Privacy Policy
The Contest Company ("The Contest Company") a division of Element Eight, Inc. (“Element Eight”) is committed to respecting and protecting the privacy rights and Personal Information (as defined below) of all visitors to The Contest Company website (the “Site”). This privacy policy is intended to provide you with the information on how we collect, use, disclose and store the information that you provide to us through the Site so that you can make appropriate choices for sharing information with us.
When we collect your personal information ("Personal Information"), you can be confident that we'll handle and store it in a secure manner to protect your information from unauthorized access or disclosure.
This policy describes our privacy practices. By participating in our web sites, or otherwise providing us with your Personal Information, you are accepting the practices described in this Privacy Policy. These terms and conditions are subject to change from time to time, so you should review them for changes periodically. Please note that anonymous data from which you cannot be identified is excluded from the restrictions described in this Privacy Policy.
Why do we collect your personal information?
Our goal at The Contest Company is to provide our visitors with the highest quality information and services. In order to ensure that you receive quality service, we collect certain Personal Information directly from our visitors.
You can visit The Contest Company's websites without identifying yourself or providing any Personal Information. At certain times, however, we ask you to provide information that will enable us to provide you with important product information, enhance your visit or follow up later. Your participation is completely optional.
Upon our collection of your Personal Information, The Contest Company may use such personally identifiable information internally, separately or in combination with pre-existing information, for the following purposes:
- Operate, maintain and improve the Site and our services;
- Provide you with personalized offers for contests, products and services;
- Facilitate and fulfill contests on the Site – for example, for prize vouchers, including tracking redemption;
- Evaluate your eligibility for certain types of contests, offers, products or services that may be of interest to you;
- Answer your questions and respond to your requests;
- Perform analytics and conduct customer research;
- Subscribe to a newsletter or mailing list;
- Communicate and provide additional information that may be of interest to you about The Contest Company, sometimes, with your consent, by combining your information with information from Other Sources;
- Send you reminders, technical notices, updates, security alerts, support and administrative messages, service bulletins, marketing messages, and requested information, including on behalf of Sponsors;
- Administer rewards, surveys, sweepstakes, contests, or other promotional activities or events;
- Manage our everyday business needs, such as administration of the Site, forum management, fulfillment, analytics, fraud prevention, troubleshooting, and enforcement of our corporate reporting obligations, or to comply with the law;
- Enhance other information we have about you directly or from Other Sources to help us better understand you and determine your interests;
- To customize your experience on the Site;
- To enforce Rules and Regulations or this Privacy Policy; or for other purposes that we disclose to you and to which you consent.
In these instances, we may ask for your name, address, e-mail address, telephone number, or other information. We may also keep records of information we have provided to you, and details of any enquires, complaints or compliments made by you and our response, if any (referred to as your "Personal History"). Your Personal Information and Personal History will be added to our customer database.
Automatic Information Collection and Monitoring on our Websites.
For each visitor to a The Contest Company website, The Contest Company's web server may automatically recognize and store information, such as the visitor's IP address/domain name combination and any referring websites. We use this information to understand visitor traffic patterns through our websites for purposes of enhancing their usability. Your computer provides this information automatically each time you log on, unless you have activated blocking technology available in some browsers.
The Contest Company uses cookies on this Site. “Cookies” are pieces of information that a Web site transfers to an individual's hard drive for record-keeping purposes. Cookies make web surfing easier by saving your passwords, purchases, and preferences for you. The use of cookies is an industry standard, and you will find cookies at most major Web sites. The Contest Company does not use cookies to retrieve information from your computer that was not originally sent in a cookie. Cookies help make The Contest Company better by showing how and when visitors use this Site. Many content improvements and updates are based on data such as total number of visitors and pages viewed. This statistical information is most easily tracked with cookies.
Most browsers are initially set to accept cookies. If you'd prefer, you can set your browser to refuse cookies. However, it is possible that some areas of the Site will not function properly if you do so. Please refer to your browser instructions or "help" screen to learn more about these functions.
The Contest Company may but is not obligated to monitor communications such as messages to, from, within or directly related to our services and websites to ensure that our policies regarding use and our terms and conditions are being complied with and are not being violated (e.g. no obscenity, defamation or abusive language, no content that may infringe legal rights), and The Contest Company has the right to block, remove and/or report any such communications and activities as appropriate. We may keep records of user's messages and, among other things, the email addresses involved. By accessing a The Contest Company website or application, you acknowledge and consent to such monitoring.
What do we do with your personal information?
The primary purpose of our collection of this information is to be able to provide products and services to you, to provide you with customer support services, to seek your opinion from time to time, and to compile marketing and other statistics for use by The Contest Company. The Contest Company may also use this information with data from third parties to provide information to you on The Contest Company products, services and promotions, and on complementary products and services offered by our affiliated companies and other companies. At times we collect Personal Information with third parties, who may also keep your Personal Information.
