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NRG CREDITS PRIVACY POLICY |
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NRG Credits program is operated by NRG Credits Ltd, Inc.
("NRG Credits", "us", "we" or
"our") through its own Web site and other Web sites with whom
it partners. Protecting your privacy is a top priority at NRG Credits, Inc. for consumers who participate in the
NRG Credits
program. We want you to understand how our company handles your personal
information that we may obtain both on our Web site and through the NRG Credit program, and how we may and may not share it. This Privacy
Statement covers all of the information handling practices for the NRG Credits program for the benefit of current and past customers.
This NRG Credits Privacy Statement is effective upon acceptance in
registration for new registering users, and is otherwise effective on
September 1, 2004 for all users. What
information is required for NRG Credits, and why? Enrollment Information. To
set up your membership with the NRG Credits program, you will need to
provide certain contact information, such as your name, mailing address,
e-mail address, phone number, username, and password. If you are already
a member of NRG Credits Ltd., certain contact information
may be passed from the NRG Credits database to complete your
enrollment information rather than require you to complete it during
registration for NRG Credits. This basic information is required if
you wish to enroll in the NRG Credits program. We may append
additional data we obtain from third parties to your enrollment
information for analysis and marketing purposes . This information will
also allow us to provide better, more relevant offers to you. Purchase Information.
As an NRG Credits member, you can earn NRG Credits by purchasing
goods and services from our participating merchants. Once earned, those NRG
Credits can then be redeemed by NRG Credits paying at
6 monthly intervals on the 30 June and 31 December the proportional
amount due on your NRG Credits at that particular date into your
account with energy provider
retailer you have nominated as being current at that time. You may at
that time nominate to have your half yearly NRG credit amount
converted into fuel vouchers with a fuel company of our choice. NRG
Credits cannot be redeemed for cash or to a debit or credit card but can
be sold to another person who becomes or is an existing member of NRG Credits
. For a more detailed description of the NRG Credits program, please click here to view our Terms of Use [insert
link to Terms of Use]. We may require additional
information in order to keep track of and collect your purchases. We may
collect, from our third party partners, details of your transactions
such as the date and amount of your transaction in order to keep track
of and collect your purchases, None of this purchase information will be
released to any third party in a personally identifiable way, only in
aggregate or anonymous form. NRG Credit Account Information.
We will maintain records to keep track of the NRG Credits you earn
from your purchases with our participating merchants. You can view your NRG
Credits account balance and recent account activities, update
your account profile or contact a customer service representative on
your NRG Credits account Web page. Tell-A-Friend Information.
You may use our Tell-a-Friend service to notify your family and friends
about NRG Credits by providing their names and e-mail addresses. How will my information be used? Management of Your Account.
When you become a Green Climate Club member, we use your enrollment
information and transaction data to manage your account. We will not
rent, sell or share any personal information we gather through NRG Credits to third parties except as indicated below or to provide
information regarding the products or services you have ordered. There
are other circumstances where your information may be shared with other
parties for non-marketing purposes. The following describes the ways
that your information may be disclosed in the normal course of business
to provide our services. We may
use your information for other products and services owned and
controlled by us in order to provide services to our members. Use of Information with Our
Participating Merchants. We share certain data with our participating merchants in aggregate
form, but the NRG Credits program is designed to ensure you are not
identified personally to participating merchants unless you make the
choice to share your personal information directly with them. We will
not disclose any of the personal information you supply to us to our
participating merchants without your prior express consent. The only
information that may be shared between us and one of our participating
merchants is information that pertains to orders. Order information,
including order numbers and amounts, may be available to us, the
merchant, or third party affiliate program management companies for
accurate discount tracking purposes. This information will not be
released by us to other parties unless required by law or to protect us
and our members from losses. We do
not record any personal information passed from our members to our
participating merchants, including credit card information or merchant
passwords. Use of Information with Our NRG Credit Partners. Both us and our partners who offer the NRG Credits program to
their consumers share certain data with each other in order to ensure
the proper operation of the NRG Credits program. We need to share
data with these partners to operate the NRG Credits program and the
partners need to share data with us to allow their consumers to
participate. All data received by us will be used in accordance with
this Privacy Statement and all data shared with our partners will be
used in accordance with their relevant privacy policy. Service Providers. We
provide information to trusted companies who work on behalf of or with
us under confidentiality agreements. These companies may use your
personal information to help us communicate with you about offers of
interest to you. However, these service providers do not have an
independent right to use, share or sell this information. Use of Third Parties for Fulfillment
Purposes.
