Privacy Policy

ECOE, Inc. ("ECOE" and "us" and "we" and "our") has a mission is to establish trusting relationships based on respect for your ("you" and "user" and "Customer" and "Accountholder" and "Green Member" and "I-Business Agent" and "Agent Member") personal identity and information by promoting the use of fair information practices. This privacy statement covers the sites of http://www.ecoe.us and http://www.myecoe.com and http://www.myecoe.net and all pages within these domains that are an extension of the sites ("Our Domains"), and every site and page that contains a Copyright notice designating the intellectual property rights of; ECOE, Inc. Because ECOE demonstrates its commitment to our users privacy, we disclose ECOE's information practices herein and review our privacy practices for compliance from time to time.

If you have any questions or concerns regarding our Privacy Policy statement, please contact ECOE via the Contact Us channels at http://www.ecoe.us. If you do not receive acknowledgment to your inquiry or your inquiry is not addressed satisfactorily, please contact us via telephone.

Information Collection and Use

1. Information Collection
   1. ECOE is the sole owner of the information collected on Our Domains. ECOE collects information from our users at several different points on our Web sites.
2. Registrations
   1. In order to use certain portions of our Web sites, or to subscribe to our Free Green Member and/or Independent Business Agent Member ("Green Member" and "I-Business Agent" and "Agent Member" and "Member" and "Membership") Program (the "Online Services"), a user must complete a registration form. During registration a user is required to provide certain contact information (such as your name, email address, phone number, etc.). We use the information you supply to register you for use of our Online Services and to contact you about products and services found on our Web sites for which you have expressed interest. If you encounter a form that contains a field requesting you to provide personal information (such as income level, gender, etc.), it is always optional, however, it's encouraged so we can provide a more personalized experience to you and for you on our Web sites.
   2. For our Membership Program, we require a social security number ("SSN") from Citizens of The United States ("US") because we are a US based Company. US based companies that offer a payment (a "Fee" and "Fees") to users from sales of a Company's products and/or services are required to collect this information by law. In the event an I-Business Agent of our Program is a Citizen of the United States, and does not provide their SSN, entry into our Membership Program may be refused, at our sole discretion, or any Fees that may be generated and deemed to be payable, to a Member, can be withheld pending our receipt of the Member's SSN.
3. Customer Orders
   1. We require certain information from our Customers on our order forms. Our Customers are asked to provide basic contact information (such as name, email address, phone number, shipping address, etc.), and financial information (such as credit card number, expiration date, etc.) that is collected by our Secure Merchant Account via Authorize.net. Detailed payment information is used for billing purposes and to fill a Customers order through our Secure Merchant Account, but is not collected directly by, or available to, ECOE or its employees. If there is trouble processing an order, the basic information we gather is used to contact the user, or to supply our Secure Merchant Account with information so they may contact you to resolve issues if you have contacted us to do so.
   2. If anyone other than our in-house Billing Department Personnel makes request for your credit card number, or complete financial information, do NOT provide it. In the event our in-house Billing Department Personnel requests your credit card information, it will only be up to the first six (6) and/or last six (6) digits of your credit card. If anyone at our in-house Billing Department requests anything beyond those sets of numbers, do NOT provide it. Even our Secure Merchant Account provider's employees and customer service personnel only have access to the first six (6) and/or last six (6) numbers on accountholder's credit card and is used only for accountholder verification to resolve billing issues.
4. Information Use
   1. ECOE may request, collect and use demographic and survey data (such as job title, country, state/province, user interests, etc.) to learn more about the people and organizations that are interested in ECOE's products and services to better focus our marketing efforts and to improve our product and service offerings. We will share this type of generic aggregated demographic information with an outside third party simply to showcase the level of interest individuals have in ECOE's products and services, but at no time is any personal information or personal contact information given to or shared with any third party.
5. User Profiles
   1. We store information that we collect through the forms you submit on our Web sites to create a profile of our users. A profile is stored information that we keep on individual users that details their viewing preferences, any products and services subscribed to, and history of payments. Consequently, collected information is tied to a users personally identifiable information to provide support, improve the content of our Web sites for each user, tailor a users visit to our Web sites, and to direct pertinent marketing promotions to them if they have requested it. We do not share your profile with third parties.
