Privacy Policy

Privacy Policy

Our Commitment to Privacy
Your privacy is important to us. To better protect your privacy, we provide this notice explaining our online information practices and the choices you can make about the way your information is collected and used. To make this notice easy to find, we make it available on our homepage and at every point where personally identifiable information may be requested. Our privacy policy is designed to inform you of the following:

• What information we collect;
• With whom it is shared;
• How it can be corrected;
• How it is secured;
• How policy changes will be communicated; and
• How to address concerns over misuse of personal data.

Information Collection, Use, and Sharing
Pacific H.E.L.P.S. (“Pacific HELPS”) is the sole owner of the information collected on this site. We will not sell, share, or rent this information to others in ways differently than we have disclosed in this statement. We only have access to/collect information that you voluntarily give us via email, online forms, or other direct contact from you. We will not sell or rent this information to anyone.

Examples of the types of nonpublic personal information collected at these pages are:

• Name
• Address
• Web address
• Email address
• Phone Number
• Credit/Debit Card Information
• Checking Account Information
• Social Security Number
• Federal Tax ID/Employer Identification Number(EIN)
• Other Donor Information
We will use your information to respond to you regarding the reason you contacted us. We will not share your information with any third party outside of our organization, other than as we have disclosed in this statement. We only disclose personal information about you to the following types of nonaffiliated third parties: Financial services providers, such as companies engaged in banking, credit cards, and consumer finance.

We may also share the information we collect, as described above, with other nonaffiliated third parties such as third parties who may assist us in preparing monthly statements, and credit reporting agencies to whom we report information about your transactions with us.

Please be advised that any opt out rights described below will not apply to the sharing of information necessary for us to to perform services that you request or to comply with financial and/or IRS requirements.
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Unless you ask us not to, we may contact you via email in the future to tell you about new projects, status of existing projects, or changes to this privacy policy.

Your Access to and Control Over Information
You may opt out of any future contacts from us at any time. You can do the following at any time by contacting us via the email address or phone number provided on our website:
• See what data we have about you, if any.
• Change/correct any data we have about you.
• Have us delete any data we have about you, except that we may retain a copy of your data for our use in preparing monthly statements and other financial reports.
• Express any concern you have about our use of your data.

Registration
In order to donate through this website, a user must first complete the registration form. During registration a user is required to give certain information (such as name, email address, and financial information). This information is used to process your donation and to contact you about the status of project(s) to which you may have donated and to inform you of additional projects undertaken by Pacific HELPS.  At your option, you may also provide additional information (such as gender or age) about yourself, but it is not required.

Donations
We request information from you on our registration form. To donate to Pacific HELPS and receive a tax benefit, you must provide certain contact information (like name and address) and financial information (like credit card number, expiration date, social security number). This information is used for billing purposes and to fulfill your donation. If we have trouble processing a donation, we’ll use this information to contact you.

Sharing
We partner with another party to provide specific services, such as processing donations. When the user signs up for these services or donates to Pacific HELPS, we will share names, or other contact and financial infsormation 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.

Security
This website takes precautions to protect our users’ information. When users submit sensitive information via the website, your information is protected both online and off-line. When our donation form asks users to enter sensitive information (such as credit card number, social security number, and/or Federal Tax ID), that information is encrypted and is protected with SSL encryption software. While on a secure page, such as our donation 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 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 treasurer or Chief Financial Officer) are granted access to personally identifiable information. Any employee of Pacific HELPS that utilizes a computer in one or more of our offices 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 door or cage.
If you have any questions about the security at our website, you can send an email to info@pacifichelps.org.

Cookies
We use “cookies” on this site. A cookie is a piece of data stored on a site visitor’s hard drive to help us improve your access to our site and identify repeat visitors to our site. For instance, when we use a cookie to identify you, you would not have to log in a password more than once, thereby saving time while on our site. Cookies can also enable us to track and target the interests of our users to enhance their experience on our site. Usage of a cookie is in no way linked to any personally identifiable information on our site.

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.

Links
This web site contains links to other sites. Please be aware that we are not responsible for the content or 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 any other site that collects personally identifiable information.
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 or US mailing so as to enable users to “opt-out” if we use their information in this different manner. We will use information in accordance with the privacy policy under which the information was collected.
Opt-out requirements:
You may request that Pacific HELPS no longer communicate with you regarding its activities or solicit donations from you by sending an email to us at info@pacifichelps.org. In the email you send us to opt-out from any further communications or solicitations, you are required to type the text “Opt-out” in the subject line and provide us with your full name and address in the body of the email.  Upon receipt of your email, we will remove your personally identifiable information from our database, with the exception of that information necessary to fulfill our requirements related to monthly and/or annual reports. We will no longer contact you to solicit donations or to provide you with information regarding Pacific HELPS activities.
As provided in this policy, we only provide your nonpublic personal information to a nonaffiliated third party in conjunction with the services that you have requested that we provide. All nonaffiliated third parties to whom we disclose your nonpublic personal information are prohibited from disclosing or using the information other than to carry out the transactions that you have requested. Accordingly, there is nothing for a user to opt out of with respect to how these nonaffiliated third parties use their non-public personal information.
Other Provisions as Required by Law
Numerous other provisions and/or practices may be required as a result of laws, international treaties, or industry practices. It is up to you to determine what additional practices must be followed and/or what additional disclosures are required. Please take special notice of the California Online Privacy Protection Act (CalOPPA), which is frequently amended and now includes a disclosure requirement for “Do Not Track” signals.
If you feel that we are not abiding by this privacy policy, you should contact us immediately via telephone at 770-851-9526 or via email at info@pacifichelps.org.