PRIVACY and ETHICS>

PRIVACY and ETHICS [ Terms of Use | Privacy Statement | Home > ]

ACSA and its subsidiaries are committed to respecting and protecting your privacy, ethically. We've structured our web sites so that, in general, you can visit ACSA on the Web without identifying yourself or revealing any personal information. ACSA is a founding sponsor of the ACSA OnLine Privacy Program, the 'standard' for Privacy certification. We proudly display the ACSA OnLine Privacy Logo on our websites.

Once you choose to provide us personally identifiable information (any information by which you can be identified), you can be assured that it will only be used to support your membership relationship with ACSA.

This statement regarding the privacy of the personally identifiable information you provide online covers the five foundation principles of fair information: Awareness, Choice, Accuracy & Access, Security, and Oversight.

Awareness

ACSA provides this Online Privacy Statement to make you aware of our privacy policy, practices and of 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 from the bottom of every ACSA.NET, its subsidiaries' and affiliates' web pages.

Professional Ethics

ACSA standards of Ethical behavior of its volunteers is maintained at the highest level of conduct: we maintain continuous monitoring of the scientific methods and reporting systems and data used by our professionals and scientists in their research, and even employ the monitoring services of Certified Public Accountants and Scientific Standards Monitoring consultants for the purposes of ensuring that our work is always at the highest level. Our Internal Conduct of Science committee regularly evaluates our work, and accepts and reviews complaints, if any, from the public or private sector, investigates then and if required, takes appropriate action to correct the problem.

We are committed to a higher standard than that set forth by any research or scientific University or Organization in the world.

What we collect

On some ACSA web sites, you can order products or services, make requests, and register to receive materials. The types of personal information collected at these pages are name, contact and billing information, transaction, and credit card information which are emailed to our processing center in encrypted form. You supply the personal and business contact information you choose.

In order to tailor our subsequent communications to you and continuously improve our products and services (including registration), we may also ask you to provide us with information regarding your personal or professional interests, demographics, experience with our products, and more detailed contact preferences. Some electronic newsletters record anonymous data about articles you have expressed interest in.

No ACSA.NET web pages use cookies, a data analysis technique.

How we use it

ACSA uses your information to better understand your needs and provide you with better service. Specifically, we use your information to help you complete a transaction, to communicate back to you, to update you on service and benefits, and to personalize our web sites for you. Credit card numbers are used only for payment processing, fraud protection, and are not retained for other purposes.

From time to time, we may also use your information to contact you for market research or to provide you with marketing information we think would be of particular interest. At a minimum, we will always give you the opportunity to opt out of receiving such direct marketing or market research contact. We will also follow local requirements, such as allowing you to opt in before receiving unsolicited contact, where applicable.

Who we share it with

ACSA will not sell, rent, or lease your personally identifiable information to others. Unless we have your permission or are required by law, we will only share the personal data you provide online with other ACSA entities and/or business partners who are acting on our behalf for the uses described in "how we use it". Such ACSA entities and/or business partners, including those in the United States and/or any other countries, are governed by our privacy policies with respect to the use of this data and are bound by the appropriate confidentiality agreements.

Data collected online may also be combined with information you provide when you register your ownership of ACSA products.

Children's Privacy Protection ACSA takes special care to protect the privacy needs of children under the age of 13 and encourages parents to be an active participant in their child's online activities and interests. We abide by the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) requirements. The vast majority of ACSA web sites do not target and are not intended for children under the age of 13. ACSA web sites that do not target children will not knowingly collect data from them. If we discover personal data from a child through an adult oriented site, we will eliminate that data. A very few web sites in ACSA's "Home & Home Office" web section may include children under the age of 13 as part of a broader family audience target. Those specific web pages are clearly identified and provide an explicit privacy notice and processes to obtain parental approval, provide data access and data removal process for parents. ACSA conducts the Annual ACSA Young Writers' Contest from January to early April each year. This contest targets children under the age of 13, grades K-5. Personal data is not collected online. Data collected from children is done so through a printed contest entry form that is mailed or faxed to ACSA care of the contest administrator ACSA Scholastic. Parental approval is required on the contest entry form. No personal data is shared with the contest administrator. Parents wishing to access, review or delete their child's contest entry data should send a request to "Annual ACSA Young Writers' Contest, c/o ACSA, 6 Commerce Drive, Cranford, NJ 07016.