6. Cookies
   1. A cookie is a piece of data stored on the hard drive of a users computer to tie information to or about the user. Usage of a cookie is in no way linked to any personally identifiable information while you are on our Web sites.

      There are two primary kinds of cookies;

      Session ID cookies: The session ID cookie does not stay on a user's Computer, it is for the purpose of helping a user save time only. Once users close the browser window where they are engaged with a session ID cookie, the cookie simply terminates, it is not stored on the user's hard drive.

      Persistent cookies: A persistent cookie does stay on a user's Computer after they leave a Web site. A persistent cookie is a small text file stored on the users hard drive for an extended period of time. Generally, when people make comment to the effect that they "do not like cookies", this is the type of cookie they are referring to. Persistent cookies have a tendency to build up on a user's hard drive, and can force or limit the interaction when a user revisits a Web site. A user can easily remove persistent cookies by following Internet browser help file directions.

   2. Like any Web site with a password protected or login area, ECOE does use "session ID" cookies, but we do not use the more obtrusive persistent cookies in these areas. ECOE believes everyone should have a choice of the information gathered about them when visiting a Web site, thus we use forms that you know you are filling in to provide tracking of your interaction while visiting our Web sites. We do not use any stealthy avenue to collect information about you without your knowledge in any way, or at any time.
   3. Recognizing session ID cookies is a function of your computer's operating system that automatically sets so you do not have to login a password more than once, thereby saving you time while visiting Web sites. Session ID cookies are activated by your Computer's operating system because it remembers that you have an area that you login to while visiting our Web site. If a user has their system configured to reject all cookies, they may still access and use our Web sites, but could have to manually type in their passwords every time they enter into a password protected area depending on how they have their settings configured.
   4. Some third party Web sites you reach through our Web sites may use persistent cookies (for example, advertisers), however, once you leave our Web sites, we have no access to, nor do we have any control over, cookies you may encounter.
7. Third Party Advertising
   1. We do not use a third party Advertising Agency for ad content on any of our Web sites. We have many domains on the Internet that link with each other, and all of the advertising run and offered on all of our Web sites is from ECOE alone. Information about visits to any of our Web sites, such as number of times an ad is viewed, is logged to be used to serve ads to users on our Web sites, but we do not log a user's name, address, or other personal information when visiting an ad. For more information about how your information is logged on other Web sites we link to, and the advertising you visit and their use of cookies there, please check the privacy statement on their Web sites. Our privacy policies cover the use of cookies by ECOE only and does not cover the use of cookies by any advertisers you may encounter on a Web site we may link to.
   2. You can identify when you are visiting one of our Web sites by "ECOE, Inc." being a part of the copyright notice at the bottom of every page we control and own.
8. Log Files
   1. Like most standard Web site servers, we use log files. Log files include generic information like internet protocol (IP) addresses, browser types, Internet service providers (ISPs), referring/exit pages, platform types, date/time stamping, and the number of clicks and what is clicked on our Web sites to analyze trends, administer the site, analyze traffic movement in the aggregate, and gather broad demographic information for aggregate use. IP addresses, referring pages, date/time stamping, etc. are not linked to any personally identifiable information unless a form is filled in by the user. When this type of information is logged, it is done for our protection and the protection of our Customers and Members as proof that a user has requested information. This is otherwise known as "opt-in" information, or a user "opting-in" to receive information from ECOE (like our Newsletters, product information, etc.), or to provide an avenue to protect our Members from fictitious or false complaints (i.e. Spam complaints) when the user has in fact requested more information.
   2. In the event a user does opt-in to receive more information, material they receive from ECOE will always have an easy means of being removed from receiving further material. If material is delivered to you from one of our Members, and you do not see an easy form of removal from receiving future material from them, simply reply to the Member requesting removal. If you have requested removal from receiving material from a Member, and they are not respecting your right to privacy by continuing to send you more material past seventy-two (72) hours, we want to know about it so we can resolve the matter as quickly as possible. If you feel your right to privacy is being violated, you may file a detailed complaint as directed at our "Anti-Spam Policy", Article 7.
