Privacy Policy

The Houston Birthing Connection Web Site Privacy Policy Your right to privacy is very important to us. We recognize that providing us with personal information is an act of trust. Therefore, we have created a privacy policy to protect your personal information. Questions regarding this statement should be directed to The Houston Birthing Connection by sending an e-mail message to twaddy@houstonbirthingconnection.org. Please reference this privacy policy in your subject line. Your Personal Information Personal Information Collected In general, when you visit our web site and access information you remain anonymous. We do not require you to register or provide personal information to us to view our web site. You do have an option to join our mailing list on the web site, or to make a financial contribution and in both cases we collect contact information and if a contribution is involved, credit card information. Similarly, we collect information on individuals who may volunteer services or attend events. What Information We Collect and How We Use That Information Our mailing list form requires users to give us contact information that may include name, e-mail address, format preference (HTML vs. plain text), physical address, interests, and similar information. We do not request or store sensitive information from our visitors, such as social security numbers. The credit card transaction available through our web site is handled by a secure, encrypted process provided by a third party processor under contract to The Houston Birthing Connection. Use of Your Personal Information on a selective basis, personally identifiable information is used internally to identify recipients for written and e-mail communications designed to inform individuals of organizational updates, events, food drives, and campaigns for financial support. You have the right to opt-out of these mailings, and can do so by notifying The Houston Birthing Connection in writing of this preference. The Houston Birthing Connection never shares your personal information with outside organizations. Internet Protocol Address an Internet Protocol (IP) address is a number that is automatically assigned to your computer when you use the Internet. We collect an IP address from all visitors to our web site. We use IP addresses to help diagnose problems with our server, administer our web site, analyze usage trends, track users' interactions with the web site, gather broad demographic information for aggregate use in order for us to improve the web site, and deliver customized, personalized content. IP addresses are not linked to personally identifiable information. Links to Third-Party Web Sites We sometimes provide links to third party web sites existing outside of The Houston Birthing Connection. Since we do not control the content or functionality of these web sites, we encourage you to review the privacy policies posted on these third-party web sites. Any link from http://houstonbirthingconnection.org to such a third-party web site does not denote an affiliation with the web site or an endorsement of its viewpoint(s) or mission(s). Security of Your Information Security All sensitive information (such as your credit card information) provided to The Houston Birthing Connection is transmitted using Secure Socket Layer (SSL) encryption. SSL is a proven coding system that lets your browser automatically encrypt, or scramble, data before you send it to us. We also protect account information by placing it on a secure portion of our web site that is only accessible by certain qualified employees of The Houston Birthing Connection. Unfortunately, no data transmission over the Internet can ever be 100% secure. While we strive to protect your information to the fullest extent, we cannot ensure or completely guarantee the security of such information. Your Credit Card Information When you enter your credit card information into a form field on http://houstonbirthingconnection.org, your credit card information is encrypted and transmitted securely to The Houston Birthing Connection or to our third party processor. Neither The Houston Birthing Connection nor our third party processor store your credit card information on a permanent basis; your credit card information is only used for the duration of the transaction and is then deleted from our records. We take the utmost precaution to keep your credit card information safe  and secure. If you are uncomfortable submitting your credit card information online, you can also contribute to The Houston Birthing Connection call our Development Office at 832-308-0776 to authorize a credit card transaction. Cookies What are "Cookies"? Cookies are small files sent from a web server to your computer through your browser program. A non-persistent cookie enables a web site to temporarily keep information on your computer as you travel from one page to another on our web site. This cookie is automatically deleted from your machine when you close your browser. Because these cookies are necessary to provide some functions, failure to allow such cookies may make some of the functions on our web site unavailable to you. Our Use of Cookies The Houston Birthing Connection uses cookies for various reasons. We only read information from the specific cookies that are written by our web sites. Cookies may be used to store some history about the parts of our web site that you visited to help you navigate our web sites more easily or to alert you to related pages on our web site that may interest you.