GENI Privacy Statement

  This privacy statement discloses the privacy practices for http://www.geni.org.

  Because this web site wants to demonstrate its commitment to your privacy, it has agreed to notify you of:

1. What personally identifiable information of yours or third party personally identification is collected from you through the web site
   
   
2. The organization collecting the information
   
   
3. How the information is used
   
   
4. With whom the information may be shared
   
   
5. What choices are available to you regarding collection, use and distribution of the information
   
   
6. The kind of security procedures that are in place to protect the loss, misuse or alteration of information under GENI control
   
   
7. How you can correct any inaccuracies in the information.

If you feel that this company is not abiding by its posted privacy policy, you should first contact Peter Meisen (GENI's President) by EMAIL, PHONE, or POSTAL MAIL.

[ EDITOR'S NOTE: If you or someone you know wishes to contribute to a TRUSTe license (currently about $600 annually), please contact GENI. We feel that having a TRUSTe license and displaying the TRUSTe logo would improve the amount of donations/pledges, and the number of online orders that GENI receives. ]

Information Collection and Use
GENI is the sole owner of the information collected on this site.  We will not sell, share, or rent this information to others in ways different from what is disclosed in this statement.  GENI collects information from our users at several different points on our website. 

Order
We request information from the user on our order form.  Here a user must provide contact information (like name and shipping address) and financial information (like credit card number, expiration date).  This information is used for billing purposes and to fill customer’s orders.  If we have trouble processing an order, this contact information is used to get in touch with the user.

Log Files
We use IP addresses to analyze trends, administer the site, track user’s movement, and gather broad demographic information for aggregate use.  IP addresses are not linked to personally identifiable information.

Sharing
We will share aggregated demographic information with our partners and advertisers. This is not linked to any personal information that can identify any individual person.

We partner with another party to provide specific services. When the user signs up for these services, we will share names, or other contact information that is necessary for the third party to provide these services.

These parties are not allowed to use personally identifiable information except for the purpose of providing these services.

Links
This web site contains links to other sites. Please be aware that we [GENI] are not responsible for the privacy practices of such other sites.  We encourage our users to be aware when they leave our site and to read the privacy statements of each and every web site that collects personally identifiable information.  This privacy statement applies solely to information collected by this Web site.

Newsletter
If a user wishes to subscribe to our newsletter, we ask for contact information such as name and email address.

Surveys & Contests
From time-to-time our site requests information from users via surveys or contests.  Participation in these surveys or contests is completely voluntary and the user therefore has a choice whether or not to disclose this information.  Information requested may include contact information (such as name and shipping address), and demographic information (such as zip code, age level).  Contact information will be used to notify the winners and award prizes.  Survey information will be used for purposes of monitoring or improving the use and satisfaction of this site.

Tell-A-Friend / Refer-This-Page
If a user elects to use our referral service for informing a friend about our site, we ask them for their name and email address, as well as the friend’s name and email address.  GENI will automatically send the friend an email inviting them to visit the site, and a confirmation email to the originator of the message.  GENI stores this information for the purpose of sending this email, and regular promotional emails from GENI about GENI products, services and events.  The user and their friend may contact GENI at info@geni.org to request the removal of this information from the GENI database.

Security
This website takes every precaution to protect our users’ information.  When users submit sensitive information via the website, your information is protected both online and off-line. 

When our registration/order form asks users to enter sensitive information (such as credit card number and/or social security number), that information is encrypted and is protected with the best encryption software in the industry - SSL.  While on a secure page, such as our order form, the lock icon on the bottom of Web browsers such as Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer becomes locked, as opposed to un-locked, or open, when you are just ‘surfing’.  To learn more about SSL, click this link for more details:

While we use SSL encryption to protect sensitive information online, we also do everything in our power to protect user-information off-line.  All of our users’ information, not just the sensitive information mentioned above, is restricted in our offices.  Only employees who need the information to perform a specific job (for example, our billing clerk or a customer service representative) are granted access to personally identifiable information.  Our employees must use password-protected screen-savers when they leave their desk.  When they return, they must re-enter their password to re-gain access to your information.  Furthermore, ALL employees are kept up-to-date on our security and privacy practices.  Every quarter, as well as any time new policies are added, our employees are notified and/or reminded about the importance we place on privacy, and what they can do to ensure our customers’ information is protected.  Finally, the servers that we store personally identifiable information on are kept in a secure environment, behind a locked cage. 

If you have any questions about the security at our website, you can send an email to info@geni.org.

Supplementation of Information
In order for this website to enhance its ability to tailor the site to an individual’s preference, we combine information about the purchasing habits of users with similar information from our partners to create a personalized user profile.  When a user makes a purchase from these other companies, we collect and share that purchase information so we can tailor the site to our users’ preferences.

Special Offers
We send all new members a welcoming email to verify email and contact information. Established members will occasionally receive information on products, services, special deals, and a newsletter. Out of respect for the privacy of our users we present the option to not receive these types of communications. Please see our choice and opt-out below.

Site and Service Updates
We send user site and service announcement updates. Members are not able to un-subscribe from service announcements, which contain important information about GENI. We communicate with the user to provide requested services and in regards to issues relating to their account via email, fax, or phone.

Correction/Updating Personal Information:
If a user’s personally identifiable information changes (such as your zip code), or if a user no longer desires our service, we will endeavor to provide a way to correct, update or remove that user’s personal data provided to us.  This can done by emailing our Customer Support department at info@geni.org.

Choice/Opt-out
Our users are given the opportunity to ‘opt-out’ of having their information used for purposes not directly related to our site at the point where we ask for the information.  For example, our order form has an ‘opt-out’ mechanism so users who buy a product from us, but don’t want any marketing material, can keep their email address off of our lists. 

Users who no longer wish to receive our newsletter or promotional materials from our partners may opt-out of receiving these communications by replying with unsubscribe in the subject line in the email at info@geni.org.

Users of our site are always notified when their information is being collected by any outside parties.  We do this so our users can make an informed choice as to whether they should proceed with services that require an outside party, or not.

Notification of Changes
If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post those changes on this page or our Homepage so our users are always aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under circumstances, if any, we disclose it.  If at any point we decide to use personally identifiable information in a manner different from that stated at the time it was collected, we will notify users by way of an email.  Users will have a choice as to whether or not we use their information in this different manner. We will use information in accordance with the privacy policy under which the information was collected.