We at Planned Parenthood Votes! Connecticut / Rhode Island PAC ("PPV" or "Planned Parenthood Votes!") want this site to be a safe and private place for users. We will do our part by not requiring you to register or provide any information at all to use most sections and features of this Web site. In turn, you can do your part by reading this policy and taking the steps outlined below.
If you are accessing this website from a country in the European Union, please note that this website and the information contained in it is not provided for or directed to you.
There are certain actions and areas of the site that will require you to provide personal information, such as:
1. becoming a member of our activist network
2. sending an e-mail question
3. making a donation
Any time you provide personal information, this privacy policy will govern our use of the information you have provided.
By submitting personal information to us, you agree that we may use the information in accordance with this privacy policy. We will update this privacy policy as we deem necessary. You should be sure to reread this policy in its entirety from time to time.
Personal Information You Choose to Provide
In order to gain access to certain areas of our site or to use certain features, you may choose to provide personal information. If you do submit information to us, we will use that information for the purposes for which it was submitted. We may also use your information in other ways, such as to contact you about other Planned Parenthood Votes! activities and/or fundraising campaigns or as otherwise disclosed to you at the point of collection, and we may share your information with other organizations.
For example:
If you make an online donation to us, your information will be added to one or more of our supporter lists and databases, and you will be contacted about other Planned Parenthood Votes! activities, news, and/or fundraising campaigns.
If you join or opt-in to our activist network, you will receive informational updates and action alerts about reproductive health and rights issues. Our activist network is an electronic network, and therefore we need an e-mail address to contact you. We also need your full postal address in order for our systems to match you to the correct state and federal districts, thereby ensuring that you are primarily sending messages to your designated elected officials.
We also may provide opportunities for you to submit additional personal information,such as Website feedback. By submitting this information to us, you give us permission to receive it, review it, edit it, store it, post it on our Web site, and use it in appropriate settings designed to illustrate the importance of reproductive health and rights. To protect your privacy, please do not include any identifying information in your submissions.
You should be aware that we use third-party vendors to provide services on this site and in our offline business operations. The information that you submit on this site may be provided to those vendors on a confidential basis so that those vendors can provide services (such as maintaining our databases, sending e-mail messages to activists or supporters, facilitating our fundraising activities and campaigns, or processing credit card transactions) on our behalf.
Other than as described in this privacy policy, or as may be necessary to protect the rights, property, and safety of our organization, our clients, or others, or as may be necessary to comply with applicable law, we will not give or sell the personal information you provide online. We also reserve the right to share personal information you provide with legal authorities if it is, in our sole opinion, necessary to investigate, prevent, or take action regarding suspected fraud, situations involving threats or potential harm, or if required by law (such as by a subpoena, court order, or other legal means).
Financial Information You Choose to Provide
If you choose to make an online donation, you will have to provide your credit card billing information. As this information is collected and transferred over the Internet to our secure server, it is encrypted using Secure Socket Layer (SSL) technology, the industry standard security technology that is designed to protect sensitive information. Our donation pages display the Verisign Secure Site Seal to assure you that our Web site is authentic and that all transactions are secured by SSL encryption. If you are making a donation, the credit card information that you provide at the time of donation is used only to process your donation and will not be used for any other purposes.
Information Automatically Collected and Stored
As is true of most Web sites, we automatically collect and store some information about your computer and your visit and store it in log files. This information includes information such as your computer’s (or your ISP’s) Internet Protocol (IP) address (this is not your e-mail address); the domain from which you access the Internet (e.g., "verizon.net" or "stanford.edu"); the name, version, and specifications of your computer and your computer’s operating system; the Internet address of the Web site, if any, from which you came to our site; the date and time you arrived at our site and how long you spent on the site; and which pages you visited.
We use this information to formulate statistics (possibly with the help of outside experts) that show the number of visitors to the different sections of our site and to help us make our site more useful to visitors. For example, we use the browser information to help us design our Web site so that as many people as possible will be able to view the pages correctly. These statistics do not reveal personal information.
Use of Cookies
Cookies are small text files that are either placed on your computer’s hard drive ("persistent cookies") or in your computer’s Random Access Memory ("session cookies"). We use both persistent cookies and session cookies for various sections of our websites.
Session Cookies: We use session cookies to make it easier for you to navigate certain sections of our Web site. If you choose to provide personal information by using an interactive application on our site, such as by joining our e-mail list, or registering with our activist network, or making an online donation or asking a question, we place a session cookie on your computer so that you will be recognized as you move around our Web pages. Unless you opt-in to change these session cookies to persistent cookies (see "Persistent Cookies" below), the information is only used for the duration of your browser session. For example, if you join our activist network and then navigate through different pages of our Web site, the cookie will maintain the information you entered when you filled out the activist registration page. As you move through the site, any fields requiring information about you that has already been captured will be pre-populated. However, once you close your browser window, the session cookie times out. If you open a new browser window and return to our Web site, your personal information fields will not be pre-populated.
Persistent Cookies: We use persistent cookies in some sections of our Website to provide greater accuracy in our analysis of the information that is automatically collected about your visit to our site. A persistent cookie remains on your hard drive for an extended period of time. These cookies do not collect personal information. We do not link the information collected through these cookies with other personal data that you provide to us.
