SCOPE This notice provides the full EquiBlocks TM (EquiBlocks) Online Privacy Statement. This notice applies to those EQUIBLOCKS websites and services that display or link to this notice.
Collection of Your Personal Information at some EQUIBLOCKS sites, we ask you to provide personal information, such as your e-mail address, name, home or work address or telephone number. We may also collect demographic information, such as your ZIP code, age, gender, preferences, interests and favorites. If you choose to make a purchase or sign up for a paid subscription service, we will ask for additional information, such as your credit card number and billing address, that is used to create an EQUIBLOCKS billing account. To access some EQUIBLOCKS services, you will be asked to sign in with an e-mail address and password, which we refer to as your credentials. In most cases, these credentials will be part of the EQUIBLOCKS Network credential. You can use the same credentials to sign in to many different EQUIBLOCKS sites and services, as well as those of select EQUIBLOCKS partners. By signing in on one EQUIBLOCKS site or service, you may be automatically signed into other EQUIBLOCKS sites and services. If you access our services via a mobile phone, you may also use your telephone number and a PIN as an alternative credential to your username and password. As part of creating your credentials, you may also be requested to provide questions and secret answers, which we use to help verify your identity and assist in resetting your password, as well as an alternate email address. Some services may require added security, and in these cases, you may be asked to create an additional security key. Finally, a unique ID number will be assigned to your credentials which will be used to identify your credentials and associated information. We may collect information about your visit, including the pages you view, the links you click and other actions taken in connection with EQUIBLOCKS sites and services. We also may deliver advertisements and provide website analytics tools on non-EQUIBLOCKS sites and services, and we may collect information about page views on these third party sites as well. Much of this third party ad delivery is done through our VENDORS, and you may read the Vendor privacy statement at your own discretion. Additionally, we may collect certain standard information that your browser sends to every website you visit, such as your IP address, browser type and language, access times and referring Web site addresses. When you receive newsletters or promotional e-mail from EquiBlocks, we may use web beacons (described below), customized links or similar technologies to determine whether the e-mail has been opened and which links you click in order to provide you more focused e-mail communications or other information. In order to offer you a more consistent and personalized experience in your interactions with EquiBlocks, information collected through one EQUIBLOCKS service may be combined with information obtained through other EQUIBLOCKS services. We may also supplement the information we collect with information obtained from other companies. For example, we may use services from other companies that enable us to derive a general geographic area based on your IP address in order to customize certain services to your geographic area.
Use of Your Personal Information EQUIBLOCKS collects and uses your personal information to operate and improve its sites and deliver the services or carry out the transactions you have requested. These uses may include providing you with more effective customer service; making the sites or services easier to use by eliminating the need for you to repeatedly enter the same information; performing research and analysis aimed at improving our products, services and technologies; and displaying content and advertising that are customized to your interests and preferences. Many of the websites and online services we offer are supported by advertising, and as indicated above, we may use some of the information we collect in order to personalize the ads we show you. However, we designed our systems to select ads based only on data that does not personally and directly identify you. For example, we may select the ads we display according to certain general interest categories or segments that we have inferred based on (a) demographic data, including any you may have provided when creating an account (e.g. age, zip or postal code, gender), general demographic data acquired from other companies, and a general geographic location derived from your IP address, (b) the pages you view and links you click when using EquiBlocks’s and its partners’ web sites and services. When we display personalized ads, we take a number of steps designed to protect your privacy. For example, we store page views, clicks and search terms used for ad personalization separately from your contact information or other data that directly identifies you (such as your name, e-mail address, etc.). Further, we have built in technological and process safeguards designed to prevent the unauthorized correlation of this data. We also use your personal information to communicate with you. We may send certain mandatory service communications such as welcome letters, billing reminders and information on technical service issues. Some EQUIBLOCKS services may send periodic member letters that are considered part of the service. We may also occasionally send you product surveys or promotional mailings to inform you of other products or services available from EQUIBLOCKS and its affiliates. Personal information collected on EQUIBLOCKS sites and services may be stored and processed in Canada and in the United States or any other country in which EQUIBLOCKS or its affiliates, subsidiaries or agents maintain facilities, and by using a EQUIBLOCKS site or service, you consent to any such transfer of information outside of your country.
