PRIVACY POLICY

We at Erie County Historical Society respect your privacy. This statement is our privacy policy, which discloses our information practices. It describes:

* What personally identifiable information of yours (information from which someone may personally identify you) is collected from you through our Web site
* What personally identifiable information of a third party (such as your Internet Service Provider) is collected from you through our Web site
* The organization or company that is collecting the information
* How the information is used
* With whom the information may be shared
* What choices you have regarding collection, use and distribution of the information
* The kind of security procedures that are in place to protect the loss, misuse or alteration of information under our control
* How you can correct any inaccuracies in the information

If you believe that we are not abiding by our posted privacy policy, you should contact our Privacy Patrol by e-mailing your concern to ECHS@ErieCountyHistory.org

Information Collection
Erie County Historical Society collects information from our users in several areas of our Web site as described in this privacy policy.

Registration
This Web site includes a registration form for you to provide information to us. You are required to give us information so that we may contact you (such as your name and e-mail address). We use this information to contact you about the services on our site for which you have expressed an interest. In order to provide you with a more personalized experience on our site, we give you an opportunity to provide demographic information (such as income level and gender) and unique information that identifies you (such as your social security number).

Newsletter
If you wish to subscribe to our newsletter, we ask for contact information such as your name and e-mail address.

Order Forms
We request information from you on our order form. You must provide contact information (such as name and shipping address) and financial information (such as credit card number and expiration date). This information is used to fill your orders and for billing purposes. If we have trouble processing your order, we use this contact information to get in touch with you.

Surveys & Contests
From time to time our site requests information from you to conduct surveys or contests. Participation in these surveys or contests is completely voluntary. Therefore, you have a choice whether or not to disclose the information. This information may include contact information (such as name and address) and demographic information (such as age or zip code). Unless otherwise stated near the information form, we use survey information to monitor or improve our site and contest information to notify the winners and award prizes.

Tell a Friend
If you elect to use our referral service to inform a friend about our site, we ask your friend for his or her name and e-mail address. We automatically send the friend a one-time e-mail inviting him or her to visit our site. We store this information for the sole purpose of sending this one-time e-mail. The friend may contact us at ECHS@ErieCountyHistory.org to request removal of this information from our database.

Cookies
A cookie is a message that the server for our Web site gives to your Web browser. Your browser stores the message in a file called cookie.txt. Each time the browser requests a page from the server, a message is sent back to the server. Purposes for cookies include identifying users and preparing customized Web pages for them. When you fill out a form on our site, this information is packaged into a cookie and sent to your browser. It’s stored for later use. The next time you visit our site, your browser will send the cookie to the server, which can use the information to present you with a more personalized experience. For instance, the site may greet you by your name or remember your username when you begin to fill out a form.

If you reject the cookie, you may still use our site; however, you may only receive limited information in some areas of the site.

Some of our business partners, such as advertisers, use cookies on our site. We have no access to these cookies or control over them.

Log Files
We use Internet Protocol (IP) addresses to analyze trends, administer the site, track a user’s movement and gather broad demographic information for aggregate use. “Aggregate use” means that information from all users is collected and gathered into a whole unit so that information as a whole can be used. We do not link IP addresses to personally identifiable information.

Special Offers
When you complete our registration form, we send you a welcoming e-mail to verify your password and username. You may occasionally receive information on products, services and special deals. We offer you the option to discontinue receiving these communications by “opting out” of receiving promotional offers and material.

Site and Service Updates
We send you update announcements that contain important information about our site and services. If you register on our site, you may not discontinue receiving these announcements unless you choose to delete your registration information and discontinue using our site. We will communicate with your regarding your account through e-mail or the telephone.

Information Use
Erie County Historical Society is the sole owner of the information collected on this site. We will not share, sell or rent this information to others in any way other than as disclosed in this policy or stated at the point where the information is collected.

Sharing
We will share aggregated demographic information with our partners and advertisers. This information is not linked to any personal information that can identify any individual person.

We use a credit card processing company to bill for goods and services and an outside shipping company to ship orders. These companies do not use, share, retain or store personally identifiable information for any purposes other than to process the transaction or to ship the order.

We partner with other companies and individuals to provide specific services. When you sign up for these services, we will share your name or other contact information 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.

Your Choice to Opt-Out
You have the opportunity to “opt-out” of having your information used for purposes not directly related to our site at the point where we ask you for the information. For example, our order form has an opt-out box. If you want to buy a product from us, but you do not want to receive future promotional e-mails or marketing material, you simply check the box to opt-out of the group receiving such e-mails.

If you no longer wish to receive promotional material from our partners, you may opt-out of this group by responding to the “unsubscribe” e-mail link or by e-mailing us at ECHS@ErieCounty History.org.

We notify you when your information is being collected by any outside parties. You may then make an informed choice as to whether or not you would like to continue receiving services that require an outside party.

Correcting and Updating Personal Information
If any of your personally identifiable information changes or if you no longer wish to use our service, we will offer you a way to correct, update or remove your personal data that you have provided to us. Usually this can be done on the member information page or by e-mailing us at ECHS@ErieCountyHistory.org.

Security
We want to protect your information. When you submit sensitive information on our Web site, your information is protected online and off-line.

When you provide sensitive information on our site (such as credit card number or social security number), that information is encrypted and protected with encryption software. While you are on a secure page, such as our order form page, the lock icon on the bottom of Web browsers such as Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer becomes locked.

While we use encryption software to protect sensitive information online, we also use our best efforts to protect your information off-line. All of our users’ information, not just the sensitive information, is restricted in our offices. Only employees who need the information to perform a specific job (such as our billing clerk or customer service representative) are granted access to personally identifiable information. Our employees must use password-protected screen savers when they leave their desk. The servers on which we store personally identifiable information are kept in a secure environment behind a locked cage.

If you have any questions about the security for our Web site, please e-mail us at ECHS@Erie CountyHistory.org.

Links
This Web site contains links to other Web sites. We are not responsible for the privacy practices of the other sites. We encourage you to read the privacy statements of each and every Web site that collects personally identifiable information. This privacy policy applies solely to information collected by this Web site.

Notification of Changes
If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post those changes on our Home Page so you will always be aware of what information we collect, how we use it and under what circumstances, if any, we disclose it. If we decide to use personally identifiable information in a manner different from that stated at the time it was collected, we will notify you by e-mail. You will have the choice to allow us to use the information in this different manner. We will use information according to the privacy policy posted at the time the information was collected.