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Privacy Statement • Trademarks • Memeber Agreement Customer Service: 888-997-4435
Privacy Statement
Purpose
Welcome to the Shop Shield® service provided by Kemesa, LLC (“Kemesa”). Kemesa is the owner of this website and retains all ownership rights to the information collected at this site. This privacy statement describes our Shop Shield® privacy practices.
Your Personal Information We Collect and What We Do With It
This statement tells you what types of your personal information we collect via Shop Shield®, and what we do with it. In particular, we collect “Personal Identity Information” and other “Personal Information.”
By "Personal Identity Information," we mean your name, billing address, email address, telephone number, and credit card or bank account information (including the account number, the financial institution, routing number, and your address associated with the account). “Personal Identity Information” also includes your Social Security number, which federal law and Elan Financial Services (“Elan”) (the financial institution that makes payments to websites when you use Shop Shield®) obligate us to obtain in order to comply with “Know Your Customer” banking regulations.
By "Personal Information," we mean other information about you that you may disclose to Shop Shield® that does not include Personal Identity Information.
When you register with Shop Shield® to create a Member account, we ask you to provide your name, Social Security number, physical address, a functioning email address, and telephone number, as well as information about the credit card (including the billing address associated with the card, the card verification number, and card expiration date) and/or bank account that you will use to make payments. We need this information in order to assure that purchases you make using Shop Shield® are charged to the account you designate and to comply with banking regulations. We also need your email address to assure that you promptly receive order confirmation and shipment notices. We may use your telephone number to contact you regarding your account or issues relating to purchases you make using Shop Shield®.
When you use Shop Shield® to pay for a purchase on a website, we substitute anonymous information for your Personal Identity Information -- e.g., name, billing address, account number – to protect your privacy and to protect you from identity theft. We use the account information you provide to us at registration to arrange for payment from your bank or credit card account; in doing so, information about that transaction is shared with Elan solely for the purpose of completing the transaction. However, your account information is never shared with the website on which you make a purchase.
Shipping Addresses
In instances where the purchased item is to be delivered offline, you will need to provide the merchant’s website with a name and shipping address; Shop Shield® will not provide merchant websites with your name and/or shipping address. In this instance, some of your Personal Identity Information will be provided (by you) to the merchant website. However, because Shop Shield® substitutes anonymous billing information, the merchant will not know that you also are the purchaser or whether the shipping address is also a billing address. If the shipment is to be made to another person or address, your name and address, of course, are not disclosed to the merchant website.
It is important that you always make sure that the shipment address is that of the desired recipient. If the Shop Shield® anonymous information is incorrectly used as the shipping address, the order will be received at a Shop Shield® location resulting in a delay of receipt and added shipping expense to you. Of course, if you manually override the anonymous information Shop Shield® provides, any information that you input at that time will be transmitted to the website and your Personal Identity Information may be compromised.
Other Personal Information
Please note that Shop Shield® protects only Personal Identity Information specific to your name, billing address, email address, User ID, Social Security Number, password, telephone number, and financial account. Websites may ask for other information about you (such as age, clothing sizes), or additional information to confirm your registration (such as your mother's maiden name) or for other purposes. Shop Shield® cannot protect any such information, including Personal Identity Information, which you provide directly to websites.
Existing Merchant Website Accounts
In certain circumstances (such as when a Member already has a registered account at a particular website which he or she may want to continue to use in order to remain in frequent purchase or other membership privilege programs), a Shop Shield® Member may consciously choose to reduce the protection we offer. In these instances, Shop Shield® can still be used to protect the anonymity of credit card or bank account number and billing information associated with those purchases.
For travel or event ticket transactions you are required to provideyour own name so you can identify yourself as having made the reservation. To this extent a Member somewhat reduces the personal identity protection Shop Shield® would otherwise provide. However, for all such purchases, credit card or bank account numbers, billing information, email addresses and passwords continue to be anonymous, thereby providing significant protection to your personal identity information.
Anonymous Registrations
Shop Shield® can also protect your Personal Identity Information on a website which asks you to register by providing an email address, a User ID, and Password even if you do not make purchases. In such circumstances, Shop Shield® will create and provide you with an anonymous email address, user ID and Password for use at that website. You will, however, be responsible for providing any other Personal Identity Information of your choice at such a website. As with purchase sites, all merchant communications utilizing the anonymous email address Shop Shield® provides will be forwarded without modification to the email address you have registered with Shop Shield® after we have inspected them to protect you from phishing, viruses or other malware.
We will use the anonymous Shop Shield® email addresses provided for communications between the merchant and you, so that the merchant does not receive your email address. Of course, you are free to contact the merchant directly, but if you do so you will lose the anonymity provided by the Shop Shield® service.
Customer Service Disclosures
Shop Shield® customer service strives to resolve most merchant or shipper issues without revealing your Personal Identity Information. If, however, you specifically request that we provide Personal Identity Information to a website, we will honor your request. This could happen, for example, if you wish to deal directly with a website in a manner that would require you to expose your billing information or Personal Identity Information. This does not apply to matters such as product returns or defects which are handled by the shipping address recipient. In such instances, you must specifically and voluntarily provide permission in advance in writing or via email before we will share your personal information with the website. Of course, this will compromise the protection of your Personal Identity Information for that purchase and with that website. It will also void the Shop Shield® identity theft guarantee/victim solution service provisions for that purchase.
