Privacy Policy
Scenic America privacy policy
- Scenic America is committed to transparency in how we use your personal information.Please note that we reserve the right to update our privacy policy. Check back regularly for our current policy.We do not require you to provide any information at all to use most basic features of our websites.There are certain activities and areas of the site that will require you to provide personal information, such as:
1. Taking an action on one of our campaigns
2. Signing up to receive emails from us
3. Making a donation
If you submit your personal information to us, you are agreeing that Scenic America may use the information in accordance with this data usage policy.
If you have questions regarding this data usage policy, please contact us.
Voluntary Information We Collect
- Why does Scenic America collect certain personal information?We collect information to help us better meet your needs and to improve our programs. Our reasons for collecting personal information include:1. Internal record keeping
2. To carry out activities where personal information is required, such as advocacy actions
3. To communicate with you according to your preferences (by email, mail, SMS or phone)
4. To provide you with information that is relevant to you; for example, information about scenic legislation in your state
What information does Scenic America collect?
- We only collect personal information from our visitors when it is supplied to us voluntarily. Certain activities on our website (described in further detail below) may require you to provide information such as your name, email address, mailing address, phone number, or may ask you to submit written comments. If you do not wish to share the required information with Scenic America, do not participate in these activities.The following are examples of how we may use your personal information when you engage in common activities on our website:1. When you sign up to join our main email list or provide us with your email address, we will have a record of your email address and any other information you choose to provide. We will send you email about action alerts, fundraising campaigns, and other Scenic America activities. You can opt out of these emails at any time; every electronic communication from Scenic America includes a link to opt out of receiving additional communications. Scenic America may share your contact information with our chapters, affiliates, or partners if they are initiating an action in your geographic area.2. When you make an online donation to Scenic America, your information will be added to our donor list and database, and you may be contacted about other Scenic America activities, news, action alerts, and/or fundraising campaigns. Scenic America will not share your credit card information with other organizations, including our chapters, affiliates, and partners.
3. When you take an advocacy action such as sending a message to your elected representatives, government officials or other targets of Scenic America advocacy, we will keep a record of the information you submit and will send your message to these recipients, along with the contact information you provide, such as your name, address, phone number, and email address. Scenic America is not responsible for what these recipients may do with your information. Please note that officials receiving these emails may choose to contact you. Government agencies may add the names of people who submit comments on government proposals into public documents recording feedback on a given proposal. This is often a part of the government process for receiving and recording feedback from the public. Government agencies typically have strict guidelines around not misusing information provided to them by the public for other purposes. However, you should review the policies of the appropriate government body if you are concerned.
4. We may store and use any other voluntary information you choose to provide. We will use it in a manner consistent with the examples above, and we will never sell your personal information.
5. When you provide us with your landline or mobile phone number, we may contact you through phone call or text message to let you know about opportunities to get involved in our work. You may opt out of these communications at any time.
In addition to voluntary personal information, Scenic America may also collect aggregated data to help us understand how visitors, including you, use our online tools. This aggregated data contains no personally identifiable information. If you prefer not to have this data collected, you can opt out by disabling cookies in your browser; however, some features on our websites may not work with cookies disabled. (For more, see “Security and Cookies” below.)
Comments
When visitors leave comments on our website we collect the data shown in the comments form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection.
An anonymized string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.
Media
If you upload images to the website, you should avoid uploading images with embedded location data (EXIF GPS) included. Visitors to the website can download and extract any location data from images on the website.
Cookies
If you leave a comment on our site you may opt-in to saving your name, email address and website in cookies. These are for your convenience so that you do not have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment. These cookies will last for one year.
If you visit our login page, we will set a temporary cookie to determine if your browser accepts cookies. This cookie contains no personal data and is discarded when you close your browser.
When you log in, we will also set up several cookies to save your login information and your screen display choices. Login cookies last for two days, and screen options cookies last for a year. If you select “Remember Me”, your login will persist for two weeks. If you log out of your account, the login cookies will be removed.
If you edit or publish an article, an additional cookie will be saved in your browser. This cookie includes no personal data and simply indicates the post ID of the article you just edited. It expires after 1 day.
Embedded content from other websites
Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.
These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.
Analytics
Scenic America uses Google Analytics to help us improve our site’s performance and make it more useful to visitors by monitoring statistics that show, for example, the number of visitors that use different sections of our site. No personally identifiable information is relayed through Google Analytics, but for a better understanding please read Google’s privacy policy.