9. Clear Gifs (Web Beacons/Web Bugs)
   1. Although ECOE does not use them on our Web sites, because we may link to other Web sites that may not be under our control, we feel you should be aware that some companies, usually advertising companies, may employ a software technology called clear gifs (a.k.a. Web Beacons/Web Bugs) that helps them better manage content on a Web site by informing them what content is effective. Clear gifs are tiny graphics with a unique identifier, similar in function to cookies, and are used to track the on-line movements of Web users. The main difference between the two is that clear gifs are invisible on the page and are much smaller, about the size of the period at the end of this sentence. Clear gifs are not tied to a user's personally identifiable information. Clear Gifs can work "with" existing cookies on a computer if they are both from the same Web site or advertising company. That means, for example, that if a person visited www.XYZ-Company, which uses an advertising company's clear gif, the Web site would match the clear gif's identifier and the advertising company's cookie ID number to show the past on-line behavior for that computer. This collected information would then either be given to the advertising company, or collected by the advertising company directly.
   2. ECOE may use clear gifs in our HTML-based emails, but this is done simply to let us know what emails we send have been opened by the recipients, and does not track where you go or what Web sites you visit while surfing the Internet. This allows us to gauge the effectiveness of certain communications and the effectiveness, or the lack thereto, of our marketing campaigns. Email sent out in plain text format do not carry clear gifs. If a user receiving email from ECOE would like to opt-out, they may do so at any time. Please see the "Choice/Opt-out", Article 13, below for more information about opting-out from receiving emails.
10. Communications from ECOE
    1. Special Offers and Updates
       We send all new Customers and Members a welcoming email to supply verification of email and issue password and username details. Established Customers and Members will occasionally receive information on products, services, special deals, and our company news. Out of respect for the privacy of our Customers we present the option to not receive these types of communications. Members are able to stop these types of communications by simply requesting termination of their Membership and account.
    2. Newsletter
       If a user wishes to subscribe to our newsletter, we ask for contact information such as name and email address. Out of respect for our users privacy we provide a way to opt-out of these communications. Please see the "Choice/Opt-out", Article 13, below for more information about being removed from our email subscription list.
    3. Service Announcements
       On rare occasions it is necessary to send out service related announcements. For instance, if our service is temporarily going to be down or suspended for maintenance, we might send our Customers and/or Members a notification email. Generally, Customers and/or Members may not opt-out of these communications, however, if a Customer deactivates their account or a Member requests termination of their Membership and account service announcement emails are no longer sent to them. Email communications of this kind are not promotional in nature, and are delivered very far and few between, if they are sent at all.
    4. Customer Service
       We communicate with our Customers and Members on a regular basis to provide requested services and in regard to issues relating to their account. We reply via email and/or telephone in accordance with the Customer's and/or Member's wishes. These type of communications are sent in reply to a user's request for us to contact them.
11. Information Sharing
    1. Legal Disclaimer
       We take every effort to preserve user, Customer and Member privacy, however we will comply with disclosing personal information when required by law wherein such action is necessary to comply with a current judicial proceeding, a court order, or a legal process served upon ECOE or on our Web sites, in the event such disclosure is required to protect a person from harm.
    2. Aggregate Information (non-personally identifiable)
       We will share generic aggregated demographic information with our business affiliates and those looking to advertise with us, such as the amount of hits or visits to particular pages on our Web sites at any given time frame, solely for the purpose of showing value or evidencing the value of a certain ad spot that may be available for purchase by a third party. This does not link to or provide any personally identifiable information.
