Privacy Policy

Website Privacy Policy

Picture Earth recognizes your privacy concerns and is committed to preserving your privacy and safeguarding your sensitive information. The following statement describes the general information-gathering and usage practices of our sites.

Disclosure.

Picture Earth is committed to fully disclosing our policies regarding the collection, use, maintenance, disclosure and security of personal information obtained from users of our site. The term "personal information" includes a name, address, email address, or any other information which could be used to contact you directly or to identify you personally.

Use and Disclosure Limitations.

Picture Earth only uses personal information about its Web site users for specific purposes. We do not share user information with third parties except when we have told users about the disclosures, when we have prior consent, or when required by law.

Use Policy: When Picture Earth gathers personal information from users, we ask for permission first. We also disclose, at the time of collection, how the information will be used by us. Personal information is used for activities such as auto-completion of commonly-used forms and helping us contact you when you solicit information from Picture Earth.

Disclosure Policy: We do not normally disclose personal information to anyone outside of Picture Earth unless we have previously informed users about the disclosures. However, some data may be used from time to time by outside contractors, including auditors or consultants, to assist us in carrying out necessary financial or operational activities. These uses will be consistent with this privacy policy and all contractors using this potential personal information must agree to safeguard it, to use it only for the authorized purpose, and to return it or destroy it upon completion of the activity.

Picture Earth might be required to disclose personal information in response to a valid legal process such as a subpoena, search warrant or court order.

Although unlikely, it is possible that we may have to make certain disclosures to ensure the security of our Web site, to protect its integrity, or to take precautions against potential liability. In any of these situations, we will take any reasonable steps to limit the scope of the data disclosed.

Specific Information Collection Activities

* "Contact" Functions. Some pages on our sites offers users the opportunity to email either Picture Earth, its affiliate organizations or other companies or organizations about specific issues. To do so, users are asked to provide certain personal information to facilitate these communications. This information often includes the user's name, email address, and, depending on which contact method the user chooses, postal address. This information is used to create a template letter or message from the user to the organization or company and, if the user chooses to email the message using our automated function, it will include the user's email address to as part of the email message. This provides the organization or company a way to respond to users regarding the content of the message.

* "Join," "Donate" or "Give a gift membership" Functions. To contribute to Picture Earth in any way, users are asked to provide certain personal information. This information may include the user's name, email address, phone number and postal address. This information is used to process and fulfill your membership(s) or donation and to provide relevant information to you for tax purposes.

* "Survey" Function. We occassionally ask users to complete surveys on our sites and may ask for personally-identifiing infomation as part of that process. Unless otherwise clearly specified at the point of the request, this information is not used for Picture Earth for any purpose other than to process or analyze the results of the survey or to fulfill a request that you make as part of the survey.

* "Subscription" Function. To subscribe to email newsletters offered by Picture Earth, users are asked to provide certain personal information. This information may include the user's name, email address, phone number and postal address. This information is used exclusively to fulfill requests related to your email newsletter subscription and to contact you about participation in Picture Earth membership and programs.

All our employees and processors who have access to the personal data of users and are associated with the processing of that data are obliged to respect the confidentiality of users' personal data.

Complaints.

Picture Earth will work with users to resolve any complaints about our privacy policies or practices.

If you have a complaint about our privacy and fair information practices policy or about our implementation of the policy, you can contact us. Picture Earth will try to resolve any problems that arise in a fair and prompt manner.

Technical Issues Related to Your Privacy.

Picture Earth uses a number of specific technical tools and techniques to ensure convenient, reliable and timely service. While we work to ensure the security of personal information, no data transmission over the Internet can be guaranteed to be 100% secure and some of these tools and techniques may affect your privacy concerns.

As a result, while we strive to protect your personal information, we cannot ensure or warrant the security of any information you transmit to us or from our online products or services, and you do so at your own risk. Once we receive your transmission, we make our best effort to ensure its security on our systems.

Cookies: Picture Earth occasionally uses "cookies" to provide convenience features to return visitors. "Cookies" are bits of information that are stored by your browser on your hard drive. As you activate certain information services at our Web site, we create a cookie to help our program remember who you are. The information stored in the cookie we send you contains personally identifiable information but is automatically deleted from your harddisk when you close your browser.

Picture Earth uses cookies only when appropriate and we never use cookies to retrieve information from your computer that was not originally sent in a cookie from us.

Web Logs: Picture Earth maintains standard Web logs that record basic information about visitors to our Web site. These logs contain:

* The Internet domain from which you came to our Web site.

* Your IP address. An IP address is a series of numbers which uniquely identifies your connection to the Internet. Although it is possible in some instances, certain types of IP addresses may be used by interested persons to identify users but we do not attempt to identify users in this way.

* The type of browser (e.g., Internet Explorer or Netscape) and operating system (e.g., Windows 98) you use.

* The date and time you visited the site, and the pages you saw.

We use Web log information to design our Web site, identify popular features, and in similar ways. We do not try to identify individuals from Web logs or to link Web logs to other user information. However, if someone tries to damage our Web site or use it in an unauthorized or illegal way, we may share Web log information with law enforcement agencies. Picture Earth may provide aggregate information such as the number of users who visit particular pages of the site, or the number of people who link to certain external sites from our site, to other parties.

Links to Other Sites: Picture Earth does carry advertising on some of its sites and provides links to other sources of information which we believe may be of interest to site visitors. We have no control over the content of the sites to which we link in Picture Earth's sites and these sites may have different privacy policies, which we encourage you to review. When you click through to other Web sites, you may get cookies directly from them. Picture Earth does not see or use these cookies, and we do not control how other sites use cookies.

Changes to Privacy Policy

Picture Earth's features and services will change over time and our information-gathering practices and policies may also change.

While our philosophy of protecting user information from inappropriate uses and disclosures will not change, this policy will be updated occasionally to include any change that materially affects the collection, maintenance, use, or disclosure of personal information.

Other changes to this privacy policy statement that reflect refinements, improvements, updates, and new features will be made as appropriate and posted as soon as possible. Whenever the privacy policy changes, we will modify the date and version number to reflect that a change was made.

How to Request and/or Correct Information

Although Picture Earth has no programs or utilities to collect information other than those which have been outlined in this Privacy Policy, you may request in writing any personal information about you that we hold, or correct or amend information about you if it is inaccurate.

The following Web sites are operated by Picture Earth, 285 Fifth Avenue, Suite 458, Brooklyn, NY 11215. Our telephone number is (646) 205-4199, and our email address is contact@pictureearth.org.

Click here to contact us regarding privacy-related concerns.