SHELBY ELECTRIC
COOPERATIVE
BOARD POLICY 310
SUBSCRIBER PRIVACY POLICY FOR
SHELBY
ELECTRIC COOPERATIVE BROADBAND WIRELESS INTERNET (PWR-net.coop)
THESE
TERMS AND CONDITIONS STATE IMPORTANT REQUIREMENTS REGARDING YOUR USE OF
PWR-net.coop SERVICE AND YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH SHELBY ELECTRIC COOPERATIVE. YOU SHOULD READ THEM CAREFULLY AS THEY CONTAIN IMPORTANT INFORMATION REGARDING YOUR
RIGHTS AND OURS.
IF YOU DO NOT AGREE TO THESE TERMS AND CONDITIONS, YOU MAY NOT USE THE SERVICE
AND YOU MUST TERMINATE YOUR SERVICE IMMEDIATELY.
Shelby
Electric Cooperative (the “Cooperative”) may revise this Subscriber Privacy
Policy (the "Policy") from time to time without notice by posting a new version
of this document on www.PWR-net.coop or any successor URL(s). All revised copies
of the Policy are effective immediately upon posting. Accordingly, customers and
users of the PWR-net.coop service should regularly visit these web sites and
review this Policy to ensure that their activities conform to the most recent
version. In the event of a conflict between any subscriber or customer agreement
and this Policy, the terms of this Policy will govern. Questions regarding this
Policy and complaints of violations of it by customers and users can be directed
to the Cooperative via “Help” email obtainable at www.shelbyelectric.coop.
This Privacy Policy
covers all
web sites under the PWR-net.coop domain (such as
www.PWR-net.coop and
www.shelbyelectric.coop) and applies to all current and former
customers of The Cooperative’s PWR-net.coop service (the “Service”). We
encourage you to read the entire Policy and check this page periodically for any
changes or updates. By using the Service, you expressly consent to the terms of
this Policy, as it may be changed from time to time.
The Cooperative is committed to maintaining
your privacy and believes that, as a subscriber to the Service, you are entitled to know the Cooperative's
information practices. This includes the limitations which the Cooperative
observes in the collection and disclosure of personally identifiable subscriber
information, the type of personally identifiable information we collect, how we
use subscriber information, under what conditions we may disclose this
information, the period during which we maintain it and the rights of
subscribers concerning this information and its disclosure.
If you have questions or concerns
regarding
this Policy, you should contact the Cooperative at the contact information near
the end of this Policy.
Information Collection.
The
Cooperative collects information from you at several different points on the
Service. Some of this information is personally identifiable information, but
much of it is not. Personally identifiable information is information that
identifies a particular person. When you establish an account for the Service we
collect information such as your name, address, telephone number, e-mail
address, as well as information used for billing, and payment (including bank
and credit card information), and other information we may need to establish and
service an account. During the initial provisioning of the Service, and any
subsequent changes or updates to that provisioning, the Cooperative collects
technical information about your computer hardware and software, modem and/or
other service-related devices, and customization settings and preferences.
The Cooperative also collects personally
identifiable information about you when you communicate with us for, among other things, support,
maintenance, and billing, send us e-mails, respond to our surveys or e-mails,
engage in chat sessions with us, register for information, or participate in
promotions or contests. In addition,
the Cooperative may combine personally identifiable information, which we
collect as part of our regular business records, with personally identifiable
information obtained from third parties for the purpose of creating an enhanced
personal database to use in marketing and other activities related to the
Service and our other services.
Information Use and Disclosure.
The Cooperative considers the
personally identifiable information contained in our business records to be
confidential. The Cooperative may disclose personally identifiable information
concerning any subscriber, subject to applicable law, if the disclosure is:
• necessary
to render, or conduct a legitimate business activity related to, the Service and
Service features or other services provided to the subscriber; or
• required by
law or legal process including subpoena, court order or search warrant.
In addition,
the Cooperative may use and disclose personal information collected from you or
your use of the Service, subject to applicable law, in order to:
• install,
configure, operate, provide, support, and maintain the Service;
• confirm
that you are receiving the service requested and are properly billed for it;
• identify
you when changes are made to your Service account;
• make you
aware of new products or services that may be of interest to you;
• understand
the use of, and identify improvements to, our Service;
• detect
unauthorized reception, use, or abuse of the Service;
• determine
whether there are violations of any applicable policies and terms of Service;
• configure
modems and/or other service-related devices; and
• comply with
applicable law and take steps to prevent fraud.
The
Cooperative may also use and disclose personally identifiable information,
subject to applicable law, in order for the Cooperative to perform, for example:
• billing and
invoicing
•
administration
• surveys
• collection
of fees and charges
• marketing
• service
delivery and customization
• maintenance
and operations
• technical
support
• procurement
of services, hardware or software necessary to the Service or offered through
the Service
• hardware
and software upgrades
• fraud
prevention
In connection with the activities listed
above, we may disclose personally identifiable information about you to our affiliates or to others who
work for us. We may also disclose personally identifiable information about you
to our employees for the Cooperative's internal business purposes, as well as to
outside auditors, professional advisors and service providers, potential
business transition partners, and regulators. Typically, we make these
disclosures when the disclosure is necessary to render, or conduct a legitimate
business activity related to the Service or other services we provide to you. We
may be required by law or legal process to disclose certain personally
identifiable information about you to lawyers and parties in connection with
litigation and to law enforcement personnel.
