Privacy Policy Security Policy

CanadaHelps.org Respects Your Right to Privacy

When you make a donation through CanadaHelps.org, you are entrusting us with very important financial and personal information, and we understand that you may have concerns about privacy issues on the Internet. CanadaHelps.org feels that protecting the privacy of our donors is one of our most important jobs.

Your personal information, although it is shared with CanadaHelps.org, belongs to you. When we refer to "personal information", we mean any information about an identifiable individual, whether it concerns your email address, where you live, your interests or which organizations you support. We feel that it is your right to be able to give in a safe and secure environment, and to know how your personal information is being used.

Your personal information will never be shared, traded, sold or used in any manner not explicitly approved by you. We do not swap mailing lists, share donor information or sell (or even collect) phone numbers. Only CanadaHelps.org and our registered charities are allowed to access this personal information. We are required to store your personal information by the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA). It also helps protect you in the case of a lost or missing receipt, because we can reissue a receipt for your tax purposes. Finally, the storage of personal information helps protect you against credit card fraud, because the records of all transactions are kept for reference in the case of a dispute. During the course of your donation, your credit card information is processed by Paymenttech. The only other circumstances under which we would divulge any personal donor information to a third party is upon subpoena or order from a legitimate court, police agency, the CRA, or if requested by a credit card issuer in the case of a dispute. In any case when your information is shared, CanadaHelps.org will demand reasonable assurance that third parties will protect your information in conformity with our privacy practices.

While sending your personal information to CanadaHelps.org is necessary for us to issue you a tax receipt, you have the right to choose not to share that information with the charity to whom you make the donation. By choosing 'Anonymous' or any other contact preference on the donation form, your personal information will not be viewable by the charity you donated to. The only information accessible will be donation date, time, amount, and the type of credit card used. From time to time, CanadaHelps.org may share statistics that describe how our visitors use our site. This might include information like the average donation amount, how donations break down by geographic area, what times of the day have the heaviest donation traffic, and which type of charity receives the most gifts. None of these statistics will ever reveal any personally-identifiable or individual information. This information allows CanadaHelps.org to better serve donors, use its marketing resources more efficiently, and help charities understand how to effectively communicate about CanadaHelps.org to its donors.

Privacy is important to you, and it is important to us.

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CanadaHelps.org Online Security Policy

Your privacy and security is important to us. We work carefully to ensure that your personal information is kept safe and secure throughout the transaction process. Our site is built on one of the most respected web application platforms available, and is protected against unauthorized activity by robust hardware and software security systems.

On any pages where you share or store personal information or perform financial transactions, CanadaHelps.org encrypts your data using Secure Socket Layers (SSL), the industry standard security protocol. This allows you to send and receive information without the worry of having that sensitive data (such as your credit card or home address) intercepted by anyone other than yourself and CanadaHelps.org. You know that the page you are viewing is secure when your browser displays a 'closed lock' or other symbol to let you know that SSL has been enabled. CanadaHelps.org uses the most advanced security available; you can verify our information by clicking on the VeriSign/Soltrus Secure Site Seal.

In the MyCanadaHelps area, your stored information is secured using SSL, and is accessible using your unique username and password. As with any secure information, please be sure to keep your password a secret, revealed to no one. The information that is stored in your MyCanadaHelps account is for your review and our payment processing only.

Only CanadaHelps.org and the charity you've donated to are allowed to access your personal information. Charities may check your address in order to send a thank-you card, or keep you informed about how they are using your gift. All of this information is contained within a secure section of the site, and charities can only log on using unique usernames and passwords, issued and accessed by encoded authentication services. Each charity has their own specific login, and can access only the donor information that is theirs; no donor information is shared by CanadaHelps.org with other charities, and we will not sell or trade our donor records to anyone. For added privacy, we even offer an anonymous donation service, where you still receive a tax receipt, but the charity you contribute to cannot see your name, email address or mailing information.

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