Privacy Policy
'The Effective Communication Group' understands that your privacy is important to you. We are committed to protecting the privacy of your personally-identifiable information as you use this ‘Web Site’. This ‘Privacy Policy’ tells you how we protect and use information that we gather from you. By using this ‘Web Site’, you consent to the terms described in the most recent version of this ‘Privacy Policy’. You should also read our ‘Terms of Use’ to understand the general rules about your use of this ‘Web Site’ and any additional terms that may apply when you access particular services or materials on certain areas of this ‘Web Site’. Each reference to ‘we’ and ‘our’ refers to 'The Effective Communication Group' and its affiliates. Each reference to ‘you’, ‘your’, ‘visitor’ or ‘user’ refers to the individual accessing this ‘Site’.
PERSONAL AND NON-PERSONAL INFORMATION
Our ‘Privacy Policy’ identifies how we treat your personal and non-personal information.
WHAT IS NON-PERSONAL INFORMATION AND HOW IS IT COLLECTED AND USED ?
Non personal information is information that cannot identify you. If you visit this ‘Web Site’ to read information, such as information about one of our services, we may collect certain non-personal information about you from your computer’s web browser. Because non-personal information cannot identify you or be tied to you in any way, there are no restrictions on the ways that we can use or share non-personal information. What is personal information and how is it collected ? Personal information is information that identifies you as an individual, such as your name, postal address, ‘e-mail’ address, telephone number and facsimile number. We may collect personal information from you in a variety of ways: i.e.
• when you send us an application or other form;
• when you execute a transaction with us, our affiliates, or others;
• when we collect information about in you in support of a transaction, such as credit card information;
• in some places on this ‘Web Site’ you have the opportunity to send us personal information about yourself, to elect to receive particular information, to purchase and secure access to one of our products or services or to participate in an activity.
ARE ‘COOKIES’ OR OTHER TECHNOLOGIES USED TO COLLECT PERSONAL INFORMATION ?
Yes, we may use ‘cookies’ and related technologies, such as web beacons, to collect information on our ‘Web Site’. A ‘cookie’ is a text file that is placed on your hard disk by a web page server. ‘Cookies’ cannot be used to run programmes or deliver viruses to your computer. ‘Cookies’ are uniquely assigned to you and can only be read by a web server in the domain that issued the ‘cookie’ to you. One of the primary purposes of ‘cookies’ is to provide a convenience feature to save you time. The purpose of a ‘cookie’ is to tell the Web server that you have returned to a specific page. For example, if you register with us, a ‘cookie’ assists ‘The Effective Communication Group’ to recall your specific information on subsequent visits. This simplifies the process of recording your personal information, such as correspondence addresses, delivery addresses, etc. When you return to the same ‘Web Site’ for ‘The Effective Communication Group’, the information you previously provided can be retrieved, so you can easily use the features that you customised. A web beacon is a small graphic image that allows the party that set the web beacon to monitor and collect certain information about the viewer of the web page, web-based document or ‘e-mail’ message, such as the type of browser requesting the web beacon, the ‘IP’ address of the computer that the web beacon is sent to and the time the web beacon was viewed. Web beacons can be very small and invisible to the user but in general, any electronic image viewed as part of a web page or ‘e-mail’, including ‘HTML’ based content, can act as a web beacon. We may use web beacons to count visitors to the web pages on the ‘Web Site’ or to monitor how our users navigate the ‘Web Site’ and we may include web beacons in ‘e-mail’ messages in order to count how many messages sent were actually opened, acted upon or forwarded.
Third party vendors also may use ‘cookies’ on our ‘Web Site’. For instance, we may contract with third parties who will use ‘cookies’ on our ‘Web Site’ to track and analyse anonymous usage and volume statistical information from our visitors and members. Such information is shared externally only on an anonymous, aggregated basis. These third parties use persistent ‘cookies’ to help us to improve the visitor experience, manage our site content and track visitor behaviour. We may also contract with a third party to send ‘e-mail’ to our registered members.
To help measure and improve the effectiveness of our ‘e-mail’ communications, the third-party sets ‘cookies’. All data collected by this third party on behalf of ‘The Effective Communication Group’ is used solely by or on behalf of ‘The Effective Communication Group’ and is shared externally, only and on an anonymous, aggregated basis. From time to time we may allow third parties to post advertisements on our ‘Web Site’ and those third-party advertisements may include a ‘cookie’ or web beacon served by the third party. This ‘Privacy Policy’ does not cover the use of information collected from you by third party advertisement servers. We do not control ‘cookies’ in such third-party advertisements and you should check the privacy policies of those advertisers and / or advertisement services to learn about their use of ‘cookies’ and other technology before linking to an advertisement. We will not share your personal information with these companies but these companies may use information about your visits to this and other ‘Web Sites’ in order to provide advertisements on this site and other sites about goods and services that may be of interest to you and they may share your personal information that you provide to them with others.
You have the ability to accept or decline ‘cookies’. Most Web browsers automatically accept ‘cookies’ but you can usually modify your browser setting to decline ‘cookies’ if you prefer. If you choose to decline ‘cookies’, you may not be able to fully experience the interactive features of ‘Web Sites’ for ‘The Effective Communication Group’ you visit.
HOW DOES ‘THE EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION GROUP’ USE PERSONAL INFORMATION ?