We may use certain third parties to provide delivery and administrative
services, such as keeping track of your purchases, delivering purchases
analyzing data or delivering special offers to you on our behalf or on
behalf of our partner companies. Third parties may also be used to help
us administer our NRG Credits program. In order to obtain these
services, we may need to share certain personally identifiable
information about our members. However, these third parties will be
bound by legal agreements to not use or disclose the information we
provide them for any purpose other than to perform the requested
service. On
occasion, contests, sweepstakes or surveys on our Web site may be
co-sponsored by us and another company, or may be sponsored by companies
other than us. Some or all of the data collected through these contests,
sweepstakes or surveys may be shared with the sponsor(s) or companies
indicated on the entry form. If such data will be shared, then there
will be a notice prior to the time of data collection or transfer. Direct Marketing Partners. We
will not provide NRG Credits participants' postal information and
other relevant data to direct
marketing partners who may want to send direct marketing campaigns on
behalf of the NRG Credits program and also use this postal
information and other data to market to you on their own behalf. These
direct marketing partners do not have an independent right to share or
sell this information. In no circumstances will we ever provide your
e-mail address to any such direct marketing partners. Notification About Products and
Services.
We offer you the chance to earn NRG Credits through purchases of
goods and services from our participating merchants and from
opportunities made available to you on our Web site, through the postal
mail and, unless you opt out of receiving them, through e-mail. We may
use information about you to provide you offers tailored to your
interests. Sometimes, we send offers via e-mail to selected groups of
members on behalf of our participating merchants. When we do this, we do
not give the participating merchants your name and address. If you do
not want to receive offers via e-mail from participating merchants, you
may opt out of receiving them as detailed in the E-mail section below. Use of Information from Third Parties.
We may obtain information about you from our partner companies and other
third parties in order to provide you with opportunities tailored to
your interests. We may also use information obtained from our partner
companies and other third parties in conjunction with member account and
enrollment information for analytical and audit purposes. Use of Non-Personally Identifiable
Information.
We may also provide aggregated, non-personally identifiable information
about our members to third parties for audit, marketing and other
purposes. Because aggregated data is not associated with any particular
person, these third parties will not have access to any personally
identifiable information about you. Legal Requests/Questionable
Activities. We
reserve the right to release information to local, state, or federal law
enforcement officials when we believe in good faith that the law
requires it, or when required to do so by order of a court or authorized
administrative agency. Who sees my personal information? Only a
very limited number of our employees have access to your personal
information. Primarily, this information is accessed to provide customer
service or to fulfill the NRG Credits owed to you. We may
use contractors or vendors to help us to provide some of the services
for the NRG Credits program. If we need to disclose personal
information for them to provide services, it is with the requirement
that the information is kept confidential and is used only for those
services. How do we keep your information
secure? We
maintain reasonable physical, electronic, and procedural safeguards that
comply with federal regulations to protect personal information about
you. We use a secure, encrypted connection (called an SSL connection) on
all pages where you transmit personal data to us. Whenever you access
any of your account pages or change any of your user information, it is
done over an SSL connection to the NRG Credits program. How can I access and update my NRG Credits’ data? You
