PRIVACY POLICY

We believe in working together with our Members to support programs that make a significant difference in our children's education and development. We are committed to assisting family centric educational and extracurricular activities that are important to our customers and their families. The SchoolBates Program offers our Members a way to direct donation dollars to their favorite school/school program.

In addition, we share your concern about the protection of your personal information online. This is our policy regarding the privacy of information we collect on our web site(s). This Privacy Policy includes examples of the types of personal information we collect and the kinds of companies with whom we share such information.

The SchoolBates Program is operated by JW Austin Enterprises, LLC. ("JW Austin Enterprises", "SchoolBates", "us", "we" or "our") through its own Web site and other Web sites with whom it partners. We view protecting your privacy as a top priority for consumers who participate in the SchoolBates Program. We want you to understand how our company handles your personal information that we may obtain both on our Web site and through the SchoolBates Program, and how we may and may not share it.

This Privacy Statement covers all of the information handling practices for the SchoolBates Program for the benefit of current and past customers. This SchoolBates Privacy Statement is effective upon registration for new users, and is otherwise effective on January 23, 2006 for all users.

What information is required for SchoolBates, and why?

SchoolBates may collect the following types of information, which is explained in more detail throughout the rest of this Privacy Policy:

  • contact information including: your name, postal mailing address, e-mail address, phone number, contact information of your friends and associates to whom you choose to submit information about SchoolBates, and financial information, such as credit card information, depending on the services used;
  • transactional information: username and password for accessing the SchoolBates web site, purchases and purchase histories, order numbers and amounts, dates and amounts of transactions, schools and school organizations;
  • communications sent through the site or sent to us;
  • statistics about your activity when using SchoolBates or viewing advertisements, such as pages viewed, frequency and timing of visits to the site, viewing patterns, web site performance, advertising data, and standard web log/log file/clickstream data such as IP addresses; and
  • information from third parties, such as data for analytical, audit, and marketing purposes.
  • School and/or school organization information including: name, postal mailing address, e-mail address, phone number, contact information of Organization Leaders and Point Contacts.

Enrollment Information

To enroll as a full member (a "Member") with the SchoolBates service, you will need to provide certain contact information, such as your name, email address, phone number, username, and password, as well as, defining the associated school and/or school organization that you request as the recipient of benefits of the SchoolBates Program. This basic information is required if you wish to enroll in the SchoolBates Program.

Purchase Information

As a SchoolBates Member, you can help your school and/ or school organization earn cash rebates by purchasing goods and services from our participating merchants. For a more detailed description of the SchoolBates Program, please view our Terms of Service.

We may require additional information in order to keep track of and collect Member's purchases. We collect, from our third party partners, details of your transactions such as the date and amount of your transaction in order to keep track of your purchases and match those to your requested school and/or school organization. None of this purchase information will be released to any third party in a personally identifiable way, only in aggregate or anonymous form.

How will my information be used?

The types of information subject to collection listed above may be used in the following ways, which is explained in more detail throughout the rest of this Privacy Policy:

  • to carry out and track the transactions you request;
  • to measure and improve our services, such as by optimizing your experience when using the SchoolBates web site or offering additional services;
  • to troubleshoot problems;
  • to enforce our Terms of Service policy;
  • to prevent potentially illegal or prohibited activity;
  • to inform you of updates to our services and policies, targeted marketing, and special offers based on your preferences; and
  • to share marketing and other data with third parties in a form that does not provide personally identifiable information, or provides personally identifiable information that is protected by confidentiality agreement.

Management of Your Account

When you become a SchoolBates Member, we use your enrollment information and transaction data to manage your account. We will not rent, sell or share any personal information we gather through SchoolBates to third parties except as indicated below or to provide information regarding the products or services you have ordered. There are other circumstances where your information may be shared with other parties for non-marketing purposes. The following describes the ways that your information may be disclosed in the normal course of business to provide our services.

We may use your information for other products and services owned and controlled by us in order to provide services to our Members.

Use of Information with Our Participating Merchants

We share certain data with our participating merchants in aggregate form, but the SchoolBates Program is designed to ensure you are not identified personally to participating merchants unless you make the choice to share your personal information directly with them. We will not disclose any of the personal information you supply to us to our participating merchants without your prior express consent.

