Our legal statement
© PACIFIC URCHIN HARVESTERS ASSOCIATION (PUHA.ORG) All rights reserved.
Copyrights & Trademarks
The information and related graphics published in this Internet site are the sole and exclusive property of the PUHA.ORG unless otherwise noted.
The PUHA.ORG name and logo are proprietary trademarks of PUHA.ORG. No use of any PUHA.ORG trademark, trade names in this Internet site may be made by any other party without express written permission of PUHA.ORG.
Disclaimer
THE INFORMATION CONTAINED ON THIS SITE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" WITHOUT ANY WARRANTIES, EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, OR NON-INFRINGEMENT. PUHA.ORG MAKES NO REPRESENTATION OR WARRANTY THAT THE INFORMATION PRESENTE ON THIS SITE WILL BE TIMELY OR ERROR-FREE. PUHA.ORG HAS NOT REVIEWED ALL THE SITES THAT MAY BE LINKED TO ITS SITES AND DOES NOT ENDORSE AND IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR THE CONTENT OF ANY OFF-SITE PAGES OR ANY OTHER SITES LINKED TO THESE SITES. LINKING TO SUCH SITES IS AT YOUR OWN RISK.
The information presented on this site or broadcast from this site with web site software by PUHA.ORG from PUHA.ORG publications, writings and/or third party books or writings is for information purposes only and is not meant to serve as a substitute for professional medical, legal, or financial advise which should be obtained through consultation with appropriate professionals in your province or state. PUHA.ORG reserves the right to make additions, deletions, or modifications to the information contained on this site at any time without prior notification.
Reference to any product, service, hypertext link to a third party, or other information by trade name, trademark, supplier or otherwise does not constitute or imply its endorsement, sponsorship or recommendation by the PUHA.ORG.
Any opinions, advice, statements, services, offers or other Information supplied to or made available on this web site by third parties are those of the respective author(s), and PUHA.ORG is not responsible for and does not endorse nor guarantee the accuracy or usefulness of such material. PUHA.ORG expressly disclaims any liability associated with such material.
Use of Website
Each person assumes full responsibility and all risks arising from use of this site. Illegal use or abuse of any self-propagating programs on this site will be subject to deletion of entries with no refunds (if applicable) for unused time should there be an offer of posting information for selected or advertised time periods. Any member, individual or corporation disregarding posted legal notices or cease and desist requests will be subject to full legal action as allowed by city, county, provincial/state and/or federal laws.
On-line Conduct
Members and visitors agree to use this web site only for lawful purposes and are prohibited from posting any unlawful, harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, defamatory, obscene or otherwise objectionable material of any kind on this site.
Our privacy policy
A. Overview
In order to operate the PUHA.ORG service and to reduce the risk of fraud, PUHA.ORG ("PUHA.ORG" or "we") must ask you to provide us information about yourself and your credit card and/or bank account. This Privacy Policy describes the information we collect and how we use that information. PUHA.ORG takes the privacy of your personal information very seriously and will use your information only in accordance with the terms of this Privacy Policy. We will not sell or rent your personally identifiable information or a list of our customers to third parties. However, as described in more detail in Part C below, there are limited circumstances in which some of your information will be shared with third parties, under strict restrictions, so it is important for you to review this Privacy Policy. This Privacy Policy applies to all services that are hosted on the PUHA.ORG.com Web site, whether the services are offered by PUHA.ORG, by its subsidiaries.
If you have questions or concerns regarding this Privacy Policy, you should first contact PUHA.ORG using our contact information.
By accepting the Privacy Policy and User Agreement in registration, you expressly consent to our use and disclosure of your personal information in the manner described in this Privacy Policy. This Privacy Policy will take effect on October 4, 2004. This Privacy Policy was last updated on October 1, 2005.
Please note that your personal information will be stored and processed on our computers in the United States and Canada. The laws on holding personal data in the United States and Canada may be less stringent than the laws of your country but PUHA.ORG will hold and transmit your personal information in a safe, confidential and secure environment. If you object to your personal information being transferred or used as described in this Privacy Policy, please do not register for the PUHA.ORG service.
Notification of Changes
This policy may be revised over time as new features are added to the PUHA.ORG service or as we incorporate suggestions from our customers. If we are going to use or disclose your personally identifiable information in a manner materially different from that stated at the time we collected the information, you will have a choice as to whether or not we use or disclose your information in this new manner. Any material changes will be effective only after we provide you by e-mail with at least 30 days' notice of the amended Privacy Policy (if you have closed your PUHA.ORG account, you will not be contacted to notify you of the amended Policy and your personal information will not be used or disclosed in this new manner).
We will post the amended Privacy Policy prominently on our Web site so that you can always review what information we gather, how we might use that information, and whether we will disclose it to anyone. Please check the PUHA.ORG Web site at any time for the most current version of our Privacy Policy.
