Privacy Policy
This Privacy Policy describes how Elect535 collects and uses the personal information you provide to Elect535 through our Website (www.elect535.org) or by other means. It also describes the choices available to you regarding our use of your personal information and how you can access and update this information. By accessing or using the Website, you signify that you have read this Privacy Policy, and you expressly consent to our collection, use, disclosure, storage and protection of your personal information as described in this Privacy Policy.
1. No sale of personal information. Elect535 will not rent or sell your personal information to third parties.
2. Information you provide through the account creation and update process. When you create an account on the Website, we collect basic information about you through the registration process – your name, email address, and a means to authenticate your account (for example, a password). You may also choose to provide additional information through the account creation and update process, such as the person who referred you to Elect535, your address, your local group, a picture as well as information to facilitate donations to candidates (e.g. employer name, job title, as required by FEC rules regarding political contributions).
You can review and update the account information you provide to Elect535 through the Website by logging into your account on the Website. We collect any additional information you choose to provide us when you update your account on the Website.
3. Information displayed on your User page. When you register for an account on the Website, there is an optional account setting to establish a public profile page that will be automatically created for you. This page shows to the public your first name, area of residence (city, state/province and country), any group affiliation you may have, a listing of your candidate portfolio and the date on which you created an account on the Website.
You may also choose to provide other information on your profile page (for example, your occupation, a description of your group or any other information you would like others to know about the candidates you have selected, and a listing of the donations and volunteer activities you have made for candidates in your portfolio). You can review and update the profile page through your account settings on the Website.
4. Information collected and displayed about donations that you have made (“Donation Transactions”). Elect535 collects information on your Donation Transactions, individually (for example, amount of a donation, recipient of the donation, the location of the recipient) and in the aggregate (for example, by region or by advocacy group). If you have created an account on the Website and made donations through your account, Elect535 makes information on these Donation Transactions available to you on your portfolio page on the Website. Except as noted in Section 10 below, Elect535 will not disclose your personally identifiable Donation Transaction information to any third party without your consent.
If you have set your profile setting to “Public”, information on Donation Transactions conducted through your Account is optionally displayed on your public profile page. Elect535 may further publicly display and disclose your Donation Transaction information in an anonymous manner, for example, as part of the latest activity of any Advocacy Group to which you may have attributed the Donation, or as part of the current activity on the Website (a sum of all donations to date for a candidate, for example) and as part of a historical visualization of activity on the Website. If you have created an account on the Website and conducted Donation Transactions through your account, you can review information for these Donation Transactions by logging into your account on the Website.
5. Information collected, displayed and used for other Website and Program features. As you use additional features on the Website we may collect any additional information that you provide as part of using such features in order to facilitate the operation of these features on the Website.
a. Campaign Teams. If you join a Campaign Team and you have a public profile, information about your Campaign Team will be displayed on your public profile page (for example, Campaign Team name and location, as well as the number of Donations made by the Campaign Team). In turn, you will be displayed as a member of the Campaign Team either in a personally identifiable or anonymous manner (depending on your profile setting). Information about the Donation Transactions that you have attributed to a Campaign Team (individually and in the aggregate) also will be displayed as part of Donations made by that Campaign Team. You can review your Campaign Team information by logging into your account on the Website.
b. Donations. Elect535 collects information on any donations you make to Elect535 or to the campaigns, needed to communicate with you (for example, to provide donation confirmations) via your email address, physical address or through other means of contact that you have chosen to provide to Elect535. Furthermore, in order to be compliant with FEC regulations, Elect535 must disclose donor information regarding name, address, email, employer and employment details to the Donation Recipient – the campaign. This information is transferred through a third-party transaction processor which stores this information, along with credit card details. All campaign donations are distributed directly to the referenced campaign via the third-party transaction processor. No credit card details are stored by Elect535. At no time does Elect535 collect money on behalf of campaigns for future distribution.
