PRIVACY POLICY

When you register, contribute, sign up to volunteer, or take any other action on our Site, we may ask you to give us contact information, including your name, address, telephone number, mobile telephone number and/or e-mail address. We may obtain information about you from outside sources and add it to or combine it with the information we collect through this Site.

We use this information to operate this Site, send you news and information about The Bloc’s activities, solicit your participation in The Bloc’s activities, and related uses. We use your e-mail address to send such information by e-mail, and may use your telephone number to call you or send you a text message or phone call for these purposes.

Additionally, we may share your information as follows, or as otherwise described in this Privacy Policy:

• To companies that assist us in maintaining this Site or with the The Bloc’s activities, but only for purposes of providing services to The Bloc and with the strict requirement that any such company will never itself have the right to contact you for any reason;

• To comply with applicable law or legal requirements (for example, a lawful subpoena), to protect our rights or property, or to protect our supporters from fraudulent, abusive, or unlawful conduct, or if we reasonably believe that an emergency involving immediate danger of death or serious physical injury to any person requires disclosure of communications or justifies disclosure of records;

• To other groups with your consent.

• Submitting your personal information (including e-mail address) on this page will sign you up to receive e-mails from The Bloc. We may also use your first name to indicate the latest actions taken on this site.

The Bloc complies with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act. The Bloc does not solicit and does not accept personally identifying information from any person under 13 years of age.

Visitors to this Site who are under 13 years of age should not use this Site except under the supervision and with the assistance of their parent or legal guardian, and should never submit any personally identifying information to the Site. For example, visitors under 13 years of age should not register, purchase or use services or take any actions on or through this Site.

When you purchase services through this Site, we collect credit card information from you. That information is used solely for processing your contribution; is not maintained by The Bloc; and is never disclosed to anyone, for any other purpose other than for processing your contribution, under any circumstances.

The Bloc uses industry standard security measures to protect against the loss, misuse or alteration of all of the personally identifiable information that you provide to us. Our server is located in a locked, secure environment. All supplied credit card information is transmitted via Secure Socket Layer (SSL) technology and then encrypted into our payment processing provider’s database.

Permission to access your personally identifiable information is granted only to you and The Bloc’s employees or contractors who need to know that information to provide services to you and who are required to keep the information confidential. Although we make good faith efforts to store information collected by this Site in a secure operating environment, we cannot guarantee complete security.

A cookie is a piece of data stored on the user’s hard drive containing information about the user. Some parts of this Site may be password-protected. We may use a cookie (cookies reside on your computer and are under the control of your browser) to help us remember and process items that you purchase through this Site; and/or to compile aggregate data about visitors to the Site and their interaction with the Site for the purposes of improving the operation of the Site and/or offering better Site experiences and tools in the future.

We may also use cookies to enable you to return to password-protected areas of the Site without having to re-enter your password. If you wish to disable these cookies, the help portion of the tool bar on most browsers can assist. If you set your browser to disable cookies, however, you may not be able to access certain parts of this Site.

We may also use third-party services such as Google Analytics. This helps us understand traffic patterns and know if there are problems with our Site. We may also use embedded images in emails to track open rates for our mailings, so that we can tell which mailings appeal most to The Bloc supporters.

Please note that third party vendors, including Google, may show The Bloc-sponsored ads on the Internet. Those third party vendors (including Google) use cookies to serve ads based on a user’s prior visits to our website. Users may opt out of Google’s use of cookies by visiting http://www.google.com/privacy/ads/

We may place online advertising with third-party vendors, including Google, which will be shown on other Sites on the internet. In some cases, those third-party vendors may decide which ads to show you based on your prior visits to the Site. At no time will you be personally identified to those third-party vendors, nor will any of the information you share with us be shared with those third-party vendors. If you prefer to opt out of the use of these third-party cookies on the Site, you can do so by visiting the Network Advertising Initiative opt out page.

The Bloc does not use cookies to track what specific pages an individual site visitor views. Please note, however, that third party vendors, including Google, may show The Bloc-sponsored ads on the Internet. Those third party vendors (including Google) use cookies to serve ads based on a user’s prior visits to our website. Users may opt out of Google’s use of cookies by visiting http://www.google.com/privacy/ads/ .

The privacy policies and practices contained in this Privacy Policy do not apply to ANY external links. This Privacy Policy only applies to our Site or any future Sites that we may develop. It does not cover Sites that are linked to by this Site or Sites for which we are not responsible (“linked-Sites”). These linked-Sites will have their own policies and practices that may be different from ours. We encourage you to familiarize yourself with the policies and practices of the linked-Sites, especially if you provide personal information to them.

The Bloc complies with the California Online Privacy Protection Act. As part of that Act, all registered users of our Site may make any changes to their information at any time by logging into their Control Panel and going to the “Edit Profile” page. Changes to billing and/or credit card information must be made through The Bloc staff and may be initiated by contacting info at thebloc dot us

We retain the right to amend or otherwise update this Privacy Policy at any time. By using our Site, you consent to the collection and use of the information as we have described. If we change our policies and practices, we will post the changes in our Privacy Policy so that you are always aware of them. With this knowledge, you can make an informed decision about whether you wish to provide personal information to us.