Website Visitors
Except as described below, the DirectEmployers Foundation (hereafter, “the Foundation”) does not collect or require visitors to its websites to furnish personally identifying information such as names, email addresses, and phone numbers. Like most website operators, the Foundation does collect non-personally identifying information of the sort that web browsers and servers typically make available, such as the browser type, operating system, language preference, referring site and date and time of each visitor request. The Foundation also collects potentially-personally identifying information like Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, which are non-personally identifying in and of themselves but could be used in conjunction with other information to personally identify users.
The Foundation's purpose in collecting this information is to better understand how the Foundation's visitors use its websites. To that end, the Foundation may share potentially-personally identifying information with its employees, contractors, service providers, and subsidiaries and related organizations. The Foundation may also release its results of such analyses of non-personally identifying information about visitors by publishing a report on website usage trends. Otherwise, the Foundation will not publicly release potentially-personally identifying information except under the same circumstances as the Foundation releases personally identifying information. Those circumstances are explained below.
Community Members
Certain members of the Foundation community (contributors, customers, etc.) choose to interact with the Foundation in ways that require the Foundation and others to know more about them. The amount and type of information that the Foundation gathers from those members depends on the nature of the interaction. For example, members who wish to post content to certain portions of the Foundation's websites or participate in live chat session(s) are asked to provide usernames that are used to identify content as having been posted by a particular member (who is identified by the username).
Developers, by comparison, are asked to provide contact information, up to and sometimes including telephone or fax numbers, so that they can be contacted as necessary. Typically, developers will be contacted by email, IRC (internet relay chat), or IM (instant messaging services). However, in the event of a time-sensitive question relating to the work the developer is doing in connection with the Foundation and where other means of contact have failed, a developer’s phone number or fax number may be used to contact the developer. This information is available to the Foundation employees, contractors, subsidiaries, and potentially to other members of the community. A developer can choose not to provide a phone number or fax number. On occasion, developers and other community members are contacted by email and asked for a physical address or geographic location so that they may be sent the Foundation-related t-shirts and other promotional materials or invited to an event or other the Foundation-related gathering. In such cases, the purpose for which their physical address is sought will be made explicit.
Customers of the Foundation stores (which sell merchandise and other items on behalf of the Foundation) are asked to provide even more information, including billing and shipping addresses and credit card or similar information to third party vendors so that their transactions can be processed and fulfilled by the Foundation or a third-party fulfillment vendor. However, we cannot guarantee that this list is always up to date.
We also permit community members to provide their names and email addresses so that they can have a more direct engagement with the Foundation and so that the Foundation can send them information related to the Foundation, such as educational material, promotional and cross-promotional material, surveys to be completed, messages about the Foundation Foundation, events information, and other such information and materials. These are opt-in interactions where community members affirmatively sign-up for inclusion in a direct communication with the Foundation (and with an ability to unsubscribe/opt-out on any email received). These campaigns may be conducted with the help of a third-party customer relationship manager to help us manage the database of information and its analysis and use, in each case such third party’s involvement with all the data collected will be solely on the Foundation’s behalf. As part of these marketing campaigns, we might also ask you to provide demographic information such as gender, age, job or role, country, geographic location, and areas of interest. If we ask you for this information, we will use it to customize our communication with you and to better understand those interested in the Foundation and its products. As part of these marketing campaigns, we may collect a campaign source ID, marketing campaign ID, and a campaign referrer ID. These types of information are used so that we may better understand your interests and the effectiveness of particular marketing campaigns. We may also use this information to customize our communications with you.
Our websites also may provide a means for candidates to apply on-line for employment with the Foundation. Applicants for employment with the Foundation are required to provide contact information, including name, street address, telephone number, and email address, as well as resume information. We use this information to process and evaluate the application for employment, and to communicate with the applicant about employment opportunities. If we elect to make an offer of employment, this information may become part of the employee file and may be used for other employment and work-related purposes. The Foundation uses an outside service provider to assist us with online job applications and the application process generally. You can view a list of the service provider(s) here. It is our policy to require any such service providers to contractually commit to the Foundation to (a) only use applicant data for the purpose of fulfilling obligations to the Foundation in providing the services and (b) not disclose the information to third parties.