PUHA.ORG Shops and other pages on the PUHA.ORG Web site include links to third party Web sites. These sites are governed by their own privacy statements, and PUHA.ORG is not responsible for their operations, including but not limited to their information practices. Users submitting information to or through these third party Web sites should review the privacy statement of these sites before providing them with personally identifiable information.
A Special Note About Children. Children are not eligible to use our service and we ask that minors (under the age of 18) do not submit any personal information to us or use the service.
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B. Information We Collect
Required Information
To open a PUHA.ORG account, you must provide your name, address, phone number, and e-mail address.
Information About You From Third Parties
In order to protect all our customers against potential fraud, we verify with third parties the information you provide. In the course of such verification, we receive personally identifiable information about you from such services. In particular, if you register a credit card or debit card with PUHA.ORG, we will use card authorization and fraud screening services to verify that your card information and address matches the information that you supplied to PUHA.ORG, and that the card has not been reported as lost or stolen.
Additional Verification
If we cannot verify the information that you provide, or if you request a withdrawal by check to an address other than your verified credit card billing address, we ask you to send us additional information by fax (such as your drivers' license, credit card statement, and/or a recent utility bill or other information linking you to the applicable address), or to answer additional questions online to help verify your information.
Web Site Traffic Information
Because of the way that World Wide Web communication standards work, when you arrive at or leave the PUHA.ORG Web site, we automatically receive the Web address of the site that you came from or are going to. We also collect information on which pages of our Web site you visit while you are on the PUHA.ORG site, the type of browser you use and the times you access our Web site. We use this information only to try to understand our customers' preferences better and to manage the load on our servers, so as to improve our service and your experience with PUHA.ORG. We do not track the Web sites that you visit before or after you leave the PUHA.ORG site.
Our Use of "Cookies"
"Cookies" are small files of data that reside on your computer and allow us to recognize you as a PUHA.ORG customer if you return to the PUHA.ORG site using the same computer and browser. We send a "session cookie" to your computer if and when you log in to your PUHA.ORG account by entering your e-mail address and password. These cookies allow us to recognize you if you visit multiple pages in our site during the same session, so that you don't need to re-enter your password multiple times. Once you log out or close your browser, these session cookies expire and no longer have any effect.
We also use longer-lasting cookies to display your e-mail address on our sign-in form, so that you don't have to retype the e-mail address each time when you log in to your PUHA.ORG account. In addition, we use cookies to process our referral program, described in Section C below. Our cookie files are encoded so that your e-mail address and other information can only be interpreted by PUHA.ORG. We may, however, share cookie information regarding whether or not a certain user is already registered with PUHA.ORG with certain merchants with whom we have an official co-marketing relationship.
Customer Service Correspondence
If you send us correspondence, including e-mails and faxes, we retain such information in the records of your account. We will also retain customer service correspondence and other correspondence from PUHA.ORG to you. We retain these records in order to measure and improve our customer service, and to investigate potential fraud and violations of our User Agreement. We may, over time, delete these records if permitted by law.
Questionnaires, Surveys and Profile Data
From time to time, we offer optional questionnaires and surveys to our users for such purposes as collecting demographic information or assessing users' interests and needs. The use of the information collected will be explained in detail in the survey itself. If we collect personally identifiable information from our users in these questionnaires and surveys, the users will be given notice of how the information will be used prior to their participation in the survey or questionnaire.
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C. Our Use and Disclosure of Information
Internal Uses
We collect, store and process your personal information on servers located in the United States and Canada. We use the information we collect about you in order 1) to provide our services and process your transactions, 2) to provide customer service, 3) to determine your eligibility to receive offers for special features or products, and 4) to improve our products and services. At your option (as indicated in your PUHA.ORG Profile settings), we use the information you provide to access specific third party services on your behalf and perform the actions that you request us to perform.
We give access to individually identifiable information about our users only to those employees who require it to fulfill customer service requests.
Disclosure to Other PUHA.ORG Customers
If you are buying goods or services and paying through PUHA.ORG, the seller of the goods or services may request that you provide a mailing address that PUHA.ORG has confirmed as matching the billing address in the credit card system. You do not have to provide this information. If you do not provide the information, however, the seller may choose not to accept your PUHA.ORG payment and not to complete the transaction.
Disclosure to Third Parties Other Than PUHA.ORG Customers
PUHA.ORG will not sell or rent any of your personally identifiable information to third parties. PUHA.ORG will not share any of your personally identifiable information with third parties except in the limited circumstances described below, or with your express permission (and with other PUHA.ORG customers as described above). These third parties are limited by law or by contract from using the information for secondary purposes beyond the purposes for which the information is shared.
We share information with companies that help us process the transactions you request and protect our customers' transactions from fraud, such as sharing your credit card number with a service that screens for lost and stolen card numbers.
