Privacy / Security

Heart’s Home USA - Privacy Policy

Heart’s Home USA main­tains the high­est level of pri­va­cy con­cern­ing our donors’ con­tacts and fund in­for­ma­tion.

All con­tact in­for­ma­tion is used for in­ter­nal pur­pos­es on­ly and nev­er pub­lished. Note that con­tact in­for­ma­tion is re­quired by the IRS in re­la­tion to con­tri­bu­tions but is not for pub­lic in­spec­tion.

Heart’s Home USA guar­an­tees that the iden­ti­ty of any per­son who con­tacts us through this Website is kept con­fi­den­tial. Heart’s Home USA does not sell, trade, or share its donor list with any other or­ga­ni­za­tion.

Those who choose to reg­is­ter through spon­sor­ship forms on our web­site may choose to give us cer­tain con­tact in­for­ma­tion (such as their email ad­dress­es). These fea­tures may al­so re­quest op­tion­al de­mo­graph­ic in­for­ma­tion (such as zip code or age). Unless you con­tact us to de­sagree, we may use the­se data to send you ad­di­tion­al in­for­ma­tion about Heart’s Home USA and its pro­grams. Your vol­un­tar­i­ly pro­vid­ed con­tact in­for­ma­tion may al­so be used to con­tact you if nec­es­sary in order to re­solve cus­tomer ser­vice is­sues.

In some cas­es, our web­site re­sorts to se­cure­ly en­crypt­ed con­tri­bu­tion re­spon­se forms for users who choose to fill in the­se forms to provide in­for­ma­tion, re­quest in­for­ma­tion, and make do­na­tions. We col­lect the user’s will­ing­ly sub­mit­ted con­tact in­for­ma­tion (such as email ad­dress), and fi­nan­cial in­for­ma­tion (such as a cred­it card type, num­ber, and ex­pi­ra­tion date). Contact in­for­ma­tion from the­se re­spon­se forms is used to pro­cess do­na­tions, provide re­ceipts and other in­for­ma­tion about Heart’s Home USA to our cus­tomers. The user’s con­tact in­for­ma­tion is al­so used to get in touch with him/her if nec­es­sary in order to re­solve cus­tomer ser­vice is­sues. Financial in­for­ma­tion that is col­lect­ed is used to bill the user for do­na­tions pledged.

In any cas­es, users may read­i­ly opt-out of re­ceiv­ing fu­ture com­mu­ni­ca­tions; by con­tact­ing Heart’s Home USA. Besides, this web­site of­fers its users the pos­si­bil­i­ty to re­move their in­for­ma­tion from our database not to re­ceive fu­ture com­mu­ni­ca­tions or our ser­vices; as well as in order to change or mod­i­fy any in­for­ma­tion pre­vi­ous­ly pro­vid­ed.

When con­tact­ing us to change your sta­tus, be sure to in­clude any in­for­ma­tion that would help us iden­ti­fy you on our lists, such as the com­plete con­tact in­for­ma­tion (name, postal ad­dress, tele­phone num­ber, and email ad­dress).

Heart’s Home USA Security Policy

When the user fills in re­spon­se forms re­quest­ing con­fi­den­tial in­for­ma­tion (such as the cred­it card num­bers) on Heart’s Home USA’s web­site, our server re­sorts to an Internet se­cu­ri­ty pro­to­col known as “Secure Sockets Layer” or “SSL.” This is a cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and en­cryp­tion tech­nol­o­gy de­signed to make us­ing your cred­it card as safe as pos­si­ble on the Internet.

Statistically speak­ing, in­de­pen­dent agen­cies re­port that us­ing a cred­it card on the Internet through SSL is far safer than sub­mit­ting your cred­it card to a clerk in a gro­cery store, or over an open tele­phone line. According to the­se agen­cies, there are no record­ed in­stances of some­one “break­ing” SSL en­cryp­tion and us­ing cred­it card in­for­ma­tion stored there­in for fraud­u­lent pur­pos­es.

The SSL tech­nol­o­gy de­pends on se­cure Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) which are cer­ti­fied by a cer­ti­fy­ing au­thor­i­ty such as Thawte . Secure URLs al­ways be­gin with “https://” rather than “http://” and if you are us­ing one from a browser that rec­og­nizes SSL (in­clud­ing, among others, Netscape Navigator, Microsoft Internet Explorer, AOL’s ver­sion 3, and Spyglass), you will gen­er­al­ly al­so re­ceive a pre­ced­ing mes­sage and/or see a sym­bol, such as a lock, that cer­ti­fies that you are on a se­cure page. Any in­for­ma­tion you en­ter on such a page is en­crypt­ed at your browser, sent over the pub­lic Internet in en­crypt­ed form, and then de-en­crypt­ed at our servers.

If your browser does not sup­port the SSL tech­nol­o­gy, you will re­ceive an er­ror mes­sage when try­ing to have ac­cess to our SSL page.

Once we re­ceive your cred­it card in­for­ma­tion, it be­comes avail­able to a small num­ber of trust­ed Heart’s Home staff mem­bers who have been espe­cial­ly trained in pro­cess­ing this in­for­ma­tion.