Third Parties
Other than these situations, no other company or other third party will receive any Personal Identity Information regarding you unless we are legally required to provide such information (see below) or if we need to do so in order to prevent or investigate fraud. We will also provide your Personal Identity Information to designated third parties if we receive your prior written or email request, consent or express instructions from you or your authorized representative. In such instances you will specifically and voluntarily provide your permission in advance of our sharing your Personal Identity Information.
Password–Protected Access
To access your Member account on our website, you must use your Shop Shield® Member name (User ID) and password. Each time you use Shop Shield®, it will show you the two–way authentication picture (security image) you selected during registration. Please do not enter your Shop Shield® password until you recognize this security image as the one you selected. This is an added security measure we provide for your protection. In addition, it is your responsibility to restrict access to your User ID and password so that only you may gain entry to your personal information online.
Aggregated Member Information
Shop Shield® will collect and analyze information about transactions using Shop Shield® to help us better understand, in the aggregate, our Members’ usage of Shop Shield® so that we can better serve you and all of our other Members better. We aggregate this information in a manner that does not reveal any individually identifiable Personal Identity Information of any Members to any other company or third party. Under no circumstances will such aggregated data enable any other entity to access the Personal Identity Information of any individual Member without the Member's prior written consent.
Disclosures Required by Law
Like any other business, there may be situations in which we may be legally required to provide an individual's Personal Identity Information or other information about an individual to federal or state law enforcement, the Department of Homeland Security, or other legally–authorized government agencies, or in connection with a legal proceeding (such as if we receive a subpoena). If allowed by law in such situations, we will make reasonable efforts to provide you with notice before we supply Personal Identity Information or other information about you in response to such a request.
Security
Kemesa, through Shop Shield®, has implemented advanced security for the confidentiality and integrity of your personal information. Personal and account information is restricted with multiple levels of security, and monitoring systems. Kemesa service representatives are only able to access information when initiated by you, through the Shop Shield® service.
We maintain electronic, physical and procedural safeguards to protect the personal information of our Members. Multiple levels of encryption, with a "distributed database", protect your information from unauthorized parties. For example: (1) Individual Member's data is NOT stored in a central database; (2) Distributed databases only contain encrypted fragments of Member's Personal Identity Information; (3) The fragmented data CANNOT be assembled without multiple encrypted keys; and (4) A Member's Personal Identity Information comes together, only when a transaction is in process, or when it is requested by that individual, and NOT at any other time. We are fully compliant with Payment Card Industry (PCI) standards, and implement ISO 27001 security program standards. Kemesa undergoes an annual web certification, quarterly scans/tests by a nationally recognized computer security firm, and a 24/7/365 internal network monitoring program.
The servers and other physical processing equipment are maintained in a top (level 4) Department of Defense (DOD) facility. Finally, we retain your encrypted and fragmented personal information, for as long as you are a Member of the Shop Shield® service, and as required by federal financial regulations. Fragmented, encrypted, transaction data (buyer, seller, amount, date) are required to retained for up to five (5) years.
Involuntary Disclosure
In the unlikely event there is any breach of our security that might compromise the privacy of information about you, we will act promptly to correct the breach and, at minimum, provide you with appropriate notification consistent with legal requirements.
IP Address and Log Files
We may use your IP address to administer our website, to help diagnose problems with our server, to analyze usage trends, to track users' use of Shop Shield®, to help correctly identify you for security-related reasons, and to gather broad demographic information for aggregate use.
Cookies
The Shop Shield® website uses "session cookies" which are used to make visits to our website easier. As soon as you end the session the cookie disappears and no personal information is retained. The cookie helps us learn how people use our site so we can make it even easier to use in the future. This information is never linked to your Personal Identity Information and is collected only on an anonymous basis.
To assure your added privacy, we do not use what are called "persistent cookies" which recognize your computer when you return to our website. As a result, you will have to enter your login information each time you return to a “Members–Only” area of our website.
Children's Personal Information
Consistent with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act:
This site does not collect, use, or disclose personal information (including online contact information) of children under the age of 13. In the event that a child under the age of 13 attempts to register on our site, we will not accept the registration and will delete information received from the child.
Access to Personal Information
Kemesa gives you the opportunity to modify or remove Personal Identity Information or other information that you have provided to us. You may do so by modifying your registered Member information on the Shop Shield® Member website where you can also review your Shop Shield® transaction history. However, we may retain such deleted information for an appropriate period of time to satisfy legal requirements or to prevent fraud.
Other Websites
You may access our website through other websites. We are not responsible for the collection of information by those other websites, and are not bound by any policies or statements made on such sites. Other websites, Internet search engines and marketing companies through which you access our website use persistent cookies and collect information such as traffic, viewing and usage patterns.
Sale or Merger
If this site is sold to, or merges with, another company not owned by Kemesa, you should expect that some or all of the customer information collected from this website, including Personal Identity Information and other personal information, may be transferred to the buyer/surviving company as a transferred business asset. Also, in the event that Kemesa or substantially all of its assets are acquired, customer information will of course be one of the transferred assets. In both situations, that information will remain subject to the promises made in our Privacy Policy in effect at the time the Member information is or was collected (unless, of course, the Member consents otherwise).
Contacting Us
If you have any questions about this privacy statement, the practices of this site, or your dealings with this website, you can contact Customer Service at 1-888-997-4435.
Changes to our Privacy Policy
Kemesa will provide notice of any changes to this Privacy Policy by email and by posting on this Shop Shield® website. Changes will take effect thirty (30) days after notice has been provide. Your continued use of Shop Shield® constitutes your acceptance and agreement to be bound by any changes.
Effective date: April 29, 2008
