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Privacy Policy

SWANA is concerned about maintaining your privacy. Collecting certain information about our members, customers and vendors is vital to our ability to continue to delivery high quality products at reasonable cost.

To ensure that our association is doing everything possible to appropriately use the information that we do collect, we have established this privacy notice. Any questions regarding this notice should be directed to the Information Technology Department at 800-GO SWANA (467-9262) or by email at it@SWANA.org.

Privacy Policy Table of Contents

What Information Does SWANA Collect About You?

SWANA collects the following types of information in the course of business with the association:

General Contact Information

  • Name
  • Company Affiliation
  • Address
  • Phone and Fax numbers
  • E-mail Address

Financial Information

  • Credit card or check information when used for making payments

Information Specific to SWANA

  • The chapter(s) that you belong to (if member)
  • Any positions of responsibility that you have held in your chapter or the association at large (if member)
  • Profile information (i.e. the areas that you are involved in such as recycling)
  • Events that you have registered for in the past, including payment information
  • Any products that you ordered, including payment information
  • Any SWANA awards won
  • Any donations made for our scholarship program, advocacy efforts, or other causes
  • Your certification status (if SWANA certified or with a pending application)

Information Specific to Your Visit to our Website

  • IP Address
  • Browser Type
  • Domain Name
  • Referring Web Site Address
  • Links that you have accessed
  • Cookies

Cookies

SWANA collects cookies on our Web site to capture information about page visits. This information is anonymous and SWANA uses this information only internally—to deliver the most effective content to our visitors. Information from the cookies is used to gauge page popularity, analyze traffic patterns on our site and guide development of other improvements to our site. SWANA does not require that you accept cookies, however, some functionality on our website, our product or service check-out process, and products and services may be disabled if you decline to accept cookies. You can set your browser to notify you when you receive a cookie, giving you the chance to decide whether or not to accept it. You may also change your cookie settings through preferences options in our products and/or services, where applicable.

SWANA never gives away information about our users. If you choose to e-mail us and provide personally identifiable information about yourself, SWANA will use this information only to respond to your inquiry. SWANA will not sell, rent or otherwise disclose that information to third parties unless such disclosure is necessary for the purposes set forth in this Policy, by law or a policy or notice contained or associated with a specific SWANA product or service.

SWANA uses analytics data and tracking pixels to serve remarketing ads based on a user's prior visits to our website. Site visitors may be assured that these tracking efforts do not collect personally identifiable data. Site visitors may opt out of personalized ads on Google services and Facebook by adjusting the Ad Settings of their Google and Facebook accounts. Users can also review how SWANA serves remarketing ads (and can opt out of being tracked) by visiting https://privacy.feathr.co.

How SWANA Obtains This Information

SWANA obtains the information described above in variety of ways:

Information That Our Users Volunteer

We collect information via traditional forms that users complete and cause to be delivered to our offices. We also collect similar information through forms that users fill out when completing an online transaction. These forms perform a wide variety of functions that include, but are not limited to:

  • Registering for an event
  • Ordering a product
  • Providing access to the members only section of our web site

Registration forms will indicate what information is required and what information (if any) is optional. This information may be collected during registration or in connection with specific activities, for example, signing up for a newsletter, or answering a survey.

SWANA hosts message and/or bulletin boards. Registration may be required in order to participate in these activities.

Information That Is Collected Automatically

Certain information related to visiting our web sites are collected automatically. The specific information collected is delineated in a previous section of this notice.

Information That Is Provided to Us

We receive information from our network of Chapters. We also receive similar information from vendors and customers and other parties in accordance with that partner’s privacy policy.

A Note About Using Our Website

You can visit SWANA websites without giving us any personally identifiable information. However, some areas require additional personal information (such as logins and passwords) in order to access.

A Note About Placing an Order

Individuals may provide credit card information when making purchases online. Individuals who would prefer not to provide a credit card number online may either place their order over the phone or complete an order form and mail it to our offices with payment.

What Does SWANA Do with the Information We Collect?

Your information is used in a variety of ways that include:

  • Fulfilling your requests, orders and registrations
  • To display or send custom, personalized content to our website visitors and to send newsletters, mail, e-mails, promotional material, surveys and other updates, information or offers. Individuals user may, at any time, opt out of receiving such information.
  • We also use collected information to evaluate and administer our products and services. This includes our response to any problems that may arise, such as difficulties in navigating our site or accessing certain features, as well as to gauge user trends to determine what products and services are most popular.

How Does SWANA Share Your Information?

  1. Contact information is available on the online Membership Directory. In your Membership Profile members may select the contact information that will displayed about them.
  2. Contact information is available to vendors that we utilize to perform various functions that range from hosting our web site to processing large mailings.
  3. Aggregate information that is not member-specific is available in reports that we prepare for advertisers and sponsors, as well as our promotional and business partners.

We share your contact information with third parties only as described below.

SWANA, Its Chapters and Vendors

SWANA staff and designated officials from each Chapter may access contact information that you provide for internal marketing purposes, including sending you notices of membership renewal deadlines as well as new publications, services or products we offer likely to be of interest. The designated Chapter officials are required to limit the use of the information to official Chapter purposes and may not use it for personal or private business purposes. Violation of this requirement will lead to being removed from the list of approved users.

All companies working for SWANA (Vendors must comply with our information collection, use and disclosure policies, and are not permitted to sell your information to third parties or to use it except as authorized by us and you, or as permitted or required by law.

