Privacy Policy
Our commitment to privacy: The Halton Media Group, a division of
Metroland Media Group Ltd. a wholly owned subsidiary of the Torstar Corporation,
knows that protecting the privacy and confidentiality of your personal
information is important to consumers. This Privacy Code governs Burlington
Post, Oakville Beaver, Oakville Today, Flamborough Review, Milton Canadian
Champion, Burlington Shopping News, Oakville Shopping News, Milton Shopping
News, Mississauga West Shopping News, 701 Gold Book, On-Site, Tourist, City
Parent, Forever Young, News 4 Kids, Premier Consumer Shows (refer to premierconsumershows.com for complete list of Shows), Formula
Media Group (refer to formulamediagroup.com for complete list of publications), and
www.haltonsearch.com
Collection, use and disclosure of personal information by us and our affiliates
are governed by the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act
(the "Act"), and any applicable provincial legislation. This Privacy Code
explains what personal information is collected from its customers and how it is
used. It also explains how you can ask questions, make suggestions, and complain
about our privacy practices. This Privacy Code applies to personal information
(see below) collected by us, including our websites. Be aware that our websites
may contain links to other websites provided and maintained exclusively by third
parties not subject to this Privacy Code. Please review the privacy policies on
any external websites to determine their information handling practices.
For a listing of our affiliates, please go to www.torstar.com and click on
Torstar Properties, or call Customer Service at 1-800-265-3673 for
information.
This Privacy Code is available to the public in electronic form at slennox@thespec.com and in paper form from
5040 Mainway, Unit #1, Burlington, Ontario, Canada, L7L 7G5. If you have any
additional concerns or questions, we encourage you to contact us and we will
address your concerns to the best of our ability. Please read this Privacy Code
carefully, and check back periodically as we update it from time to time. By
submitting your personal information to us, you signify your agreement to the
terms and conditions of this Privacy Code.
What is personal information? Personal information is any information
about an identifiable individual. Personal information does not include the
name, title, business address or telephone number of an employee of an
organization. Information used solely for journalistic purposes is exempted from
the Act.
We are responsible for personal information under our control. Our employees
are informed about the importance of privacy and receive periodic information to
update them about our Privacy Code and related policies. In addition, Torstar
Corporation, our parent company, has appointed a Chief Privacy Officer to
oversee personal information-handling practices of The Halton Media Group and
its affiliates.
Children: If you are under 18, be sure to obtain your parent or guardian's
permission before you send any personal information to us, or anyone else, over
the Internet. We encourage parents to get involved with their children's online
usage and to be aware of the activities in which they are participating.
What personal information do we collect, and why? We collect personal
information for specific, limited purposes. Information is collected by fair and
lawful means.
We collect personal contact information (for example, name, address, email
address and telephone numbers) if you: sign up for a newsletter; subscribe to a
newspaper; register on an online forum or website, or to attend a paid event;
purchase any product from us; are a classified advertiser or auction
participant; or provide it to us when you attend a trade or consumer show. This
information is used to fulfill your request, provide targeted advertising and
respond to your inquiries. From time to time it may be used to provide reward
points or apply credit, as applicable in the circumstances.
- We retain your subscriber ID and passwords so that upon request by you and
receipt of identification we may remind you of them.
- If you enter a contest or other promotion, we use your personal contact
information to administer the contest or promotion including contacting,
announcing and promoting prizewinners.
- We collect demographic information, as well as purchase history and a list
of promotions offered to you ("history"), in order to gain a better
understanding of your interests so that we may develop better products and
services, and to determine eligibility for our products and services.
- We may also use demographic, personal contact and history information from
time to time to contact you about changes, enhancements or other notices related
to goods or services you requested and which we provide. In addition, we may use
this information to send you offers or information from us, our affiliates and
from selected sponsors or advertisers ("Marketing Offers"). If you do not wish
to receive Marketing Offers, you may opt-out at any time by following the
procedure set out in our opt-out policy (see below).
- We keep notes and special instructions on file for classified advertisers
and subscribers to help us fulfill your request and provide customer service. We
may tape or monitor your telephone calls with our customer service
representatives for quality assurance purposes.
- We collect credit card information if you: subscribe to a newspaper;
register on a paid website; enter a paid contest; register to attend a paid
event; purchase any product from us; are a classified advertiser or an auction
participant. This credit card information is used for the purpose of fulfilling
your order.
- If you choose to opt-out of any use of your personal information in
accordance with our opt-out policy, we keep your contact information on a list
so that your request can be honoured. If you complain to any of our departments,
we collect your contact information and the nature of your complaint, for the
purpose of investigating and responding to you.
- If you are a freelancer, or other service provider, we collect your social
insurance number for tax reporting purposes and your contact information in
order to pay you. We may also collect financial information from freelancers or
other service providers and from advertisers (for example, banking details and
credit history) to assess credit risk, sales data to prepare royalty reports and
other information to help us evaluate your services.
- If you use any of our websites, we may assign an internet cookie. An
internet cookie is a small text file that a website stores on your internet
browser and that can collect and store information. We use cookies to better
understand how you use our websites, to make sure our ads and dynamic content
are served correctly and to improve the performance of our websites. For
example, a cookie may recall a set of preferences you have set for our website
and record items that you have registered for. Storing cookies on your web
browser allows us to present you with custom web pages and other content that
are tuned with your preferences. For example, if you are a registered user, you
may see a welcome page with your name on it. These activities are invisible to
you, and are generally intended to improve your internet surfing convenience.