The only information that may be shared between us and one of our participating merchants is information that pertains to orders. Order information, including order numbers and amounts, may be available to us, the merchant, or third party affiliate program management companies for accurate tracking purposes. This information will not be released by us to other parties unless required by law or to protect us and our Members from losses.

We do not record any personal information passed from our Members to our participating merchants, including credit card information or merchant passwords.

Use of Information with Our SchoolBates Partners

Both we and our partners who offer the SchoolBates Program to their consumers share certain data with each other in order to ensure the proper operation of the SchoolBates Program. We need to share data with these partners to operate the SchoolBates Program and the partners need to share data with us to allow their consumers to participate. All data received by us will be used in accordance with this Privacy Statement and all data shared with our partners will be used in accordance with their relevant privacy policy.

Service Providers

We provide information to trusted companies who work on behalf of or with us under confidentiality agreements. These companies may use your personal information to help us communicate with you about offers of interest to you. However, these service providers do not have an independent right to use, share or sell this information.

Use of Third Parties for Fulfillment Purposes

We may use certain third parties to provide marketing and administrative services, such as keeping track of your purchases, analyzing data or delivering special offers to you on our behalf or on behalf of our partner companies. Third parties may also be used to help us administer our SchoolBates Program. In order to obtain these services, we may need to share certain personally identifiable information about our Members. However, these third parties will be bound by legal agreements to not use or disclose the information we provide them for any purpose other than to perform the requested service.

On occasion, contests, sweepstakes or surveys on our Web site may be co-Organization Leadered by us and another company, or may be Organization Leadered by companies other than us. Some or all of the data collected through these contests, sweepstakes or surveys may be shared with the sponsor(s) or companies indicated on the entry form. If such data will be shared, then there will be a notice prior to the time of data collection or transfer.

Direct Marketing Partners

We may provide SchoolBates Members' postal information and other relevant data to trusted direct marketing partners who may send direct marketing campaigns on behalf of the SchoolBates Program and also use this postal information and other data to market to you on their own behalf. These direct marketing partners do not have an independent right to share or sell this information.

Notification About Products and Services

We offer Members the chance to have donations made to school and/ or school organization of their choice via the SchoolBates Program through purchases of goods and services from our participating merchants and from opportunities made available to Members on our Web site, through the postal mail and, unless you opt out of receiving them, through email. We may use information about you to provide you offers tailored to your interests. Sometimes, we send offers via email to selected groups of Members on behalf of our participating merchants. When we do this, we do not give the participating merchants your name and address. If you do not want to receive offers via email from participating merchants, you may opt out of receiving them as detailed in the email section below.

Use of Information from Third Parties

We may obtain information about you from our partner companies and other third parties in order to provide you with opportunities tailored to your interests. We may also use information obtained from our partner companies and other third parties in conjunction with Member account and enrollment information for analytical and audit purposes.

Use of Non-Personally Identifiable Information

We may also provide aggregated, non-personally identifiable information about our Members to third parties for audit, marketing and other purposes. Because aggregated data is not associated with any particular person, these third parties will not have access to any personally identifiable information about you.

Legal Requests/Questionable Activities

We reserve the right to release information to local, state, or federal law enforcement officials when we believe in good faith that the law requires it, or when required to do so by order of a court or authorized administrative agency. More specific examples of such circumstances may include: to satisfy the Electronic Communications Privacy Act; to disclose information that is necessary to identify, contact, or bring legal action against someone who may be violating our Terms Of Use Policy or other user policies; to operate SchoolBates services properly; or to protect SchoolBates and our Members.

Who sees my personal information?

Only a very limited number of our employees have access to your personal information. Primarily, this information is accessed to provide customer service or to fulfill the rewards to a school and/or school organization of choice. We may use contractors or vendors to help us to provide some of the services for the SchoolBates Program. If we need to disclose personal information for them to provide services, it is with the requirement that the information is kept confidential and is used only for those services. School and/or school organizations to which you contribute will not receive any information about you or your purchases.

