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Privacy Policy

Thank you for visiting SmarterHouse.org, an American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (hereinafter designated ACEEE) site. Your privacy is important to us. To better protect your privacy, we provide this notice explaining our online information practices and the choices you can make about the way your information is collected and used at this ACEEE site.

Privacy Policy

The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy is concerned about privacy issues and wants you to be familiar with how we collect, use and disclose information. This Privacy Policy describes our practices in connection with information that we collect through aceee.org, aceee.org/blog, greenercars.org, smarterhouse.org, and the other websites from which you are accessing this Privacy Policy, as well as through HTML-formatted email messages that we send to you that link to this Privacy Policy (collectively, the “Services”). By providing Personal Information to us or using the Services, you agree to this Privacy Policy.

Personal Information

Personal Information We May Collect

“Personal Information” is information that identifies you as an individual or relates to an identifiable person, including:

  • Name
  • Title
  • Organization
  • Postal address
  • Telephone numbers
  • Email address
  • Credit and debit card information

We may use a third-party payment service to process payments made through the Services. If you wish to make a payment through the Services, your Personal Information may be collected by that third party and will be subject to its privacy policy. We have no control over, and are not responsible for, the third party’s information practices.

If you submit any Personal Information relating to other people to us, you are telling us that you have the authority to do so and to permit us to use the information in accordance with this Privacy Policy.

How We May Collect Personal Information

We and our service providers may collect Personal Information in a variety of ways, including:

  • Through the Services : We may collect Personal Information through the Services, such as when you register to download a research report, make a contribution or register for a conference.
  • From Other Sources : We may collect Personal Information from or about you from other online and offline sources, such as public databases, providers of demographic information, joint marketing partners, social media platforms, people with whom you are connected on social media, and other third parties.

How We May Use Personal Information

We may use Personal Information:

  • To respond to your inquiries and to offer you products, programs and services that we believe may be of interest to you.
  • To fulfill your requests for our products, programs and services, such as to send you newsletters.
  • To send administrative information to you, such as information regarding the Services and changes to our terms, conditions and policies. To complete your purchase or donation, including to communicate with you regarding it and provide you with related customer service.
  • For our internal purposes, such as data analysis, audits, fraud monitoring and prevention, developing new products and services, enhancing, improving or modifying the Services, identifying usage trends, determining the effectiveness of our promotional campaigns and operating and expanding our business activities.

How Personal Information May Be Disclosed

We do not sell, trade, or share Personal Information with third parties for their own fundraising or marketing purposes, nor do we use Personal Information we collect to send fundraising or marketing mailings on behalf of other organizations, except as indicated below.

  • We may disclose your name and affiliation to our conference attendees, if you have attended the same conference.
  • We may disclose your name and affiliation to our Ally Program members and conference sponsors, as indicated on our conference registration form, unless you have opted out of such disclosure.
  • We may disclose your Personal Information to our third party service providers who provide services such as website hosting, data analysis, payment processing, information technology and related infrastructure provision, customer service, e-mail delivery, auditing, and other similar services.
  • You may disclose your Personal Information on message boards, chat, profile pages and blogs and other services to which you are able to post information and materials. Please note that any information you post or disclose will become public and may be available to other users and to the general public. We urge you to be very careful when deciding to disclose any information on or through the Services.
  • We may disclose your Personal Information to a third party in the event of any reorganization, merger, sale, joint venture, assignment, transfer or other disposition of all or any portion of our business, assets or stock (including in connection with any bankruptcy or similar proceedings).

In addition, we may use or disclose your Personal Information as we believe to be necessary or appropriate: (a) under applicable law; (b) to comply with legal process; (c) to respond to requests from public and government authorities; (d) to enforce our terms and conditions; (e) to protect our operations; (f) to protect our rights, privacy, safety or property, and you or others; and (g) to allow us to pursue available remedies or limit the damages that we may sustain.

