Privacy Policy

Effective date: June 1, 2014
Last revised: January 1, 2020

Overview

Protecting your privacy is one of our highest priorities for Shop & Support, and the purpose of this policy is to help you understand how we go about doing that. This statement covers all of our information handling practices, for both information collected online and offline, and is published here for your benefit.

What information we collect, and why we collect it

It is our policy to collect only the information we need for the proper administration and enhancement of the program for the benefit of our participants. We may obtain the following kinds of information from various sources, as listed here:

  • Information you provide to us on applications and other forms, that you otherwise enter on our Web site, or that you provide to us in writing (including e-mail) or by telephone. This information may include items such as your name, address, telephone number, e-mail address and necessary information to link your credit or debit cards. In addition, please see the section on Cookies below regarding information we receive automatically when you visit our Web site.
  • Information from your purchase transactions.

We use the information we obtain only to properly administer and enhance the Program for our participants and to fulfill legal and regulatory requirements.

Sharing of information with third parties

Information about Enrolled Consumers is extremely important to Shop & Support. We do not share your personal information with non-affiliated third parties except as permitted or required by law, including as provided below:

  • Agents and service providers. In order to administer the Program, we may share personal information about you with agents and service providers to perform functions on our behalf, such as to send e-mail and postal mail, analyze data, provide marketing services, process applications and credit card payments, and service accounts. Generally, we provide these entities with only Enrolled Consumer contact information, although in some cases we may provide them with limited additional information. We contractually obligate these service providers to access and use personal information only as needed to perform their functions and for no other purposes.
  • Protection of Shop & Support and others. We may disclose personal information about you to third parties when we believe such disclosure is appropriate to comply with a legal requirement, such as a law, regulation, court order, subpoena or search warrant, or in the course of a legal proceeding. We may also disclose personal information, as we believe appropriate to enforce or apply our rights under our agreements with Enrolled Consumers, to protect the rights, property or safety of Shop & Support, our Enrolled Consumers and others, including exchanging information for fraud protection and credit risk reduction.
  • Business transfers. If there is a change of control in Shop & Support's business (whether by merger, sale, or otherwise), its Enrolled Consumer information could be sold as part of that transaction and the purchaser potentially could use your personally identifying information. Should something like that occur, notice will be posted on the Web site so that you are aware of a change of control.

Shop & Support does not share Enrolled Consumer information with nonaffiliated, non-financial institutions to enable them to market their products and services directly to you. If we ever make the decision to share Enrolled Consumer information with nonaffiliated third parties other than as described above so that they may market their products and services directly to you, we will notify you well ahead of time, and you will have the opportunity to opt-out of that information sharing.

Cookies and other technologies

Our web servers place and read "cookies" on our site's visitors' web browser for a variety of purposes. Cookies are small data files that are stored on an Internet user's web browser by a web server. One important use of cookies is to help identify you while you are logged in to the Shop & Support site. Consequently, if your browser does not accept cookies, you will be unable to enroll or log in to our service through our site. You will, however, be able to browse our site as a visitor. The information Shop & Support collects from cookies and web server logs is used to administer the web service and customize information you receive when visiting our site. Shop & Support may also use and share aggregate information from cookies and web server logs to analyze and improve our web service offerings. This information does not identify individual visitors or Enrolled Consumers.

As is the case for most Web sites, we gather certain information automatically and store it in log files. This information may include the Internet protocol (IP) address, browser type, Internet service provider (ISP), referring/exit pages, operating system, date/time stamp, and clickstream data of the computer being used. We use this information to analyze trends, to administer our Web site, to track users' movements around the Web site and to gather demographic information about our user base as a whole. We, certain third parties who host portions of our Web site, and certain advertising affiliates or others employ cookies and/or small pieces of code known as "web beacons" or "clear gifs" that, on an anonymous basis, count users that have visited a page that contains these web beacons. We use web beacons to help us better manage content on our site and to determine which content is effective. In addition, third party advertising affiliates and others may use web beacons to help us track the effectiveness of our advertisements placed on third party Web sites. Web beacons on our site are not used to collect personally identifiable information about our visitors or Enrolled Consumers. Finally, we use web beacons in our HTML-based e-mails to let us know which e-mails recipients have opened so that we may gauge the effectiveness of our communications. If you would like to opt-out of these e-mails, even if you have at one time opted in, you may do so. See "Marketing messages" for more information.

If you have not opted out of receiving marketing messages from us about the Program, we may use information from our log files, cookies or web beacons to help us make those communications more useful or interesting to you.

Marketing messages

You may choose whether and to what extent you receive marketing messages from Shop & Support about the Program or products and services offered by our affiliates. If you do not wish to receive any of these marketing messages, you may opt out. You may also choose to receive offers that are of interest to you in the ways you wish to receive them.

If you do not wish to receive marketing messages, you may opt out by sending us an e-mail at caredesk@shopandsupport.org containing your full name, user name, address and request, or by contacting us at 650-941-6500. You may also opt out of receiving marketing e-mails from Shop & Support by updating your Shop & Support Profile opt-out preferences on our Web site. Note that even if you opt out of receiving marketing messages, we reserve the right to send you specific administrative notices that are required by law, regulation, or as needed to service your account. In addition, our Participating Charities and Merchants reserve the right to contact you using information you supplied them or from sources other than Shop & Support.

Security

Shop & Support is committed to earning and keeping your trust. We have implemented and continually review physical, electronic, and procedural safeguards in order to protect your information against loss, unauthorized access, and illegal use or disclosure. We adhere to the highest security standards, including using sophisticated security monitoring tools; documented security policies; 3DES encryption for transmissions of information to and from Participating Merchants, Charities and Enrolled Consumers; restricted access of personally identifiable information only to those of our employees who need to know the information as part of their job; and periodic security audits by third party security experts.

All personal information is stored by Shop & Support in secure locations. Our staff is trained on procedures for the management of personal information, including limitations on the release of information. Confidential information is destroyed according to a records retention schedule, and we conduct periodic reviews to ensure that proper information management policies and procedures are understood and followed.

Please remember that you also play a valuable part in data security. You should never share your Shop & Support password with anyone. If you feel your password has been compromised, you should change it immediately. After you have finished using our site, you should log out of your Shop & Support account and exit your browser so that no unauthorized persons can use our site under your name and account information.

Collection of information from minors

Shop & Support is not intended to be used by minors. Accordingly, Shop & Support does not knowingly collect, either online or offline, personally identifiable information from anyone under the age of 18.

State laws

In addition to the rights described in this policy, please note that you may have additional rights under state law. For example, if your address on file with us is a California address, we will not share personal information about you with a financial institution with whom we have a joint marketing relationship unless we provide you the required notice under California law and you do not opt-out of that information sharing. In addition, if your address on file with us is a Vermont address, we will not share consumer report information about you with our affiliates unless you expressly consent to that information sharing.

Changes to this Privacy Policy

If we materially change this statement or our information-handling practices as described in this statement, we will notify you by e-mail and/or through a notice on our Web site at least 30 days prior to their implementation. In addition, any time a revision is made to this policy, the date of that revision will be shown with this policy.

Contacting Us

Shop & Support
2 Park Plaza
Suite 1000
Irvine, CA 92614
CareDesk@ShopAndSupport.org