Carbon Offsets To Alleviate Poverty (“COTAP” or “we”) is committed to protecting your privacy and ensuring you have a positive experience on the Website. We take privacy seriously and we value yours. This site (“Website” or “Site”) is owned by COTAP. This privacy policy (“Privacy Policy” or “Policy”) outlines our practices regarding collection, use, and disclosure of information that you may provide via the Website. This Policy is applicable worldwide. By using this Site, you agree to the terms of this Privacy Policy. If you have additional questions, you may send an email to privacy@cotap.org.
Your Consent
By using this Site, you agree to the terms of this Privacy Policy. Whenever you submit information via this Site, you consent to the collection, use, and disclosure of that information according to the terms of this Privacy Policy.
Personal Information Collection
Personal information is any information about you that is personally identifiable, such as your name, address, e-mail address or telephone number. The only personally identifying information that we collect and store about you is the information that you choose to provide to us. When COTAP collects any personal information on the Website, we will express our need for the personal data at the point of collection. Personal information is any information that can be used to identify an individual, and may include, name, email address, postal or other physical address, title, occupation, and other information required to carry out a transaction or activity you have requested. Some of the reasons we collect your personal information include:
- Email newsletter signup: Our Site’s registration form requires users to provide us with personal information, such as name, address, and e-mail address. COTAP’s email list is administered by Mail Chimp, a third party email marketing firm, but is never shared. To view Mail Chimp’s privacy policy as it pertains to your email address on our list, see section IV: “Your Distribution Lists” at: https://www.intuit.com/privacy/statement/
- Customer testimonials/Providing online feedback: COTAP welcomes feedback on your experience with our products. Our Site’s form for providing feedback allows users to choose to provide their name and email address, along with any other information, including, testimonials, complaints or comments that you provide in the feedback. When you submit such comments, you consent to the use, collection and/or disclosure of such information.
- Carbon footprint: We consider an individual’s personal carbon footprint to be private identifiable information, and we therefore will not disclose such information unless that individual specifically consents to such disclosure or chooses to publish or share such information, including through a testimonial on their experience with COTAP or by sharing information about their COTAP donation on social media websites such as Facebook. In the absence of such consent or disclosure, an individual’s carbon footprint will be protected as personal information under this Privacy Policy.
Aggregate Information Collection
We may collect aggregate information by monitoring the use of the Site through web server logs and cookies. Cookies tell us nothing about you personally, but allow us to customize the Site to better meet your needs. Cookies cannot pass on viruses, harm your computer or pass on private information such as an e-mail address without your intervention. If you are uncomfortable about cookies, you should be able to disable your web browser from accepting cookies or to alert you before accepting cookies.
Uses of your Personal Information
We use the personal information that you choose to provide us for purposes such as:
- Sending you information about COTAP: We will use your contact information to send you our newsletters, updates on the specific COTAP project(s) in relation which you have matched your carbon footprint, and other information that we think you might be interested in regarding our products and services or that relate to the donation that you have made.
- Processing payments: We will use your personal information to process payments (e.g., a donation transaction).
- Responding to testimonials/feedback: We listen closely to what our users tell us and use your feedback to improve our services. We will use your personal information to respond to the feedback, comments or complaints that you may provide COTAP.
- Calculating carbon footprint: We use the information you provide to calculate your carbon footprint and we use your carbon footprint solely for information purposes to suggest and guide you towards an appropriate donation amount. COTAP counts the carbon footprints of its donors in order to accurately match donors with specific projects and to ensure that the required quantities of tonnes are retired on our donors’ behalf.