Sharing of Your Personal Information Except as described in this statement, we will not disclose your personal information outside of EQUIBLOCKS and its controlled subsidiaries and affiliates without your consent. Some EQUIBLOCKS sites allow you to choose to share your personal information with select EQUIBLOCKS partners so that they can contact you about their products, services or offers. Other sites do not share your contact information with third parties for marketing purposes, but instead may give you a choice as to whether you wish to receive communications from EQUIBLOCKS on behalf of external business partners about a partner’s particular offering (without transferring your personal information to the third party). Some EQUIBLOCKS services may be co-branded and offered in conjunction with another company. If you register for or use such services, both EQUIBLOCKS and the other company may receive information collected in conjunction with the co-branded services. We occasionally hire other companies to provide limited services on our behalf, such as handling the processing and delivery of mailings, providing customer support, hosting websites, processing transactions, or performing statistical analysis of our services. Those companies will be permitted to obtain only the personal information they need to deliver the service. They are required to maintain the confidentiality of the information and are prohibited from using it for any other purpose. We may access and/or disclose your personal information if we believe such action is necessary to: (a) comply with the law or legal process served on EquiBlocks; (b) protect and defend the rights or property of EQUIBLOCKS (including the enforcement of our agreements); or (c) act in urgent circumstances to protect the personal safety of users of EQUIBLOCKS services or members of the public.
Accessing Your Personal Information, you may have the ability to view or edit your personal information online if enabled by EQUIBLOCKS. In order to help prevent your personal information from being viewed by others, you will be required to sign in with your credentials (e-mail address and password). The appropriate method(s) for accessing your personal information will depend on which sites or services you have used.
Communication Preferences You can stop the delivery of future promotional e-mail from EQUIBLOCKS sites and services by following the specific instructions in the e-mail you receive. These choices do not apply to the display of online advertising. Nor do they apply to the receipt of mandatory service communications that are considered part of certain EQUIBLOCKS services, which you may receive periodically unless you cancel the service.
Security of Your Personal Information EQUIBLOCKS is committed to protecting the security of your personal information. We use a variety of security technologies and procedures to help protect your personal information from unauthorized access, use, or disclosure. If a password is used to help protect your accounts and personal information, it is your responsibility to keep your password confidential. Do not share this information with anyone. If you are sharing a computer with anyone you should always choose to log out before leaving a site or service to protect access to your information from subsequent users.
Use of Web Beacons EQUIBLOCKS Web pages may contain electronic images known as Web beacons – sometimes called single-pixel gifs – that may be used to assist in delivering cookies on our sites and allow us to count users who have visited those pages and to deliver co-branded services. We may include Web beacons in promotional e-mail messages or our newsletters in order to determine whether messages have been opened and acted upon. EQUIBLOCKS may also employ Web beacons from third parties in order to help us compile aggregated statistics regarding the effectiveness of our promotional campaigns or other operations of our sites. We prohibit Web beacons on our sites from being used by third parties to collect or access your personal information. Finally, we may work with other companies that advertise on EQUIBLOCKS sites to place Web beacons on their sites in order to allow us to develop statistics on how often clicking on an advertisement on a EQUIBLOCKS site results in a purchase or other action on the advertiser’s site.
Advertisements Displayed by Third Parties Online advertisements you see on EQUIBLOCKS Web pages are displayed by EquiBlocks. However, we allow third-party ad serving companies, including ad networks, to display advertisements on EQUIBLOCKS Web pages. Ad serving companies often place a persistent cookie on your computer in order to recognize your computer each time they display an online advertisement to you. Because these companies may serve advertisements on many different websites, they may be able to compile information over time about where you, or others who are using your computer, saw and/or clicked on the advertisements they display. These companies may use this information to make predictions about your characteristics or preferences and to display targeted advertisements that they believe may be of interest to you. They may also associate this information with your subsequent visit, purchase or other activity on participating advertisers’ websites in order to determine the effectiveness of the advertisements.
Controlling Spam or Unsolicited E-mail EQUIBLOCKS is concerned about controlling unsolicited commercial e-mail, or “spam.” EQUIBLOCKS will not sell, lease or rent its e-mail subscriber lists to third parties. While EQUIBLOCKS continues to actively review new technology, such as expanded filtering features, there is no currently available technology that will totally prevent the sending and receiving of unsolicited e-mail. Using junk e-mail tools and being cautious about the sharing of your e-mail address while online will help reduce the amount of unsolicited e-mail you receive.
Enforcement of This Privacy Statement If you have questions regarding this statement, you should first contact us by using our Contact Us form.
Changes to This Privacy Statement We will occasionally update this privacy statement to reflect changes in our services and customer feedback. We encourage you to periodically review this statement to be informed of how EQUIBLOCKS is protecting your information.
Contacting Us EQUIBLOCKS welcomes your comments regarding this privacy statement. If you have questions about this statement or believe that we have not adhered to it, please contact us by using our Contact US form.
