Privacy PolicyUse of Services As Consent By using a Guadalupe Valley Telephone Cooperative, Inc. and/or its wholly owned subsidiary, Guadalupe Valley Communications systems, LP (collectively "GVTC") web site or subscribing to one or more of our "Services," you agree to our collection and use of your personal information as described in this Privacy Policy. Your continued use of a GVTC site following the posting of any changes to these terms constitutes acceptance of those changes. Collection of Your Personal Information At some GVTC 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, we will ask for additional information, such as your credit card number and billing address, which is used to create a GVTC billing account. In order to access some GVTC Services, you will be asked to sign in with an e-mail address and password, which we refer to as your credentials. As part of creating your credentials, you may also be requested to provide questions and secret answers, which we use to verify your identity and assist in resetting your password, as well as an alternate e-mail address. We may use technologies such as cookies and web beacons (described below), to collect information about the pages you view, the links you click and other actions you take on our sites and Services. Additionally, we 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. Use of Your Personal Information GVTC collects and uses your personal information to operate and improve its sites and Services. The 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 intended to improve our products, services and technologies; and displaying content and advertising that are customized to your interests and preferences. Sharing of Your Personal Information Except as described in this statement, we will not disclose or sell your personal information outside of GVTC and its controlled subsidiaries and affiliates without your consent. We sometimes 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 service providers will be permitted to obtain only the personal information they need to deliver the service they are providing. They are required to maintain the confidentiality of the information and are prohibited from using it for any other purpose. We may access or disclose personal information about you, including the content of your communications, in order to: (a) comply with the law or respond to lawful requests or legal process; (b) protect the rights or property of GVTC or our customers, including the enforcement of our agreements and policies governing your use of the Services; or (c) act on a good faith belief that such access or disclosure is necessary to protect the personal safety of GVTC employees, customers or the public. Display of Advertising We may place advertising on our sites, including advertising on behalf of companies with whom we have a relationship. When we display online advertisements to you, we may place a persistent cookie on your computer in order to recognize your computer each time we display an ad to you. While we may use some of this information to personalize the ads we show you, we have designed our systems to select ads based only on data that does not personally and directly identify you. Security of Your Personal Information GVTC is committed to protecting the security of your personal information. We use a variety of technologies and procedures to help protect your personal information from unauthorized access, use, or disclosure. For example, we store the personal information you provide on computer systems with limited access, which are located in controlled facilities. When we transmit highly confidential information (such as credit card number or password) over the Internet, we protect it through the use of encryption, such as a Secured Socket layer (SSL) protocol. Use of Cookies GVTC may store small data files, called cookies, on your computer when you visit certain Web sites. Cookies allow us to personalize your service by collecting and storing information that will identify you when you visit a site. Cookies also allow us to collect ‘Web Site Usage’ information when you visit our websites, including IP address, Web browser and operating system types, Web pages visited on our Web sites, time spent on our Web pages, and return visits to our Web sites. GVTC may combine the Web Site Usage information with Your Personal Information in order to provide a more customized online experience to you and to market and provide advertising about goods and services that may be of particular interest to you. Use of Web Beacons GVTC 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 which 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. Finally, we may work with other companies that advertise on GVTC 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 GVTC site results in a purchase or other action on the advertiser’s site. Last Revised: 7.14.08 |