Online Shopping

At some Web sites, you can purchase products and services or register to receive materials, such as a catalog or new product and service updates. In many cases, you may be asked to provide contact information, such as your name, address, email address, phone number, and credit/debit card information. Further, if you complete an order for someone else, such as an online gift order sent directly to a recipient, you may be asked to provide information about the recipient, such as the recipient's name, address, and phone number. SchoolBates has no control over the third parties' use of any personal information you provide when placing such an order. Please exercise care when doing so.

If you order products or services directly from SchoolBates, we will use the personal information you provide only to process that order. We do not share this information with outside parties except to the extent necessary to complete that order.

How do we keep your information secure?

We maintain reasonable physical, electronic, and procedural safeguards that comply with federal regulations to protect personal information about you. We use a secure, encrypted connection (called an SSL connection) on all pages where you transmit personal data to us. Whenever you access any of your account pages or change any of your user information, it is done over an SSL connection to the SchoolBates Program.

How can I access and update my SchoolBates' data?

Members may access and update information stored in your account profile by visiting your My Account page. Please keep your contact, account, and preference information up-to-date. Doing so ensures that your purchases are properly tracked and credited. It also helps us inform you of new participating merchants who may help you boost the potential rewards for your school and/or school organization of choice. It is your responsibility to update and maintain accurate contact information in your account.

You can make changes by visiting your My Account page and entering corrections. Email and street addresses that are entered into a Member's personal profile page are the addresses that will be used for all contact. Neither we nor any of our service providers are responsible for any mailings, including the mailing of award checks that are sent to incorrect addresses, if the address in question was the address listed in that School Profile associated as the designated School in a Member's account at the time of issuance.

What about links to other sites and participating merchants ' use of information?

Through the SchoolBates Web site, we may provide links to third-party Web sites, such as those of our participating merchants. Each of these Web sites may have separate privacy and different data-collection practices from the SchoolBates Program, and we are not responsible for the actions or practices of these third parties, or for the content on these Web sites. We encourage you to review the privacy policies of their Web sites.

Cookies

>We use "cookies" to personalize the SchoolBates Program to a Member's interests, to ensure that only a Member can access an account, to facilitate the Member's automatic log-in process and for Web beacons (as described below in the "Web Beacons" section). A cookie is a text file that is placed on your hard disk by a Web page server. Cookies cannot be used to run programs 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.

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 the SchoolBates Program or Web sites you visit.

We also review "log-file" data to monitor site performance and analyze traffic patterns and usage of our Web site. Each time you visit the SchoolBates Web site, our server automatically recognizes the following:

  • Host origin of the request (your IP address or that of your ISP if using proxy servers)
  • Referrer URL (the page you came from)
  • Requested document (the page you're looking at)
  • Your cookie
  • Date and time of your visit

This information, sometimes called log-file or clickstream data, is used to monitor site performance and ensure the SchoolBates Program functions properly. It may also be appended to your personal profile so that we may further tailor the SchoolBates Program to your interests.

Web Beacons

The SchoolBates' Web pages and/or HTML emails may contain electronic images (called "Web beacons", "single-pixel GIFs", or "action tags") that allow us to count users who have visited a certain Web page or opened an email, conduct research on participating merchants and Web sites for auditing purposes, or to access your SchoolBates' "cookie" to identify you when on third party Web sites. Using Web beacons allows us to personalize your experience by tailoring advertisements, updates, and other offers to your particular interests, and measuring the marketing effectiveness of our email communications.

Web beacons collect only a limited set of information including a cookie number, time and date of a page view, and a description of the page on which the Web beacon resides. Information recorded through these Web beacons may be used to report aggregate demographic or usage information about you to our partners. The SchoolBates' Web pages may also contain Web beacons placed there by participating merchants to help determine the effectiveness of an offer or promotion. No personally identifiable information about you is shared with any other person or entity except as otherwise set forth in this Privacy Statement.

Email

With your consent, we will send Members email offers available to SchoolBates participants. You may opt-out of receiving email from SchoolBates either during the registration process, changing your preferences on your SchoolBates account page, or by clicking on the unsubscribe link available at the bottom of any commercial email you receive and follow the instructions on-screen or by sending an email requesting to stop receiving email to: memberservices@SchoolBates.com.

Organization Leaders and Point Contacts will receive SchoolBates promotional and school and/or school organization account information changes updates. You as a an Organizational Leader or Point Contact may opt-out of receiving these emails by changing your role in your school and/or school organization in your My Account area.