    3. Third Party Links and Advertisers
       With outside third party links located on our Web sites, we endeavor to only link with reputable third parties (such as our Joint Venture "JV" Partners) for the purpose of supplying our users, Customers and/or Members with useful information or "Quick-Links" to such Web sites. Other links you find on our Web sites will be targeting our own Internet advertisements and banner ads to reach this Web site, and can be found on other Web sites we link to, or to or on a third party advertisement and/or Web sites. Some of these third parties may use cookies and clear GIFs on their ads and Web sites, and if you visit their ads and/or Web sites, those cookies and clear GIFs could load onto your computer allowing them to recognize a user when a user visits "our" Web sites. Regardless of this kind of tracking some advertisers use on the Internet, the information they collect through this way with this technology is not personally identifiable, and is used by third parties and advertising agencies to track where their advertising budget is best placed for their own traffic/ad-cost ratio evaluations. For more information about any third-party advertisers or for the choices they provide you about not having this anonymous information used, please observe the Privacy Policies of any Web site you may reach from a link or advertisement on our Web sites.
12. Instances When You Share Your Personal Information
    1. We do NOT share your personal information with any third parties. However, if you fill in a form on or through a link you have found via an ad or link to a third party on our Web sites, you will be initiating action to supply your information to that respective third party by your own free will. We are not responsible for information you submit outside of the Web sites and Web pages we own. The only avenues that are under our control where you are able to share your information with others is if you post your personal information to an advertising section on our Web sites in the event you fill in and submit any of the following three (3) forms:
       1. Third Party Merchant Account
          We use an outside credit/debit card processing company to bill our Customers and/or Members for goods and services. The gateway to our Merchant Account Provider is Authorize.net who does not retain, share, store or use personally identifiable information for any secondary purposes.
       2. Our Online Services; Program
          We associate with third party individuals within our Online Services. One of the specific services we provide our Members with is a free Web site for their marketing endeavors. These free Web sites contain pages that link to forms that our Members advertise out on the Internet in hopes of having people and/or companies opt-in to receive information, sign up for a product and/or service that will generate a Fee to be paid to the Member for their sales, and to invite new Members to register for our Online Services. For example, when a user registers for particular products and/or services, the user's name and other contact information like phone numbers and an email address are necessary for the Member to provide information about our products and services. These third parties, our Members, are not authorized to use personally identifiable information except for the purpose of providing information about our products, services and Online Services/Program.
       3. Business Transitions
          In the event ECOE, Inc. goes through a business transition, such as a merger, being acquired by another company, or selling a portion of its assets, user, Customer, and Member information will, in most instances, be part of the assets transferred.
13. Choice/Opt-out
    1. Our users are given the opportunity to opt-out of receiving information related to supplying more information about our products, services, and our Web sites on every communication sent. For example, our Company emails have an opt-out mechanism so users who buy a product from us, but do not want any marketing material, can keep their email address off of our mailing lists.
    2. Users who have subscribed to our Newsletter who no longer wish to receive it, or any other promotional communications, may opt-out of receiving these communications by replying to us by clicking on the unsubscribe link, which is located at the bottom of every communication we send, or, the user may contact us through our http://www.ecoe.us Web site directing us to remove them from our mailing lists, or via postal service at; ATTN To: ECOE - P.O. Box 2788, Weatherford, Texas, USA 76086 (Please include very specific and fully detailed information containing everything you wish us to remove from our systems in any and all communications that you initiate).

       Users who have opted-in to receive information from our Members may request removal from the Members at any time. We provide our Agent Members with an email address at our myecoe.com domain for use when corresponding with users and Customers to do with any and all ECOE related communications', and instruct all of our Members to provide an easy and prominent way for opting-out of their email lists, however, while ECOE's Agent Manager does monitor our Members email accounts for quality control and marketing assistance purposes, we do not monitor all of the email sent out by our Members, thus we do not track which Members are including this easy opt-out option on their mailings. For further information and instruction on what to do if one or more of our Members is not respecting your request for removal from their emails, please visit our "Anti-Spam Policy", Article 7 for instruction and details on how to inform ECOE directly.

14. Links
    1. Our Web sites may contain links to other Web sites. Please be aware that ECOE, Inc. is not responsible for the privacy practices of any such other Web sites. We encourage our users to be aware when they leave our Web sites and to read the privacy statements of each and every Web site they visit that collects personally identifiable information. This privacy statement applies solely to information collected by our Web sites.
