Our Commitment to Privacy
Updated Aug 2023
Our Privacy Policy was developed as an extension of our commitment to combine the highest-quality products and services with the highest level of integrity in dealing with our clients and partners. The Policy is designed to assist you in understanding how we collect, use and safeguard the personal information you provide to us and to assist you in making informed decisions when using our site and our products and services. This statement will be continuously assessed against new technologies, business practices and our customers' needs.
What Information Do We Collect?
How Can You Edit or Delete Your Personal Information?
How Do We Use the Information That You Provide to Us?
What Are Cookies, and How Do We Use Them?
Data Retention and Erasure
Notice of Breach of Security
Do-Not-Track Procedures
How Do We Protect Your Information?
Do We Disclose Information to Outside Parties?
Changes to This Policy
Your Consent
How to Contact Us
What Information Do We Collect?
When you visit one of our websites you may provide us with two types of information: personal information you knowingly choose to disclose that is collected on an individual basis and website use information collected on an aggregate basis as you and others browse our sites.
1. Personal Information You Choose to Provide
Credit Card Information
If you choose to purchase products or services from us, you may need to give personal information and authorization to obtain information from various credit services. For example, you may need to provide the following information:
- Name
- Mailing address
- Email address
- Credit card number
- Business phone number
- Other personal information
See below for information about how we keep your credit card information secure.
Email Information
In addition to providing the foregoing information to us, if you choose to correspond further with us through email, we may retain the content of your email messages together with your email address and our responses. We provide the same protections for these electronic communications that we employ in the maintenance of information received by mail and telephone.
2. Website Use Information
Similar to other commercial websites, our websites utilize a standard technology called "cookies" (see explanation below) and web server logs to collect information about how our websites are used. Information gathered through cookies and web server logs may include the date and time of visits, the pages viewed, time spent at our site(s), the IP address of your internet service provider, and the websites visited just before and just after our sites. This information is collected on an aggregate basis. None of this information is associated with you as an individual.
How Can You Edit or Delete Your Personal Information?
If you have an entry-submission account on one of our websites, you may login to that account at any time, access your Profile and make and save the changes you wish. If you wish to delete your entry-submission account and all of the information associated with it, you may do that as well after logging into your account. You may also email any changes you wish to make, or your request for account deletion, to [email protected].
If you have a judging account on one of our websites, you may login to that account at any time, access your Profile and make and save the changes you wish. If you wish to delete your judging account and all of the information associated with it, you may do that as well after logging into your account. You may also email any changes you wish to make, or your request for account deletion, to [email protected].
If you subscribed to one or more of our email lists, by filling out one or more entry-kit-request or newsletter-subscription forms on one or more of our websites, you may unsubscribe from any or all of those lists by clicking the unsubscribe link at the bottom of any email message served to subscribers of said list. You may also access your email-list profile through that link and delete all of your information from our subscription lists, if you choose. Your may also email your request for deletion of your information from our email lists to [email protected].
If you subscribed to one or more of the entry-deadline-reminder-by-text-message services of our awards programs, you may unsubscribe from any or all of those by clicking the unsubscribe link in any text message sent to subscribers of said list. You may also email your request for deletion of your information from our text-message lists to [email protected].
How Do We Use the Information That You Provide to Us?
Broadly speaking, we use personal information for purposes of administering our awards programs, providing customer service and making available other products and services to our customers and prospective customers. Occasionally, we may also use the information we collect to notify you about important changes to our websites, new services and special offers we think you will find valuable. The lists used to send you product and service offers are developed and managed under our traditional corporate standards designed to safeguard the security and privacy of our customers’ personal information. As a customer, you will be given the opportunity to opt out of receiving these offers at any time
We also do not market to, or knowingly collect personal information from, children under the age of 13 on our websites.
We may use vendors to carry out certain functions in marketing and delivering services to you (such as processing nominations and sending you nomination fulfillment information), and so share online data with those vendors to the extent necessary for them to perform their work. Of course, such partners and vendors must use that personally-identifiable information only for the purpose(s) for which it was shared and protect it from any further use. We also share such information with other industry and credit-related organizations to improve operations and to protect against fraud, security and credit risks.
We also provide personally-identifiable online information in response to subpoenas and other legal demands, and where we believe that disclosing this information is necessary to identify, contact or bring legal action against individuals who may be endangering public safety or interfering with our property or services, or with our customers' or others' use of them.
