EBSN’s Privacy Policy covers the collection, use, and disclosure of personal information that may be collected by EBSN anytime you interact with EBSN, such as when you visit our website, when you purchase EBSN services, or when you call us. Please take a moment to read the following to learn more about our information practices, including what type of information is gathered, how the information is used and for what purposes, to whom we disclose the information, and how we safeguard your personal information. Your privacy is a priority at EBSN, and we go to great lengths to protect it.
Why we collect personal information
We collect your personal information because it helps us deliver a superior level of service to our community. It enables us to give you convenient access to our services and focus on categories of greatest interest to you. In addition, your personal information helps us keep you posted on the latest news, updates, and events that you might like to hear about.
What information we collect and how we may use it
There are a number of situations in which your personal information may help us give you better services. For example:
- You may be asked to provide personal information about yourself when you’re using our website, discussing a service issue on the phone, registering for a workshop, or participating in an online discussion.
- When you interact with EBSN, we may collect personal information relevant to the situation, such as your name, mailing address, phone number, email address, and contact preferences; and information relating to a support or service issue.
- We also collect information for market research purposes — such as where you use your computer — to gain a better understanding of our user community and thus to provide valuable services of interest to our community.
- We collect information regarding activities on our website. This helps us to determine how best to provide useful information and to understand which parts of our websites, and services are of most interest.
- We may use personal information to provide services that you have requested as well as for auditing, research, and analysis to improve EBSN’s services.
Your EBSN ID and related information
The EBSN website allows you to create an “EBSN ID” based on your personal information. This saves you time and allows for easier use of our web services. Here’s how it works: You create a personal profile — providing a unique user ID, email address, your zip code, and optionally your home mailing address — and choose a password for security. The system saves this information. The next time you visit the EBSN site, all you need to do is enter your EBSN ID and password; the system looks up the information it needs to assist you.
Publicly displayed information is public
If you participate in an online discussion on an EBSN website you should be aware that any information you share is visible to other users. Personally identifiable information you submit to one of these forums can be read, collected, or used by other individuals to send you unsolicited messages. EBSN is not responsible for the personally identifiable information you choose to submit in these forums. For example, if you choose to make information, which was previously non-public, available, the information will become publicly available.
When we disclose your information
EBSN takes your privacy very seriously. EBSN does not sell or rent your contact information to marketers without your consent.
With our service providers, vendors, and partners
There are also times when it may be helpful for EBSN to make certain personal information about you available to companies that EBSN has a relationship with or that perform work for EBSN to provide services to you on our behalf. These companies may help us fulfill requested services, provide customer service, or conduct customer research or satisfaction surveys. These companies are also obligated to protect your personal information in accordance with EBSN’s policies, except if we inform you otherwise at the time of collection. For example, if you request that we contact one or more solar providers to generate an estimate on your behalf, you authorize EBSN and these providers to exchange the information that you provided. If you are approved for service, your account will be governed by EBSN and these solar providers’ respective privacy policies. Without such information being made available, it would be difficult for you to receive the product and pricing information you’ve requested, requested customer service, provide us feedback to improve our services, or access certain services, offers, and content on the EBSN website.
At times we may be required by law or litigation to disclose your personal information. We may also disclose information about you if we determine that for national security, law enforcement, or other issues of public importance, disclosure is necessary.
How we protect your personal information
EBSN takes precautions — including administrative, technical, and physical measures — to safeguard your personal information against loss, theft, and misuse, as well as unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration, and destruction.
The EBSN Online Store use Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption on all web pages where personal information is required. To make purchases from the EBSN Online Store, you must use an SSL-enabled browser. Doing so protects the confidentiality of your personal and credit card information while it’s transmitted over the Internet.
You can help us by also taking precautions to protect your personal data when you are on the Internet. Change your passwords often using a combination of letters and numbers, and make sure you use a secure web browser.
Kids
EBSN does not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13 for marketing purposes, but because some information is collected electronically, it can appear to be the personal information of the EBSN site user, and will be treated as such by this privacy policy. If a child under 13 submits personal information to EBSN and we learn that that personal information is the information of a child under 13, we will attempt to delete the information as soon as possible.
Cookies and other technologies
As is standard practice on many websites, EBSN’s website uses “cookies” and other technologies to help us understand which parts of our websites are the most popular, where our visitors are going, and how much time they spend there. We also use cookies and other technologies to make sure that our community outreach and promotion is bringing customers to our services. We use cookies and other technologies to study traffic patterns on our website, to make it even more rewarding as well as to study the effectiveness of our outreach programs. And we use cookies to customize your experience and improve the convenience of our online services.
For example, knowing your zip code, utility online account information and historical use of grid power helps us accurately assess the amount and cost of power you purchase from your utility and provide you with the best possible online services.
As is true of most websites, we gather certain information automatically and store it in log files. This information includes Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, browser type, Internet Service Provider (ISP), referring/exit pages, operating system, date/time stamp, and clickstream data.
We use this information, which does not identify individual users, to analyze trends, to administer the site, to track users’ movements around the site and to gather demographic information about our user base as a whole. EBSN does not use this information to market directly to a person.
In some of our email messages we use a “click-through URL” linked to content on the EBSN website. When customers click one of these URLs, they pass through our web server before arriving at the destination web page. We track this click-through data to help us determine interest in particular topics and measure the effectiveness of our community outreach programs. If you prefer not to be tracked simply avoid clicking text or graphic links in the email.
Our commitment to your privacy
As we said, EBSN takes protecting your privacy very seriously. To make sure your personal information is secure, we communicate these guidelines to EBSN employees and strictly enforce privacy safeguards within the organization.
Privacy questions
If you have questions or concerns about EBSN’s Privacy Policy, contact us at privacy@ebsn.org.
EBSN may update its privacy policy from time to time. When we change the policy in a material way a notice will be posted on our website along with the updated privacy policy.
East Bay Solar Neighborhoods, 146 Vicente Rd., Berkeley, California, 94705