When we do so, the identity of the third party will be made known to you. Personal History information is primarily used for customer support, statistical and customer services purposes.
Your Personal Information and Personal History will be kept confidential and used to enrich your customer relationship with The Contest Company. For instance, we may inform you of product upgrades, special offers, updated information and other new The Contest Company products and services we feel may be of interest to you. When you visit our company web sites, we want to help you find information quickly and to personalize your visits.
The Contest Company may share information with appropriate third parties, including law enforcement or other similar entities, in connection with a criminal investigation, investigation of fraud, or other activities that are suspected to be illegal or may expose you, The Contest Company, or a contest sponsor to legal liability.
Please be aware that any Personal Information you provide to us maybe stored or transferred to third parties in Canada and in the United States, in adherence with the contest sponsor’s privacy policies. The data protection laws of the United States may differ from those in Canada. As a result, this Personal Information may be subject to access requests from U.S. governments, courts, law enforcement officials and national security authorities in the United States according to United States laws. Subject to these laws, we will use reasonable efforts to ensure that appropriate protections are in place to maintain protections on the personal information that are equivalent to those that apply in Canada.
We reserve the right to transfer any Personal Information we have about you in the event that we sell or transfer all or a portion of our business or assets to a third party.
By using this Site, participating in any Site activities, Contests, and/or providing us with your Personal Information, you consent to the collection, transfer and processing of your Personal Information as described in this clause.
We protect your personal information
We will not share your Personal Information with anyone outside The Contest Company and its affiliated companies, except to the extent necessary to fulfill the purposes described or where we have collected Personal Information with a third party as noted above. When we employ other companies and individuals to perform functions on our behalf and where we collect Personal Information with third parties, we ensure by contractual means that these third parties may not use your Personal Information for any other purpose without your knowledge and consent.
Your personal information may be maintained and processed by our affiliates and other third party service providers in Canada and the US or other jurisdictions. Our service providers are given the information they need to perform their designated functions, and we do not authorize them to use or disclose personal information for their own marketing or other purposes.
Our Information Policy re: Children
If you are under 13 years of age, you should not provide any personally identifiable information to The Contest Company without the knowledge and permission of your parent or guardian. If we learn that you are under 13 years of age, we will not use any personally identifiable information about you without the consent of your parents or guardian, except as allowed by law. This may mean that you will be unable to participate in some activities offered by The Contest Company without that consent.
In some circumstances, we may ask our customers and web site visitors to provide us with contact information of their parent or guardian. We will use this information only for the purpose of contacting the parent or guardian to notify them of our information practices with respect to children, to notify that person of a child's participation in one of our promotional activities or on one of our web sites, and/or to seek the consent of the parent or guardian to such participation.
The parent or guardian of any person under the age of 13 whose Personal Information we have collected may ask to review that Personal Information and to have it deleted (subject to certain restrictions). For more information on how to do this, please contact The Contest Company as indicated below.
How we protect Personal Information
We protect your Personal Information by maintaining physical, organizational and technological safeguards (appropriate to the sensitivity of such information) and designed to protect against unauthorized use, disclosure or access of the Personal Information we collect. Personal Information may only be accessed by persons within our organization or our third party service providers, who require such access to provide you with the services indicated above. Personal Information we collect is maintained with the source of the information in Toronto, ON.
We retain Personal Information that we collect only as long as reasonably necessary to fulfill the purposes for which it was collected or to meet any legal requirements. We have retention standards which meet these requirements. We destroy Personal Information when it is no longer needed for the purposes for which it was collected.
Legal, government & other disclosures
The Contest Company, our affiliates and our Canadian, US and other service providers may provide your Personal Information and Personal History Information to appropriate third parties including law enforcement or other government agencies in connection with a criminal investigation, fraud prevention or other legal action, or if The Contest Company reasonably believes it is necessary to protect The Contest Company including its systems and operations, its customers or the public, or as otherwise required by applicable Canadian, US or other law.
The Contest Company web sites may contain links to other sites. The Contest Company and its affiliates are not responsible for the privacy practices or the content of such sites and expressly disclaim all liability associated with your use of and the content on such other sites.
Contacting The Contest Company
For further information on our privacy practices, or if you would like to access or request a correction to your Personal Information, or for questions on Personal Information that we may have collected from you, please contact The Contest Company via email at info@thecontestcompany.com or in writing to The Contest Company c/o Element Eight, Inc. 174 Spadina Avenue, Suite 300 Toronto, Ontario M5T 2C2, Attention: Privacy Officer. Subject to certain limitations, you may review, correct or update your Personal Information, limit or revoke consent for disclosure or use or, in certain circumstances, have your Personal Information deleted. We will keep your Personal Information for a reasonable period or time in order to fulfill your primary business purpose, or as required or permitted by law or business custom, whichever is longer
Personal Information submitted to us in any application for employment is not used for marketing purposes.
The Contest Company reserves the right to change this privacy policy at any time by notifying visitors of the existence of a new privacy policy.