Privacy Policy
Last updated: November 26, 2009
Protecting Your Privacy
Protecting your privacy and the confidentiality of your personal information has always been fundamental to the way we do business with you within Windset Farms. We developed the Windset Farms Privacy Policy to inform you of our commitment to and policy on privacy, to tell you about the ways we ensure your privacy and the confidentiality of your information are protected as well as what information we collect when you visit our website and how we use it.
Privacy Policy Table of Contents
- Our Commitment to privacy
- Our understanding of this Privacy Policy
- Why we ask for your information
- How we obtain your consent
- When we release your information
- How we protect your information
- Your right to access your information
- Keeping your information accurate
- Respecting your preference
- Addressing your concerns
- Visiting our information sites
- Cookies
- Flash - Local Shared Object
- Email comments, questions or responses
- Responding to contest or surveys
- Enforcement
- Changes to this Privacy Policy
Our commitment to privacy
Protecting your privacy and the confidentiality of your personal information has always been fundamental to the way we do business within Windset Farms. We strive to provide you with the best customer service. To us, that includes treating you fairly and with respect. The Windset Farms Privacy Policy informs you of our policy on privacy, and tells you about the ways we help ensure that your privacy and the confidentiality of your information are protected.
Our understanding of this Privacy Policy
Our Privacy Policy informs you of the policies and practices we have in place relating to the management of personal information at Windset Farms. The word "information" means personal, financial and other details about you that you provide to us and we obtain from others outside our organization, including through the products and services you use. This policy applies to personal customers, including individuals carrying on business alone or in partnership with other individuals and signing officers of our business customers. It consists of five key principles:
1. Collecting and using information
Either before or when we collect information about you, we will explain how we intend to use it. We will limit the information we collect to what we need for those purposes, and we will use it only for those purposes. We will obtain your consent if we wish to use your information for any other purpose.
2. Releasing information
We may provide your information to other persons in situations where:
- we have your consent
- the other parties are our suppliers or agents who assist us in serving you
- we are required or permitted to do so by law or applicable regulators and self-regulatory organizations
- transfers of a business are involved
3. Protecting information
We will protect your information with appropriate safeguards and security measures. We will retain your information only for the time it is required for the purposes we explain.
4. Providing information access and accuracy
We will give you access to the information we retain about you. We will make every reasonable effort to keep your information accurate and up-to-date.
5. Respecting and responding to your privacy concerns
In the Windset Farms Privacy Policy, we will explain your options for refusing or withdrawing consent to the collection, use and release of your information, and we will record and respect your choices. We will investigate and respond to your concerns about any aspect of our handling of your information. In the Windset Farms Privacy Policy, we will explain how we fulfill each of these important principles.
Why we ask for your information
We ask you for information to establish and serve you as our customer. At the time you begin a relationship with us and during the course of our relationship, we may collect information about you. We obtain most of our information about you directly from you. The information we ask for depends on which product or service you want.
How we obtain your consent
It is important to understand the different ways that we may obtain your consent to collect, use, disclose and share your personal information. Depending on the situation and the sensitivity of the information, we may obtain your consent in different ways. Express consent may be obtained verbally, online or in writing. Implied consent may be obtained through your use of a product, or when you approach us to obtain products or services from us. We will not make your consent a condition of obtaining a product or service, unless it is reasonably or legally required, and we will clearly indicate when this is the case.
When we release your information
We do not sell or rent customer lists or personal information to others. However, we may release your information to parties outside Windset Farms in certain circumstances, which include:
- With your consent
- For servicing purposes
- When required or permitted to do so by law or applicable regulators and self-regulatory organizations
- Transfers of a business
How we protect your information
We will protect your information with appropriate safeguards and security measures.We have thorough security standards to protect our systems and your information against unauthorized access and use. When we provide information in response to a legal inquiry or order, we ensure that the order is valid and we disclose only the information that is legally required. All employees of Windset Farms are familiar with the procedures that must be taken to safeguard customer information. And to us, protecting the confidentiality of your information is more than a procedure - it's part of our job. It is specified in our employment agreements and regularly confirmed in writing. We audit our procedures and security measures regularly to ensure that they are being properly administered and that they remain effective and appropriate to the sensitivity of the information. We retain your information only as long as it is required for the reasons it was collected. The length of time we retain information varies depending on the product or service and the nature of the information. This period may extend beyond the end of your relationship with us but only for so long as it is necessary for us to have sufficient information to respond to any issue that may arise at a later date. When your information is no longer needed for the purposes explained to you, we have procedures to destroy, delete, erase or convert it to an anonymous form.
