Last Modified September 2023
Your privacy is important to us. To better protect your privacy, we provide this notice explaining our online information practices and the choices you can make about how your information is collected and used. This Privacy Policy (“Policy”) applies to all our activities, including, but not limited to our brands' websites, and all other websites, mobile sites, services, applications, platforms and tools where this Policy appears or is linked (collectively, our "Website"). As used in this Policy, HelpLink shall be referred to as “HelpLink”, “us” “our”, and “we”.
This Policy is to inform you about how we collect, use, share, and protect personal information. Please take a minute to read this Policy so that you can better understand our Website information practices. Any reference to our Website includes its e-mail, text, live chat, and other electronic messages. If you have questions about this Policy, please contact us as described in the Contact Us section below.
By providing information to us (by any means, whether in correspondence, via our Website or otherwise) you consent to our use of the information you provide in accordance with this Policy. If you do not agree with this Policy or our practices, you may not use our Website. This Policy may change from time to time and your continued use of our Website constitutes your acceptance of those changes. We encourage you to review this Policy periodically.
Please note that participation in the Website is primarily a public activity. Much of the information you post to our Website (whether directly through our site or via links with other social networking websites) is instantly publicly viewable. Therefore, you should not submit any information that you consider confidential. We maintain the privacy of your email address, phone number, and password provided to us in the registration process (unless you enter such information as your username in the text of your entries to user areas). Still, other information you provide should be considered non-confidential and available for viewing by others.
Also, please note that information provided through Facebook or other social networks, or for publication on company pages, mobile apps, or websites may be subject to different privacy policies, which may vary materially from these terms applying to our web sites.
If you are a California resident, please also see the “California Residents” section below, for further information on our collection and use of your information.
We will collect and use the following personal information by which you may be personally identified:
Personal information also includes information about an individual’s activities, such as information about his or her activity within our Website, and demographic information, gender, family, geographic area, and preferences, when any of this information is linked to personal information that identifies that individual.
Additionally, when you visit our Website or interact with our related tools, widgets or plug-ins, we may collect some basic information by automated means such as cookies, web beacons and web server logs. The information we collect in this manner may include your browser type, IP address, Internet service provider’s domain name, which pages you accessed on our Website, and when, unique device identifier, browser characteristics, domain and other system settings, search queries, device characteristics, operating system type, language preferences, referring URLs, actions taken on our Website, dates and times of Website visits, metadata and other information associated with other files stored on your device. Through these automated collection methods, we obtain "clickstream data," which is a log of the links and other content on which a visitor clicks while browsing a website. We may link certain data elements we have collected through automated means, such as your browser information, with other information we have obtained about you for the purposes described below, and to let us know, for example, whether you have opened an email we sent to you. While you can change your cookies settings in your browser, please note, however, that without cookies you may not be able to use all of the features of our Website.
We may use cookies on our site to remember your preferences.
Personal information you provide to us about yourself or that we collect and infer based upon your entries and interactions with our Website may be used:
Any information gathered by us is used to customize the experience for you, the user, and is not shared or sold to any third parties, except as expressly provided for in this Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use Agreement. We may share personal information with service providers who perform services on our behalf (“Third Party Providers”). These Third Party Providers are permitted to use or disclose the information only as necessary to perform services on our behalf or comply with legal requirements. Examples of these service provider include entities that process credit card payments, manage and reduce our credit risk, verify information, fulfill orders, and provide web hosting, analytics and marketing services. We may also share any suggestions, ideas, proposals, comments, questions, feedback or other information (“Feedback”) which may contain personal information with other users of our Website for promotional purposes, including as testimonials with your permission.
The personal information that you provide will be available to us and our agents, representatives, co-branding partners, franchisees and licensees (collectively, the “Affiliated Parties”). By submitting personal information, you grant to the Affiliated Parties and the Third-Party Providers a license to use such personal information for the purposes described in this section. The Affiliated Parties and Third-Party Providers may also use your personal information, alone or in combination with the information submitted by other users, to improve Website navigation or infrastructure, in internal marketing analyses or reviews, and for other administrative purposes.
Additionally, we may provide customized or targeted advertisements to you based on your personal information (including usage statistics and characteristics). If you do not wish to receive these types of communications or allow an Affiliated Party to use your Personal Information in such a manner, please contact us in the manner identified in the "Opt-Out" section below.