15. Surveys And Contests
    1. From time-to-time, our Web sites and/or emails may offer users surveys and contests. Participation in these surveys or contests is completely voluntary and the user therefore has a choice whether or not to disclose the information requested on the respective forms. The requested information typically includes contact information (such as name, phone number, and shipping address), and demographic information (such as state/province and zip/postal code). Contact information will be used to notify the winners and award prizes, or if a respective contest is provided by a third party, contact information will need to be shared with the contest third party sponsor or sponsors, however, we will indicate who the sponsor or sponsors is/are on any such contest forms. Survey information will be used for purposes of monitoring or improving the use and satisfaction of our Web sites. A user's personally identifiable information collected in any and all surveys on our Web sites is not shared with any third parties. If we use an intermediary to conduct any surveys or contests, the intermediary party may not use any personally identifiable information for any other secondary purposes outside of the survey and/or contest being conducted. For further information about Contests we provide, please see Article 22 below.
16. Tell-A-Friend
    1. If a user elects to use our Tell-A-Friend referral service to inform a friend about a link or promotion on our Web sites, we ask the Referrer for their name and email address and the friend's name and email address. We will automatically send the Referrer's friend a one-time email inviting them to visit a link or promotion that the Referrer is wanting them to see. We store this information for the sole purpose of sending the one-time email and to track the success of our Tell-A-Friend referral service. The friend, or friends, that receive the one-time email will be provided the name and email address of the person who has Referred them, so they may contact the Referrer to either thank them for the information, or to request that they not refer them to a Tell-A-Friend type system again.
17. Chat Rooms, Message Boards, and Public Forums
    1. Please keep in mind that whenever you voluntarily disclose personal information on-line (for example on message boards, through email, in chat areas, etc.) that information can be collected and used by others. In short, by posting any personal information on-line that is publicly accessible, you may receive unsolicited messages from other parties in return and ECOE can not and will not be held liable or responsible, or be able to assist you in any way, for or with any instances and/or consequences that you may experience from your action to post your personal information publicly.
18. Security
    1. We take every precaution to protect all of our users' information. When a user submits sensitive information via our Web sites, their information is protected both on-line and off-line. When our registration/order form asks users to enter sensitive information (such as credit/debit card number and/or social security number), that information is encrypted and is protected.
    2. While on a secure page, such as our Shopping Cart and Member Registration pages, or Customer order forms, the "lock icon" on the user's Web browser becomes locked, as opposed to un-locked or open when users are just 'surfing'.
    3. While our Merchant Account uses SSL encryption to protect sensitive information on-line, we also do everything in our power to protect user information off-line. All of our users' information, not just the sensitive information mentioned above, is restricted to our main office and is not accessible to anyone via any on-line channel. Only contracted employees who need the information to perform a specific job (for example, customer service and support) are granted access to personally identifiable information. Our contracted employees must use password-protected screen-savers when they leave their desk. When they return, they must re-enter their password to re-gain access to user information.
    4. All of our contracted employees are kept up-to-date on our security and privacy practices, and they are required to observe new policies when added, to ensure they are able to answer any and all question that may be asked by users. Our contracted employees are notified and/or reminded about the importance we place on privacy on a regular basis, and what they can do to ensure our users' information is protected.
    5. Our servers, including the ones that store personally identifiable information, are in a secure environment, behind locked doors, in a locked facility, with service technicians monitoring all systems, 24-hours per day, 365-days per year in-house. ECOE does not use third party Web hosting or servers to maintain its operations or store data.
19. Supplementation of Information
    1. In order for our Web sites to properly fulfill obligations to users, it may necessary for us to verify and/or supplement the information we receive with information from third party sources. The time we would outsource or seek interaction with a third party, who we classify as "Required Third Parties", to verify and/or supplement information with is summed up and described as follows:
       1. Credit Checks; to determine if an advertiser is qualified for one or more of our ad placements prior to them sending or us receiving payment, wherein we use their name or entity name and social security number (SSN) or Business Identification Number (BIN) to request a credit report. Once we determine credit-worthiness, this type of document is destroyed. ECOE may also perform credit checks on potential Customers wishing to obtain our products and/or services on or via a payment schedule which will only be conducted with the Customer signing an application for credit and thus providing authorization to ECOE for such a credit check to be performed.