Your right to access your information
We will give you access to the information we have about you. If requested, we will assist you in making your request. If you require other information, simply contact us and we will respond to your request within 30 days.
Keeping your information accurate
We will make every reasonable effort to keep your information accurate and up-to-date.
Having accurate information about you enables us to give you the best possible service and minimize the possibility that out of date information may be used to make a decision which impacts you. We have policies and procedures to help us maintain the accuracy of your information. For most updates, we rely on you for information. You can help by keeping us informed of any changes, such as if you move or change telephone numbers. If you find any errors in our information about you, let us know and we will make the corrections immediately, and make sure they are conveyed to anyone we may have misinformed. For information that remains in dispute, we will note your opinion in the file.
Respecting your preference
We will explain your options of refusing or withdrawing consent to the collection, use or release of your information, and, given reasonable notice, we will record and respect your choices. In most cases you are free to refuse or withdraw your consent at any time. You may do so by contacting us at (604) 940-7700. Our staff will be pleased to explain your options and any consequences of refusing or withdrawing your consent, and record your choices.
Addressing your concerns
If you have any questions, concerns or problems about privacy, confidentiality or how a request for information was handled, we encourage you to let us know, and you can take the following actions. If you choose to mail, fax or email us, please include your full name, address and telephone number. Contact us in one of the following ways:
- Telephone: (604) 940-7700
- Fax: (604) 940-7711
- Mail: Windset Farms, 3660-41B Street Delta, BC V4K 3N2, Canada
- Email: Contact form
We'll work hard to provide an acceptable solution but if you are not satisfied, the Manager will become involved in the resolution of your problem or concern. If your concern still remains unresolved after contact with the Manager, you may then contact The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada at Place de Ville, 112 Kent Street, 3rd Floor, Ottawa, Ontario K1A 1H3, or call toll-free at 1-800-282-1376.
Visiting our information sites
When you go directly to the information portion of our websites and move from page to page, read pages or download content onto your computer, we learn which pages are visited, what content is downloaded, and the address of websites that you visited immediately before coming to our websites. However, none of this is associated with you as an individual. It is measured only in aggregate.
We use this information to find out how many people visit our websites and which sections of the sites are visited most frequently. This helps us to know what type of information is most useful to our website visitors so that we can improve our websites and make it easier for our website visitors to access information. We record the statistical information on the numbers of visitors to our websites, but no information about you in particular will be kept or used.
Cookies
A cookie is a small file containing certain pieces of information that a website creates when you visit the site. It can track how and when you use a site, which site you visited immediately before, and it can store that information about you.
There are two common types of cookies, "session cookies" and "persistent cookies". Session cookies store information only for the length of time that you are connected to a website - they are not written onto your hard drive. Once you leave the website, the originator of the cookie no longer has the information that was contained on it.
Windset Farms uses session cookies as an additional security feature for its online services. For example, when you login to any web service and are authenticated through your login ID and password, a cookie will store the identification number of your browser. Throughout your session, the cookie acts as a type of digital signature to identify your current session to the web server.
We also use session cookies to track your visits within our site. We use that information to determine the type of information that you are looking for in our site and to improve our site. We use information about the site you visited immediately prior to our site to assess the viability of links to our site that we have created on third party sites.
The information stored in "persistent cookies" is written onto your hard drive and remains there until the expiry date of the cookie. Windset Farms uses persistent cookies to store non-sensitive information that you are aware of and have agreed to. For example, if you choose the option on our login screen to remember your Windset account, the system will remember and automatically input your user name each time you use the service from that personal computer.
