Privacy policy.

 

Your privacy is important to us. Our Homes Media Group Inc. (referred to as “OUR HOMES”, “us” or “we”) is committed to maintaining the privacy, security and accuracy of the personal information we collect, use and disclose in accordance with applicable legislation. This privacy policy (the “Privacy Policy”) is a statement of principles and guidelines concerning the protection of personal information of our individual clients, individual service providers and other individuals (“you”).

CONSENT

BY SUBMITTING PERSONAL INFORMATION TO OUR HOMES OR ITS AGENTS, YOU AGREE THAT WE MAY COLLECT, USE AND DISCLOSE SUCH PERSONAL INFORMATION IN ACCORDANCE WITH THIS PRIVACY POLICY, THE PRIVACY PREFERENCES YOU HAVE MADE KNOWN TO US AND AS PERMITTED OR REQUIRED BY LAW. Subject to legal and contractual requirements, you may refuse or withdraw your consent to certain of the identified purposes at any time by contacting us. If you refuse or withdraw your consent, we may not be able to provide you or continue to provide you with certain services or information that may be of value to you.

1. What personal information do we collect?

Canadian privacy legislation defines personal information broadly as information about “an identifiable individual” or as information that allows an individual to be identified. The types of personal information that we may collect from you from time to time include: your name, address, telephone number, e-mail address.

2. Why do we collect your personal information?

We collect your personal information to provide the product, service or information you requested, for example, if you signed up for our newsletter, we use your personal information to send it to you by email. If you enter into a contest offered through our website or printed publications, we use your personal information to administer the contest on our own behalf or on behalf of our sponsors.

3. To whom do we disclose your personal information?

We may disclose your personal information to the following third parties in the following circumstances, with your permission:

(a) Disclosure to Trading Partners 
From time to time our magazines or website may make their list of customers available to other carefully screened organizations (such as other magazines, book publishers, banks or charities) that want to let you know about a product or service that might interest you. The material to be sent to you is reviewed by us before the names and addresses (including e-mail addresses) are released to ensure the organization is reputable and material is appropriate and not misleading.

(b) Law Enforcement and Legal Disclosure 
OUR HOMES may disclose your personal information to a government institution that has asserted its lawful authority to obtain the information or where OUR HOMES has reasonable grounds to believe the information could be useful in the investigation of unlawful activity, or to comply with a subpoena or warrant or an order made by a court, person or body with jurisdiction to compel the production of information, or to comply with court rules regarding the production of records and information, or to OUR HOMES’ legal counsel.

If you would prefer for us NOT to share your information as described above in sections 4(a), simply inform us (see “Contact Us” below)

4. Control of your personal information

At OUR HOMES, we want you to be able to maintain control over how we use your personal information. In particular:

You may have the right to “opt out” of some or all of the identified purposes, uses and disclosures listed in sections 3 and 4 above. You always have the option to instruct us not to use your name, address, e-mail address, etc. beyond providing you with the product, service or information you requested. See “Contact Us” below. E-mail communications will always include an identification of the sender and an “Unsubscribe” option

5. Where is your personal information stored?

Your personal information is stored in secured locations and on servers controlled by OUR HOMES, located either at our offices or at the offices of our service providers. For access to your personal information, please contact our Privacy Officer using the contact information in the “Contact Us” section below.

6. How can you access your personal information?

Upon written request, subject to certain exceptions, OUR HOMES will inform you of the existence, use, and disclosure of your personal information and will give you access to that information. Access requests should be sent to our Privacy Officer, using the contact information in the “Contact Us” section below.

7. How do we protect your personal information?

We make every reasonable effort to protect against the loss, misuse, and alteration of personal information under our control. Our security policies are periodically reviewed and enhanced as necessary.

Only authorized employees and suppliers have access to your personal information. Where information is sent to a third party for processing, we make sure, through our contracts with them, that all your information is kept secure. We keep your information for the time we are providing you with a product or service.

We operate secure data networks protected by industry standard firewall and password protection systems.

8. Privacy and our websites

OUR HOMES sometimes collects personal information through its website.

