This Privacy Policy applies to www.advancingalternatives.com operated by Advancing Alternatives of 501 Richardson Dr, Suite 600, Lancaster, PA 17603, USA (“we”, “us”, “our”).

This Privacy Policy applies to Personal Information that we collect from interested parties and from our website and other online users (hereinafter “you”), as well as information that we collect automatically during your visits of our website and shop (e.g., information collected via cookies).

For purposes of this Privacy Policy, “Personal Information” means any data, such as your name, telephone number, email address, IP (“Internet Protocol”) address or location data.

Information we collect

We may ask you for Personal Information when you:

  • use our website and services,
  • make a purchase in our shop,
  • participate online or otherwise in marketing activities,
  • subscribe to our marketing and promotional emails or other materials,
  • interact with us on third-party social networking sites (subject to the terms of use and privacy policies of said third parties); or
  • contact us.

Our use of Personal Information

Advancing Alternatives may use your Personal Information for the following purposes:

  • sending notifications to you,
  • enabling you to use our website,
  • providing support to respond to your online inquiries,
  • customize, analyze, and optimize our services (including content to gauge usage trends and determine the effectiveness of our marketing campaigns), technologies, notifications and business relationships with you,
  • better understanding website users,
  • personalizing content and implementing your preferences,
  • prevention of fraud and other prohibited or unlawful activities,
  • protecting the security and integrity of our website, businesses, and services; and
  • other functions and purposes disclosed to you at the time of collection or as required or permitted by law.

Legal basis for processing

Our legal basis for collecting and using your Personal Information as described in this Privacy Policy depends on the Personal Information involved and the specific context in which we collect it. Generally, your Personal Information will be collected and processed by us on one or more of the following legal bases:

  • your consent,
  • compliance with contractual obligations,
  • compliance with legal obligations, and
  • on the basis of our legitimate interests.

If you have any questions or need more information about the legal basis for the collection of your Personal Information, you can reach us using [email protected] or call us on 877 546 2257 or write to us at the above address.

Use of cookies

We use so-called cookies on our web site. Cookies are small text files that are stored on your respective device (PC, smartphone, tablet, etc.) and saved by your browser. For further information please refer to our Cookie Policy. The legal basis for the use of cookies is our legitimate interest.

Contacting us

If you contact us, we process the following data from you for the purpose of processing and handling your request: first name, last name, e-mail address, and, if applicable, other information if you have provided it, and your message. The legal basis for the data processing is our obligation to fulfill the contract and/or to fulfill our pre-contractual obligations and/or our legitimate interest in processing your request.

Account and Registration

To use our all features of our shop, you can register and log in. Here, too, we store data in order to create a user account for you: Name, E-mail address, chosen password. We store this data as long as you are registered with us. If you delete your account, we will delete your data unless there is a legal retention period on our part. In this case, we must store your data for longer. The data that you provide to us via your account will be stored until you delete the data from your account. In addition, we process data that is required for the services we offer or your membership. The legal bases for processing are contract and our legitimate interest.

Use of the online shop

You can order our offers via the online shop. In doing so, we process your Personal Information that is required for processing your order and for customer care, as well as the data that you also provide to us voluntarily. When you order via the online shop, for example, we have to ask for your name, e-mail address and shipping address. We will process this data for order processing: Name, Address(es), E-mail address, Order data, Payment data, Telephone number, IP address.

The processing of this Personal Information is necessary for the ordering process. We process this data insofar as this is necessary for the processing of the contract, and for the assertion of possible claims on our part. The legal bases for processing are contract and our legitimate interest.

The provision of bank details is subject to our payment processors. We do not collect or store payment information or bank details ourselves but receive payment confirmation statements. The legal basis for providing the checkout is the fulfillment of our contractual obligations and the fulfillment of our legal obligations.

To ensure that you receive your ordered products, we pass on the necessary data to the selected logistics service provider for order processing. In this case, we transmit your e-mail address and in some cases also your telephone number to the logistics service provider. In this way, they can inform you that your parcel is being sent. With the parcel notification, you can influence the parcel delivery if necessary and change the delivery day or delivery location.

Data Automatically Collected by Us

We may automatically collect information about user behavior and usage regarding your visits to our websites, such as the pages you view, the links you click, and other actions you take in connection with our website.

We may also collect certain information about the browser you use to access our website, such as your IP address, device identifier, location data, browser type and language, and your access times, the URL (“Uniform Resource Locator”) of the website from which you arrived at our website, and the URL to which you are directed after leaving our website if you clicked on a link on our website.

Data from third party sources

We may obtain data about you from third-party sources, such as social networks, and other third parties. We may use this data to better analyze your user behavior to improve our ability to provide you with relevant marketing information and services, and to prevent and combat fraud.

 

Retention of your data

We will retain your Personal Information as necessary in connection with the purposes described in this Privacy Policy, for as long as you are actively working with us, and in accordance with Pennsylvania`s Retention Periods and other applicable laws.