What Are Cookies, and How Do We Use Them?
Cookies are a feature of web browser software that allows web servers to recognize the computer used to access a website. Cookies are small pieces of data that are stored by a user’s web browser on the user’s hard drive. Cookies can remember what information a user accesses on one web page to simplify subsequent interactions with that website by the same user or to use the information to streamline the user’s transactions on related web pages. This makes it easier for a user to move from web page to web page and to complete commercial transactions over the Internet. Cookies should make your online experience easier and more personalized.
How Do We Use Information We Collect from Cookies?
We use website browser software tools such as cookies and web server logs to gather information about our website users’ browsing activities, in order to constantly improve our websites and better serve our customers. This information assists us to design and arrange our web pages in the most user-friendly manner and to continually improve our websites to better meet the needs of our customers and prospective customers.
Cookies help us collect important business and technical statistics. The information in the cookies lets us trace the paths followed by users to our websites as they move from one page to another. Web server logs allow us to count how many people visit our websites and evaluate our sites' visitor capacity. We do not use these technologies to capture your individual email address or any personally identifying information about you.
Information we collect may be retained for as long as needed to fulfill legitimate business purposes, or for a period of time specifically required or allowed by applicable regulation or laws. If you no longer want us to use your information to provide services to you, you can withdraw your consent or request that we erase your information by contacting [email protected]. Please note that if you request erasure of your information, we may retain some of your information as necessary for our legitimate business interests, such as fraud detection and prevention, and to comply with our legal obligations. We will respond to your request to exercise these rights within a reasonable time (and in all cases within 30 days of receiving a request).
We do not store your credit card information on our servers and only use such information to complete your transactions on our websites. All credit card transactions are processed by our third party payment processors, including Heartland Payment Systems, Paypal, Stripe and WePay.
Notice of Breach of Security
If a security breach causes an unauthorized intrusion into our system that materially affects your information, then we will notify you as soon as possible and later report the action we took in response.
Do-Not-Track Procedures
Note that any Do-Not-Track instructions from your browser or similar mechanism will not affect our collection of the data that you voluntarily provide to us through such means as browsing our websites, signing up for any of our services, or entering personal information on our websites.
How Do We Protect Your Information?
Information Security. We utilize encryption/security software to safeguard the confidentiality of personal information we collect from unauthorized access or disclosure and accidental loss, alteration or destruction.
Evaluation of Information Protection Practices. Periodically, our operations and business practices are reviewed for compliance with corporate policies and procedures governing the security, confidentiality and quality of our information.
Employee Access, Training and Expectations. Our corporate values, ethical standards, policies and practices are committed to the protection of customer information. In general, our business practices limit employee access to confidential information, and limit the use and disclosure of such information to authorized persons, processes and transactions.
Do We Disclose Information to Outside Parties?
We may provide aggregate information about our customers, sales, website traffic patterns and related website information to our sponsors or reputable third parties, but this information will not include personally identifying data, except as otherwise provided in this Privacy Policy.
What About Legally Compelled Disclosure of Information?
We may disclose information when legally compelled to do so, in other words, when we, in good faith, believe that the law requires it or for the protection of our legal rights.
What About Other Websites Linked to Our Websites?
We are not responsible for the practices employed by websites linked to or from one or more of our websites nor the information or content contained therein. Often links to other websites are provided solely as pointers to information on topics that may be useful to the users of our websites.
Please remember that when you use a link to go from one of our websites to another website, our Privacy Policy is no longer in effect. Your browsing and interaction on any other website, including websites which have a link on one of our websites, is subject to that website's own rules and policies. Please read over those rules and policies before proceeding.
Changes and Updates to this Policy
Please revisit this page periodically to stay aware of any changes to this Policy, which we may update from time to time. If we modify the Policy, we will make it available through our websites, and indicate the date of the latest revision, and will comply with applicable law. Your continued use of our websites after the revised Policy has become effective indicates that you have read, understood and agreed to the current version of the Policy.
By using our Website you consent to our collection and use of your personal information as described in this Privacy Policy. If we change our privacy policies and procedures, we will post those changes on our Website to keep you aware of what information we collect, how we use it and under what circumstances we may disclose it.
Please contact us with any questions, comments, concerns or complaints about this Policy, your Personal Data, our use and disclosure practices, or your consent choices by email at [email protected].