may access and update information stored in your account profile by
visiting your NRG Credits account Web page. Please keep your contact,
account, and preference information up-to-date. Doing so ensures that
your purchases are properly tracked and credited. It also helps us
inform you of new participating merchants who may help you boost your NRG
Credits bank. It is your responsibility to update and maintain
accurate contact information in your account. You can make changes by
visiting your account page and entering corrections. E-mail and street
addresses that are entered into a member's personal profile page are the
addresses that will be used for all contact including the mailing of
debit cards. Neither us nor any of our service providers are responsible
for any mailings, including the mailings of debit cards, that are sent
to incorrect addresses, if the address in question was the address
listed in that member's account at the time of issuance. What about links to other sites and
participating merchants ' use of information? Through
NRG Credits Web site, we may provide links to third-party Web
sites, such as those of our participating merchants. Each of these Web
sites may have separate privacy and different data-collection practices
from the NRG Credits Program, and we are not responsible for the
actions or practices of these third parties, nor for the content on
these Web sites. We encourage you to review the privacy policies of
their Web sites. In addition, the debit cards you may earn are provided
by a third party, which also has a separate privacy policy and
data-collection practices which can be accessed from the third party’s
Web site. Cookies. We
use "cookies" to personalize the NRG Credits program to
your interests, to ensure that only you can access your account, to
facilitate the automatic log-in process and for Web beacons (as
described below in the "Web Beacons" section). A cookie is a
text file that is placed on your hard disk by a Web page server. Cookies
cannot be used to run programs or deliver viruses to your computer.
Cookies are uniquely assigned to you, and can only be read by a Web
server in the domain that issued the cookie to you. You have the ability
to accept or decline cookies. Most Web browsers automatically accept
cookies, but you can usually modify your browser setting to decline
cookies if you prefer. If you choose to decline cookies, you may not be
able to fully experience the interactive features of the NRG Credits
program or Web sites you visit. We
also review "log-file" data to monitor site performance and
analyze traffic patterns and usage of our Web site. Each time you visit
the NRG Credits Web site, our server automatically recognizes the
following:
This information, sometimes called log-file or
clickstream data, is used to monitor site performance and ensure the NRG
Credits program functions properly. It may also be appended to
your personal profile so that we may further tailor the NRG Credits
program to your interests. Web
Beacons. NRG Credits ’ Web pages and/or HTML e-mails may contain
electronic images (called "Web beacons", "single-pixel
GIFs", or "action tags") that allow us to count users who
have visited a certain Web page or opened an e-mail, conduct research on
participating merchants and Web sites for auditing purposes, or to
access your NRG Credits’ "cookie" to identify you when on
third party Web sites. Using Web beacons allows us to personalize your
experience by tailoring advertisements, updates, and other offers to
your particular interests, and measuring the marketing effectiveness of
our e-mail communications. Web beacons collect only a limited set of
information including a cookie number, time and date of a page view, and
a description of the page on which the Web beacon resides. Information
recorded through these Web beacons may be used to report aggregate
demographic or usage information about you to our partners. The NRG Credits ' Web pages may also contain Web beacons placed there by
participating merchants to help determine the effectiveness of an offer
or promotion. No personally identifiable information about you is shared
with any other person or entity except as otherwise set forth in this
Privacy Statement. E-mail.