c. Integrated third party features. If you use features on the Website that are integrated with third party websites or services (for example, Twitter and Facebook) to share information about your activity on the Website (for example, information about recently completed Donation Transactions and whether you “like” Elect535) through the third party website or service, Elect535 will share this information with the third party website or service and additional information, if any, that you choose to provide to Elect535 in order to use these features (for example, your username for the third party website or service). However, Elect535 reserves the right to withhold or withdraw information related to candidates to the extent necessary to protect the privacy of candidates. If you use interactive features on Elect535 to indicate that you "recommend" a particular feature or listing on Elect535, that information will be collected and may be displayed on the Website and furthermore shared on any applicable third-party websites and services to which you have authorized such information sharing.
d. Customer service. If you contact Elect535 customer service, we will collect the information you provide (for example, your name, email address, physical address, phone number and question/comment) in order to contact you and address your question or comment.
e. Applications. If you submit an application to Elect535 (for example, to be an employee, volunteer, borrower, trustee or field partner), we collect the information you submit (for example, name, phone number, resume, cover letter and position of interest) to assess the application and follow up with you on such submission.
6. Information from cookies. Cookies are small text files created by a website that store information on your computer, such as your preferences when visiting that website. Similar to many websites, if you have enabled cookies in your browser, Elect535, independently and through enabled third-party tools and programs, collects certain technical information using cookies, such as the path of users to the Website, pages visited, originating IP address, browser type, browser language and the date and time of the user's visit. This information helps Elect535 track trends and improve areas of the Website and Program, and are common analytics used by most websites. If you have disabled cookies, the Website may not work as it is intended because Elect535 uses cookies when you sign in to keep track of your personal session.
7. Electronic communications. From time to time you will receive notices and information based on your account status or activity (collectively, "Communications") from Elect535 (for example, confirmations of Donations you have made, confirmation of email address or password changes, or customer service inquiries regarding the status of or activity in your account). By creating an account with Elect535 on the Website, you agree that all Communications from Elect535 relating to your use of the Website may be provided or made available to you electronically by e-mail or at the Website. To access the Communications electronically, you will need to use a computer with Internet Explorer 8.0 or above, Chrome 4.0 or above, Safari 4.0 or above, Opera 10.0 or above or Firefox internet browsers and with hardware capable of running these internet browsers.
You may withdraw your consent to receive Communications electronically by contacting Elect535 in the manner described below. However, if you withdraw your consent to receive Communications electronically from Elect535 (other than for the optional emails described in Section 9 (Optional emails) below), Elect535 will not have the ability to permit you to make Donations through your account on the Website. The withdrawal of your consent will not affect the legal validity and enforceability of electronic Communications provided by us or any electronic Communications provided by or on behalf of Elect535 prior to the time you withdraw your consent. It is your responsibility to keep Elect535 informed of any changes in your email address so that you continue to receive all Communications without interruption. By registering on the Website, you acknowledge that you can access the electronic Communications, and you consent to having all Communications provided or made available to you in electronic form.
9. Optional emails. By default, you will receive the following types of emails from Elect535, but you can choose not to receive these emails through a preference on the My Account, Email Preferences section of the Website or in the email: auto donating notifications, Elect535 news, portfolio candidate news, portfolio candidate volunteer opportunities, Donation updates, group messages and team messages.
10. Disclosure to affiliates, service providers, agents and representatives. We will disclose your personal information to third parties only in the ways that are described in this privacy statement. Elect535's affiliates and service providers, agents and representatives of Elect535 and its affiliates may be provided access to your personally identifiable information as part of, or incident to, their provision of services to Elect535 (for example, processing donation transactions, distributing Elect535 emails and fulfilling physical Elect535 Card orders). All such access shall be under appropriate confidentiality agreements and limited to use to provide services to Elect535 to perform the functions of the website.
11. Disclosure of non-personally identifiable data. Elect535 reserves the right to disclose information that does not directly identify you, for example, aggregated or anonymized data, for educational, informational or promotional purposes in furtherance of Elect535’s mission.
