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PPDM Privacy Policy

Your privacy is important to us. The PPDM Association, its subsidiaries and affiliates (collectively, "PPDM", "us", "we") are committed to maintaining the privacy, security and accuracy of the personal information they collect, use and disclose in accordance with applicable legislation. This privacy policy (the "Privacy Policy") is a statement of principles and guidelines concerning the protection of personal information of our individual members, individual service providers and other individuals ("you") (with the exception of our personnel, whose personal information is collected, used and disclosed in accordance with our Personnel Privacy Policy).

CONSENT

BY SUBMITTING PERSONAL INFORMATION TO PPDM OR ITS AGENTS, YOU AGREE THAT WE MAY COLLECT, USE AND DISCLOSE SUCH PERSONAL INFORMATION IN ACCORDANCE WITH THIS PRIVACY POLICY, THE PRIVACY PREFERENCES YOU HAVE MADE KNOWN TO US AND AS PERMITTED OR REQUIRED BY LAW. Subject to legal and contractual requirements, you may refuse or withdraw your consent to certain of the identified purposes at any time by contacting us. If you refuse or withdraw your consent, we may not be able to provide you or continue to provide you with certain services or information that may be of value to you.

  1. Who are we?
  2. What personal information do we collect?
  3. Why do we collect your personal information?
  4. To whom do we disclose your personal information?
  5. Control of your personal information
  6. How can you access your personal information?
  7. How do we protect your personal information?
  8. Privacy and our Website
  9. Changes to the Privacy Policy
  10. Contact Us

1. Who are we?

PPDM is a not-for-profit organization that develops and maintains standards for the Resource Industry. With over 100 member companies comprised of petroleum businesses, governments, data vendors, software vendors and service firms, the association provides a roundtable process to bring experts together to build useful, business-driven standards.

This Privacy Policy applies to our collection, use and disclosure of personal information regarding the members, stakeholders and consumers of our products and services and our individual service providers.

2. What personal information do we collect?

Canadian privacy legislation defines personal information broadly as information about "an identifiable individual" or as information that allows an individual to be identified. The types of personal information that we may collect from you from time to time include: your name, company, address, telephone number, e-mail address payment information (for billing purposes). In addition, from time to time, we may ask you to provide us with more detailed information regarding your interests, occupation, and background. For example, we sometimes ask our members and stakeholders to complete surveys in order to get a better sense of who they are and what issues, products or services may be of interest to them.

3. Why do we collect your personal information?

We collect your personal information for the purposes listed below:

  1. To provide the product, service or information you requested
    If you have registered for one of our events we may use your contact information to notify you of agenda or venue changes. Member companies must provide us with contact information for business and technical contacts when they join PPDM.

  2. To process payment
    Your credit card number or banking information for pre-authorized payments is used only for processing payments and for presenting you with payment options - not for marketing purposes. PPDM will only have access to payment information that you submit to us by fax or mail. Online processing of payment information will be handled entirely by a trusted third-party company (Moneris) and use of that information will fall under that company's policies.

  3. To send you information
    From time to time we may send you further information about PPDM, or other products and services produced under its name.

  4. Other purposes
    In addition, from time to time, we may use your personal information for the following purposes:

    • to detect and protect PPDM and other third parties against error, fraud, theft and other illegal activity, and to audit compliance with PPDM policies and contractual obligations;
    • to understand your needs and preferences, including to contact and communicate with you and to conduct surveys, research and evaluations;
    • to engage in business transactions, including the purchase, sale, lease, merger, amalgamation or any other type of acquisition, disposal, securitization or financing involving PPDM;
    • for any other purpose we may indicate to you from time to time.

4. To whom do we disclose your personal information?

We may disclose your personal information to the following third parties in the following circumstances:

  1. Disclosure to Service Providers We may disclose your personal information to other companies that provide services on our behalf, including label printers, invoice printers, fulfillment contractors, auditors, our software developers (including website developers and hosts), data processing, document management and office services. In addition, we may disclose your personal information to an organization or individual retained by PPDM to evaluate your creditworthiness or to collect debts outstanding on an account or to our auditors. We will only provide those companies the information they need to deliver the service and they are prohibited from using that information for any other purpose.

  2. Disclosure to Trading Partners From time to time PPDM may make our list of event attendees available to other carefully screened organizations (such as event sponsors) that want to let you know about a product or service that might interest you.

  3. Disclosure in Business Transfers PPDM may be involved in the sale or transfer of some or all of its business. As part of that sale or transfer, PPDM may disclose your personal information to the acquiring organization, but will require the acquiring organization to agree to protect the privacy of your personal information in a manner that is consistent with this Privacy Policy.

  4. Law Enforcement and Legal Disclosure PPDM may disclose your personal information to a government institution that has asserted its lawful authority to obtain the information or where PPDM has reasonable grounds to believe the information could be useful in the investigation of unlawful activity, or to comply with a subpoena or warrant or an order made by a court, person or body with jurisdiction to compel the production of information, or to comply with court rules regarding the production of records and information, or to PPDM's legal counsel.

If you would prefer for us NOT to share your information as described above in sections 4(a)-4(c), simply inform us (see "Contact Us" below).

5. Control of your personal information

At PPDM, we want you to be able to maintain control over how we use your personal information. In particular:

  • You may have the right to "opt out" of some or all of the identified purposes, uses and disclosures listed in sections 3 and 4 above.
  • You always have the option to instruct us not to use your name, address, e-mail address, etc. beyond providing you with the product, service or information you requested. See "Contact Us" below.
  • E-mail communications will always include an identification of the sender.

