Heartspring Network Privacy Policy

Your privacy is critically important to us. At Heartspring we have a few fundamental principles:

  1. We don’t ask you for personal information unless we truly need it. (We can’t stand services that ask you for things like your gender or income level for no apparent reason.)

  2. We don’t share your personal information with anyone except to comply with the law, develop our products, or protect our rights.

  3. We don’t store personal information on our servers unless required for the on-going operation of one of our services.

  4. In our fundraising tools, we aim to make it as simple as possible for you to control what’s visible to the public, seen by search engines, kept private, and permanently deleted.

Below is our privacy policy which incorporates these goals:

Heartspring, Inc. (“Heartspring”) operates several websites including heartspring.org, heartspring.tv, myheartspring.org, pedalfest.org, lightsonthelake.org, autismcarewalk.org, and others (defined as "the Network" in our Terms of Service). It is Heartspring’s policy to respect your privacy regarding any information we may collect while operating our websites.


Website Visitors

Like most website operators, Heartspring collects non-personally-identifying information of the sort that web browsers and servers typically make available, such as the browser type, language preference, referring site, and the date and time of each visitor request. Heartspring’s purpose in collecting non-personally identifying information is to better understand how Heartspring’s visitors use its website. From time to time, Heartspring may release non-personally-identifying information in the aggregate, e.g., by publishing a report on trends in the usage of its website.

Heartspring also collects potentially personally-identifying information like Internet Protocol (IP) addresses. Heartspring does not use such information to identify its visitors, however, and does not disclose such information, other than under the same circumstances that it uses and discloses personally-identifying information, as described below.


Gathering of Personally-Identifying Information

Certain visitors to Heartspring’s websites choose to interact with Heartspring in ways that require Heartspring to gather personally-identifying information. The amount and type of information that Heartspring gathers depends on the nature of the interaction. For example, we ask visitors who sign up for a Heartspring Account to provide a username and email address. Those who engage in transactions with Heartspring – by making a donation, for example – are asked to provide additional information, including as necessary the personal and financial information required to process those transactions. In each case, Heartspring collects such information only insofar as is necessary or appropriate to fulfill the purpose of the visitor’s interaction with Heartspring. Heartspring does not disclose personally-identifying information other than as described below. And visitors can always refuse to supply personally-identifying information, with the caveat that it may prevent them from engaging in certain website-related activities.


Aggregated Statistics

Heartspring may collect statistics about the behavior of visitors to its websites. For instance, Heartspring may monitor the most popular fundraising pages on the Heartspring Network, or use spam screened by a 3rd-party service to help identify spam. Heartspring may display this information publicly or provide it to others. This site also uses a tool that collects your requests for pages and passes elements of them to search engines to assist them in indexing this site. We control the configuration of the tool and are responsible for any information sent to the search engines.

Heartspring does not disclose personally-identifying information other than as described below.


Protection of Certain Personally-Identifying Information

Heartspring discloses potentially personally-identifying and personally-identifying information only to those of its employees, contractors and affiliated organizations that (i) need to know that information in order to process it on Heartspring’s behalf or to provide services available at Heartspring’s websites, and (ii) that have agreed not to disclose it to others. Some of those employees, contractors and affiliated organizations may be located outside of your home country; by using Heartspring’s websites, you consent to the transfer of such information to them. Heartspring will not rent or sell potentially personally-identifying and personally-identifying information to anyone. Other than to its employees, contractors and affiliated organizations, as described above, Heartspring discloses potentially personally-identifying and personally-identifying information only when required to do so by law, or when Heartspring believes in good faith that disclosure is reasonably necessary to protect the property or rights of Heartspring, third parties or the public at large. If you are a registered user of an Heartspring website and have supplied your email address, Heartspring may occasionally send you an email to tell you about new features, solicit your feedback, or just keep you up to date with what’s going on with Heartspring and our events. If you send us a request (for example via a support email or via one of our feedback mechanisms), we reserve the right to publish it in order to help us clarify or respond to your request or to help us support other users. Heartspring takes all measures reasonably necessary to protect against the unauthorized access, use, alteration or destruction of potentially personally-identifying and personally-identifying information.


Cookies

A cookie is a string of information that a website stores on a visitor’s computer, and that the visitor’s browser provides to the website each time the visitor returns. Heartspring uses cookies to help Heartspring identify and track visitors, their usage of Heartspring website, and their website access preferences. Heartspring visitors who do not wish to have cookies placed on their computers should set their browsers to refuse cookies before using Heartspring’s websites, with the drawback that certain features of Heartspring’s websites may not function properly without the aid of cookies.


Privacy Policy Changes

Although most changes are likely to be minor, Heartspring may change its Privacy Policy from time to time, and in Heartspring’s sole discretion. Heartspring encourages visitors to frequently check this page for any changes to its Privacy Policy. If you have a Heartspring Account, you should also check your profile page for alerts to these changes. Your continued use of this site after any change in this Privacy Policy will constitute your acceptance of such change.

Last updated: 04/2010

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