Privacy Policy

Missionary Society of St. Columban (“the Columban Fathers”) is strongly committed to protecting your privacy online when visiting our web site. The Columban Fathers knows that you care how information about you is used and shared and we appreciate your trust that we will do so carefully and sensibly. This privacy notice outlines the information the Columban Fathers will collect on the Columban Fathers web site and how we will use that information. By visiting columban.org, you are accepting the practices described in this Privacy Notice.

1. Types and Uses of Personal Information

For each visitor to the Columban Fathers web site, our web server automatically recognizes and collects the individual’s domain name, not their email address. The only information the Columban Fathers obtains about individual visitors to its web site is that supplied voluntarily by visitors (e.g. name, company name, title, e-mail address, physical address). In cases when the Columban Fathers may need additional personal information to provide visitors with customized content or to inform them about new features or services, visitors are explicitly asked for that information.

The Columban Fathers also collects certain personal information with respect to its consumers in order to provide you with its services. Such personal information collected by the Columban Fathers is kept strictly confidential and is used for internal purposes only, including, without limitation, providing you with requested services, improving our marketing and promotional efforts, statistically analyzing web site usage, improving our content and web site offerings and to customize our web sites’ content and layout. The Columban Fathers also uses your information to create aggregate reports; however, these reports do not contain any personally identifiable information. We believe these uses allow us to improve the Columban Fathers web site and better tailor them to meet our users’ needs. If you scroll to the bottom of this page, you will see additional examples of the type of information we collect.

EXCEPT AS DISCLOSED IN THIS PRIVACY NOTICE, the Columban Fathers does not sell, lend, rent or otherwise disclose any personal information to any third parties. HOWEVER, YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION MAY BE SHARED WITH AFFILIATES, AGENTS OR CONTRACTORS OF the Columban Fathers.

Your personal information is used in the following ways:

• User IDs and Passwords. Provides you with access to your profile areas and to protected content.
• Account Information. These tell us more about who you are, how to contact you, and your shipping and billing information. Also contains any preferences you have provided, such as language, email format and interests.
• Customer Feedback and Support. Provides a mechanism for requesting information from the Columban Fathers. Also used to tell us how we can improve our products, services and site designs.
• Email Correspondence. Used to raise and respond to issues and inquiries of all types. Also used to distribute information about the Columban Fathers our products, and services.
• Transactions. Shows which products and services you have requested.

As a security measure for ourselves and our users, we utilize certain software programs to monitor traffic to our site and within our network. This software also enables us to identify unauthorized upload attempts, access to our system, and other attempts to cause damage to our systems.

2. Business Transfers

As we continue to develop our business, the Columban Fathers, or substantially all of its assets may be acquired. In such a transaction, customer information will of course be one of the transferred business assets.

3. Cookies

Our web site will not place cookies in the browser files of your computer.

4. Registration

Our web site’s registration system requires users to give us contact information such as their name and e-mail address, and demographic information such as a ZIP code, sex, age or income level. The customer’s contact information is used to contact the visitor when necessary. Users may choose (opt-in) to receive future mailings; see the choice/opt-in section below. Demographic and profile data are also collected at our web site. We use this data to tailor the visitor’s experience at our web site, showing the visitor content that reflects their stated preferences. This information is shared with advertisers on an aggregate basis, but it does not indicate the identity of individual users.

5. Disclosure Required by Law

Unfortunately, due to the existing regulatory environment, we cannot insure that all of your private communications and other personal information will never be disclosed in ways not otherwise described in this privacy policy. By way of example (without limiting the foregoing), we may be forced to disclose information to the government or third parties under certain circumstances, or third parties may unlawfully intercept or access transmissions or private communications. Further, we can (and you authorize us to) disclose any information about you to law enforcement or other government officials as we, in our sole discretion, believe necessary or appropriate. Therefore, although we use industry standard practices to protect your privacy, we do not promise, and you should not expect, that your personal information or private communications will remain private.

6. External Links

The Columban Fathers web site may contain links to other internet web sites. We encourage all of our partners, contributors and third parties to implement policies and practices that respect the privacy of our users. However, the Columban Fathers is not responsible for the privacy practices or the content of such web sites. Our policy only addresses the use and disclosure of information we collect from you. To the extent that you disclose your information to other parties, whether they are linked from the Columban Fathers web site, different rules may apply to their use or disclosure of the personal information you disclose to them. Because the Columban Fathers does not control the privacy policies of third parties, you are subject to the privacy customs and policies of that third party. We encourage you to ask questions before you disclose your personal information to others.

7. Public Forums

The Columban Fathers may provide its users with chat rooms, forums, message boards and/or news groups. Please remember that any information disclosed in these areas becomes public information and you should exercise caution when deciding to disclose your personal information.

8. Security

The Columban Fathers web site has security measures in place to protect the loss, misuse and alteration of the information under our control. The Columban Fathers employs strict security measures to safeguard on-line transactions; personal information is stored in a secured database and always sent via an encrypted Internet channel.

9. Children’s Privacy

The Columban Fathers understands the importance of protecting childrens’ privacy in the interactive, on-line world. The Columban Fathers does not intentionally target or solicit to children thirteen (13) or younger for purposes of collecting personal information. The Columban Fathers web site may link to certain web sites which may target or solicit to children thirteen (13) or younger and may collect personal information. Those web sites are not governed by this privacy policy, but will (or should) have their own privacy policies that more fully explain how they respect and protect the privacy of children while providing them information, goods or services. Check out the FTC’s site (1) for more tips on protecting children’s privacy online.

10. Amendments and Updates

Please note that we review our privacy practices from time to time, and that such practices are subject to change. The Columban Fathers reserves the right to change this privacy notice at anytime by posting revisions on the Columban Fathers web site. We ask that you periodically review this page to insure familiarity with the most current version of our privacy notice. However, this privacy policy is not intended to, and does not, create any contractual or other legal rights in or on behalf of any party.

11. Terms and Conditions of Use and Notices

If you choose to visit columban.org, your visit and any dispute over privacy is subject to this Notice and our Terms and Conditions, including limitations on damages, arbitration of disputes, and application of the laws of the State of Nebraska. If you have any concern about privacy at the Columban Fathers, please contact us and we will try to resolve it. Our business changes constantly. This Notice and the Terms and Conditions will change also, and use of information that we gather now is subject to the Privacy Notice in effect at the time of use. We may e-mail periodic reminders of our notices and conditions, unless you have instructed us not to, but you should check our web site frequently to see recent changes.

12. Opt-In / Removal of Information

Our web site gives users the opportunity to opt-in to receive communications from us and our partners at the point where we request information about the visitor. Our web site also gives users the following options for removing their information from our database in order to stop receiving communications or our service.

13. Corrections and Updates to Information

This web site gives users the following options for changing and modifying information previously provided:

14. Inquiries

Should you have other questions or concerns about this privacy policy, please contact us.

15. Automatic Information

Examples of the information we collect and analyze include the Internet protocol (IP) address used to connect your computer to the Internet; login; e-mail address; password; computer and connection information such as browser type and version, operating system, and platform; purchase history; the full Uniform Resource Locators (URL) clickstream to, through, and from our Web site, including date and time; cookie number; products you viewed or searched for; and phone number used to call our 800 number.