Credit Card Companies

As in any transaction, your credit card company will have all relevant information about the name of the vendor, item(s) purchased, and date and total cost. To facilitate orders and registrations, SWANA will cache your order information, and create an authorization with a merchant account (i.e., your credit card company). SWANA will not otherwise provide any personal data to your credit card company. Credit card charges will appear on your statement as being from SWANA.

Advertisers

We may share anonymous, aggregate (not member-specific) demographic, and anonymous information with advertisers. This information may be obtained from cookies (packet of information to identify a registered user) and similar technologies. No personally identifiable information is disclosed to any of these third parties in providing these reports. Credit card numbers, bank account numbers, and passwords are not shared with advertisers, sponsors or promotional partners, and are used by SWANA only to fulfill a purchase or registration.

Third Parties

SWANA will, from time to time at its sole discretion, rent its mailing list to carefully screened companies that we believe may provide a benefit to SWANA or its members. When we do, we have approved in advance the use of the mailing list and any material being to be sent. In addition, your contact information is not sent directly to this third party. All information is sent to an approved and bonded mailing house that handles all production for the mailing and destroys all information from SWANA immediately after it is used for this one mailing.

You can elect not to receive these mailings by following the directions in the section entitled “How Can you Control your Contact Information?”

A Note About E-mail and the Internet

Your e-mail address is not shared with third parties. Your e-mail address however is available to the officers of the chapters you are affiliated with. In addition, your e-mail address is also available through the member directory in our members only website.

To prevent your e-mail address from appearing in our member directory, simply follow the instructions in in the section entitled “How Can you Control your Contact Information?”

You should be aware that if you voluntarily disclose information, personal or otherwise, online in any community area (whether through the SWANA website or any other service available online), that information can be collected and used by others. For example, someone who sees your e-mail address on a message sent as part of our list services may send you an unsolicited e-mail.

A Note About Other Disclosures as Required by Law or Other Purposes

SWANA reserves the right to use or disclose any information without notice or consent as needed to satisfy any law, regulation or legal request; to conduct investigations of consumer complaints or possible breaches of law; to protect the integrity of our site and our property; to protect the safety of our visitors or others; to fulfill your requests; or to cooperate in any legal investigation. Nevertheless, we will attempt to notify any member, registrant or attendee with respect to whom we have disclosed information in response to a formal or official request. Unless otherwise directed by court order and subject to lawful authority, such information will be limited to General Contact Information (I.A.1-5).

How Can You Control Your Contact Information?

SWANA offers several ways for you to update your contact information or change your preferences.

  1. Members are able to log in to the Members Only section of our website and update or change their contact or account information. Check the site for further information.
  2. You may unsubscribe to any of our online e-mail updates by following the unsubscribe instructions in the body of any message.
  3. To update your contact information or ask that we not share your personal contact information with third parties you may write to us at: SWANA, Member Services Department, 1100 Wayne Avenue, Silver Spring, MD 20910. In those instances, we will retain your information in a “do not promote” file in our database.
  4. You may control the information displayed in your member directory listing by logging on to our members only site and changing this setting within your personal record.
  5. You may also e-mail us at membership@swana.org.

We will take reasonable steps to implement your opt-out requests promptly, but you may still receive promotional information from us by mail for up to 60 days due to printing and mailing schedules, and up to 15 days for e-mail.

Security of Your Personal Information

SWANA uses Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) technology to encrypt important information, such as your credit card data, in an effort to prevent unauthorized access during transmission of your orders over the Internet. We incorporate standard industry practices internally and with our service providers suitable to the degree of sensitivity of the information involved to maintain the security of your personal information and to avoid its disclosure except as described in this policy.

Your personal information may also be protected by the password you created when you logged onto our members-only section of our web site. The confidentiality of any password is yours to protect. You may change it anytime by following the instructions at the website.

We use our best efforts to assure that your data remains secure when maintained by on the SWANA website. SWANA employees are made aware of its privacy practices through periodic communications and training. We store data on multiple service systems, in controlled, secure environments. To maintain the highest level of security, we conduct internal reviews of our security measures on a regular basis.

In section 10.3 of the SWANA bylaws it states that “a Chapter shall be subject to such requirements as are set forth in the Policy Manual.” This includes conformance with this Privacy Notice.

Contact your Chapter directly with any questions you might have about how that Chapter gathers and retains your information.

Links

SWANA may offer links from our website to sites operated by third parties. We offer links to third party sites so that you can conveniently visit our vendors and advertisers or locate other content likely to be of interest. We are not responsible for the content, practices or policies of sites operated by third parties and urge you to inquire about them before providing any personally-identifiable information.

Visitors and Subscribers Outside the United States

Our websites and the servers that make these sites available worldwide are located in the United States. All matters relating to these sites are governed by the laws of the State of Maryland in the United States. Any information you provide will be transferred to the United States. By visiting our sites and submitting information, you authorize this transfer, processing and use.

Changes to our Privacy Notice

We will occasionally update this Privacy Notice as necessary to protect our users and to comply with a changing environment. We recommend that you check the notice when you visit our site to be sure you are aware of and understand our current policy. If we make material changes to this notice or in how we will use or collect your personally identifiable information, we will prominently post such changes prior to implementing the change. We will not make material changes in how we handle previously collected personal information that have retroactive effect unless legally required to do so and we will e-mail registered website visitors information on material changes to this notice.

SWANA Contact Information

Questions about this Privacy Notice or privacy practices at SWANA should be emailed to it@SWANA.org. Please include the URL of the website and/or name of the publication involved in your request.

You may contact us by mail at:

SWANA
8484 Georgia Avenue, Suite 230
Silver Spring, Maryland 20910

You may fax us at: (301) 589-7068
Att: IT Department

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