As mentioned above, we may not be able to provide you with our services if you withdraw your consent to our use of your personal information.

6. How can you access your personal information?

Upon written request, subject to certain exceptions, PPDM will inform you of the existence, use, and disclosure of your personal information and will give you access to that information. Access requests should be sent to PPDM, using the contact information in the "Contact Us" section below.

7. How do we protect your personal information?

We make every reasonable effort to protect against the loss, misuse, and alteration of personal information under our control. Our security policies are periodically reviewed and enhanced as necessary.

Only authorized employees and suppliers have access to your personal information. Where information is sent to a third party for processing, we make sure, through our contracts with them, that all your information is kept secure. We keep your information for the time we are providing you with a product or service, and for a reasonable time thereafter in the event that you wish to resume service.

We do not collect personal information directly from bulletin boards or wikis. However, we cannot guarantee that personal information voluntarily disclosed in discussion boards or wikis will not be collected and used by others, which may result in unsolicited messages to you from other parties.

8. Privacy and our website

PPDM sometimes collects personal information through its website. In this section, we provide you with additional information regarding such collection.

Cookies - When an individual visitor accesses the PPDM website, we may use a browser feature called a "cookie" to collect information such as the type of Internet browser and operating system the visitor uses, the domain name of the websites from which the visitor came, date and duration of the visit, number of visits, average time spent on our website, pages viewed and number of cookies accumulated. A cookie is a small text file containing a unique identification number that identifies the visitor's browser, but not necessarily the visitor, to our computers each time our website is visited. Unless a visitor specifically informs us (e.g. by logging into their account or sending us correspondence from the website), we will not know who the individual visitors are. In addition to the identified purposes described in our Privacy Policy, we may use this website information and share it with other organizations with whom we have a commercial relationship to measure the use of our website and to improve the functionality and content of the website. Visitors can reset their browsers either to notify them when they have received a cookie or refuse to accept cookies. However, if a visitor refuses to accept cookies, he or she may not be able to use some of the features available on our website.

Online Communications - In order to provide our website visitors with a product, service or information, visitors may voluntarily submit personal information to us for purposes such as asking a question, obtaining information, subscribing to, reviewing or downloading a publication, participating in contests and surveys. If you are known to PPDM as a registered user of an online service, we may combine and store personal information about your use of our website and the online information you have provided with certain other online and offline information we may have collected.

E-Mail Communications - Occasionally, we may send marketing or promotional e-mail communications to you with information that may be useful, including information about the products and services of PPDM and other third parties with whom we have a relationship. We will include instructions on how to unsubscribe and inform us of preferences if recipients decide they do not want to receive any future marketing or promotional e-mails from PPDM.

Also, if you send us an email message, we may retain that message and your email address, as well as any response we send you.

Advertisers - If you submit some of your personal information on any PPDM website to request information from a third party (such as an advertiser), we are not responsible for any use of your personal information by such third party. Hence, we suggest that you first learn more about such third party's privacy policies prior to submitting your personal information by visiting its website or contacting it by postal mail or telephone.

Bulletin Board and wiki - PPDM's website offers a bulletin board and wiki. The voluntary disclosure of personal information on a bulletin board is not governed by this Privacy Policy. Any communications which are part of discussion boards or wikis are public and not private and you provide such information at your own risk. Although it is prohibited to use our forums as a source of email addresses for sending unfounded or unsolicited messages or spamming, others may still capture your email address and send you email messages if you post your email address and we cannot control such actions by others. We advise you to remain prudent and attentive at all times when you are on line on the Internet.

Searches - For your convenience, search functions are sometimes provided on our website. We keep logs of the words searched to learn more about what kind of information our visitors are seeking, and thus improve our services.

Hyperlinks - For your convenience, PPDM's website sometimes contain hyperlinks to websites managed by third parties. By activating these hyperlinks, you will leave PPDM's website for those of the third parties, which may have different privacy policies and practices than PPDM. PPDM cannot be held liable for the use of such third party websites.

Advertising to Children - We believe that PPDM's website does not appeal directly to children of 13 years old or less. We do not knowingly direct our advertising at children under the age of 13, except as permitted by law.

Individuals Under 18 - No personal information should be submitted or posted on our website by individuals under 18 years of age without their parent's or guardian's permission.

No information collected from online guests under 18 years of age is used for any marketing or promotional purposes whatsoever by PPDM. Unless otherwise disclosed at collection, we do not provide any personal information collected through any PPDM website from individuals under 18 years old, regardless of its source, to any third party for any purpose whatsoever.

9. Changes to the Privacy Policy

PPDM reserves the right to modify or supplement this Privacy Policy at any time. If we make a change to this Privacy Policy, we will post such change on our website and make such revised policy and change available upon request to the PPDM. However, PPDM will obtain the necessary consents required under applicable Privacy Laws if it seeks to collect, use or disclose an individual's personal information for purposes other than those to which consent is obtained unless otherwise required or permitted by law.

Prior to October 15, 2008 the PPDM website may have collected personal information, such as e-mail address, using privacy policies which differ from the statement above. In such cases where information has already been provided, customers will be contacted and informed of the new policy practices before any new use is made of their personal information.

10. Contact Us

Please refer to the PPDM contact page for current contact information. If the link is no longer active, you may email PPDM at info@ppdm.org.