The Foundation is an open organization that believes in sharing as much information as possible about its products, its operations and its associations. Accordingly, community members should assume - as should most folks who interact with the Foundation - that any personally identifying information provided to the Foundation will be made available to the public. There are four broad exceptions to that rule:
- The Foundation does not publicly release information gathered in connection with commercial transactions (i.e., transactions involving money), including transactions conducted through the Foundation Foundation Store or donations to the Foundation Foundation.
- The Foundation does not publicly release personally identifying information collected in connection with an application for employment with the Foundation.
- The Foundation does not make publicly available information that is used to authenticate users the publication of which would compromise the security of the Foundation's websites (e.g., passwords).
- The Foundation does not make publicly available information that it specifically promises at the time of collection to maintain in confidence.
Outside those four contexts, users should assume that personally identifying information provided through the Foundation's websites will be made available to the public.
Children
The Foundation's websites are not directed to individuals under the age of thirteen (13), and we request that such individuals do not provide personally identifying information through our websites.
Interactive Product Features
Certain the Foundation products contain features that report, or that permit users to report, the user's usage patterns and problems - whether caused by the Foundation's software, third-party software, or third-party websites - to the Foundation. The reports generated by these features typically include non-personally identifying information such as the configuration of the user's computer and the code running at the time the problem occurred.
Some of these features give users the option of providing personally identifying information, though none of these features require it. Some the Foundation software features that do permit users to provide personally identifying information advise, in advance, that such information will not be made publicly available. The Foundation analyzes the information provided by these interactive product features to develop a better understanding of how its products are performing and being used. It does not use the information to track the usage of its products by identifiable individuals.
Protection of Certain Personally-Identifying Information
Where the Foundation has collected personally identifying information subject to one of the four exceptions described in the Community Members section, above, it discloses that information only to those of its employees, contractors, service providers, and subsidiaries and related organizations that need to know that information in order to process it on the Foundation's behalf and that have agreed not to disclose it to others. The Foundation may need to transfer personally identifying information to an affiliate or successor in the event of a change of our corporate structure or status, such as in the event of a restructuring, sale, or bankruptcy. We will retain any personally identifying information for the period necessary to fulfill the purposes outlined in this privacy policy. The Foundation does not rent or sell personally identifying information to anyone.
Security
The Foundation undertakes a range of security measures including physical access restraints, technical security monitoring, and internal security reviews of the environment to help to protect your personal information from unauthorized access, alteration, disclosure, or destruction. We also have policies in place to prohibit employees from viewing personal information without business justification.
Updating of Personally-Identifying Information
You may request access, correction, or deletion of your personally identifiable information or potentially personally identifiable information, as permitted by law. The Foundation will seek to comply with such requests, provided that we have sufficient information to identify the personally identifiable information or potentially personally identifiable information related to you. To do so, users should look for links or contact information available on whichever the Foundation websites store the relevant information or contact the Foundation by using one of the email addresses listed on our contact page.
Cookies and Clear GIFs
What Are 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. Most major websites use cookies. Because the browser provides this cookie information to the website at each visit, cookies serve as a sort of label that allows a website to "recognize" a browser when it returns to the site. The domain name in the Foundation cookies will clearly identify their affiliation with the Foundation and, where applicable, its third-party service provider.
What Are Clear GIFs? Clear gifs (also known as web beacons) are used in combination with cookies to help website operators understand how visitors interact with their websites. A clear gif is typically a transparent graphic image (usually 1 pixel x 1 pixel) that is placed on a site. The use of a clear gif allows the site to measure the actions of the visitor opening the page that contains the clear gif. It makes it easier to follow and record the activities of a recognized browser, such as the path of pages visited at a website.