Transmission of Information.
The Cooperative transmits
personally identifiable and non-personally identifiable information about you
over the Service when you send and receive e-mail, chat, send instant messages,
transfer and share files, make files accessible, visit Web sites, or otherwise
use the Service and its features. Our transmission of this information is
necessary to render the Service. The Cooperative uses third parties to deliver
some features and functions of the Service, including customer and technical
support and e-mail. These third
parties collect or transmit personally identifiable and non-personally
identifiable information about you. These third parties are not permitted to use
your personally identifiable information except for the purpose of providing
their services. We will not read your outgoing or incoming e-mail, private chat,
or instant messages, but we (or our third party providers) do store e-mail
messages on computer systems for a period of time. We could be required to
disclose these messages and communications along with other personally
identifiable information about you to comply with law or to protect our Service
as described in the Legal Disclaimer section of this Policy. We also monitor the
performance of our Service and your Service connection in order to manage,
maintain, and improve the Service and your connection to it. We (or our third
party providers) use tools to help prevent and block "spam" e-mails, viruses,
spyware, and other harmful or unwanted communications and programs on the
Service. These tools may automatically scan your e-mails, instant messages, file
attachments, and other files and communications in order to help us protect you
and the Service against these harmful or unwanted communications and programs.
These tools do not collect or disclose personally identifiable information about
you.
Service
Providers.
We contract
with third parties to provide specific services and features for the Service.
When you use these particular services, generally you provide your name and
specific Service-related information directly to the third party service
provider. If you become a customer of these third parties directly, then you
will be subject to their terms of service and privacy policies. You should
carefully read their terms and policies to understand how they may use
personally identifiable information about you. Except as otherwise specified in
this Policy, we will not provide our advertisers, content providers, or these
other third parties with personally identifiable information about you unless we
have received your consent first. Likewise, the Cooperative will not share
personally identifiable information about where you go on the Service or on the
Web unless we have received your consent first. We also use aggregate
information to better understand how the Service is being used, to improve it,
and for network management, bandwidth usage, maintenance, performance
measurement, and security.
Aggregate
Information
The
Cooperative or our contractors may from time to time share aggregate
(non-personally identifiable) information such as the number of Service
subscribers who match certain statistical profiles (for example, the number of
subscribers in various parts of the country) with our advertisers, content
providers, or other third parties with whom we have a relationship.
Third
Party Advertisers.
We may use a
third-party ad serving company to serve certain advertisements to you when you
visit our websites,
www.shelbyelectric.coop and
www.PWR-net.coop. Our third-party ad serving company may use
anonymous information related to your visit to the Service's Web site to better
provide advertisements to you about goods and services that may be of interest
to you. In the course of serving advertisements to this Web site, our
third-party ad serving company may place or recognize a unique"cookie" or
equivalent technology through your browser.
Business
Transitions.
If the
Cooperative enters into a merger, acquisition, or sale transaction of all or a
portion of its assets, subscribers' personally identifiable information will, in
most instances, be one of the items transferred as part of the transaction. If,
as a result of the business transition this Policy will be changed, you should
refer to the Notification of Changes to this Policy section. Aggregate
information may also be transferred in connection with a business transition.
Preferences.
We store
information that you provide to personalize your settings on the Service so that
you don't have to change these settings each time you use the Service. We do not
share your preferences with third parties except for service providers or other
third parties who may provide certain components of the Service.
Cookies.
Cookies are small files stored on a computer's hard drive to simplify and
improve a user's Web experience. A Web site may store information in a cookie
about your computer configuration so that it can more efficiently provide
information to you the next time you visit the site. Or, your browser program
might save a cookie with a reference key linking to your username and password
on a remote server so that a Website's server will automatically recognize you
the next time you access the site. The Cooperative uses cookies to remember your
username and password, if you choose to store them, from the home page of the
Service at www.PWR-net.coop, as well as to remember some of your
personalization preferences. The Cooperative also uses cookies to determine when
your current session on the Service's Web site should be logged out after a
period of no activity. In addition, the Cooperative uses cookies to determine
whether you are accessing the website at
www.shelbyelectric.coop or
www.PWR-net.coop or features of the Service from our Service or
another Internet service provider. We do this in order to authenticate access to
certain features of the Service, and to enable certain communications between
Service subscribers. Aside from this reference by the cookie, the Cooperative
does not store your name or other personal information in cookies. Some of our
business relationships are with vendors who may use cookies (for example, search
engines) or in connection with their own advertisers and other business
partners. However, we have no access to or control over these third party
cookies. For more information about how these vendors and their business
partners use cookies, and how you may be able to "optout" of those cookies, read
the privacy policy that applies to each vendor's Web site. This Policy covers
the use of cookies by the Cooperative under the PWR-net.coop domain; it
does not cover the use of cookies by any other party or Web site unless stated
otherwise.