In certain circumstances, you may be given the option to turn a session cookie into a persistent cookie on your computer (e.g., "Would you like us to remember your password?" messages). If you opt to turn a session cookie into a persistent cookie, that persistent cookie will remember your personal information (e.g., user name and password) and will not time out at the end of your browser session. See "Your Help is Needed" for more information.
Disabling Cookies: Persistent cookies leave a record on your computer that you have visited our site. However, you have the ability to remove cookies from your computer. Your Internet browser’s "Help" section will give you information on how to delete cookies. In addition, there are many Web sites that provide browser- and operating system-specific information on how to delete cookies. When thinking about whether you want to delete cookies, you should be aware that some sites require cookies to function properly. If you delete cookies, you may have to re-register with some sites or you may notice difficulty in browsing some sites after you delete cookies.
Clear Gifs (Web Beacons)
We employ a software technology called clear gifs (a.k.a. Web Beacons) 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 link the information gathered through clear gifs with other personal data that you provide to us.
Online Advertisements
From time to time, we may run online advertisements on third-party Web sites to attract visitors to our site or to alert our supporters to special opportunities. Our advertising partners may use cookies and clear GIFs on this site and on the third-party sites on which our ads appear, which allow the advertising partner to track certain information about user behavior, such as "click-stream data." Any use of information by an advertising partner would be governed by their terms of use and privacy policy, so be sure to be familiar with these policies prior to responding to online advertisements.
Security
Information submitted via the Internet, including through a web page or e-mail is subject to interception or incorrect routing, and the Internet is not a fully secure communications channel. Please consider this prior to submitting any information to us via this web site.
Certain sections of this site have heightened security measures in place to protect the loss, misuse, and alteration of the information you have provided. The security measures used on this site include, but are not limited to, industry-standard Secure Socket Layer (SSL) technology, Verisign certificates, firewalls, and internal policies to maintain the security of stored data. While we follow generally accepted industry standards to protect the personal information submitted to us, no method of transmission over the Internet, or method of electronic storage, is 100 percent secure. Therefore, while we strive to use commercially acceptable means to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee its absolute security.
When you register with or donate to us, or become a member of our supporter community through this Website, you will have a personal subscription management page, where you will be able to edit your personal information, as well as review your messaging, advocacy, and/or donation records. Access to your personal subscription management page is controlled to protect the privacy of your data — our Web site requires that you log on with your e-mail address and personal password to access your personal subscription management page. The log-on process may be automated if you choose to accept the placement of a persistent cookie on your PC. See "Use of Cookies" and "Your Help Is Needed" for more information on persistent cookies.
Remember, breaches of security also can occur when users are not vigilant in protecting their own information. The next section of our privacy policy suggests some actions you can take to help control the security of your personal information.
Your Help Is Needed
Although we do our best to protect your privacy on our sites, we need your help.
You have control over your own privacy. Think carefully before providing any personal or financial information online.
Although this site has security measures in place to protect the loss, misuse, and alteration of the information you have provided, no e-mail or Web transmission is completely secure against interception. If you are worried because your communication is very sensitive, do not send it electronically.
When you write to us or send us submissions, if you desire to remain anonymous, you should not tell us your name, the names of other users, or of your friends. To fully protect your privacy, you should try to keep out any information that you think may identify you or others.
Remember that we cannot protect your privacy once you leave our site, such as by "hyperlink." So when you visit other Web sites, check each one’s privacy policy yourself, and be careful about the information you submit or share.
You should be aware that in some areas of this site we utilize personalization measures designed to make your site experience more enjoyable (i.e., personalized links in e-mail that allow data fields to be pre-populated with certain personal information). We need your help to protect the information embedded in these links. You should always keep your e-mail account information secure and not allow others to access your e-mail account.
In addition, you should only forward our e-mail messages or other Website information (such as volunteer or job postings) to others through the buttons or links provided within the e-mail or Website. When you use your e-mail system’s forwarding capabilities, others may be able to take actions in your name and/or access your personal information.
You may be given the option to turn on a persistent cookie on your computer (see "Use of Cookies" above). Remember that once you have set a persistent cookie that is linked to your personal information, anyone can access your personal information by using your computer.
In addition to the records left on your computer by cookies, your browser and operating system contain other records of your Web browsing and other actions (e.g., browser history). As with cookies, you can find information about how to clear these history trails in your browser’s "Help" section or through other Web sites that provide detailed information for each browser and operating system. See "Use of Cookies — Disabling Cookies" above.
How to Unsubscribe or Contact Us About Your Information
If you do not want to receive any e-mail from us in the future, visit your personal subscription management page to deactivate your account. Note that your records will remain in Planned Parenthood Votes!’ databases, but your log-in and e-mail address will be deactivated.
If you wish to review the contact information we have on file for you, correct your contact information or provide a change of address, or inform us how you wish your contact information to be used, please contact our staff (see below).
You may contact us by mail, e-mail, or telephone, as follows:
Mail: Planned Parenthood Votes! Connecticut / Rhode Island, 345 Whitney Ave, New Haven, CT 06511
E-mail: [email protected]
Phone: 1-203-865-5158
Policy Last Updated: November 26, 2010
If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post those changes here, so that you are continually 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 our privacy policy at any time, so please review it frequently.