Monday, 08 February 2010
| Privacy Policy |
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Collection of Your Personal Information Ocasionally, we ask you to provide personal information, such as your e-mail address, name, home or work address, or telephone number. We may also collect demographic information, such as your ZIP code, age, gender, preferences, interests and favorites. If you choose to make a purchase or sign up for a paid subscription service, we will ask for additional information, such as your credit card number and billing address, which is used to create a A Plus Hearing Aid Centers billing account. In order to access some A Plus Hearing Aid Centers services, you will be asked to sign in with an e- mail address and password. We may collect information about your interaction with A Plus Hearing Aid Centers sites and services. For example, we may use website analytics tools on our site to retrieve information from your browser, including the site you came from, the search engine(s) and the keywords you used to find our site, the pages you view within our site, your browser add-ons, and your browser's width and height. We may also use technologies, such as cookies and web beacons (described below), to collect information about the pages you view, the links you click and other actions you take on our sites and services. Additionally, we collect certain standard information that your browser sends to every website you visit, such as your IP address, browser type and language, access times and referring Web site addresses. We also deliver advertisements (see the Display of Advertising section below) and provide Web site analytics tools on non-A Plus Hearing Aid Centers sites and services, and we may collect information about page views on these third party sites as well. When you receive newsletters or promotional e-mail from A Plus Hearing Aid Centers, we may use web beacons (described below), customized links or similar technologies to determine whether the e-mail has been opened and which links you click in order to provide you more focused e-mail communications or other information. In order to offer you a more consistent and personalized experience in your interactions with A Plus Hearing Aid Centers, information collected through one A Plus Hearing Aid Centers service may be combined with information obtained through other A Plus Hearing Aid Centers services. We may also supplement the information we collect with information obtained from other companies. For example, we may use services from other companies that enable us to derive a general geographic area based on your IP address in order to customize certain services to your geographic area. Use of Your Personal Information A Plus Hearing Aid Centers collects and uses your personal information to operate and improve its sites and services. These uses may include providing you with more effective customer service; making the sites or services easier to use by eliminating the need for you to repeatedly enter the same information; performing research and analysis aimed at improving our products, services and technologies; and displaying content and advertising that are customized to your interests and preferences. For more information about the use of information for advertising, see the Display of Advertising section below. We also use your personal information to communicate with you. We may send certain mandatory service communications such as welcome letters, billing reminders, information on technical service issues, and security announcements. We may also occasionally send you product surveys or promotional mailings to inform you of other products or services available from A Plus Hearing Aid Centers and its affiliates. Personal information collected on A Plus Hearing Aid Centers sites and services may be stored and processed in the United States or any other country in which A Plus Hearing Aid Centers or its affiliates, subsidiaries or service providers maintain facilities. A Plus Hearing Aid Centers abides by the safe harbor framework as set forth by the U.S. Department of Commerce regarding the collection, use, and retention of data from the European Union. Sharing of Your Personal Information Except as described in this statement, we will not disclose your personal information outside of A Plus Hearing Aid Centers and its controlled subsidiaries and affiliates without your consent. Some A Plus Hearing Aid Centers sites allow you to choose to share your personal information with select A Plus Hearing Aid Centers partners so that they can contact you about their products, services or offers. See the Communication Preferences section below for more information. Some A Plus Hearing Aid Centers services may be co-branded and offered in conjunction with another company. If you register for or use such services, both A Plus Hearing Aid Centers and the other company may receive information collected in conjunction with the co-branded services. We occasionally hire other companies to provide limited services on our behalf, such as handling the processing and delivery of mailings, providing customer support, hosting websites, processing transactions, or performing statistical analysis of our services. Those service providers will be permitted to obtain only the personal information they need to deliver the service. They are required to maintain the confidentiality of the information and are prohibited from using it for any other purpose. However, for credit card processing, our fraud detection vendors may use aggregate data to help improve their service. This helps them more accurately detect fraudulent uses of credit cards. We may access or disclose information about you, including the content of your communications, in order to: (a) comply with the law or respond to lawful requests or legal process; (b) protect the rights or property of A Plus Hearing Aid Centers or our customers, including the enforcement of our agreements or policies governing your use of the services; or (c) act on a good faith belief that such access or disclosure is necessary to protect the personal safety of A Plus Hearing Aid Centers employees, customers or the public. Accessing Your Personal Information You may have the ability to view or edit your personal information online. In order to help prevent your personal information from being viewed by others, you will be required to sign in with your credentials (e-mail address and password). The appropriate method(s) for accessing your personal information will depend on which sites or services you have used. Some A Plus Hearing Aid Centers sites or services may collect personal information that is not accessible via the links above. However, in such cases, you may be able to access that information through alternative means of access described by the service. Or you can write us by using our Web form, and we will contact you regarding your request. Communication Preferences You can stop the delivery of future promotional e-mail from A Plus Hearing Aid Centers sites and services by following the specific instructions in the e-mail you receive. These choices do not apply to the display of online advertising. Nor do they apply to the receipt of mandatory service communications that are considered part of certain A Plus Hearing Aid Centers services, which you may receive periodically unless you cancel the service. Display of Advertising Many of the Web sites and online services we offer, as well as those of our partners, are supported by advertising. We may display ads on our own sites and the sites of our advertising partners. When we display online advertisements to you, we will place a persistent cookie on your computer in order to recognize your computer each time we display an ad to you. Because we may serve advertisements on many different Web sites, we are able to compile