Non-Personal Information – 
Our Website’s operating system – like all other Websites – automatically records some general, non-personal information about your Web visit, such as:

  • The domain of the Internet Service Provider (such as “company.com” or “service.ca”), and the IP address (such as “ppp-55”) of the computer used to access this site;

  • The type of Web browser (such as “Internet Explorer version x” or “Chrome version x”), and the operating system (such as Macintosh, Unix, or Windows) used to access this site;

  • The date and time of the visit to this Website; and,

  • The URLs of the various webpages which are visited on this site.

This tracking system does NOT record personal information about individuals.

We use the above non-personal information for statistical analysis, and to help us make our website more useful to our visitors. We may also disclose an aggregated summary of the above information to third parties such as sponsors, advertisers and our auditors.

We may also use “cookies” that identify you as a return visitor. A cookie is a piece of data that a website can send to your browser, which may then be stored on your hard drive. We might do this so that when you come back to visit us again, we can tailor information to suit your individual preferences. The goal is to save you time, and provide you with a more meaningful visit. Cookies do NOT contain ANY personally identifying information. Browsers allow you to disable cookie collection if you wish, or inform you when a cookie is being stored on your hard drive.

Unless a visitor specifically informs us (e.g. by enrolling for our services or sending us correspondence from the websites), we will not know who the individual visitors are. In addition to the identified purposes described in our Privacy Policy, we may use this website information and share it with other organizations with whom we have a commercial relationship to measure the use of our websites and to improve the functionality and content of the websites.

Visitors can reset their browsers either to notify them when they have received a cookie or refuse to accept cookies. However, if a visitor refuses to accept cookies, he or she may not be able to use some of the features available on our websites.

E-Mail Communications – 
Occasionally, we may send marketing or promotional e-mail communications to you with information that may be useful, including information about the products and services of OUR HOMES and other third parties with whom we have a relationship. We will include instructions on how to unsubscribe and inform us of preferences if recipients decide they do not want to receive any future marketing or promotional e-mails from OUR HOMES.

Also, if you send us an email message, we may retain that message and your email address, as well as any response we send you.

Searches – 
For your convenience, search functions are sometimes provided on our websites. We keep logs of the words searched to learn more about what kind of information our visitors are seeking, and thus improve our services.

Hyperlinks – 
For your convenience, OUR HOMES’s websites sometimes contain hyperlinks to websites managed by third parties. By activating these hyperlinks, you will leave OUR HOMES’s websites for those of the third parties, which may have different privacy policies and practices than OUR HOMES. OUR HOMES cannot be held liable for the use of such third party websites.

Advertising to Children – 
We believe that none of OUR HOMES’s websites appeal directly to children of 13 years old or less. We do not knowingly direct our advertising at children under the age of 13, except as permitted by law.

Individuals Under 18 – 
No personal information should be submitted or posted on our websites by individuals under 18 years of age without their parent’s or guardian’s permission. We may request name, address, phone number, email address and date of birth from an individual under 18 years of age for contest participation so that we may notify him or her if selected as a winner. In the event we do so, we will request their parent’s or guardian’s consent prior to collection.

No information collected from online guests under 18 years of age is used for any marketing or promotional purposes whatsoever by OUR HOMES. Unless otherwise disclosed at collection, we do not provide any personal information collected through any OUR HOMES website from individuals under 18 years old, regardless of its source, to any third party for any purpose whatsoever.

9. Changes to the Privacy Policy

OUR HOMES reserves the right to modify or supplement this Privacy Policy at any time. If we make a change to this Privacy Policy, we will post such change on our websites and make such revised policy and change available upon request to the Privacy Officer. However, OUR HOMES will obtain the necessary consents required under applicable Privacy Laws if it seeks to collect, use or disclose an individual’s personal information for purposes other than those to which consent is obtained unless otherwise required or permitted by law.

10. Contact Us

OUR HOMES has appointed a Privacy Officer to oversee compliance with this Privacy Policy and applicable Privacy Laws. To access your personal information, inform us of changes you believe need to be made to that information, request that we investigate a concern you have about our personal information practices, or obtain further information about this Policy and the practices outlined herein, please contact:

CONTACT: 
Privacy Officer 
OUR HOMES Media Group Inc. 
25 Elgin St. 
Collingwood ON L9Y 3L6 
Tel: 705.445.5065 
E-mail: editor@ourhomes.ca