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.