Privacy Policy

Our company is dedicated to your privacy.

Our organization is Voices for Independence, licensed in Pennsylvania, USA.

Our address is 1432 Wilkins Rd., Erie, PA 16505

Our primary website is www.vficil.org.

What personal data we collect and why we collect it

Our website collects and stores the minimum amount of personal data necessary to give users a high-quality experience. Specifically, the following information may be collected and/or stored.

Comments

When visitors leave comments on the site we collect the data shown in the comments form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection.

To improve user experience, comments may be connected to one of two services; Gravatar and Facebook. This is done to determine if there is a Gravatar or Facebook account associated with your email address and give the option of importing selected information from your profile, including your profile photo.

The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/

Facebook’s privacy policy is available here: https://www.facebook.com/policy.php

Media

User submitted images and other media may contain meta-information. It is the responsibility of the user to remove any personally identifiable meta-information prior to submission.

Contact forms

Contact forms collect the information requested within the form as well as the user’s IP address and time and date of form submission.

Cookies

If you leave a comment on our site you may opt-in to saving your name, email address and website in cookies. These are for your convenience so that you do not have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment. These cookies will last for one year.

If you visit our login page, we will set a temporary cookie to determine if your browser accepts cookies. This cookie contains no personal data and is discarded when you close your browser.

When you log in, we will also set up several cookies to save your login information and your screen display choices. Login cookies last for two days, and screen options cookies last for a year. If you select “Remember Me”, your login will persist for two weeks. If you log out of your account, the login cookies will be removed.

If you edit or publish an article, an additional cookie will be saved in your browser. This cookie includes no personal data and simply indicates the post ID of the article you just edited. It expires after 1 day.

Embedded content from other websites

Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.

These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.

Analytics

This website uses Google Analytics for visitor data analysis. You can access the privacy policy for Google and its products here: https://policies.google.com/privacy

Who we share your data with

The only data shared with third party organizations are specific to fulfillment of contracted services. Data is only stored temporarily for a maximum of 30 days beyond completion of contracted services.

How long we retain your data

If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognize and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.

For users that register on our website (if any), we also store the personal information they provide in their user profile. All users can see, edit, or delete their personal information at any time (except they cannot change their username). Website administrators can also see and edit that information.

What rights you have over your data

If you have an account on this site, or have left comments, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.

Where we send your data

Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service.

Data Protection Officer

A Data Protection Officer is responsible for all requests related to data collection, storage, updating, and removal. All requests will receive a response within three business days.

You may contact the Data Protection Officer in one of three ways:

by mail:

Data Protection Officer: Mediastead, LLC.

by telephone: + 1-215-253-3737

by email: privacy-dpo@mediastead.com

How we protect your data

All of our websites have an up-to-date SSL certificate. We also maintain strict PCI compliance.

Customer and corporate data is secured through several third-party providers. Links to privacy policies for these providers:

Amazon AWS: https://aws.amazon.com/privacy/

Fiserv: https://merchants.fiserv.com/en-us/privacy/

MailChimp: https://mailchimp.com/legal/privacy/

DropBox: https://www.dropbox.com/privacy

What data breach procedures we have in place

In the event of a data breach, any affected, or potentially affected, visitors or customers will be notified within 72 hours via email.

Data breach protocols include giving as much information as possible to those affected without obstructing ongoing investigations into the breach.

In the event of a data breach, information about the breach, but not personally identifiable customer information will be provided to law enforcement as needed.

The Data Protection Officer will also give an assessment of the potential risk as well as specific instructions to mitigate that risk.

We reserve the right to make necessary changes to customer accounts to prevent the possibility of a data breach, including requiring strong passwords or requiring a reset of passwords upon next visit.

Are you GDPR compliant?

Yes. While currently GDPR standards are only applicable to customers in the EU, we have decided to use the standards universally. All visitors and customers may make requests for update and/or removal of personal data at any time by contacting our Data Protection Officer.