 This Web site, located at ch.com™ (this "Site"), is a service owned and operated by Bertelsmann Direct North America, Inc. (referred to collectively herein, along with its affiliates, as "ch.com" or "we" or "us" or "our"). Your privacy is very important to us. This privacy policy spells out our commitment to respecting the privacy of the members of ch.com and visitors to our Web site. We reserve the right to change this policy, which we'll do through an email or online posting. Whether you are a member or just a visitor, we are very careful with what we do with your information. Collection of information is usually grouped into two categories: personal, which is information identifiable to a specific member, and aggregate, which is general demographic information that does not identify any individual member. Personal Information may include your name, email address, mailing address, credit card information, and phone number. We may also collect certain demographic information, such as your viewing preferences, age, gender, geographical location, language, time zone, income and education. (Some of the information we ask for may be optional.) Ch.com may use or disclose aggregate information for any purpose.
Ch.com offers and special promotions Ch.com first uses your personal information to process and review your application for enrollment. We will use the information you provide to keep you informed of application and order status. If your application is not completed, if we require additional information, or if we want to provide you with alternative offers, we may contact you based on what you already have provided. Once you have joined, we use your information to process your orders, and to personalize ch.com emails and the ch.com Web site based on your interests, including making you aware of special offers, newsletters, and commercial offerings that may be of interest. Ch.com mostly does this by periodic mailings sent to your email address highlighting new releases and special sales. As a member you agreed to receive these mailings, and it is how your membership works. However, you do have the right to opt-out of some of our emails by visiting the "Email Preferences" area of this Web site. Our periodic New Release emails are part of being a member of ch.com, and you may not opt-out of receiving them. In order to provide services that better meet your needs, we also may supplement the information that you provide to us with other information that we receive from third parties. We maintain a list of member-provided email addresses for the purpose of sending order confirmations and status reports, reminders, promotional information about ch.com news, products and special offers. If you provide us with your email address through our Web site or by mail, you will receive our free electronic newsletters. All ch.com members have the option of signing up for this and other newsletters, too. If you wish to have your name removed from our promotional email list, or if you want to sign up for additional newsletters, please visit the "Email Preferences" section of the "Your Account" area of our site. If you change your mind about receiving email or a particular newsletter, simply go back to edit your preferences. We also provide email opt-out information in our emails. We also may call you with special offers. If you do not wish to receive such phone calls, please write to us, including any and all ch.com account numbers you have, at: ch.com, P.O. Box 91602, Indianapolis, IN 46291-0616, or send an email to help@ch.com. We never sell or rent your name and email address to other online marketers of products or services without your consent. However, ch.com may send email communications to members on behalf of these outside parties. If you do not want your name, address, email address or other personal information to be used for such purposes, please visit the "Email Preferences" section of the "Your Account" area of our site. If you change your mind, simply go back to edit your preferences. We also provide email opt-out information in our emails.
Your credit or debit card information We'll keep your credit or debit card information on file, but we have designed our site not to display the entire card information. Plus, you can always choose to change to a new card or delete one of your cards entirely from our files. To see (or change) your current card status, click "Manage Credit or Debit Card" in "Your Account". When you join ch.com you authorize ch.com to place a temporary, $1 authorization charge on your card. This temporary charge will not be converted into an actual charge to you; it is used only to verify your billing address and the validity of your card. The temporary charge will reduce the amount available on your card by $1 for a short period of time. Sweepstakes In our periodic mailings to our members, we may include sweepstakes and contest entry opportunities. While we believe these are exciting opportunities to win great prizes without any further obligation on your part, we also understand that you may not want to hear about all the details. If you do not want to receive details about sweepstakes or contests by email, please email us from the email address you want excluded at dvdnosweeps@columbiahouse.com. This is only for our members to opt out of sweepstakes email. For both our members and visitors, we may use information you provide us when registering for these sweepstakes to administer prize awards, or to make offers about our services. Please check the official rules for each sweepstakes for more privacy information. Other uses of your information In the daily course of business, we may use your information to assist you if you have questions or problems, or to perform normal business operations, such as billing, collection, and accounting. If you provide personal information in an application that is eventually rejected, we retain that information in case you apply again. Ch.com uses industry-standard procedures and safeguards designed to protect the privacy of all personal information. All of our employees with access to personal information are required to follow specific practices concerning its proper handling. Our vendors and their employees who may need access to member information, such as customer service and fulfillment vendors, are held to strict confidentiality requirements. At times we may retain third parties to analyze data we collect on our Web site, and to administer the services provided (such as shipping, Web hosting, etc.), solely to help us provide and improve our products, services, and Web sites. These suppliers and other third parties are not authorized by us to use your personal information in any other way. We may have to use personal information to investigate complaints and protect ch.com and its members, in compliance with the law, your Membership Agreements, and ch.com policies. Ch.com may release your information if required to do so by law, including inquiries that are subject to a subpoena, court order or warrant, or to cooperate with or participate in legal investigations, enforce our user agreements or protect the rights, property or safety of ch.com or other persons or entities. Our online technology Ch.com uses industry-standard technologies to make our Web site a safe and secure environment for making purchases online. When you make a purchase or join ch.com using your credit or debit card, the transactional information, including your card number, is stored on our server for archival purposes only. That information is encoded with 128-bit encryption. Your card information is encrypted and protected during transmission using Secure Sockets Layering ("SSL") technology. We use this SSL technology to help prevent such information from being intercepted and read as it is transmitted over the Internet. The encrypted data goes to a secure site where your information is stored on restricted-access computers located at restricted-access sites. For your shopping convenience, once you have entered your member ID and password and you check out, the site displays the last four digits of your card number so you always know which card you used. We also offer SSL encryption on new member applications. Please