Privacy Policy
Your privacy is critically important to us. At ACG, we have a few fundamental principles:
- We are thoughtful about the personal information we ask you to provide and the personal information that we collect about you through the operation of our services.
- We store personal information for only as long as we have a reason to keep it.
- We aim to make it as simple as possible for you to control what information on your website is shared publicly (or kept private), indexed by search engines, and permanently deleted.
- We help protect you from overreaching government demands for your personal information.
- We aim for full transparency on how we gather, use, and share your personal information.
Below is ACG’s privacy policy, which incorporates and clarifies these principles.
Who We Are and What This Policy Covers
Tangley International Ltd, trading as Applied Corporate Governance (“ACG“) operates applied-corporate-governance.com and may operate other websites. It is ACG’s policy to respect your privacy regarding any information we may collect while operating our websites.
Website Visitors
Like most website operators, ACG collects non-personally-identifying information of the sort that web browsers and servers typically make available, such as the browser type, language preference, referring site, and the date and time of each visitor request. ACG’s purpose in collecting non-personally identifying information is to better understand how ACG’s visitors use its website. From time to time, ACG may release non-personally-identifying information in the aggregate, e.g., by publishing a report on trends in the usage of its website.
ACG also collects potentially personally-identifying information like Internet Protocol (IP) addresses for logged in users and for users leaving comments on applied-corporate-governance.com blogs/sites. ACG only discloses logged in user and commenter IP addresses under the same circumstances that it uses and discloses personally-identifying information as described below, except that commenter IP addresses and email addresses are visible and disclosed to the administrators of the blog/site where the comment was left.
Gathering of Personally-Identifying Information
Certain visitors to ACG’s websites choose to interact with ACG in ways that require ACG to gather personally-identifying information. The amount and type of information that ACG gathers depends on the nature of the interaction. For example, we ask visitors who sign up at applied-corporate-governance.com to provide a username and email address. Those who engage in transactions with ACG are asked to provide additional information, including as necessary the personal and financial information required to process those transactions. In each case, ACG collects such information only insofar as is necessary or appropriate to fulfill the purpose of the visitor’s interaction with ACG. ACG does not disclose personally-identifying information other than as described below. And visitors can always refuse to supply personally-identifying information, with the caveat that it may prevent them from engaging in certain website-related activities.
Aggregated Statistics
ACG may collect statistics about the behavior of visitors to its websites. ACG may display this information publicly or provide it to others. However, ACG does not disclose personally-identifying information other than as described below.
Protection of Certain Personally-Identifying Information
ACG discloses potentially personally-identifying and personally-identifying information only to those of its employees, contractors and affiliated organizations that (i) need to know that information in order to process it on ACG’s behalf or to provide services available at ACG’s websites, and (ii) that have agreed not to disclose it to others. Some of those employees, contractors and affiliated organizations may be located outside of your home country; by using ACG’s websites, you consent to the transfer of such information to them. ACG will not rent or sell potentially personally-identifying and personally-identifying information to anyone. Other than to its employees, contractors and affiliated organizations, as described above, ACG discloses potentially personally-identifying and personally-identifying information only in response to a subpoena, court order or other governmental request, or when ACG believes in good faith that disclosure is reasonably necessary to protect the property or rights of ACG, third parties or the public at large. If you are a registered user of an ACG website and have supplied your email address, ACG may occasionally send you an email to tell you about new features, solicit your feedback, or just keep you up to date with what’s going on with ACG and our products. If you send us a request (for example via email or via one of our feedback mechanisms), we reserve the right to publish it in order to help us clarify or respond to your request or to help us support other users. ACG takes all measures reasonably necessary to protect against the unauthorized access, use, alteration or destruction of potentially personally-identifying and personally-identifying information.
Cookies
A cookie is a string of information that a website stores on a visitor’s computer, and that the visitor’s browser provides to the website each time the visitor returns. ACG uses cookies to help ACG identify and track visitors, their usage of ACG website, and their website access preferences. ACG visitors who do not wish to have cookies placed on their computers should set their browsers to refuse cookies before using ACG’s websites, with the drawback that certain features of ACG’s websites may not function properly without the aid of cookies.
Business Transfers
If ACG, or substantially all of its assets, were acquired, or in the unlikely event that ACG goes out of business or enters bankruptcy, user information would be one of the assets that is transferred or acquired by a third party. You acknowledge that such transfers may occur, and that any acquirer of ACG may continue to use your personal information as set forth in this policy.
Information Shared Publicly
Information that you choose to make public is–you guessed it–disclosed publicly. That means, of course, that information like your public profile and comments that you make public on your website, and your “likes” and comments on other websites that use our Services, are all available to others. Public information may also be indexed by search engines or used by third parties. Please keep all of this in mind when deciding what you would like to share.
Security
While no online service is 100% secure, we work very hard to protect information about you against unauthorized access, use, alteration, or destruction, and take reasonable measures to do so. To enhance the security of your account, we encourage you to enable our advanced security settings, like Two Step Authentication (this is from WordPress.com but is similar to what we do here at ACG).
Choices
You have several choices available when it comes to information about you:
- Limit the Information that You Provide: If you have an account with us, you can choose not to provide the optional account information, profile information, and transaction and billing information. Please keep in mind that if you do not provide this information, certain features of our Services–for example, paid, premium themes–may not be accessible.
- Opt-Out of Electronic Communications: You may opt out of receiving promotional messages from us. Just follow the instructions in those messages. If you opt out of promotional messages, we may still send you other messages, like those about your account and legal notices.
- Set Your Browser to Reject Cookies: At this time, Automattic does not respond to “do not track” signals across all of our Services. However, you can usually choose to set your browser to remove or reject browser cookies before using Automattic’s websites, with the drawback that certain features of ACG’s websites may not function properly without the aid of cookies.
Other Things You Should Know (Keep Reading!)
Transferring Information
ACG is a worldwide service. By accessing or using the Services or otherwise providing information to us, you consent to the processing, transfer, and storage of information in and to the U.K. and other countries, which may have rights and protections that are different from those in your home country.
Ads and Analytics Services Provided by Others
Ads appearing on any of our Services may be delivered by advertising networks. Other parties may also provide analytics services via our Services. These ad networks and analytics providers may set tracking technologies (like cookies) to collect information about your use of our Services and across other websites and online services. These technologies allow these third parties to recognize your device to compile information about you or others who use your device. This information allows us and other companies to, among other things, analyze and track usage, determine the popularity of certain content, and deliver advertisements that may be more targeted to your interests. Please note this Privacy Policy only covers the collection of information by Automattic and does not cover the collection of information by any third party advertisers or analytics providers.
Third Party Software
If you’d like to use third party software with our Services, please keep in mind that when you interact with them you may provide information about yourself to those third parties. We don’t own or control these third parties and they have their own rules about collection, use and sharing of information. You should review their rules and policies when installing and using third party software.
One More Thing: This Policy Is Available Under a Creative Commons Sharealike License
This privacy policy is available under a Creative Commons Sharealike license, courtesy of Automattic Inc, the company behind WordPress.com. You’re more than welcome to copy it, adapt it, and repurpose it for your own use. Just make sure to revise the language so that your policy reflects your actual practices. They would also appreciate a credit like this one.
Privacy Policy Changes
Although most changes are likely to be minor, ACG may change its Privacy Policy from time to time. ACG encourages visitors to frequently check this page for any changes to its Privacy Policy. If we make changes, we will notify you by adding a change log below, and, in some cases, we may provide additional notice (such as adding a statement to our homepage or sending you a notification through e-mail). Your continued use of the Services after any change in this Privacy Policy will constitute your consent to such change.
