Fri 30 May 2008
New Privacy Policy for St. Mark’s
Posted by Andrew Mitry under Web/Tech
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One of our volunteers, Karen Henein, a lawyer who specializes in online privacy, helped us come with a new online privacy policy.
St Mark Coptic Orthodox Church Online Privacy Policy
St. Mark Coptic Orthodox Church of Washington, DC (“St. Mark Churchâ€) is committed to protecting your privacy. This privacy policy explains data collection and use practices of the St. Mark Church Web site (www.stmarkdc.org) and applies to the suite of other St. Mark Church Web sites including but not limited to www.orthodoxsermons.org and www.orthodoxbookstore.org (the “Sitesâ€). By accessing the Sites, you are consenting to the information collection and use practices described in this privacy policy.
What information do we collect about you?
St. Mark Church or our service providers collect personal information about you that you voluntarily provide on the Sites, including but not limited to: your name, address, phone number, email address, ministry interests, and financial information in connection with online purchases and donations. We or our service providers may also collect and store information with regard to your user logs and IP address. In addition, we or our service providers may store email and other communications delivered to or by our systems as a necessary incident to the transmission and delivery of such communications and in order to comply with international, federal, state and local laws. As described below, we also use cookies to collect and store information, including personal information, about you and your use of the Sites.
We require that children under 13 years of age not submit personal information. In accordance with the Federal Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 (COPPA), St. Mark Church does not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. St. Mark Church encourages parents to participate actively in their children’s Internet experience.
How do we use this information and share it with others?
We will use the contact information you submit and other information we or our service providers collect, such as user logs, to communicate with you and to provide or enhance our service to you in the normal course of providing service. We or our service providers may also use your information to provide you with additional information about the Sites and their services, St. Mark Church, and activities and announcements related to St. Mark Church.
St. Mark Church may disclose your personal information and other information we or our service providers collect about you, if we believe in good faith that such disclosure is necessary (a) to comply with the law or in response to a subpoena, court order, government request, or other legal process; (b) to protect the interests, rights, safety, or property of St. Mark Church or others; (c) to enforce any terms of service on the Sites; (d) to provide you with the services or announcements requested by you; or (e) to operate St. Mark Church’s systems properly.
We may also share your personal information or other information we collect about you with partners, affiliates, and/or sister organizations interested in serving you or informing you about their organizations. Further use and/or disclosure of your information by such partners, affiliates, and/or sister organizations is governed by the privacy policies of those partners, affiliates, and/or sister organizations.
Use of Cookies
To enhance your experience on the Sites, St. Mark Church or its service provider uses “cookies.†Cookies are messages sent between our servers or the servers of our service providers and your browser that are saved as text files on your computer. Cookies collect information about your use of the Sites, such as the Web pages visited. Cookies, by themselves, do not tell us your email address or other personal information about you unless you choose to provide this information to us. Once you choose to furnish the Sites with personal information, this information may be stored in the cookie and/or linked to other information about you collected by the cookies or that you have provided to us.
We may contract with a third-party Web analytics service to analyze the traffic patterns on the Sites, the data for which may have been collected through the use of cookies, such as the frequency with which our users visit various parts of the Sites. These technical methods may involve the transmission of information either directly to us or to another party authorized by us to collect information on our behalf. We also may use these technical methods in HTML e-mails that we send our users to determine whether our users have opened those e-mails and/or clicked on links in those e-mails. The information generated by these technical methods may include personal information about the user.
You may customize your Web browsers to not accept cookies. If you choose to not have your browser accept cookies from the Sites, it is possible that some parts of the Sites will not function properly.
Security
We have appropriate security measures in place in our physical facilities or the facilities of our service providers to protect against the loss or misuse of your personal information that has been collected via the Sites. Only St. Mark Church personnel and authorized volunteers or authorized personnel of its service providers will have access to your personal information.
Links to Other Web Sites
The Sites may provide links to third-party Web sites. Since we do not control those sites, we encourage you to read the privacy policies on those Web sites before providing any of your personal information on such Web sites.
Changes to Privacy Policy
St. Mark Church reserves the right to change this policy at any time by posting revisions on this Web page. Changes to this privacy policy will be effective at the time they are posted.
Questions
If you have any additional questions or concerns about this privacy policy or would like to be removed from our database, please feel free to contact us any time at info@stmarkdc.org or at Website Privacy Matters, c/o St. Mark Coptic Church of Washington, D.C., 11911 Braddock Road, Fairfax, Virginia 22030.
Date: May 29, 2008