Sharing your Personal Information
We do not sell or rent your personal information to third-parties for or purposes other than those described in this Policy without first obtaining your consent. We may share personal information with third party vendors, consultants and other service providers who work with us to operate the Website and our business and who need access to such information. For example, we may use credit card processing companies to process payments. When you make payments on the Website, we will pass you through to Google Donate/Checkout, which will ask you to input personal information such as your name, e-mail address, billing address, delivery address, telephone number, credit card or other payment information and a password. This information is then stored by Google Checkout. You can read the Google Checkout privacy policy by visiting https://policies.google.com/privacy
COTAP reserves the right to disclose your personally identifiable information as required by law and when we believe that disclosure is necessary to protect our rights and/or comply with a judicial proceeding, court order or legal process. This may include disclosing personal information when we are required to, or we have a good-faith belief it is appropriate to comply with the law (e.g., a lawful subpoena, warrant or court order); to enforce or apply this Privacy Policy or our other policies or agreements; to initiate, render, bill, and collect for amounts owed to us; to protect COTAP or our customers’ rights, property or safety; to protect our customers from fraudulent, abusive, or unlawful use of, our Site; or if we believe that an emergency involving immediate danger of death or serious physical injury to any person requires disclosure of personal information.
Security of Personal Information
Security for all personally identifiable information is extremely important to us. We take appropriate security measures to protect against unauthorized access to or unauthorized alteration, disclosure or destruction of data. When we transfer sensitive personal data (for example, credit card information) over the Internet, we protect it using Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption technology. While we strive to protect your personal information, we cannot ensure the security of the information you transmit. We recommend you to take every precaution in protecting your personal information when you are on the Internet. For example, change your passwords often, use a combination of letters and numbers when creating passwords, and make sure you use a secure browser. While we try our best to safeguard your personal information once we receive it, no transmission of data over the Internet or any other public network can be guaranteed to be 100% secure.
Non-personal Information
When you visit the Website, you may be providing us with aggregate information about your use of the Site as well as personal information. Aggregate information does not identify you personally but allows us to understand how our Site is used by visitors. COTAP may share aggregated information with certain third parties without your authorization. Similar to many websites, if a website user has enabled cookies in their browser, COTAP, independently and through enabled third party tools and programs, collects certain technical information utilizing a cookie file, such as the path of users to the Website, pages visited, originating IP address, browser type, browser language, and the date and time of the user’s visit. This information helps COTAP track trends and improve areas of our Website based on visits, and are common analytics used by most websites. Third party vendors may use cookies to serve ads based on prior visits to the Website. No personally identifiable information is collected by these cookies. You can opt out of third party vendor’s cookies at any time by visiting this page: http://www.networkadvertising.org/managing/opt_out.asp
Linked websites
Our Website may provide links to other third-party websites which are outside our control and not covered by this Policy. If you follow any links which remove you from our Website, (including, but not limited to, links to social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter and links to online articles and resources provided in the COTAP blog), this Privacy Policy no longer applies – i.e., COTAP does not control the privacy policies or the privacy practices of any third parties and use of those third party sites are governed by those third party sites’ respective terms of use and privacy policies. COTAP is not responsible under this Privacy Policy for the privacy policies or practices of any third party. We encourage you to review the privacy policies posted on these sites.
COTAP Blog
The COTAP blog is a public forum. Information that is intended to be made public, including postings in the blog or any other interactive areas of the Website or other information is not considered personal information under this Policy. Please consider this before posting material to such forums.
Children’s Privacy
The Website is designed for users who are above the age of 18. COTAP does not intentionally solicit or collect personal information about children who are under the age of 18. If you are under 18 and would like to use our Website, please ask your parent or guardian for assistance.
COTAP recommends that parents or guardians do not post, or permit others to post, any personally identifiable information of anyone under the age of 18.
We encourage parents to talk to their children about their use of the internet and the information they disclose on websites. Here are a few tips to help make a child’s online experience safer:
- Teach children never to give personal information (such as name, address, phone number, school, etc.) unless supervised by a parent or responsible adult.
- Know the sites your children are visiting and which sites are appropriate.
- Look for website privacy policies. Know how your child’s information is treated.
Changes to this Privacy Policy
COTAP reserves the right, at our discretion, to change, modify, add, or remove portions of this Policy at any time. If any changes are made, COTAP will reflect the date on which any such changes are made and posted by updating the “last updated” date at the top of the page. We encourage you to check this page periodically for changes in this Privacy Policy. Your continued use of our Website following the posting of changes to these terms will mean you accept those changes.
Version 1.0: July 21, 2011