We also employ persistent cookies, in order to provide you with a more comfortable online experience. A persistent cookie is placed on your computer's hard drive to remember your language preference and ensure you are always presented with the appropriate language. We also employ a persistent cookie to ensure that any online targeted offer which you have already responded to is not presented again each time you login to our Internet banking site. When you submit an application online for a product or service, we may also collect non personal information, such as city, province and postal code in order to better serve our customers.
We use information about your computer, such as IP Address and Browser type. The primary method of collecting this information is through a persistent cookie which is added to your computer. The information is collected to assist us in authenticating you and your computer. All persistent cookies used by Windset Farms are encrypted for additional security.
Currently, most browsers do not distinguish between session cookies and persistent cookies. For web services to operate, your browser must be set to accept cookies. If you are concerned about having your browser enabled to accept cookies while you are surfing other websites, we recommend that you enable your browser to notify you when it is receiving a cookie. This gives you the ability of accepting or rejecting any cookie presented by the web server you are visiting.
Flash - Local Shared Object
Local shared objects, sometimes referred to as "Flash cookies", are data files that a website creates when you visit the site. Shared objects are most often used to enhance your web-browsing experience.
A local shared object is like a browser cookie, except that it can also store data more complex than simple text. Shared objects, by themselves, can't do anything to or with the data on your computer. More importantly, shared objects cannot access or remember your email address or other personal information unless you willingly provide such information. For more information about Flash, please visit www.adobe.com.
Email comments, questions or responses
When you send us an email or when you ask us to respond to you by email, we learn your exact email address and any information you have included in the email.
We use your email address to acknowledge your comments and/or reply to your questions, and we will store your communication and our reply in case we correspond further. We will not sell your email address to anyone outside Windset Farms. We may use your email address to send you information about offers on products and services that we believe may be of interest to you. If you don't want us to contact you by email with offers on products and services, you may tell us so at any time.
If you have asked us to put you on an email mailing list to provide you with certain information on a regular basis, or if we send you information about our offers on products and services by email, you may ask us to remove you from the list at any time (using the unsubscribe instructions provided with each email and on the site where you signed up).
Remember that email sent over the Internet is generally unencrypted. If Windset Farms requests that you transmit confidential information to us over the Internet when filling out an application online, we ensure that such transmission is encrypted. We recommend that you use caution when forwarding free-format email messages to us and that you do not include confidential information in those messages, as they are not encrypted.
We will never send email messages to customers requesting confidential information such as passwords or account numbers. Please do not act on any such emails as you may compromise your banking information by following links to a counterfeit Internet site(s).
Responding to contest or surveys
When you submit your response to a survey question or enter one of our contests, we learn your answer or any opinions or information that you volunteer. In a contest we will use your personal information for the purpose of awarding a prize. For a survey, we may use your submission to come up with the survey results, and we may publish those results in aggregate on our websites. We may also use your response to improve our products or services. Based on your participation in either, we may forward information about our offers on products and services that we believe may be of interest to you.
Enforcement
We regularly review our compliance with this Privacy Policy. Please feel free to direct any questions or concerns regarding this Privacy Policy or our treatment of personal information by contacting us through this web site or by writing to us at:
Windset Farms
3660-41B Street
Delta, BC V4K 3N2
Canada
When we receive formal written complaints at this address, it is Windset’s policy to contact the complaining user regarding his or her concerns. We will cooperate with the appropriate regulatory authorities, including local data protection authorities, to resolve any complaints regarding the transfer of personal data that cannot be resolved between Windset and an individual.
Changes to this Privacy Policy
Please note that this Privacy Policy may change from time to time. We will not reduce your rights under this Privacy Policy without your explicit consent, and we expect most such changes will be minor. Regardless, we will post any Privacy Policy changes on this page and, if the changes are significant, we will provide a more prominent notice (including, for certain services, email notification of Privacy Policy changes). Each version of this Privacy Policy will be identified at the top of the page by its effective date.
If you have any additional questions or concerns about this Privacy Policy, please feel free to contact us any time through this web site or at
Windset Farms
3660-41B Street
Delta, BC V4K 3N2
Canada
