the cookie, they may still use our site.
The only drawback to this is that the user will be limited in some areas
of our site. For example, the user
will not be able to participate in any of our Sweepstakes, Contests or monthly
Drawings that take place. Cookies can also enable us to track and target the
interests of our users to enhance the experience on our site.
Some of our business partners use cookies on our site (for example, advertisers). However, we have no access to or control over these cookies.
Log Files
We use IP addresses to analyze trends, administer the site, track user’s
movement, and gather broad demographic information for aggregate use.
IP addresses are not linked to personally identifiable information.
Sharing
We will share aggregated demographic information with our partners and
advertisers. This is not linked to any personal information that can identify
any individual person.
We use an outside shipping company to ship
orders, and a credit card processing company to bill users for goods and
services. These companies do not retain, share, store or use personally
identifiable information for any secondary purposes.
We partner with another party to provide
specific services. When the user signs up for these services, we will share
names, or other contact information that is necessary for the third party to
provide these services.
These parties are not allowed to use personally
identifiable information except for the purpose of providing these services.
Links
This web site contains links to other sites. Please be aware that we are not
responsible for the privacy practices of such other sites.
We encourage our users to be aware when they leave our site and to read
the privacy statements of each and every web site that collects personally
identifiable information. This privacy statement applies solely to information
collected by this Web site.
Newsletter
If a user wishes to subscribe to our newsletter, we ask for contact
information such as name and email address.
Surveys & Contests
From time-to-time our site requests information from users via surveys or
contests. Participation in these
surveys or contests is completely voluntary and the user therefore has a choice
whether or not to disclose this information.
Information requested may include contact information (such as name and
shipping address), and demographic information (such as zip code, age level).
Contact information will be used to notify the winners and award prizes.
Survey information will be used for purposes of monitoring or improving
the use and satisfaction of this site.
Tell-A-Friend
If a user elects to use our referral service for informing a friend about
our site, we ask them for the friend’s name and email address.
We will automatically send the friend a one-time email inviting them to
visit the site. We store this information for the sole purpose of sending
this one-time email. The friend may
contact Advanco at www.advancocorp.com to request the removal of this information from their database.
Security
This website takes every precaution to protect our users’ information.
When users submit sensitive information via the website, your information
is protected both online and off-line.
When our
registration/order form asks users to enter sensitive information (such as
credit card number and/or social security number), that information is encrypted
and is protected with the best encryption software in the industry - SSL.
While on a secure page, such as our order form, the lock icon on the
bottom of Web browsers such as Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet
Explorer becomes locked, as opposed to un-locked, or open, when you are just
‘surfing’.
While we use SSL
encryption to protect sensitive information online, we also do everything in our
power to protect user-information off-line. All of our users’ information, not just the sensitive
information mentioned above, is restricted in our offices.
Only employees who need the information to perform a specific job (for
example, our billing clerk or a customer service representative) are granted
access to personally identifiable information.
Our employees must use password-protected screen-savers when they leave
their desk. When they return, they
must re-enter their password to re-gain access to your information.
Furthermore, ALL employees are kept up-to-date on our security and
privacy practices. Every quarter,
as well as any time new policies are added, our employees are notified and/or
reminded about the importance we place on privacy, and what they can do to
ensure our customers’ information is protected.
Finally, the servers that we store personally identifiable information on
are kept in a secure environment, behind a locked cage.
If you have any questions about the security at our website, you can send an email to admin@advanco.net
Supplementation of
Information
In order for this
website to properly fulfill its obligation to our customers, it is necessary for
us to supplement the information we receive with information from 3rd party
sources.
For example, to determine
if our customers qualify for one of our credit cards, we use their name and
social security number to request a credit report. Once we determine a user’s credit-worthiness, this document
is destroyed.
(or)
In order for this website
to enhance its ability to tailor the site to an individual’s preference, we
combine information about the purchasing habits of users with similar
information from our partners, Company Y & Company Z, to create a
personalized user profile. When a
user makes a purchase from either of these two companies, the companies collect
and share that purchase information with us so we can tailor the site to our
users’ preferences.
Special Offers
We send all new members a welcoming email
to verify password and username. Established members will occasionally receive
information on products, services, special deals, and a newsletter. Out of
respect for the privacy of our users we present the option to not receive these
types of communications. Please see our choice and opt-out below.
Site and Service Updates
We also send the user site and service
announcement updates. Members are not able to un-subscribe from service
announcements, which contain important information about the service. We
communicate with the user to provide requested services and in regards to issues
relating to their account via email or phone.
Correction/Updating Personal Information:
If a user’s personally identifiable information changes (such as your zip
code), or if a user no longer desires our service, we will endeavor to provide a
way to correct, update or remove that user’s personal data provided to us.
This can usually be done at the member information page
or by emailing our Customer Support.
[Some sites may also provide telephone or postal mail options for
updating or correcting
personal information].
Choice/Opt-out
Our users are given the opportunity to ‘opt-out’ of having their
information used for purposes not directly related to our site at the point
where we ask for the information. For
example, our order form has an ‘opt-out’ mechanism so users who buy a
product from us, but don’t want any marketing material, can keep their email
address off of our lists.
Users who no longer wish to receive our
newsletter or promotional materials from our partners may opt-out of receiving
these communications by replying to unsubscribe in the subject line in the email
or email us at
admin@advanco.net
Some sites are able to offer opt-out mechanisms on member information pages and
also supply a telephone or postal option as a way to opt-out.]
Users of our site are always notified when their
information is being collected by any outside parties.
We do this so our users can make an informed choice as to whether they
should proceed with services that require an outside party, or not.
Notification of Changes
If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post those changes on our
Homepage so our users are always aware of what information we collect, how we
use it, and under circumstances, if any, we disclose it.
If at any point we decide to use personally identifiable information in a
manner different from that stated at the time it was collected, we will notify
users by way of an email. Users
will have a choice as to whether or not we use their information in this
different manner. We will use information in accordance with the privacy policy
under which the information was collected.