Security of Personal Information

Co-op Atlantic considers the responsible use of personal information to be a critical element in enabling the Internet to reach its potential as a serious tool for personal and professional activities. As the Internet changes our lives in a number of ways, Co-op Atlantic is committed to respecting your privacy.

We will not sell or give any personal information to other companies or individuals.

In general, you can visit our web site without telling us who you are or revealing any personal information about yourself. There are times, however, when we may need information from you, such as your name, home or business address and e-mail address. Some examples of when we may need information are if you choose to purchase a product directly from a Co-op Atlantic web site, subscribe to publications, or when you register for a contest. When you choose to give us personal information over the Internet that we request, Co-op Atlantic will let you know how we will use this information. Co-op Atlantic will also seek to take appropriate steps to protect the information you share with us, including using appropriate technology for credit card data used in electronic commerce transactions.

When Co-op Atlantic receives information about your session or about you, we may use it for research or to improve our site and the services we offer you. We will ask you if you want us to use that information to continue contact with you by Co-op Atlantic and/or our business partners (ie., Co-op stores) via e-mail or other means. For example, we may give your email address to your local Co-op store to allow them to send you new product information or notification of special offers. If you do not want us or our partners to contact you, you can choose to "opt out," and Co-op Atlantic will respect your wishes.

When users request pages from our server, our web server automatically collects some information about the users, including their IP addresses (the internet address of a computer). These addresses are used by computers on the network to send the requested pages to users, while the user remains anonymous. We may analyze this data for certain trends and statistics, such as which parts of our site users are visiting and how long they are spending there.

We do not link your IP addresses to anything personally identifiable to you.

Advertisers and External Links

We may use an outside advertising company to display ads on our site. We will make every effort to insure that the advertisers are legitimate businesses that complement our business objectives. The advertisers' ads may contain cookies (small files that may be placed on your hard disk for record-keeping purposes). You can set your browser to notify you when you receive a cookie, giving you the chance to decide whether or not to accept it. However, by not accepting cookies, some web pages may not display properly or you may not be permitted to access certain information. While we DO NOT use cookies in other parts of our web site, cookies received with banner ads may be collected by the ad company. We do not have access to this information or have any control of how the advertisers will use this information.

Our web sites may contain links to other sites, which may also have links to secondary web sites. Co-op Atlantic will review the primary linked sites for content before making the link, but we are not responsible for the privacy practices or the content of any other web site except our sites listed above.

Order Forms and Return Policy

Our sites use an order form for customers to request information, products, and services. We collect contact information, such as your email address. Contact information from the order forms is used to get in touch with the visitor when necessary.

Products purchased by using our order forms, may be returned within 10 days to the Co-op store from which the purchase was made. To receive a full refund, the product must be in resalable condition (complete with packaging, price tags, etc.) and the purchaser must have the proof of purchase (receipt). If the purchaser does not have the receipt, a credit note may be given, to be used for purchase of products at that Co-op store.

Surveys and Contests

Our online surveys and contests ask visitors for contact information, like email addresses. The contact information is used to ship purchases, and/or email information about our company. The customer's contact information is also used to get in touch with the visitor when necessary.

Users may opt-out of receiving future mailings; see the choice/opt-out section below.

Children's Guidelines

We care about children and understand that they have special privacy needs. Therefore, we have adopted the following privacy policy regarding children (under the age of 18 years):

We will encourage children to get their parent's permission before sharing personal information online. When verifiable parental consent is not obtained, we will only use the online contact information (such as email) to:

- Respond directly to the child's request on a one-time basis and not use that information to re-contact the child for other purposes.

- Request the name or online contact information of a parent for the purpose of obtaining verifiable parental consent or providing parental notification.

We will use our best efforts to provide parental notification, which will include the nature and intended use as well as an opportunity for the parent to prevent the use of the information and participation in the activity.

We will NOT entice the child to divulge more information than is needed to participate in any activity, game, contest, or service.

We will provide the parent a description of the specific types of a personally identifiable information collected from their child upon request.

We will allow the parent to refuse further use or future online collection of personally identifiable information and provide a way for a parent to obtain any personally identifiable information collected from their child.

We will provide notice to children in age appropriate terms of what personally identifiable information is to be collected.

We will NOT knowingly provide any links to web sites that are unsuitable for children.