BackerClub's Privacy Policy

Introduction

This document aims to achieve the following:

  • To explain the way we use information from the visitors of our website and members of our online community to provide our fundamental service, to enhance our customer’s experience, and to perform marketing/advertising campaigns.
  • To define the information we collect with your permission and what we do with it.
  • To provide methods for you to control your information collection by our website, and to contact us if you have questions or requests.

All of the information we collect on our website is to provide our online experience and to provide tailored marketing/advertisement to our audience.

Consent

By using our website or being a member, you are consenting to:

  1. The use of cookies, web beacons, session storage, and other technologies.
  2. The transfer of your information outside of our web servers, and outside of the country you live.
  3. The collection, use, and processing of your information to provide the essential functionality of our website and to provide advertising-related material to our website users.

In each case, you’ll be given the opportunity to decline to the processing of your data by the entities described within this Privacy Policy, including BackerClub (the primary data controller; identifiable below; collectively, “BackerClub”, “we”, “our”, “us”), Google, and other noted third parties. In this Privacy Policy, we indicate ways you can control what data we store and process about you. If you don’t agree with the terms of this Privacy Policy, then please do not use our website or become a BackerClub member.

Data We Collect and What We Do With It

Account Oriented Data and Processing

Here is a list of the types of information we collect, how it is collected, and what we do with the information:

  • Email Address – our website will present the opportunity for you to provide an email address to become a member/creator and to sign up to our newsletter. We use this email address to uniquely identify your account and to communicate with you.
  • Name – you can provide this to determine how you want to be identified by our website and newsletters.
  • Password – a password is required for membership for security purposes.
  • Newsletter Settings – within your account settings, you will have the option to pick the frequency and content for the newsletters you receive from BackerClub.
  • Crowdfunding Data – in your member account settings, you will have the option of providing the url for your profile on various crowdfunding platforms we integrate with (including Kickstarter and Indiegogo). We then use this information to track member pledging activity so that creators can fulfill the special perk responsibility of their promotion and to provide various membership benefits that are based on your crowdfunding activity. The specific data we collect from member activity on the crowdfunding platforms include:
    • Crowdfunding platform name
    • Crowdfunding platform unique user id
    • Number of campaigns backed by a user
    • Pledge dollar amounts (including shipping charges)
    • Reward tier chosen for a particular pledge
    • Date a particular pledge was made
    • Whether or not that pledge has been verified with BackerClub's system
    • Payment success/failure for a pledge
    • Whether a member's crowdfunding profile is public vs. private
  • PayPal Email Address – one of BackerClub's member benefits include "BackerBucks", which is a monetary system for members. Within a member's settings, they can store a PayPal email address. At the choice of the member, we transfer a positive BackerBucks balance to a valid PayPal account.
  • Analytics, marketing, advertising, and retargeting data – this is anonymous information about your website and newsletter sessions that help us understand what products/services you may be interested in, and to provide means of us advertising to our audience in a relevant, tailored fashion. To provide this service, we use account settings, crowdfunding profile data, cookies, local storage, web beacons, and other analytics technologies by noted 3rd parties.

Cookies, Local Storage, and Web Beacons

Here, we will describe the nature of cookies, local storage, and web beacon technologies and how we use them:

  • Cookies and local storage session data – cookies and local storage sessions are small files stored temporarily on your computer’s hard drive that allow our website to differentiate one visitor from another and to identify basic operational constraints for your visit. The information collected and affiliated with cookies is largely ambiguous and only serves to 1) keep track of your session and what you have recently viewed (and identify your previous session if you come back to our website after short periods of time), 2) save user preference information, 3) to retain your login status, 4) to identify the basic geographic location of your device (based on IP address from your internet service provider), and 5) to gather browser technology capabilities. Cookies are necessary for our website to function for you, but it is possible for you to set your browser so that it refuses cookies from our website (and to delete any existing files). Just remember, doing so will drastically limit your ability to use our site.
  • Web beacons and analytics/advertising cookies – this technology sends small pieces of information to third party services to collect and analyze how our website is accessed, used, and performing. We recommend you read their privacy policies to obtain a better understanding on how your personal information will be handled by these providers. Here is a definition of the information collected, where it is sent, and what it is used for:
    • Google Analytics, AdSense, DoubleClick, and AdWords – sends anonymous web traffic data to Google servers for real time and historic analyzing, determines which display advertisements to show users on our website, and keeps track of users web actions to provide relevant advertising across domains. None of the information sent is personally identifiable. Data sent includes 1) URL’s visited, 2) page load time, 3) external links you followed to arrive at our website, 4) search queries you performed to arrive at our website, and 5) non-specific geographic info for your connection. Some of this information is used to remarket, or retarget, our website audience. That means this information will track you on our website, Google’s search interface, and other Google-tracked websites on the internet that allows us to promote advertising material (on our website and elsewhere on the internet) to you that is tailored to your usage data. This information will be stored for 50 months. You can prevent Google Analytics from using your information by opting out at this link: https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout
    • YouTube – We embed YouTube videos throughout our website(s), by watching these videos you are consenting to YouTube’s privacy policies and YouTube’s collection of information techniques. For more information and to learn more about YouTube’s policies, please visit https://policies.google.com/?hl=en.
    • Kickstarter and Indiegogo – when we provide links to these crowdfunding platforms, the url will include parameters to uniquely identify our referral traffic with their system (also including Google Analtyics).