How We Use Cookies and Clear GIFs. the Foundation's websites use cookies to help the Foundation identify and track visitors, their usage of the Foundation websites, and their website access preferences across multiple requests and visits to the Foundation's websites. Our websites, and advertisements that the Foundation may run occasionally on thirdparty advertising networks, also may use clear gifs for these purposes. The basic idea is to gather aggregate data about how people use the Foundation websites. The term usually used to describe this is "web analytics" and the cookies and clear gifs are the tools by which a website owner collects this web analytics data.
The Foundation will use the web analytics data only to determine aggregate usage patterns for our websites as described above. The Foundation websites do this by using either our own internal analytics software or by sending this information to a third-party service provider to help the Foundation analyze this data. The Foundation has agreements with its third-party service providers that they will not share this information with others or use the information for purposes other than to maintain the services they provide to the Foundation. It is possible to link cookies and clear gifs to personally identifying information, thereby permitting website operators, including our third-party analytics providers, to track the online movements of particular individuals. The Foundation does not do so and its third-party service providers are not allowed to correlate the Foundation data with any other data.
The Foundation uses the information provided by cookies and clear gifs to develop a better understanding of how the Foundation's visitors use the Foundation's websites, and to facilitate those visitors' interactions with the Foundation's websites. The Foundation may make the aggregate data obtained from web analytics (including from our third-party analytics providers, if applicable) publicly available. If this data is made available, none of the information will be personally identifying information or potentially-personally identifying information.
Other Third Party Cookies. Content from other sources that is hosted on the Foundation websites may sometimes contain cookies that send information to those third parties. In certain cases, often associated with embedded content such as YouTube videos and other site linking buttons, a third party cookie may be set by the 3rd party content or provider. In these cases, the privacy policy of the 3rd party governs with respect to information that may be collected by and sent to the respective 3rd party. If you are concerned about these third party cookies, please see the information below on how to decline cookies.
How to Control the Use of Cookies. You have the ability to accept or decline cookies. The Foundation visitors who do not wish to have cookies placed on their computers by the Foundation, its contractors, or third-party service providers should set their browsers to refuse cookies before linking to the Foundation's websites. Certain features of the Foundation's websites may not function properly without the aid of cookies.
Opt-out Procedures
If you signed up to receive but no longer wish to receive electronic marketing communications from the Foundation, you can opt-out from receiving these communications by following the “unsubscribe” instructions in any such communication you receive.
The Foundation Ads
The Foundation places advertisements from time to time on third party websites to introduce people to our products and services, to encourage people to contribute to our community-based activities, and to sign up to receive communications from the Foundation. We stand by our online advertising practices and aim to provide full transparency and control over how our ads appear and function.
Some advertisements associated with this site may use cookies. Cookies are text files that your web browser places on your computer when you visit a website and can be used to store information about your activity. When you view the Foundation's advertisements on third party sites where we advertise, cookies from these campaigns provide information to us that is used to help measure and improve performance of our advertising. We do not use cookies to save data that identifies you personally such as your name, address, credit card number or other confidential information, nor do we capture behavioral data to personalize future ads or create targeting profiles about you.
Most browsers accept cookies automatically, but they can be configured not to accept them or to indicate when a cookie is being set (seehttp://www.allaboutcookies.org/manage-cookies/).
Legal Process and Other Disclosures
Consistent with our privacy commitments, we will scrutinize third party requests for information about you for compliance with the law, including those coming from governmental agencies or civil litigants. We may access, use, preserve or disclose information about you only when we have a good faith belief that it is reasonably necessary to do so to satisfy the applicable law, regulation, legal process or lawful governmental request of any country, or to protect the rights, property or safety of the Foundation, its users or the public. We will provide notice of legal process or governmental requests unless prohibited to do so by law or the circumstances warrant otherwise.
Privacy Policy Changes
By using the websites, you agree to the terms and conditions of this privacy policy. If you do not agree to the terms and conditions of this privacy policy, please do not use the websites. The Foundation may change its Privacy Policy from time to time. Any and all changes will be reflected on this page.
-->