12. Legal disclosures. Notwithstanding anything to the contrary in this Privacy Policy or the Terms of Use, you acknowledge, consent and agree that Elect535 may disclose information in order to: (a) comply with applicable law, regulation, legal process, or governmental request; (b) protect the rights, property and safety of Elect535, Users and others, including intellectual property rights; and (c) enforce or apply our agreements and policies.
13. Use of your information. In addition to the uses (including display and disclosure) of your information that we have described above in this Privacy Policy, Elect535 uses your information that Elect535 has collected as described above in this Privacy Policy in order to facilitate activities and transactions for the operation of the Website and Program, improve User experiences on the Website and in the Program and further Elect535’s mission.
14. Access to your information. If your personally identifiable information changes, you may correct, update, amend, delete/remove your information by making the change on the My Account, Profile section of the Website.
You may terminate your account on the Website at any time. This will remove all information regarding your account from our systems, except information which we are legally required to track to comply with FEC campaign finance regulations.
15. Links to other websites. If you follow any links which remove you from the Website, this Privacy Policy no longer applies – i.e., the privacy policies and practices of other websites and other parties are governed by their respective terms of use and privacy policies.
16. Public Forums. Our Website offers publicly accessible blogs or community forums. You should be aware that any information you provide in these areas may be read, collected, and used by others who access them. To request removal of your personal information from our blog or community forum, contact us at contactus@elect535.org. In some cases, we may not be able to remove your personal information, in which case we will let you know if we are unable to do so and why.
17. Note regarding children under 13. The Website is intended to be used by adults. It is not intended for children, and Elect535 does not want to collect any personal information for persons who are under the age of 13. You agree not to post nor permit others to post on your behalf, any personally identifiable information with respect to persons under the age of 13. If you believe that we have any information from a child under age 13, please contact us at contactus@elect535.org.
18. Security. Elect535 takes reasonable steps to maintain appropriate physical, technical such as encrypting transmission of information using SSL and administrative security to help prevent loss, misuse and unauthorized access, disclosure and modification of personal information. While we take these reasonable efforts to safeguard your personal information, no system or transmission of data over the Internet or any other public network can be guaranteed to be 100% secure.
19. Location of data. Elect535 is headquartered in the USA. Your personal information may be accessed by Elect535, our affiliates, service providers, agents and representatives in the USA or elsewhere in the world. By providing us with personal information, you consent to this transfer. Elect535 will protect the privacy and security of personal information according to this Privacy Policy regardless of where the personal information is processed or stored.
20. Retention period. Notwithstanding anything to the contrary in this Privacy Policy, Elect535 reserves the right to retain your personal information for a period of 7 years or more as necessary to satisfy legal requirements such as recordkeeping and tax and credit reporting requirements, as well as for purposes of fraud prevention, audit and data integrity. In addition, Elect535 reserves the right to retain, as well as to use and disclose as permitted pursuant to this Privacy Policy, your personal information for such period of time as reasonably needed by Elect535 to facilitate activities and transactions for the operation of the Website and Program, improve User experiences on the Website and in the Program and further Elect535’s mission. Elect535 reserves the right to retain information that does not directly identify you, for example, aggregated or anonymized data.
21. Modifications; Interpretation. Elect535 may update or modify this Privacy Policy from time to time. If any changes are made, Elect535 will reflect the date on which any such changes are made and posted by updating the "last updated" date at the top of the page. If we make any material changes we will notify you by email (sent to the e-mail address specified in your account) or by means of a notice on this Website prior to the change becoming effective. Please be sure to check this page periodically for changes. Capitalized terms used but not defined in this Privacy Policy have the meanings set forth in the Terms of Use
22. How to contact Elect535. We take privacy seriously and we value yours. For additional information, or if you have any questions regarding this Privacy Policy or the privacy practices at Elect535, please submit your questions or comments directly to contactus@elect535.org via email. You can also send questions or comments to:
435 Labs
Attn: Privacy Policy
5 Castle Road, Lexington, MA 02420