International transfers

Advancing Alternatives may transfer your Personal Information to other companies and/or business partners as necessary for the purposes described in this Privacy Policy. In doing so, your Personal Information is usually not transferred to countries outside the USA. However, if we do so, we provide adequate protection for your Personal Information when it is transferred including contractual arrangements, and of course reasonable technical and organizational measures.

Sharing of Personal Information

For the operation and optimization of our website and our shop and for the processing of contracts, various service companies work for us, e.g., for IT services or the hosting of our website and shop, for the payment and delivery of products, or order fulfillment, to whom we pass on the data required for the fulfillment of the task (e.g., name, address).

Some of these companies act for us by way of commissioned processing and may therefore use the data provided exclusively in accordance with our instructions. In this case, we are legally responsible for appropriate data protection measures at the companies we commission. We therefore agree on specific data security measures with these companies and monitor them regularly.

If we use service providers in third countries, we take additional measures to ensure an adequate level of data protection for the transfer of Personal Data and thus ensure that the transfer is generally permissible and that the special requirements for a transfer to a third country are met.

 

With your consent, we may disclose your Personal Information for any purpose. In addition, we may disclose your Personal Information: in connection with law enforcement, fraud prevention or other legal proceedings; as required by law or regulation; if Advancing Alternatives (or a part of Advancing Alternatives) is sold to or merged with another company; or if we have reasons to believe that disclosure is necessary to protect Advancing Alternatives, its clients or the public. In all cases other than those described above, Personal Information will not be disclosed by us to third parties for their own marketing purposes without your consent.

Updating your information

If you believe that the information, we hold about you is inaccurate or that we are no longer entitled to use it and want to request its rectification, deletion, or object to its processing, please do so by contacting us.

Withdrawing your consent

You can revoke consents you have given at any time by contacting us. The legality of the data processing carried out until the revocation remains unaffected by the revocation.

Access Request

In the event that you wish to make an Access Request, you may inform us in writing of the same. We will respond to requests regarding access and correction as soon as reasonably possible. Should we not be able to respond to your request within thirty (30) days after receiving your request, we will inform you in writing within thirty (30) days of the time by which we will be able to respond to your request. If we are unable to provide you with any Personal Information or to make a correction requested by you, we shall generally inform you of the reasons why we are unable to do so (except where we are not required to do so under the respective legal regulations mentioned above).

Your rights

Considering the absence of privacy law in Pennsylvania and the lack of applicable US Federal Law, we will typically grant you the following rights:

 

Under California`s CCPA and the CPRA amendment, you can exercise the following rights:

  • Right to Know/Access
  • Right to Delete
  • Right to Opt-out of Sale
  • Right to Non-Discrimination
  • Right to Rectification
  • Right to Limit Use and Disclosure of Sensitive Personal Information

 

Under Canada`s PIPEDA, you have the following rights:

  • Right to be informed
  • Right to access
  • Right to rectification
  • Right to erasure
  • Right to object/opt-out
  • Right to Consent
  • Right to Redressal

 

Under the EU`s GDPR and Mexico`s Federal Law, you can exercise the following rights:

  • Right to information
  • Right to rectification
  • Right to object to processing
  • Right to deletion
  • Right to information
  • Right to data portability
  • Right of objection
  • Right to withdraw consent
  • Right to complain to a supervisory authority
  • Right not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing.

If you have any questions about the nature of the Personal Information we hold about you, or if you wish to request the erasure or rectification of Personal Information we hold about you, or to exercise any of your other rights as a data subject, please contact us.

How we protect your Personal Information

Advancing Alternatives takes all reasonable steps to protect your Personal Information from misuse, alteration and loss, and from unauthorized access, alteration or disclosure. To this end, we use the following means, among others:

  • Use of encryption when collecting and transmitting sensitive data such as credit card information, technical and organizational measures to ensure the continuous integrity, availability and fail-safety of processing systems and services,
  • Restricting physical access to our sites,
  • Restricting access to data we collect about you,
  • Ensuring appropriate safeguards are in place at our facilities and those of our business partners to ensure the security of your Personal Information; and,
  • where required by law, deleting or anonymizing Personal Information.

Collection and Use of Children’s Personal Information

Advancing Alternatives takes the privacy of children very seriously. We do not knowingly collect Personal Information from children through our website.

Changes

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. If we make changes to this Privacy Policy or materially change Advancing Alternatives’ use of your Personal Information, we will revise the Privacy Policy accordingly and also change the effective date at the end of this section. We encourage you to periodically review this Privacy Policy to be informed of how we use and protect your Personal Information.

Contact us

If you would like to contact us regarding our privacy practices for any reason, you can reach us using [email protected] or call us on 877 546 2257 or write to us at the above address.

Effective Date

December 30, 2023