Log Files
and Web Site and E-mail Management.
Like many Web
sites, the Service's Web site servers generate log files. These logs record
aggregate (non-personally identifiable) information about site usage such as
Internet protocol (IP) addresses, browser types, Internet service providers,
referring/exit pages, pages accessed, platform types, date/time stamps, times of
use, and page views, for example. This information is necessary to analyze
trends, administer the Service's Web site, balance web traffic, evaluate users'
electronic browsing in the aggregate, and gather broad demographic information
for aggregate use.
Communications from the Cooperative:
Service
Announcements.
We send
subscribers Service-related announcements from time to time. For example, we may
send you an e-mail announcement about a pricing change, a change in operating
policies, or new features of the Service. You may not opt-out of these
Service-related communications, though you can deactivate your Service account
if you wish. If you fail to check your Service account and primary e-mail
address for Service-related announcements, you may miss important information
about the Service, including legal notices, for example.
Customer
Service.
We
communicate with you to provide requested services and support for questions and
issues relating to your Service account. We will reply to your requests for
customer service by e-mail, phone, discussion forum, or through any other
reasonable means.
Choice and
Contact Preferences.
Any e-mail
relating to special offers or promotions will contain a link or instructions
allowing you to opt out of receiving similar promotional e-mails in the future
by following the optout instructions in the e-mail or visiting the Contact Us
section of the
www.shelbyelectric.coop Web site.
Links.
The Service's Web site contains links to other sites. Some of these other sites
may be co-branded with the Cooperative and may look like Service features, but
the Cooperative is not responsible for the privacy practices of these other
sites. We encourage you to be aware when you leave our Web site and to read the
privacy policies of every Web site that collects personally identifiable
information about you, whether the site is co-branded with the Cooperative or
not.
Security.
The Cooperative takes the security of our subscribers' personally identifiable
information seriously. We follow industry-standard practices to take such
actions as are necessary to prevent unauthorized access to personally
identifiable information by a person other than the subscriber or us. However,
we cannot guarantee that these practices will prevent every unauthorized attempt
to access, use, or disclose personally identifiable information. We restrict
access to nonpublic personal information about you to those employees and
contractors who need to know that information to provide products or services to
you. We maintain physical, electronic, and procedural safeguards that comply
with federal standards to guard your nonpublic personal information.
Correcting
and Accessing Information.
If your
personally identifiable information changes, if you wish to confirm the accuracy
of your personally identifiable information, or if you no longer want to
subscribe to the Service, we provide a way to correct that information and a way
to deactivate a Service account. You can correct some personally identifiable
information through the Contact Us link at
www.shelbyelectric.coop. You may also contact us by telephone at the contact
information listed below to correct information or deactivate your Service
account. In addition, you may examine and copy any personally identifiable
information we collect and maintain relating to you at the Cooperative office
upon reasonable notice and during regular business hours. If you wish to inspect
those records, please contact us by telephone at 1-877-994-2323, giving us a
reasonable period of time to locate and, if necessary, prepare the information
for review, and to arrange an appointment during regular business hours. We will
correct our records if you make a reasonable showing that any of the personally
identifiable information we have collected about you is inaccurate. You will
only be permitted to examine records that contain information about you and no
one else. The Cooperative reserves the right to charge you for the cost of
photocopying any documents that you request.
Retention
of Information.
The Cooperative maintains
personally identifiable information about you in our regular business records
while you are a subscriber to the Service. We also maintain this information for
a period of time after you are no longer a subscriber. We will destroy the
information within a reasonable time period or within a required timeframe
established under applicable law, whichever is shorter.
Notification of Changes to this Policy.
If we change
this Policy (which we may do at any time), we will post those changes on the
homepage of the Service Web site, or in other places we deem appropriate, so our
subscribers are aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under
what circumstances, if any, we disclose it. We will use information in
accordance with the Privacy Policy under which the information was collected.
Your decision to continue receiving the Service after we make any changes to
this Policy shall be deemed to be your express consent to the changes in the
revised Policy.
Contact
Information.
If you have
any questions or suggestions regarding this Policy, or wish to contact us about
your personal information, please contact us at
email560@shelbyelectric.coop.
Special
Note about Children.
The Service
is not directed to children under the age of 13, and the Cooperative does not
knowingly collect personally identifiable information from anyone under the age
of 18 on the Service. Children should
always get permission from a parent or legal guardian before sending any
information about themselves (such as their names, e-mail addresses, and
telephone numbers) over the Internet, to us or to anyone else.
Email,
Webpage, and Similar Services.
Please note
that this Privacy Policy applies only to information supplied directly to the
Cooperative. For privacy policy terms applicable to your email, web page and
similar services, you should consult the privacy policy applicable to the
provider of such services.
Adopted: January 26, 2009
