Brighter Planet

Privacy policy

Introduction

This Privacy Policy is effective as of November 1, 2007. Brighter Planet is the owner of the information collected on the Brighter Planet website. Brighter Planet collects personally identifiable information from our users at several different points on our website.

What personally identifiable information is collected?

Registration

In order to use certain services on our website, you must first create a user name and password. During registration you give contact information (such as name and email address). We use this information to contact you about Brighter Planet products or services, and to share with selected third parties, unless you tell us that you don’t want us to share your information.

Links to Application Forms

Some of the products and services we offer require you to fill out an application form on the website of a Brighter Planet partner. In these cases, we will provide a link on our website to the application form. An application form may require that you provide certain personally identifiable information, including your name, address, phone number, etc.

The information you enter on an application form is collected and used in accordance with the policies of the website where that application form is located.

Carbon Profiler Service

You have the opportunity to participate in the Brighter Planet Carbon Profiler service. If you participate, we will request certain personally identifiable information from you. Participation in the Carbon Profiler service is completely voluntary and you therefore have a choice whether or not to disclose this information. Use of other Brighter Planet products and services does not require participation in the Carbon Profiler service. The requested information typically includes contact information (such as name and street address) and demographic information (such as household size). We use this information to customize and enhance your Brighter Planet Carbon Profiler experience.

Tell-A-Friend

If you choose to use our referral service to tell a friend about our site, we will ask you for your friend’s name and email address. Brighter Planet will not share your friend’s information with any other party. We will automatically send your friend an email inviting him or her to visit the site.

Your friend may contact us at to request that we remove this information from our mailing list.

Supplementation of Information

In order to have a better understanding of your preferences, we supplement the information that you provide to us, using industry-standard cookies and log files. If you have purchased products or services from us, we record your purchasing history. We also include data from third-party sources, such as market research.

Information Sharing and Disclosure

Aggregate Information (non-personally identifiable)

We share aggregate demographic information about our user base with our partners. This aggregate information does not identify individual users.

We do not link aggregate information with personally identifiable information.

Personally identifiable information

We share personally identifiable information with our bank partner for use in its marketing efforts. This information includes name, email address, postal address, and phone number if available.

When a customer uses or purchases a product or service from us that is provided by a third party (such as our bank partner or its affiliates), we share personally identifiable information with that third party. This means your first and last name, postal address and, when available, telephone numbers (including area codes) and e-mail addresses.

We do not store credit card information on our servers. When you link your credit card, we store a non-personally identifiable number on our servers that is used to link your account with our bank partner.

We do not share personally identifiable information with third parties other than service providers and as described elsewhere in this policy, except when when a customer gives us permission. Please see the “Choice and Opt-out” section.

We use industry-standard precautions while transferring personally identifiable information.

Legal Disclaimer

We reserve the right to disclose your personally identifiable information as required by law and when we believe that disclosure is necessary to protect our rights and/or to comply with a judicial proceeding, court order, or legal process served on us.

Security

Keeping personally identifiable information secure is one of our most important responsibilities. We maintain physical, electronic and procedural safeguards to protect personally identifiable information. Appropriate employees are authorized to access personally identifiable information for business purposes only. We use industry standards to protect the personal information submitted to us, both during transmission and once we receive it.

How is personally identifiable information used?

Product availability

We will occasionally send you information on the availability of our products and services for your use and/or purchase.

Out of respect for your privacy, we provide you a way to unsubscribe. Please see the “Choice and Opt-out” section.

Newsletters

If you wish to subscribe to our newsletter(s), we will use your name and email address to send the newsletter to you. Subscription to this newsletter is for adults of age 18 and older.

Out of respect for your privacy, we provide you a way to unsubscribe. Please see the “Choice and Opt-out” section.

Environmental Advocacy Campaigns

As climate change is an urgent issue that requires vigilance and action, we will periodically send you an email offering the opportunity to participate in a Brighter Planet environmental advocacy campaign. This email will give you the opportunity to sign up for that campaign. These emails may include messages from our partners, but will be sent by Brighter Planet or a service provider under contract to us. If you choose to participate in a campaign, your personally identifiable information may be shared with the partner, as described in the campaign email.

Customer Service

Based upon the personally identifiable information you provide us, we will send you a welcoming email to verify your handle and password (with reminders if necessary). We will also communicate with you in response to your inquiries, to provide the services you request, and to manage your account.

Aggregate Information

We aggregate certain parts of all of the data that we collect to obtain a demographic profile of our membership. We may occasionally present this information on our site (e.g., to show what city has the most customers). We also use this information for new product development.

Choice and Opt-out

Certain products or services purchased by a customer may be enhanced by the availability of personally identifiable information to us or to third parties. In such cases, the customer has the choice to provide us with this information and/or to specify his/her desire to share this information with third parties.

Customers may also wish to specify that the information they provide to us is not to be shared or used in certain ways. For example, if you purchase a product/service but do not wish to receive any additional marketing material from us, you will be able to indicate this preference to us on your Profile page.

Customers may opt-out of the sharing of their information, either by using an automatic Internet-based form that will be available to the customer upon the disclosure of his/her information or by contacting us at or by postal mail.

Links to Other Sites

Our website contains links to other sites that are not owned or controlled by Brighter Planet. Please be aware that we, Brighter Planet, are not responsible for the privacy practices of other sites.

We encourage you to be aware when you leave our site and to read the privacy statements of each and every website that collects personally identifiable information.

This privacy statement applies only to information collected by this website.

Changes in this Privacy Statement

If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post those changes to this privacy statement, the homepage, and other places we deem appropriate so that you are aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances, if any, we disclose it.

We reserve the right to modify this privacy statement at any time, so please review it frequently. If we make material changes to this policy, we will notify you here, by email, or by means of a notice on our home page.