Privacy Policy

Your privacy is critically important to us. At Handmade Valentine Exchange, we have a few fundamental principles:

• We are thoughtful about the personal information we ask you to provide and the personal information that we collect about you through the operation of our services.
• We store personal information for only as long as we have a reason to keep it.
• We aim to make it as simple as possible for you to control what information on your website is shared publicly (or kept private), indexed by search engines, and permanently deleted.
• We help protect you from overreaching government demands for your personal information.
• We aim for full transparency on how we gather, use, and share your personal information.

Below is our Privacy Policy, which incorporates and clarifies these principles.

Who We Are and What This Policy Covers

We are the folks behind Handmade Valentine Exchange (HVE), a group of volunteers who facilitate people connecting and sending each other handmade Valentine's gifts each year. This Privacy Policy applies to information that we collect about you when you use our website, HandmadeValentineExchange.com

Throughout this Privacy Policy we’ll refer to our website, mobile applications and other products and services collectively as “Services.” Below we explain how we collect, use, and share information about you, along with the choices that you have with respect to that information.

Creative Commons Sharealike License

We’ve decided to make this Privacy Policy available under a Creative Commons Sharealike license. Our privacy policy is based on Automattic’s and HVE’s Privacy Policies. You’re more than welcome to copy it, adapt it, and repurpose it for your own use. Just make sure to revise the language so that your policy reflects your actual practices.

Information We Collect

We only collect information about you if we have a reason to do so–for example, to provide our Services, to communicate with you, or to make our Services better. We collect information in three ways: if and when you provide information to us, automatically through operating our Services, and from outside sources. Let’s go over the information that we collect.

Information You Provide to Us

It’s probably no surprise that we collect information that you provide to us. The amount and type of information depends on the context and how we use the information. Here are some examples:

• Basic Information for Sending and Receiving Cards: We ask for the minimum amount of information needed (your name, mailing address, and email address) to pair you with other HVE participants and let you know where to send the cards you make.
• Communications With Us (Hi There!): You may also provide us information when you respond to surveys or communicate with our volunteers about a support question.

Information We Collect Automatically

We also collect some information automatically:

• Log Information: Like most online service providers, we collect information that web browsers, mobile devices, and servers typically make available, such as the browser type, IP address, unique device identifiers, language preference, referring site, the date and time of access, operating system, and mobile network information. We collect log information when you use our Services–for example, when you create or make changes to your information on HandmadeValentineExchange.com
• Usage Information: We collect information about what happens when you use our Services (e.g., page views) along with information about your device (e.g., screen size, name of cellular network, and mobile device manufacturer). We use this information to, for example, provide our Services to you, as well as get insights on how people use our Services, so we can make our Services better.
• Information from Cookies & Other Technologies: A cookie is a string of information that a website stores on a visitor’s computer, and that the visitor’s browser provides to the website each time the visitor returns. Pixel tags (also called web beacons) are small blocks of code placed on websites and emails. HVE uses cookies and other technologies like pixel tags to help us identify and track visitors, usage, and access preferences for our Services, as well as track and understand email campaign effectiveness.

How And Why We Use Information

Purposes for Using Information

We use information about you as mentioned above and for the purposes listed below:

• To provide our Services–for example, to set up and maintain your account;
• To further develop and improve our Services–for example by adding new features that we think our users will enjoy or will help them to create and manage their information more efficiently;
• To monitor and analyze trends and better understand how users interact with our Services, which helps us improve our Services and make them easier to use;
• To monitor and prevent any problems with our Services, protect the security of our Services, detect and prevent fraudulent transactions and other illegal activities, fight spam, and protect the rights and property of HVE and others, which may result in us declining a transaction or the use of our Services;
• To communicate with you, for example through an email, about activities on HVE we think will be of interest to you, solicit your feedback, or keep you up to date on HVE; and
• To personalize your experience using our Services, such as pre-filling information for you on new sign-ups.

Legal Bases for Collecting and Using Information

A note here for those in the European Union about our legal grounds for processing information about you under EU data protection laws, which is that our use of your information is based on the grounds that: (1) The use is necessary in order to fulfill our commitments to you under our Terms of Service or other agreements with you or is necessary to administer your account–for example, in order to enable access to our website on your device; or (2) The use is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation; or (3) The use is necessary in order to protect your vital interests or those of another person; or (4) We have a legitimate interest in using your information–for example, to provide and update our Services, to improve our Services so that we can offer you an even better user experience, to safeguard our Services, to communicate with you, to measure, gauge, and improve the effectiveness of our advertising, and better understand user retention and attrition, to monitor and prevent any problems with our Services, and to personalize your experience; or (5) You have given us your consent.