OTHER Information

Other Information We May Collect

“Other Information” is any information that does not reveal your specific identity or does not directly relate to an individual, such as:

  • Browser and device information
  • Information collected through cookies, pixel tags and other technologies
  • Demographic information and other information provided by you
  • Aggregated information

How We May Collect Other Information

We and our third party service providers may collect Other Information in a variety of ways, including:

  • Through your browser or device : Certain information is collected by most browsers or automatically through your device, such as your Media Access Control (MAC) address, computer type (Windows or Macintosh), screen resolution, operating system name and version, device manufacturer and model, language and Internet browser type and version. We use this information to ensure that the Services function properly.
  • Using cookies : Cookies are pieces of information that a Web site can send to your browser to provide information, which is then stored on your hard drive. Cookies save your preferences and allow us to collect information such as browser type, time spent on the Services, pages visited, language preferences and other anonymous traffic data. We and our service providers use the information for security purposes, to facilitate navigation, to display information more effectively, and to personalize your experience while using the Services. We also gather statistical information about the usage of the Services in order to continually improve their design and functionality, understand how they are used and assist us with resolving questions about them.

If you do not want information collected through the use of cookies, there is a simple procedure in most browsers that allows you to automatically decline cookies or be given the choice of declining or accepting the transfer to your computer of a particular cookie (or cookies) from a particular site. You may also wish to refer to http://www.allaboutcookies.org/manage-cookies/index.html. If, however, you do not accept these cookies, you may experience some inconvenience in your use of the Services. For example, we may not be able to recognize your computer, and you may need to log in every time you visit the applicable Services.

  • Using pixel tags and other similar technologies : Pixel tags (also known as web beacons and clear GIFs) may be used in connection with some Services to, among other things, track the actions of users of the Services (including email recipients), measure the success of our marketing campaigns and compile statistics about usage of the Services and response rates.

We use Google Analytics, which uses cookies and other, similar technologies to collect information about Web site use anonymously and reports website trends, without identifying individual visitors. You can learn about Google’s practices by going to www.google.com/policies/privacy/‌partners/, and opt out of them by downloading the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on, available at https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.

  • IP Address : Your IP Address is a number that is automatically assigned to the computer that you are using by your Internet Service Provider. An IP Address may be identified and logged automatically in our server log files whenever a user accesses the Services, along with the time of the visit and the page(s) that were visited. Collecting IP Addresses is standard practice and is done automatically by many websites, applications and other services. We use IP Addresses for purposes such as calculating usage levels of the Services, diagnosing server problems, and administering the Services.
  • From you : Demographic and other information, such as your interest in various programs and services, is collected when you voluntarily provide it.
  • By aggregating information : Aggregated Personal Information does not personally identify you (for example, we may aggregate Personal Information to calculate the percentage of our users who have a particular telephone area code).

How We May Use and Disclose Other Information

We may use and disclose Other Information for any purpose, except where we are required to do otherwise under applicable law. If we are required to treat Other Information as Personal Information under applicable law, then we may use it for all the purposes for which we use and disclose Personal Information. In some instances, we may combine Other Information with Personal Information. If we do, we will treat the combined information as Personal Information as long as it is combined.

THIRD PARTY SERVICES

This Privacy Policy does not address, and we are not responsible for, the privacy, information or other practices of any third parties, including any third party operating any site or service to which the Services link. The inclusion of a link on the Services does not imply endorsement of the linked site or service by us or by our affiliates. In addition, we are not responsible for the collection, use, disclosure or security policies and practices of other organizations, such as Facebook, Google, Twitter, Apple, Microsoft, or any other social media platform provider, operating system provider, wireless service provider or device manufacturer.

SECURITY

We seek to use reasonable organizational, technical and administrative measures to protect Personal Information within our organization. Unfortunately, no data transmission or storage system can be guaranteed to be 100% secure. If you have reason to believe that your interaction with us is no longer secure, please immediately notify us in accordance with the “Contacting Us” section below.

CROSS-BORDER TRANSFER

The Services are controlled and operated by us from the United States and are not intended to subject us to the laws or jurisdiction of any state, country or territory other than that of the United States. Your Personal Information may be stored and processed in any country where we have facilities or in which we engage service providers, and by using the Services you consent to the transfer of information to countries outside of your country of residence, including the United States, which may have different data protection rules than those of your country.

UPDATES TO THIS PRIVACY POLICY

We may change this Privacy Policy. The “Last Updated” legend at the top of this page indicates when this Privacy Policy was last revised. Any changes will become effective when we post the revised Privacy Policy on the Services. Your use of the Services following these changes means that you accept the revised Privacy Policy.

CONTACTING US

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, please contact us at

register@aceee.org or ACEEE, 529 14th St. N.W., Ste. 600, Washington, D.C. 20045. Because e-mail communications are not always secure, please do not include credit card information or other sensitive information in your e-mails to us.