Security and Who Has Access to Your Information

We are committed to the protection of our users’ information, and we take serious efforts to securely store and process that data. Our website is set to automatically connect with users’ devices via a secured, HTTPS, protocol. Sensitive information is transmitted with industry acknowledged encryption technologies. Payment methods and other payment processing data is never stored on our systems. We do not keep unessential sensitive information stored on our servers. No unauthorized 3rd parties have access to your personal data. BackerClub employs third party web development firms to assist with the creation of new website features or to fix problematic website bugs. During necessary times, BackerClub will grant authorized access to the administration of our website and data storage system to allow the 3rd party developers to do their work. In this case, these developers would have limited access to the information our website collects about its visitors; however, the developers will only ever use the information in an anonymous manner for strict feature development, bug fix, diagnostics, or testing purposes.

Transfer of Information to Other Domains and Countries

The third party companies that collect and process your information as described within this Policy have servers located around the world. Combined, your personal information may therefore be subject to privacy laws that are different from those in your country of residence. Furthermore, if you are located outside of the USA, your information will be transferred outside of your country. This is especially important to note if you live in the European Economic Area (EEA), Switzerland, or other worldwide countries that have specialized user information policies.

It is important to note that certain links may redirect you away from our website(s). Upon leaving our website(s) or the redirection to a third-party website or application, you are no longer governed by this Privacy Policy or our Terms of Service. Remember that certain providers may be located in or have facilities that are located in a different jurisdiction than either you or us. If you elect to proceed with a transaction that involves the services of a third-party service provider, then your information may become subject to the laws of the jurisdiction(s) in which that service provider or its facilities are located.

COPPA

BackerClub and its website is not directed to children under the age of 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you are under this age limit, do not use our website and do not provide any personally identifiable information to us. If you are the parent of a child under 13 and recognize your child provided personal information to BackerClub, please contact us and you may request exercise of your applicable access and deletion of this information that is stored in our domain.

Controlling Your Information Collection, Storage, and Processing

We will outline the various ways you can control what information is stored about you based on the type of information collected:

  • Account data – if you register to become a member/creator or receive our newsletter, personal information will be stored about you. This is essential data that must be collected to provide our service. To modify this information, you can contact us to modify the stored records. To revoke your subscription, you can follow the appropriate links provided to you at the bottom of every email BackerClub sends to its audience.
  • Temporary and persistent cookie/session data – if at any point you’d like to retract your previous selection of cookies, you can delete the stored cookies from within your browser settings. Many web browsers provide tools that allow you to control cookie collection and storage. To control your cookie information, research the available tools by your browser or device operating system to learn how you can limit cookie collection and delete stored session data. Please note, by limiting this data collection by our website, major functionality will be removed.
  • Analytics, marketing, advertising, and retargeting data – our advertising partners offer methods to control the tracking of your service usage. Google provides tools to manage the collection of their data at tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout and google.com/setting/ads.

Changes to the Privacy Policy

Occasionally, we may make changes to this policy. In such an event, we will make adequate notice of the update so that you will be aware of what information we collect, use, and process.

More Information

For more information about our policies or your data, you may contact us via email (24/7) at [email protected] to discuss your thoughts with us and/or exercise your rights over your data. For more information about the use of cookies and how to block them, visit
allaboutcookies.org,
youronlinechoices.eu (Europe), or
aboutads.info/choices (United States).

Data Controller

BackerClub

BackerClub, PO Box 4482 Asheboro, NC 27204, USA

Data Protection Officer: Steven Fox