Sharing Information

How We Share Information

We do not sell our users’ private personal information. We share information about you in the limited circumstances spelled out below and with appropriate safeguards on your privacy:

• Subsidiaries, Employees, and Independent Contractors: We may disclose information about you to our subsidiaries, our employees, our volunteers, and individuals who are our independent contractors that need to know the information in order to help us provide our Services or to process the information on our behalf. We require our subsidiaries, employees, and independent contractors to follow this Privacy Policy for personal information that we share with them.
• Other HVE Participants: The Exchange part of HVE requires us to give your address and name to the other members of your cohort so that they can mail their cards to you. If you believe your information has been used for a purpose outside of exchanging cards please email us at communityofvalentines@gmail.com to let us know.
• Legal Requests: We may disclose information about you in response to a subpoena, court order, or other governmental request.
• To Protect Rights, Property, and Others: We may disclose information about you when we believe in good faith that disclosure is reasonably necessary to protect the property or rights of HVE, third parties, or the public at large. For example, if we have a good faith belief that there is an imminent danger of death or serious physical injury, we may disclose information related to the emergency without delay.
• Business Transfers: In connection with any merger, sale of company assets, or acquisition of all or a portion of our business by another company, or in the unlikely event that HVE goes out of business or enters bankruptcy, user information would likely be one of the assets that is transferred or acquired by a third party. If any of these events were to happen, this Privacy Policy would continue to apply to your information and the party receiving your information may continue to use your information, but only consistent with this Privacy Policy.
• With Your Consent: We may share and disclose information with your consent or at your direction. For example, we may share your information with third parties with which you authorize us to do so.
• Aggregated or De-Identified Information: We may share information that has been aggregated or reasonably de-identified, so that the information could not reasonably be used to identify you. For instance, we may publish aggregate statistics about the use of our Services and we may share a hashed version of your email address to facilitate customized ad campaigns on other platforms.
• Published Support Requests: And if you send us a request (for example, via a support email), we reserve the right to publish that request in order to help us clarify or respond to your request or to help us support other users.

How Long We Keep Information

We generally discard information about you when we no longer need the information for the purposes for which we collect and use it–which are described in the section above on How and Why We Use Information–and we are not legally required to continue to keep it. For example, we keep the web server logs that record information about a visitor to one of HVE’s websites, such as the visitor’s IP address, browser type, and operating system, for approximately 30 days. We retain the logs for this period of time in order to, among other things, analyze traffic to HVE’s websites and investigate issues if something goes wrong on one of our websites.

Security

While no online service is 100% secure, we work very hard to protect information about you against unauthorized access, use, alteration, or destruction, and take reasonable measures to do so, such as monitoring our Services for potential vulnerabilities and attacks.

Choices

You have several choices available when it comes to information about you:

• Limit the Information that You Provide: If you do not want us to share your information with other participants, please do not sign up for the exchange.
• Opt-Out of Electronic Communications: You may opt out of receiving promotional messages from us. Just follow the instructions in those messages. If you opt out of promotional messages, we may still send you other messages, like those about your account and legal notices.
• Set Your Browser to Reject Cookies: At this time, HVE does not respond to “do not track” signals across all of our Services. However, you can usually choose to set your browser to remove or reject browser cookies before using HVE’s websites, with the drawback that certain features of HVE’s websites may not function properly without the aid of cookies.
• Close Your Account: While we’d be very sad to see you go, if you no longer want to use our Services, you can close your account by emailing communityofvalentines@gmail.com. Please keep in mind that we may continue to retain your information after closing your account, as described in How Long We Keep Information above–for example, when that information is reasonably needed to comply with (or demonstrate our compliance with) legal obligations such as law enforcement requests, or reasonably needed for our legitimate business interests.

Your Rights

If you are located in certain countries, including those that fall under the scope of the European General Data Protection Regulation (AKA the “GDPR”), data protection laws give you rights with respect to your personal data, subject to any exemptions provided by the law, including the rights to:

• Request access to your personal data;
• Request correction or deletion of your personal data;
• Object to our use and processing of your personal data;
• Request that we limit our use and processing of your personal data; and
• Request portability of your personal data.

You can usually access, correct, or delete your personal data using your account settings and tools that we offer, but if you aren’t able to do that, or you would like to contact us about one of the other rights, scroll down to How to Reach Us to, well, find out how to reach us. EU individuals also have the right to make a complaint to a government supervisory authority.

How to Reach Us

If you have a question about this Privacy Policy, or you would like to contact us about any of the rights mentioned in the Your Rights section above, please contact us. Or send us a letter at PO Box 513 Holly Springs, GA 30142

Other Things You Should Know (Keep Reading!)

Transferring Information

Because HVE’s Services are offered worldwide, the information about you that we process when you use the Services in the EU may be used, stored, and/or accessed by individuals operating outside the European Economic Area (EEA) who work for us, other members of our group of companies, or third party data processors. This is required for the purposes listed in the How and Why We Use Information section above. When providing information about you to entities outside the EEA, we will take appropriate measures to ensure that the recipient protects your personal information adequately in accordance with this Privacy Policy as required by applicable law.

Ads and Analytics Services Provided by Others

We do not serve advertisements on any of our Services.

We will aggregate user information and perform statistical analyses of the collective behavior of our members and visitors, to measure overall demographics, and to analyze how to improve our service. We may share this information with third parties (such as Simple Analytics), but such aggregate information does not contain personal information other than anonymized IP addresses. In addition, we may compile and disclose aggregate information about our users for promotional or other purposes. For example, we might want to disclose that a certain percentage of our users are located within a particular geographic area or visit the site most frequently in the mornings.

Visitors to Linked Websites

We do not control the Privacy Policy on the websites that we promote. As such, following links to those websites are not protected by this Privacy Policy.

Privacy Policy Changes

Although most changes are likely to be minor, HVE may change its Privacy Policy from time to time. HVE encourages visitors to frequently check this page for any changes to its Privacy Policy. If we make changes, we will notify you by revising the change log below, and, in some cases, we may provide additional notice (such as adding a statement to our homepage, or sending you a notification through email or your dashboard). Your further use of the Services after a change to our Privacy Policy will be subject to the updated policy. That’s it! Thanks for reading.