be careful whenever sending personal information to us via the "Contact Us" feature on this Web site or by email. For example, do not send us your account password or card information via these methods, as they may not be a secure means of transferring information. In the unlikely event that we believe that the security of your personal information in our possession or control may have been compromised, we may seek to notify you of that development. If a notification is appropriate, we would endeavor to do so as promptly as possible under the circumstances, and, to the extent we have your email address, we may notify you by email. When you visit this Site, we may collect technical information that does not, by itself, identify a specific individual. This information may include, for example, the address (or "URL") of the Web site that you came from before visiting this Site, which pages you visit on this Site, which computer platform, monitor, Web browser and related software and settings you used to view this Site and any search terms you have entered on this Site or a referral site. This technical data is aggregated and used to measure and improve the effectiveness of this Site. We may collect your IP (Internet Protocol) address and/or domain name to help diagnose problems with our server, administer our site, see where our site traffic is coming from and identify our users. We may also collect other information via this Site, such as site usage activity and preferences, also known as demographic or profile data. We may combine these types of technical data with your personal information. We may conduct some or all of these activities through our third party service providers, who provide these services on our behalf. We use "cookie" technology on a limited basis. Cookies are pieces of information that an Internet site transfers to your hard drive for record-keeping purposes. The use of cookies is an industry standard -- you'll find them almost everywhere on the Internet. We use cookies to recognize members when they return to our sites. Once we know it's you, we can customize your online visit. We can show you hot new releases based on your preferences or alert you to new Web site features. We may also evaluate our content and services and tailor our Web sites, for members and visitors, based on other information we collect such as pixel tags (or clear gifs), and the type of Internet browser or operating system you are using. We may also use pixel tags in emails that we send to you. This information is collected in the aggregate, but we may tie it to your personal information through cookie use as described above. Cookies and/or pixel tags may be placed by our third party service providers, who provide these services on our behalf. Naturally, we also pay attention to what you buy, we keep track of your shopping, purchases, traffic patterns, the pages you visit, and related site usage inside our Web site. This helps us to understand your viewing tastes more fully and to present you with better recommendations, more relevant offers and other announcements we think may interest you. We may conduct some or all of these activities through our third party service providers, who provide these services on our behalf. If a member enters our pages from the site of one of our partners, our system will recognize the path the visitor has taken. Ch.com advertises on such partners' sites or we've entered into a promotional partnership with them. We track the number of visitors to see the success of our online marketing or promotional campaign. These partners will not know your personal information, unless you are notified in advance, if you have given it to them separately or consented to give it to them through us. In cases where such partners have access to your information, we contractually bind them to keep your information confidential or to handle it in accordance with their posted privacy statements. Our company contracts under the confidentiality restrictions mentioned above, with Coremetrics, a service partner, to provide data collection and reports regarding our customers' activities on our site. Coremetrics may use cookies on our behalf and may receive information about your browsing and buying activity. Coremetrics may store member ID, city, state, ZIP code, and email address on our behalf. If you would like to opt out of these particular services, please click here. We may also use third-party advertising companies to serve ads on our behalf. These companies may employ cookies and pixel tags to measure advertising effectiveness. Any information that these third parties collect via cookies and pixel tags is generally not personally identifiable (unless, for example, you provide personally identifiable information to them through an ad or email message). We encourage you to read these businesses' privacy policies if you should have any concerns about how they will care for your personal information. Access to Your Membership Information Please visit the "Your Account" section at the ch.com Web site. If there are circumstances in which you wish to have your spouse, relative, or other trusted friend have access to your information, please write to us at ch.com, P.O Box 91602, Indianapolis, IN 46291-0616, or send us an email at help@ch.com. Your Opt-Out Rights: E-mail addresses:
External sites:
Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA): This Site is a Web site directed to the general public. We do not knowingly collect information from children under 13. Consent: By using this Site and providing us with your personal information, you are accepting the privacy practices described in this Privacy Policy. What if you're not a ch.com member, but you've heard from ch.com? If you're not a member, but you've been contacted by ch.com, we may have received your information in a few different ways. First, another member may have referred you under our "Tell A Friend" program, through which members will give us your name and email address in order for them to customize an invitation for you to join ch.com. You also may receive similarly customized, email reminders from your friend about this invitation. If you apply for membership, your information will be used in accordance with the rest of this privacy policy. If you choose not to apply online, your email address will not be retained. Similarly, a member may have shipped a gift or other merchandise to you through us and provided your personal information for that purpose. You may have received an offer from us by email. We may have received your information from one of our partners or from the mailing, opt-in emailing, or phone lists of a reputable company. Unless we are using an opt-in only list in our marketing efforts, ch.com will screen its lists with the DMA preference lists before we send such offers. Bertelsmann Direct North America, Inc. is a proud member of the Direct Marketing Association. If our Company changes Please note that because a customer information database is customarily considered a business asset, we shall have the right to transfer it in a merger, sale of some or all of its company, consolidation, change in control, reorganization, liquidation or in an action for bankruptcy. In the event all or part of our company is sold or dissolved, we will transfer information we have about you to one or more third parties with a requirement that such third parties treat your personal information substantially in accordance with our privacy policy as it exists at the time of the transfer. If we close down one of our services or shut down a Web site, we will keep your information secure and will only use it, again, in accordance with the terms of our then-current privacy policy. We may update our privacy policy from time to time. We will notify you of such updates by posting the updated policy on this Site, and, depending on the nature of the change, we may also notify you by email. Please check back here occasionally. You will always find the latest version posted here. If you still have questions Please contact Customer Service by writing to ch.com, P.O Box 91602, Indianapolis, IN 46291-0616, or visiting the Customer Service area of our Web site. Date: January 24, 2008 |