Unless you have set your preferences so that you will be alerted when a cookie
is being stored on your computer, you won't know about it.
If you are concerned about cookies, it is possible to turn them off in your
web browser preferences. However, please be aware that by disabling cookies, you
may not be able to use all portions of our websites, particularly pages
requiring registration.
We may place advertising or other links on our sites that originate from
outside advertisers. If you view these ads, the advertisers may assign a cookie.
We do not control these cookies, nor are we responsible for any marketing or
other use of your name by these advertisers.
- We generally use your personal information for the purposes of: managing,
administering, collecting or otherwise enforcing accounts; maintaining business
records for reasonable periods of time and generally managing and administering
our business; and meeting regulatory, legal, insurance, audit, security and
processing requirements.
- Occasionally, we ask our customers to complete market research surveys.
Survey results are aggregated and shared with our advertisers, sponsors and
affiliates in a manner that does not disclose personal information.
- Other than as permitted or required by law, purposes for the collection, use
or disclosure of personal information, which are not set out in this Privacy
Code, will be set out at the time of collection. You will be given a reasonable
opportunity to opt-out of any additional purposes no later than the time of
collection.
To whom do we disclose personal information, and why? We may disclose
your personal information under the following circumstances:
- In order to provide you with Marketing Offers (see above), we may disclose
your personal contact information to affiliates and selected sponsors and
advertisers. If you do not wish to receive Marketing Offers, you may opt-out at
any time by following the procedure set out in our opt-out policy (see below).
- We may transfer your personal information to service providers acting on our
behalf in order to perform processing and other specialized services, for
example, prize fulfillment of our contests, collection of overdue accounts,
product delivery, or credit card processing.
- We may disclose your personal information to our affiliates for internal
audit, management, billing, administrative or other business purposes.
- We may disclose your contact information on a confidential basis to our
advertisers for the sole purpose of newspaper delivery verification.
- When we need to disclose your personal information to unrelated parties, for
example, if we find you have violated any stated terms of service or conditions
of purchase, or if we need to comply with applicable laws and lawful
governmental requests, other legal and regulatory authorities and other legal
reasons.
- We may disclose your personal information to parties connected with the
contemplated or actual financing, insuring, sale, assignment or other disposal
of all or part of our business or assets, including for the purposes of
determining whether to proceed or continue with such transaction or business
relationship or fulfilling any records or other reporting requirements to such
parties. We will require such parties to treat your personal information in
accordance with this Privacy Code and to use and disclose it only for the
purposes for which it was collected.
Consent and opt-out policy. In general, we seek consent to use your
personal information in accordance with our opt-out policy. Except as set out in
this section, we obtain your express opt-in consent to use or disclose sensitive
personal information.
If you do not wish to receive Marketing Offers, you may opt-out at any time
by doing any of the following:
- follow the instructions at the bottom of any email Marketing Offer you
receive.
- inform your telemarketer at the time you are called with a Marketing Offer.
- call Customer Service at 1-800-265-3673 and request that your personal
information not be used for Marketing Offers.
- email Customer Service at slennox@thespec.com and request that your
personal information not be used for Marketing Offers.
Please allow a reasonable time (approximately 2-4 weeks) for processing of
your request.
Generally, by providing us with your personal information, we will assume
that you consent to our collection, use and disclosure of such information for
the purposes identified or described in this Privacy Code, if applicable, or
otherwise at the time of collection. We reserve the right to use and disclose
your personal information without consent where required or permitted by law,
for example, if we have reasonable grounds to believe the information could be
useful when investigating a contravention of a federal, provincial or foreign
law, in order to protect or defend our legal interests, or to comply with
applicable laws and lawful governmental requests.
Safeguards: We maintain personal information in a combination of paper
and electronic files. We take technical, contractual, administrative and
physical security measures to protect your personal information. When you
provide credit card information to use, we work to help protect the security of
your credit card information by using industry standard secure sockets layer
(SSL) encryption technology.
Please be aware that email is not a secure medium, and any personal
information you send to us by email could be intercepted. If your communication
is very sensitive, or includes information such as your credit card number, you
should not send it electronically unless the email is encrypted or your browser
indicates that the access to our website is secure. Materials posted to online
forums such as bulletin boards or chat rooms are public, not secure and may be
viewed by anyone. Any personal information you post may be collected and used by
anyone and may result in unsolicited messages from other internet users.
How to access and correct your personal information. You may call
Customer Service at 1-800-265-3673 and we will update, edit or delete certain
subscriber or registration information you have provided upon receipt of
appropriate evidence.
We will give you access to the information we retain about you within a
reasonable time, upon written request, satisfactory identification and proof of
entitlement. In some cases, we may not provide access to personal information in
our possession or control. If we deny your request, we will advise you in
writing of the reason for the refusal and you may challenge our decision.
How to challenge our privacy practices. We encourage you to contact us
with any questions or concerns you have about your privacy or this Privacy Code.
If you have a question concerning our Privacy Code, would like a copy, or if you
have a complaint, please contact Customer Service at:
Customer Service can successfully deal with many issues. If you prefer, or if
after contacting Customer Service, your concerns or questions have not been
resolved to your satisfaction, you can contact Torstar Corporation's Chief
Privacy Officer in writing as follows:
Chief Privacy Officer
Torstar Corporation
One Yonge Street, 6th
floor
Toronto ON
M5E 1P9
Fax: (416) 869-4183
This Privacy Code was last updated on February 20, 2007