information over time about where you, or others who are using your computer, saw and/or clicked on the advertisements we display. We use this information to make predictions about your characteristics, interests or preferences and to display targeted advertisements that we believe may be of interest to you. We may also associate this information with your subsequent visit, purchase or other activity on participating advertisers’ Web sites in order to determine the effectiveness of the advertisements. While we may use some of the information we collect in order to personalize the ads we show you, we designed our systems to select ads based only on data that does not personally and directly identify you. For example, we may select the ads we display according to certain general interest categories or segments that we have inferred based on (a) demographic or interest data, including any you may have provided when creating an account (e.g. zip or postal code), demographic or interest data acquired from other companies, and a general geographic location derived from your IP address, (b) the pages you view and links you click when using A Plus Hearing Aid Centers’s and its advertising partners’ Web sites and services, and (c) the search terms you enter when using our site's search services. When we display personalized ads, we take a number of steps designed to protect your privacy. For example, we store page views, clicks and search terms used for ad personalization separately from your contact information or other data that directly identifies you (such as your name, e-mail address, etc.). Further, we have built in technological and process safeguards designed to prevent the unauthorized correlation of this data. Although the majority of the online advertisements on A Plus Hearing Aid Centers sites are displayed by A Plus Hearing Aid Centers, we also allow third-party ad serving companies, including other ad networks, to display advertisements on our sites. Security of Your Personal Information A Plus Hearing Aid Centers is committed to protecting the security of your personal information. We use a variety of security technologies and procedures to help protect your personal information from unauthorized access, use, or disclosure. For example, we store the personal information you provide on computer systems with limited access, which are located in controlled facilities. When we transmit highly confidential information (such as a credit card number or password) over the Internet, we protect it through the use of encryption, such as the Secure Socket Layer (SSL) protocol. Some of our forms do not use SSL. If a password is used to help protect your accounts and personal information, it is your responsibility to keep your password confidential. Do not share this information with anyone. If you are sharing a computer with anyone you should always log out before leaving a site or service to protect access to your information from subsequent users. Collection and Use of Children's Personal Information Many A Plus Hearing Aid Centers sites and services are intended for general audiences and do not knowingly collect any personal information from children. When a A Plus Hearing Aid Centers site does collect age information, and users identify themselves as under 13, the site will either block such users from providing personal information, or will seek to obtain consent from parents for the collection, use and sharing of their children's personal information. We will not knowingly ask children under the age of 13 to provide more information than is reasonably necessary to provide our services. Please note that if you grant consent for your child to use A Plus Hearing Aid Centers services, this will include such general audience communication services as e-mail, instant messaging, and online groups, and your child will be able to communicate with, and disclose personal information to, other users of all ages. Parents can change or revoke the consent choices previously made, and review, edit or request the deletion of their children's personal information. Please send us an email if this is needed. We encourage you to talk with your children about communicating with strangers and disclosing personal information online. Use of Cookies A Plus Hearing Aid Centers Web sites use "cookies" to enable you to sign in to our services and to help personalize your online experience. A cookie is a small text file that is placed on your hard disk by a Web page server. Cookies contain information that can later be read by a Web server in the domain that issued the cookie to you. Cookies cannot be used to run programs or deliver viruses to your computer. One of the primary purposes of cookies is to store your preferences and other information on your computer in order to save you time by eliminating the need to repeatedly enter the same information and to display your personalized content and appropriate advertising on your later visits to these sites. A Plus Hearing Aid Centers Web sites also use cookies as described in the Collection of your Information and Display of Advertising sections of this privacy statement. You have the ability to accept or decline cookies. Most Web browsers automatically accept cookies, but you can usually modify your browser setting to decline cookies if you prefer. If you choose to decline cookies, you may not be able to sign in or use other interactive features of A Plus Hearing Aid Centers sites and services that depend on cookies, and some advertising preferences that are dependent on cookies may not be able to be respected. If you choose to accept cookies, you also have the ability to later delete cookies that you have accepted. In Internet Explorer 7, you can delete cookies by selecting “Tools”, “Delete browsing history” and clicking the “Delete Cookies” button. If you choose to delete cookies, any settings and preferences controlled by those cookies, including advertising preferences, will be deleted and may need to be recreated. We utilize Google Analytics and server statistics to track information on our sites. Controlling Unsolicited E-mail ("Spam") A Plus Hearing Aid Centers is concerned about controlling unsolicited commercial e-mail, or "spam." A Plus Hearing Aid Centers has a strict Anti-Spam Policy. While A Plus Hearing Aid Centers continues to actively review and implement new technology, such as expanded filtering features, there is no currently available technology that will totally prevent the sending and receiving of unsolicited e- mail. Using junk e-mail tools and being cautious about the sharing of your e-mail address while online will help reduce the amount of unsolicited e-mail you receive. Enforcement of This Privacy Statement If you have questions regarding this statement, you should first contact us by using our Web form. Changes to This Privacy Statement We will occasionally update this privacy statement to reflect changes in our services and customer feedback. When we post changes to this Statement, we will revise the "last updated" date at the top of this statement. If there are material changes to this statement or in how A Plus Hearing Aid Centers will use your personal information, we will notify you either by prominently posting a notice of such changes prior to implementing the change or by directly sending you a notification. We encourage you to periodically review this statement to be informed of how A Plus Hearing Aid Centers is protecting your information. Contacting Us A Plus Hearing Aid Centers welcomes your comments regarding this privacy statement. If you have questions about this statement or believe that we have not adhered to it, please contact us by using our Web form, or contact us via phone or mail. © 2008 A Plus Hearing Aid Centers Corporation. All rights reserved. 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