With
your consent, we will send you e-mail offers available to NRG Credit
participants. You may opt-out of receiving e-mail from NRG Credits
either during the registration process or at a later date. To opt-out of
receiving e-mail after registration, at any time you may click on the
unsubscribe link available at the bottom of any commercial e-mail you
receive and follow the instructions on-screen or by sending an e-mail
requesting to stop receiving e-mail to: Third
Party Ad Servers. We reserve the right to serve advertisements within our Web
pages either ourselves or by allowing other companies, called
third-party ad servers or ad networks, to do so. In addition, some of
our advertisers may use the services of third-party ad networks. Some of
these third-party ad networks may place a persistent cookie on your
computer. Doing this allows the third-party ad network to recognize your
computer each time they send you an online advertisement. In this way,
third-party ad networks may compile information about where you, or
others who are using your computer, saw their advertisements and
determine which ads are clicked on. This information allows a
third-party ad network to deliver targeted advertisements that they
believe will be of most interest to you. We do not have access to or
control of the cookies that may be placed by the third-party ad servers
or third-party ad networks. Those third-party ad networks that use
persistent cookies may offer you a way to opt-out of ad targeting. You
may find more information at the Web site of either the individual
third-party ad network or the Network Advertising Initiative. Delete
/ Deactivate from NRG Credits You may deactivate from participating in NRG Credits at any time and/or delete your personal information from our
database so as not to receive future communications from NRG Credits . To do so, click here to cancel your
membership. Note: It may take up to 72 hours for us to
process your request and any e-mail communications within the queue
prior to your decision to deactivate will still be sent to you. Note: In order to be deleted from our Direct
Marketing Partner’s databases and to stop receiving direct mail
marketing from them, you must finalize and delete your NRG Credits
account and cease participation in the NRG Credits program. It
generally takes less than 30 days to remove your information from a
Direct Marketing Partner’s list, but in certain instances it may take
up to 60 days. We reserve the right to deactivate you at our
sole discretion if we believe that you have used the NRG Credits
program or anything associated with it in a way that is fraudulent or
damaging to us, our participating merchants, partners or third party
processors. What
is TRUSTe and why is it so important? The NRG Credits program is a licensee of the
TRUSTe Privacy Program. TRUSTe is an independent, non-profit
organization whose mission is to build users' trust and confidence in
the Internet by promoting the use of fair information practices. TRUSTe
has agreed to review the practices of NRG Credits because
this Web site wants to demonstrate its commitment to your privacy.
Please note that the TRUSTe program does not cover the privacy practices
of NRG Credits ’ participating merchants. Please also note
that the TRUSTe program covers only information that is collected
through this Web site, and does not cover information that may be
collected through software downloaded from the site. Children/Minors
We are committed to protecting the privacy of
children and minors. NRG Credits program is
not designed or intended to attract children or minors under the age of
18. As provided in the Terms of Use, the NRG Credits program is
available only to persons who are 18 years of age and over. The Web site
will automatically block enrollment of any person once they indicate
they are under the age of 18. If we later learn that a user is under the
age of 18, we will terminate the account and delete the user's
information. Inherent in the NRG Credits program is the
responsibility of parents and/or guardians to ensure that their
children's privacy is protected. NRG Credits will not be
liable for any content viewed by minor children in violation of the
terms of this Privacy Statement. Sale/Merger We reserve the right to transfer information
about you if we are acquired by or merged with another orgaqization. In this
event, we will notify you in accordance with the procedures contained in
the Policy Updates section of this Policy before information about you
is transferred and becomes subject to a different privacy policy. Limitations
on Privacy Due to the existing regulatory environment, we
cannot ensure that all of your private communications and other personal
information will never be disclosed in ways not otherwise described in
this Privacy Statement. By way of example (without limiting the
foregoing), third parties may unlawfully intercept or access
transmissions or private communications, or users may abuse or misuse
your personal information that they collect from the Web site.
Therefore, although we exceed industry standard practices to protect
your privacy, we do not promise, and you should not expect, that your
personal information or private communications will always remain
private. Privacy
Statement Updates We reserve the right, at any time and without
notice, to add to, update, change, modify or revise this Privacy
Statement simply by posting such change, update or modification. Any
such addition, update, change, modification or revision will be
effective immediately upon posting. If NRG Credits materially
changes how we use your personal information, we will notify you via
e-mail. How
do I contact NRG Credits about this Privacy Statement? If you have any questions about this Privacy
Statement, our information-handling practices, or other aspects of
privacy, please contact us by e-mail at:
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