       2. IP Address Verification; is monitored and logged to verify a user's identity on-line, which is collected via electronic means when opt-in forms and support applications are being filled in by a user, or when we need to ensure that it is in fact the accountholder we are communicating with via an on-line channel. When requests for personal identifiable information (such as password recovery, upgrading accounts, canceling accounts, etc.) are being discussed directly with accountholders, this is one of the avenues we use to insure accountholders are who they say they are. However, we do not rely on IP Addresses solely for these processes, we also require users to answer security questions to prove they are actually the accountholder.
       3. Purchasing History; is logged to do with the products and services accountholders have in their portfolio, which we keep updated by way of communication with our third party Merchant Account Provider. This is done in order for us to enhance our ability to tailor our Web sites to a user's preference. We combine information about the purchasing habits of users from basic information our third party Merchant Account provides when they report an approved transaction so we can create more of a personalized user profile to assist our accountholders. When a user makes a purchase from any of our Web sites, we use both personal and demographic information in the construction of a profile.
       4. Enhancement of Marketing Profile; is done to increase our database. We regularly purchase third party marketing data (such as targeted key-word traffic, home base business seeking leads, etc.) and add the users' information we obtain to our existing user database to better target our advertising and provide pertinent offers we think our users would be interested in. We also use this information to enhance or overlay the 'profile' of individual users. This type of marketing data is sometimes directly tied to users' personally identifiable information.
20. Correcting/Updating/Deleting/Deactivating Personal Information
    1. If a user's personally identifiable information changes (such as phone, email, postal address, etc.), or if a user no longer desires our service, we provide a way to correct, update or delete/deactivate users' personally identifiable information. This can usually be done by the user through the login area the users are provided to manage their account.
21. Notification of Changes
    1. If we decide to change our Privacy Policy, we will usually post those changes to this privacy statement, the home page, and/or other places we deem appropriate so our users are always aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances, if any, we disclose it.
    2. Although we can not imagine such an instance or reason for such an instance to ever arise or take place, if we were to intend to use personally identifiable information in a manner different from that stated at the time of collection, we will notify users by posting a notice at the top of this Web page for 30 days and we will also notify users via email. Changes to our Privacy Policy may be of a minor nature, on occasion, for which notification may or may not be provided other than such minor updates simply being added to, or taken away from, our Privacy Policy without notice.
22. Entries in Contests, Draws, and Giveaways
    1. ECOE may make available a prize or prizes from time to time. If you enter a contest, draw, or giveaway (referred to hereafter as "Contest") offered by ECOE, you will be providing us with personally identifiable information about yourself.
    2. By entering a Contest you are; (i) agreeing to provide registration information to ECOE, Inc., (ii) agreeing to provide registration information to a third party if we have involved a third party's product or service to be awarded, and (iii) agreeing to receive newsletters that may contain other offers, opportunities, products, and/or services from us and/or a third party if we have involved a third party's product or service to be awarded.
    3. Provided that you take advantage of products and/or services offered in our newsletter emails or in later email offers about a third party's products or services delivered by us, you authorize us to share your full registration information with any such third party for their use in their direct marketing to you if the products and/or services are owned and operated by a third party. All personally identifiable information that is submitted in connection with any Contest shall become the property of us and may be used by us in the future for marketing of products and services, or other purposes.
    4. Our forgoing privacy statement explains how we use your information, however, in the even we are involved with a third party in or for a Contest, information will be supplied about any such third party's privacy policy, who they may share your private information with, and how they protect it, through a link to the respective third party's privacy policy. If you take advantage of marketing opportunities offered by any third party, your submitted personally identifiable information will also become the property of such third party, and we recommend that you review such third party's privacy policy to fully understand how they treat such information.
    5. For any and every Contest offered you will find the "Official Rules" by clicking on the provided "Official Contest Rules" link found on the email or Web pages offering the Contest.
23. Contact Information
    1. If you have questions or suggestions regarding our Privacy Policy, contact us through our http://www.ecoe.us Web site.