We may disclose the information we collect, as described in Section B above, to companies that perform marketing services on our behalf. These companies are subject to confidentiality agreements with us and other legal restrictions that prohibit using the information except to market the specified PUHA.ORG-related products or services, unless you have affirmatively agreed or given your prior permission for other uses.
We disclose information that we in good faith believe is appropriate to cooperate in investigations of fraud or other illegal activity, or to conduct investigations of violations of our User Agreement. For example, this means that if we conduct a fraud investigation and conclude that one side has engaged in deceptive practices, we can give that person or entity's contact information (but not bank account or credit card information) to victims who request it.
We disclose information in response to a subpoena, warrant, court order, levy, attachment, order of a court-appointed receiver or other comparable legal process, including subpoenas from private parties in a civil action.
When a user signs up for a co-branded version of PUHA.ORG (e.g. PUHA.ORG Evite) through links to PUHA.ORG from our co-branded partner's website, PUHA.ORG will share with the co-branded partner that user's name, e-mail address and physical address in order to provide enhanced integration between PUHA.ORG's services and the services of our co-branded partner. If you do not want your information shared with PUHA.ORG's co-branded partner, you should sign up with PUHA.ORG directly and not through a link from our partner's website.
We disclose information to your agent or legal representative (such as the holder of a power of attorney that you grant, or a guardian appointed for you).
We share aggregated statistical data with our business partners or for public relations. For example, we may disclose that a specific percentage of our users live in California. However, this aggregated information is not tied to personally identifiable information.
As with any other business, it is possible that PUHA.ORG in the future could merge with or be acquired by another company. If such an acquisition occurs, the successor company would have access to the information maintained by PUHA.ORG, including customer account information, but would continue to be bound by this Privacy Policy unless and until it is amended as described in Section A above.
We share your information with our parent, subsidiaries and joint ventures to help coordinate the services we provide to you, enforce our terms and conditions, and promote trust and safety.
Our Contacts with PUHA.ORG Customers
We communicate with users on a regular basis via e-mail to provide requested services, and we also communicate by phone to resolve customer complaints or investigate suspicious transactions. We use your e-mail address to confirm your opening of a PUHA.ORG account, to send you notice of payments that you send or receive through PUHA.ORG, to send information about important changes to our products and services, and to send notices and other disclosures required by law. Generally, users cannot opt out of these communications, but they will be primarily informational in nature rather than promotional.
In connection with independent audits of our financial statements and operations, the auditors may seek to contact a sample of our customers to confirm that our records are accurate. However, these auditors cannot use personally identifiable information for any secondary purposes.
Internet Address Information
We use IP addresses, browser types and access times to analyze trends, administer the site, improve site performance and gather broad demographic information for aggregate use.
PUHA.ORG does not tolerate spam. Therefore, without limiting the foregoing, you may not add a PUHA.ORG user to your mail list (email or physical mail) without their express consent after adequate disclosure, even if said user has previously made a purchase from you. We strictly enforce our Anti-Spam Policy! To report PUHA.ORG-related spam to PUHA.ORG, please contact us.
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D. Information Security
Information Security
PUHA.ORG is committed to handling your customer information with high standards of information security. Your credit card and bank account information are stored only in encrypted form on computers that are not connected to the Internet. We restrict access to your personally identifiable information to employees who need to know that information in order to provide products or services to you. We maintain physical, electronic and procedural safeguards that comply with federal regulations to guard your nonpublic personal information.
The security of your PUHA.ORG account also relies on your protection of your PUHA.ORG password. You may not share your PUHA.ORG password with anyone. PUHA.ORG will never ask you to send your password or other sensitive information to us in an e-mail, though we may ask you to enter this type of information on the PUHA.ORG website, which will always have a URL beginning with https://www.PUHA.ORG/.
Any e-mail or other communication requesting your password, asking you to provide sensitive account information via email, or linking to a website with a URL that does not begin with https://www.PUHA.ORG/ should be treated as unauthorized and suspicious and should be reported to PUHA.ORG immediately using our contact information . If you do share your PUHA.ORG password with a third party for any reason, including because the third party has promised to provide you additional services such as account aggregation, the third party will have access to your account and your personal information, and you may be responsible for actions taken using your password. If you believe someone else has obtained access to your password, please change it immediately by logging in to your account and changing your Profile settings, and also contact us right away as described in Section F below.
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E. Accessing and Changing Your Information
You can review the personal information you provided us and make any desired changes to such information, or to the settings for your PUHA.ORG account, at any time by logging in to your account on the PUHA.ORG Web site and changing your preferences.
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F. Contacting Us
If you have any questions about this privacy statement, PUHA.ORG's information practices, or your dealings with PUHA.ORG, you can contact us. |