Choice

ACSA will not use or share the personally identifiable information provided to us online in ways unrelated to the ones described above without first letting you know and offering you a choice. As previously stated, we will also provide you the opportunity to let us know if you do not wish to receive unsolicited direct marketing materials from us and we will do everything we can to honor such requests. Local country laws and policies are applied where they differ from those in the U.S.

Your permission is always secured first, should we ever share your information with third parties that are not acting on our behalf and governed by our privacy policy. For example, as part of ACSA's commitment to offering you choice, we enable you to make online purchases directly from us or through our resellers. When you choose our resellers, we inform you that your registration and shopping basket data is being transferred to the reseller you selected. This notice is important because when you choose to make online purchases through our resellers, use of your registration and shopping basket data by the reseller is then governed by their privacy policy. Local country laws and policies are applied where they differ from those in the U.S.

Accuracy & Access

ACSA strives to keep your personally identifiable information accurate. We will provide you with access to your information, including making every effort to provide you with online access to your registration data so that you may view, update or correct your information at the ACSA site where it was submitted. To protect your privacy and security, we will also take reasonable steps to verify your identity before granting you access or enabling you to make corrections. To access your personally identifiable information, return to the web page where you originally entered it and follow the instructions on that web page. To opt-out of ACSA contact, provide your name, email and/or address and relevant information about subscriptions or registrations you may have with ACSA. This opt-out will cancel all marketing and support communication and newsletters, including software driver subscriptions. Certain areas of ACSA's web sites may limit access to specific individuals through the use of passwords and through providing personally data.

Links to third party web sites on the site are provided solely as a convenience to you. If you use these links, you will leave the ACSA site. ACSA has not reviewed all of these third party sites and does not control and is not responsible for any of these sites, their content or their privacy policy. Thus, ACSA does not endorse or make any representations about them, or any information, software or other products or materials found there, or any results that may be obtained from using them. If you decide to access any of the third party sites linked to this site, you do so at your own risk.

Security

ACSA is committed to ensuring the security of your information. To prevent unauthorized access or disclosure, maintain data accuracy, and ensure the appropriate use of information, we have put in place appropriate physical, electronic, and managerial procedures to safeguard and secure the information we collect online. We use encryption when collecting or transferring sensitive data such as credit card information. Preventing credit card fraud is important to protect your personal financial data security. As part of real-time payment processing, ACSA subscribes to a Fraud Risk Management Service. The Service gives you and ACSA an extra level of protection to guard against credit card fraud. The secure data transfer and validation process between the Service and ACSA is bound by contractual and confidentiality agreements.

Oversight

If you have comments or questions about our privacy policy, please email us, and select "Privacy" as your subject category.

As a Founding Sponsor, ACSA participates in the ACSA OnLine Privacy Program, which complies with all BBBOnLine privacy standards and but does not display the BBBOnLine Privacy Seal . We are actively engaged with ACSA OnLine, the EU Data Protection Council and other organizations to develop a global approach to oversight, dispute resolution and a global seal. Further information about BBBOnLine is available at http://www.bbbonline.org. Because of our Charity and Non-Profit status, as we are not a commercial business, we are not members of the Better Business Bureau.

ISP Abuse

ACSA.NET and ACSA are members of the IAN (Internet Anti-abuse Network) which has a goal of preventing abuse of the Internet by website providers, operators and servers. For more information, see http://www.ispabuse.net.

How ACSA uses cookies

A cookie is a piece of text asking permission to be placed on your computer's hard drive. If you agree, then your browser adds the text in a small file. The purpose of a cookie is to help us analyze web traffic or let us know when you visit a particular site. Cookies allow a web application to respond to you as an individual. By gathering and remembering information about your preferences, the web application can tailor its operation to your needs, likes and dislikes. For example, when you visit an electronic store, a cookie makes it easy to shop by allowing you to drop things into a shopping cart; the cart itself is not the cookie, the cookie is placed on your hard drive and keeps track of your cart versus others' in use at the same time.

ACSA does not use cookies on its website.

You may set your web browser (Microsoft Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator) to notify you of cookie placement requests or decline cookies completely. You can delete the files that contains cookies; those files are stored as part of your internet browser.