Further, we may release your personal information if we are required to do so by law or court order or if we believe in good faith that such release is necessary or appropriate to protect the rights, property, or safety of our company, customers, affiliates, or others. We may also share information or data in a form that cannot be used to uniquely identify or contact an individual person ("non-personal information"). We may collect, use, transfer, and disclose this non-personal information for any purposes. Non-personal information that we collect may include information regarding your activities on the Website, which may be aggregated and used to help us provide more useful information to our customers and to understand which parts of the Website are of most interest.
To prevent unauthorized access and maintain data accuracy, we use industry-standard methods to safeguard and secure the information we collect online. We take all the appropriate steps to protect personally identifiable information from loss, misuse, and unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration, or destruction. However, you recognize that data transmitted online or stored in a facility where online access is provided cannot be made to be 100% secure. In particular, email sent to or from websites may not be secure. We believe in protecting your information just as we would want our information protected.
In the event that personal information is compromised as a result of a breach of security, we will promptly notify those persons whose personal information has been compromised as may be required by applicable law.
Please note that the information you enter for your user profile or in your posts may be accessed and viewed publicly. Therefore you should not post information that you consider confidential or do not want to distribute openly. Although in some areas you will have the ability to edit or delete information, please note that even this information may have been cached on servers, cut and pasted, or otherwise incorporated into other posts or for other uses. So once data is posted, you should consider that it may be publicly available perpetually, and in different locations or media than your original submission.
We will retain your personal information for as long as your account is active or as needed to provide you services. If you close your account, we will retain your personal information for a period where it is necessary to continue operating our business effectively, to maintain a record of your transactions for reporting purposes until this purpose no longer exists, and to retain as necessary to comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes and enforce our agreements.
It is our policy to provide notifications, whether such notifications are required by law or are for marketing or other business-related purposes, to our users via email notice, written or hard copy notice, or through conspicuous posting of such notice on our Website, as determined by us in our sole discretion. Notwithstanding the preceding, we reserve the right to determine the form and means of providing notifications to our users.
You may modify your communication preferences or opt-out from specific communications at any time. Please specify and adjust your preferences in the email communicated to you or by emailing us at hello@helplink.org.
Our website is not intended for use by children under the age of 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under the age of 13. If you are under 13 do not use our Website or provide any information about yourself including, without limitation, your name, address, email address or any screen name or user name you may use. If we learn that we have collected or received personal information from a child under 13 without verification of parental consent, in compliance with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, we will purge such information from our database and cancel the corresponding accounts. If you believe that we may have any information from or about a child under 13, please contact us at the address below. Please visit the FTC's website at www.ftc.gov for tips on protecting children's privacy online.
If you are a California resident, you may have certain rights related to the personal information we have collected from you, which may or may not be granted based on the circumstances, but only in compliance with applicable law. These rights may include the following under the California Civil Code Sections 1798.100, 1798.105, 1798.110, 1798.115, and 1798.125:
To exercise these rights, you or your authorized agent can follow the steps provided in Section 14, below, or reach out to us at hello@helplink.org with your request. If you contact us direct, please include your full name and email address along with why you are writing so that we can process your request in a timely manner. We aim to respond to a consumer request for access or deletion within 30 days of receiving that request. If we require more time, we will inform you of the reason and extension period in writing.
In accordance with applicable law, you may have a right to access, modify, correct, and request that HelpLink internally delete any personal information provided to or obtained by HelpLink.
You can access, modify, correct, update, or delete your personal information that we collect online and maintain by logging in to your account. Alternatively, you may contact hello@helplink.org for updates, modifications, corrections, or deletions of your personal information or request access to your personal information. We use this procedure to safeguard your information better. You may not be able to edit or delete past entries and data collected regarding previous updates.
To protect your privacy and security, we will also take reasonable steps to verify your identity before granting access or making corrections. The main form of identity management is your phone number. Please always use a valid and up-to-date phone number that can receive SMS messaging.
If you update, change or correct any Personal Information, we may keep copies of your personal information before such update, modification, or a correction for uses provided for in this Policy.
HelpLink will endeavor to respond to your request promptly. However, the personal information you have published on Facebook or other social channels may remain available even if you request that HelpLink internally deletes such information.
We will modify this Policy if our privacy practices change. We will notify you of such changes by posting the modified version on our Website and indicating the date it was last modified, and, if the changes are significant, we will provide a more prominent notice (including by email in certain instances). The date this Policy was last modified is as first stated above.
Should you have other questions or concerns about these privacy policies, please send us an email at hello@helplink.org.