‘The Effective Communication Group’ may keep and use personal information we collect from or about you, to provide you with access to this ‘Web Site’ or other products or services, respond to your requests, transmit Invoices to you for products and / or services you purchased, provide ongoing service and support, contact you with information that might be of interest to you, including information about products and services of ours and of others, ask for your opinion about our products or the products of others, for record keeping and analytical purposes and to research, develop and improve programmes, products, services and content.
Personal information collected ‘online’, may be combined with information you provide to us through other sources. We may also remove your personal identifiers, including your name, ‘e-mail’ address and other additional items of information. In this case, you would no longer be identified as a single unique individual. Once we have de-identified information, it is non-personal information and we may treat it like other non-personal information. Finally, we may use your personal information to protect our rights or property or to protect someone’s health, safety, welfare, comply with a law or regulation, court order or other legal process.
DOES ‘THE EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION GROUP’ SHARE PERSONAL INFORMATION WITH OTHERS ?
We will not share your personal information collected from this ‘Web Site’ with an unrelated third-party without your permission, except as otherwise provided in this ‘Privacy Policy’. In the ordinary course of business, we may share some personal information with companies that we hire, to perform services or functions on our behalf. In all cases, in which we share your personal information with a third party, for the purpose of providing a service to us, we will not authorise them to keep, disclose or use your information with others, except for the purpose of providing the services we asked them to provide.
We will not sell, exchange or publish your personal information, except in conjunction with a corporate sale, merger, dissolution or acquisition. For some transactions, in addition to our direct collection of information, our third-party service vendors, such as credit card companies, clearing houses and banks, who may provide such services as credit, insurance and escrow services, may collect personal information directly from you, to assist you with your transaction. We do not control how these third parties use such information, but we do ask them to disclose how they use your personal information before they collect it.
If you submit a review for a third-party (person or business) during the submission process, we ask your permission to gather your basic information (such as your name and ‘e-mail’ address) which we then share with the third-party for whom you are submitting the review. We may be legally compelled to release your personal information, in response to a Court Order, Court Summons Document, Search Warrant, Law or Regulation.
We may cooperate with law enforcement authorities, in investigating and prosecuting visitors to this ‘Web Site’, who violate our rules or engage in behaviour, which is harmful or illegal, to other visitors. We may disclose your personal information to third-parties, if we believe that the disclosure is necessary to protect our rights or property, protect someone’s health, safety, welfare, comply with a law or regulation, court order or other legal process. As discussed in the section on ‘cookies’ and other technologies, we may permit a third party to serve advertisements on this ‘Web Site’.
If you share information with the advertiser, including by clicking on their advertisements, this ‘Privacy Policy’ does not control the advertisers use of your personal information and you should check the privacy policies of those advertisers and / or advertisement services to learn about their use of ‘cookies’ and other technology before linking to an advertisement.
HOW IS PERSONAL INFORMATION USED FOR COMMUNICATIONS ?
We may contact you periodically by ‘e-mail’, postal services or telephone. to provide information regarding programmes, products, services and content that may be of interest to you. In addition, some of the features on this ‘Web Site’ allow you to communicate with us using an ‘online’ form. If your communication requests a response from us, we may send you a response via ‘e-mail’. The ‘e-mail’ response or confirmation may include your personal information. We cannot guarantee that our ‘e-mails’ to you will be secure from unauthorised interception.
HOW IS PERSONAL INFORMATION SECURED ?
We have implemented generally accepted standards of technology and operational security in order to protect personally-identifiable information from loss, misuse, alteration or destruction. Only authorised personnel and
third-party vendors have access to your personal information and these employees and vendors are required to treat this information as confidential. Despite these precautions, we cannot guarantee that unauthorised persons will not obtain access to your personal information.
LINKS
This ‘Site’ contains links to other ‘Sites’ that provide information that we consider to be interesting. ‘The Effective Communication Group’ is not responsible for the privacy practices or the content of such ‘Web Sites’.
PUBLIC DISCUSSIONS
This ‘Site’ may provide public discussions on various business valuation topics. Please note that any information you post in these discussions will become public, so please do not post sensitive information in the public discussions. Whenever you publicly disclose information online, that information could be collected and used by others. We are not responsible for any action or policies of any third-parties who collect information that users disclose in any such forums on the ‘Web Site. ‘The Effective Communication Group’ does not agree or disagree with anything posted on the discussion board. Also remember that you must comply with our other published policies regarding postings on our public forums.
HOW CAN A USER ACCESS, CHANGE, AND / OR DELETE PERSONAL INFORMATION ?
You may access, correct, update, and / or delete any personally-identifiable information that you submit to the ‘Web Site’. You may also unsubscribe from mailing lists or any registrations on the ‘Web Site’. To do so, please either follow instructions on the page of the ‘Web Site’ on which you have provided such information or subscribed or registered or contact us at '[email protected]’.
CHILDREN’S PRIVACY
‘The Effective Communication Group’ will not collect any personal information, intentionally, (such as a child’s name or ‘e-mail’ address) from children who are twelve years of age or under. If you think that we have collected personal information from a child who is twelve years of age or under, please contact us.
CHANGES
‘The Effective Communication Group’ reserves the right to modify this statement at any time. Any changes to this ‘Privacy Policy’ will be listed in this section and if such changes are material, a notice will be included on the ‘Home Page’ of the ‘Web Site’ for a period of time. If you have any questions about the ‘Privacy Policy’ at any ‘Web Sites’ operated by ‘The Effective Communication Group’ or about our ‘Web Site’ practices, in general terms, please contact us at: ‘[email protected]’.