Please note that it may take up to 72 business hours for us to process an opt-out request and that any email communications within the queue prior to your decision to opt-out will still be sent to you.

On occasion, we may contact you with specific administrative notices that are required by law, regulation, or as needed to service your account (i.e. SchoolBates Program change notifications or if we update our Privacy Statement). While you can elect to stop receiving commercial email that we may send from our participating merchants through the SchoolBates Program, you cannot unsubscribe from these administrative messages while enrolled in the SchoolBates Program.

Third Party Ad Servers

We reserve the right to serve advertisements within our Web pages either ourselves or by allowing other companies, called third-party ad servers or ad networks, to do so. In addition, some of our advertisers may use the services of third-party ad networks. Some of these third-party ad networks may place a persistent cookie on your computer. Doing this allows the third-party ad network to recognize your computer each time they send you an online advertisement. In this way, third-party ad networks may compile information about where you, or others who are using your computer, saw their advertisements and determine which ads are clicked on.

This information allows a third-party ad network to deliver targeted advertisements that they believe will be of most interest to you. We do not have access to or control of the cookies that may be placed by the third-party ad servers or third-party ad networks. Those third-party ad networks that use persistent cookies may offer you a way to opt-out of ad targeting. You may find more information at the Web site of either the individual third-party ad network or the Network Advertising Initiative. Since SchoolBates does not set the policies of third parties, you are subject to the policies of those parties.

Delete / Deactivate from SchoolBates

You may deactivate from participating in SchoolBates at any time and/or delete your personal information from our database so as not to receive future communications from SchoolBates by sending an email to memberservices@SchoolBates.com and indicating your desire to be deactivated and/or deleted from the SchoolBates Program.

Note: It may take up to 72 business hours for us to process your request and any email communications within the queue prior to your decision to deactivate will still be sent to you.

We reserve the right to deactivate you at our sole discretion if we believe that you have used the SchoolBates Program or anything associated with it in a way that is fraudulent or damaging to us, our participating merchants, partners or third party processors.

Children/Minors

We are committed to protecting the privacy of children and minors. The SchoolBates Program is not designed or intended to attract children or minors under the age of 18. As provided in the Terms of Service, the SchoolBates Program is available only to persons who are 18 years of age and over. The Web site will automatically block enrollment of any person once they indicate they are under the age of 18. If we later learn that a user is under the age of 18, we will terminate the account and delete the user's information. Inherent in the SchoolBates Program is the responsibility of parents and/or guardians to ensure that their children's privacy is protected. We will not be liable for any content viewed by minor children in violation of the terms of this Privacy Statement. For further information about tips, tools, age-appropriate or kid-friendly Web sites and how to report online trouble, please visit www.getnetwise.org.

Sale/Merger

We reserve the right to transfer information about you if we are acquired by or merged with another company. In this event, we will notify you in accordance with the procedures contained in the Policy Updates section of this Policy before information about you is transferred and becomes subject to a different privacy policy.

Limitations on Privacy

Due to the existing regulatory environment, we cannot ensure that all of your private communications and other personal information will never be disclosed in ways not otherwise described in this Privacy Statement. By way of example (without limiting the foregoing), third parties may unlawfully intercept or access transmissions or private communications, or users may abuse or misuse your personal information that they collect from the Web site. Therefore, although we exceed industry standard practices to protect your privacy, we do not promise, and you should not expect, that your personal information or private communications will always remain private, such as from third-party "hackers".

Privacy Statement Updates

We reserve the right, at any time and without notice, to add to, update, change, modify or revise this Privacy Statement simply by posting such change, update or modification. Any such addition, update, change, modification or revision will be effective immediately upon posting. If there is a material changes how we use your personal information, we will notify you via email.

How do I contact SchoolBates about this Privacy Statement?

If you have any questions about this Privacy Statement, our information-handling practices, or other aspects of privacy, please contact us by email at memberservices@SchoolBates.com or via postal mail at SchoolBates Program, J.W. Austin Enterprises, LLC, Privacy Statement Issues, 3267 Bee Cave Road, Suite 107-212, Austin, Texas 78746.