Privacy Policy

This Web site is owned and operated by Waterford Institute™ (“WI”). We recognize that visitors to our site may be concerned about the information they provide to us, and how we treat information. This Privacy Policy addresses those concerns.

Privacy Statement

WI uses its best efforts to respect your privacy. At our site, we do not collect personally identifiable information from you unless you provide it to us voluntarily and knowingly.

Personal Identifiable Information

Information Provided to Us

WI gathers personally identifiable data, such as names, addresses, zip/postal codes, e-mail addresses, etc., only when voluntarily submitted. To facilitate payment and fulfillment in connection with purchases from us, we will request personal credit card, debit card, or other payment information. The primary use of your personal information, other than directly in connection with a purchase, is to efficiently provide you with personalized, relevant information.

Occasionally, we may also run contests or other special promotions on our Web site in which we ask you for contact information (like an e-mail address) or demographic information (like a zip code, age, or income level). We use this data to send users promotional material about our company or our partners. The participant’s contact information is also used to contact him or her when necessary and may be shared with other companies for promotional purposes, but only with your prior permission and under the terms and conditions specified when you take part in the promotion. At any time, you may opt-out of receiving future mailings of this kind, or simply decline to take part in the promotions.

Any information gathered is used solely by WI or other entities who are involved in the operation of this site for internal purposes. WI lists are never sold to third parties. We will share personally identifiable information with third parties only when you authorize us to share it, or when we are required to do so by law.

We do reserve the right to disclose aggregated user statistics, such as “45 percent of our users are educators” or “5,000 members indicate an interest science lessons” in order to describe our services to prospective partners, advertisers, and other third parties.

Under protection of confidentiality agreements, we may also use third-party processors in some cases to help us provide services and manage our Web sites and relationships with users. These may include purchase and order fulfillment, credit card processing, removing duplicate information from lists, providing marketing assistance, and providing other customer support. Third-party processors and providers will be given access only to that information needed to perform their support functions, and are prohibited from using it for other purposes.

Technology Information Collected by Us

WI collects information through a variety of standard technologies to 1) enhance and personalize your experience on our Web sites; 2) generate statistics and information about traffic to and on our Web sites; and 3) for other business purposes.

Our Web site collects your IP address to help diagnose problems with our server, to determine the frequency with which our visitors look at various parts of our sites, and to administer our Web site. The IP address is also used to gather broad demographic information such as geographic distribution of our visitors and may be used to allow us to provide goods and services appropriate to your place of residence.

In addition to IP addresses, our Web site collects information through cookies. Cookies record only information you volunteer to us upon registering or visiting the Web site. Cookies are tiny files placed onto the hard drive of your computer when you register or log on to our Web site that enable our server to recognize or remember who you are each time you return. We may make limited use of cookies to provide content and services specific to your interests. For instance, we may use cookies to retain your personal preferences, hold session information for a shopping basket, or save your password so you do not have to re-enter it each time you log in. We do not use cookies to collect personal information.

Cookies may be deleted or blocked from your computer. Your browser help function should tell you how to do this. However, certain WRI services may not work correctly or at all if you delete and/or block cookies.

Personal Information Safeguarding

The security and confidentiality of your information is extremely important to us. Waterford uses a variety of technical, administrative, and physical security measures to safeguard your information from unauthorized access and improper use. These measures include, but are not limited to

• Using industry-standard encryption to protect sensitive personal information;
• Storing personal information in secure operating environments with limited authorized access;
• Requiring our Web site users to verify their identities with unique login information.

We periodically review our security procedures in order to implement new and appropriate technology and methods.

Links to Other Web Sites

Links to third-party Web sites on www.waterford.org are provided solely as a convenience to you. If you click any third-party link, you will leave our site. These third-party companies have their own privacy and data collection policies. Waterford has not reviewed these third-party sites and does not control nor is responsible for any of these sites or their content. Thus, Waterford does not endorse or make any representations about them, or any information, software, or other products or materials found there, or any results that may be obtained from using them. If you decide to access any of the third-party sites linked to this site, you do so entirely at your own risk.

Amendments to Our Privacy Policy

Waterford may amend this Privacy Policy at any time. You may wish to view it periodically.
This Privacy Policy was last updated on December 7, 2009.

Photo by Adam Barker