You can opt-out from Google Analytics; they offer an add-on to your web browser to facilitate this.
Does Scenic America rent, share, sell or trade my personal information?
Scenic America will not give, rent, sell or share your email address or information about your online activities with other organizations, except occasionally with Scenic chapters, affiliates, and partners as noted above.
Financial Information You May Choose to Provide
If you choose to make an online donation to Scenic America, you will have to provide your credit card billing information. The credit card information that you provide at the time of donation is used only to process your donation and will not be stored or used by us for any other purposes. We will store other information about the details of your transaction for our records.
How do I know my credit card information is secure?
Scenic America works with Salsa Labs, Inc. to process our donations. Salsa Labs, Inc. uses secure server software (SSL) that is the industry standard for secure commerce transactions. It encrypts all of your personal information, including credit card number, name and address, so that it cannot be read as the information travels over the Internet. We do not store your credit card information once your transaction has been processed.
Other ways we use personal information:
Scenic America works with third-party vendors to provide services on this site and in our offline business operations. The information that you submit on this site may be provided to those vendors on a confidential basis so that those vendors can provide services (such as maintaining our database, sending e-mail messages to activists, facilitating our fundraising activities and campaigns, or processing credit card transactions) on our behalf.
Other than as described in this data usage policy, or as may be necessary to protect the rights, property, and safety of our organization or others, or as may be necessary to comply with applicable law, Scenic America will not give, share or sell the personal information you provide online.
Managing your personal information
- If for any reason you would like to stop receiving future emails from us:1. Click the “Unsubscribe” link that is included at the bottom of every email; OR
2. Send us an email at scenic(at)scenic.org or call us at 202.792.1300 and ask us to unsubscribe you from our email listNote that your contact information and your donation and action history will remain in our databases, but we will not send you further emails.Can I change the information I have given to Scenic America?If you are a Scenic America donor or supporter you can update your account information by emailing us at scenic(at)scenic.org or calling us at 202.792.1300.
Security and Cookies
Does Scenic America’s website use cookies?
Yes, we use cookies for a variety of purposes. Cookies help us provide you with a better website, for example, by letting us monitor which pages our visitors find useful. A cookie does not give us access to your computer or any information about you.
A “cookie” is a tiny element of data that our site can send to your browser, which may then be stored on your hard drive. Cookies that are sent to your browser by our site are only readable by Scenic America and are never shared with any other site.
If you are concerned about your privacy and the use of cookie technology on our website you may set your browser to refuse the cookies our site attempts to send you. If you decide not to accept cookies, you may limit the functionality available when you visit our site.
Security
We are committed to ensuring that your information is secure. In order to prevent unauthorized access or disclosure, we have put in place suitable physical, electronic, and managerial procedures to safeguard and secure the information we collect online from loss, misuse and unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration and destruction.
The security measures used on this site include, but are not limited to, industry-standard Secure Socket Layer (SSL) technology on all pages where we collect financial information, security certificates, and firewalls to maintain the security of stored data. While we follow industry standards to protect the personal information submitted to us, no method of transmission over the Internet, or method of electronic storage, is 100 percent secure. Therefore, while we use commercially acceptable means to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee its absolute security.
Email Security
Emails delivered to you are handled by various systems. Each system uses SSL encryption when sending email and all email sent to us is encrypted as well using SSL. Email sent to Scenic America staff is filtered by spam services. If your domain is blacklisted has otherwise been marked as potential spam, your email may not be delivered to us directly. If you have not gotten a response to an important email please contact us using one of the methods mentioned above.
You can protect your security
Although Scenic America does its best to protect your privacy, we need your help. Many breaches of security occur when users are not vigilant in protecting their own information. You can help keep your information secure in the following ways:
You have control over your own privacy. Think carefully before providing any personal information.Although this site has security measures in place to protect the loss, misuse and alteration of information, no email or website can be completely, 100 percent secure. If you are worried because your communication is very sensitive, do not send it via email or submit it online. See above for additional ways to contact us.
We may send you personalized information via email, or provide personalized links in emails that allow web forms to be automatically populated with certain personal information. Always keep your email account secure, and do not allow others to access your email.You should only forward our email messages to others through the “Tell A Friend” buttons or links provided within the email. If you forward our emails directly to others using your email service, they may be able to see your personal information in that email, or may be able to take actions in your name and/or access your personal information by clicking on links personalized to you.
Note: Your credit card and financial information will NEVER be visible to others by clicking on links in our emails.
