Meri Insurance Services privacy policy

Introduction

Meri Insurance respects your privacy and is committed to protecting it through our compliance with this website privacy policy (“Policy”).

Maintaining protection of the information entrusted to our care by our constituents is of the utmost importance to Meri Insurance.

This Policy describes the types of information we may collect from you or that you may provide when you visit our website www.meriacupuncture.com (our “Website”) and our practices for collecting, using, protecting and disclosing that information.

Please note that supplementary rules apply in relation to individuals whose data we collect if they are located in the State of California.

This Policy applies to information we collect:

• On our Website
• In email, text and other electronic messages between you and our Website
• Through mobile and desktop applications you download from our Website, which provides dedicated non-browser-based interaction between you and our Website
• When you interact with our advertising and applications on third-party websites and services if those applications or advertising include links to MERI INSURANCE
• Through MERI INSURANCE affiliates when you become an insured
• When you sign up for any events that we host
• When you interact with us in another way—for example, contacting us with an inquiry

This Policy outlines our policies and practices regarding your personal information (information relating to you from which you can be identified) and how we will treat it. This Policy may change from time to time (see Changes to our Privacy Policy section below), so please check the policy periodically for updates. If any questions arise about the meaning or interpretation of this Policy, the English-language version of this Policy is the official text.

Information we collect about you and how we collect it

We collect several types of information from and about users of our Website and others, including:

• Identifiers including your name, postal address, email address, online identifier Internet Protocol Address, telephone number or other similar identifiers (“personal information”)
• Information about you individually, but is not held in a form to identify you, such as age, gender, language preferences, expertise and date of birth
• Payment information (such as your credit card number, CVV code and expiration date)
• Education information
• Professional or employment-related information, and/or
• Internet or other electronic network activity information, including, but not limited to, browsing history, search history, and information regarding a consumer’s interaction with a MERI INSURANCE’s internet website, MERI INSURANCE applications and advertisements

We collect this information:

• Directly from you when you provide it to us
• Automatically as you navigate through the Website. Information collected automatically may include usage details, IP addresses, and information collected through cookies and other tracking technologies
• From third parties we contract with to provide services on our behalf (such as event organizers)
• From affiliates and state and national associations that partner with MERI INSURANCE

Information you provide to us

We collect the information you provide when you interact with our Website or when dealing with MERI INSURANCE or our network offline including:

• Information that you provide by making an inquiry or becoming an insured. This includes information provided at the time of registering on the website, posting material or requesting further services. We may also ask you for information when you enter a contest or promotion sponsored by us, and when you report a problem with our Website.
• Records and copies of your correspondence (including email and other electronic messages, including social media posts), if you contact us
• Your responses to surveys that we might ask you to complete for research purposes
• Details of transactions you carry out through our Website and of the fulfillment of your orders. You may be required to provide financial information before placing an order through our Website.
• Your search queries on our Website
• Other features that are developed in the future that may result in the collection of additional new information

You also may provide information to be published or displayed (hereinafter, “posted”) on public areas of the Website, or transmitted to other users of the Website or third parties (collectively, “User Content”). Your User Content is posted on and transmitted to others at your own risk. Although we limit access to certain pages and you may set certain privacy settings for such information by logging into your account profile, please be aware that no security measures are perfect or impenetrable. Additionally, we cannot control the actions of other users of the Website with whom you may choose to share your User Content.

Usage details, IP addresses, cookies and other technologies

As you navigate through and interact with our Website, we may automatically collect certain information about your equipment, browsing actions and patterns, including:

• Details of your visits to our Website, including traffic data, location data, logs, and other communication data and the resources that you access and use on our Website
• Information about your computer and internet connection, including your IP address, operating system and browser type

The information we collect in this way is anonymous. It is aggregated into statistical data to help us improve our Website and to deliver a better and more personalized service by enabling us to:

• Estimate our audience size, browser statistics, popularity of the content and usage patterns
• Speed up your searches
• Recognize you when you return to our Website

The technologies we use for this automatic data collection may include:

• Cookies (or browser cookies). A cookie is a small file placed on the hard drive of your computer. You may refuse to accept browser cookies by activating the appropriate setting on your browser. However, if you select this setting you may be unable to access certain parts of our Website. Unless you have adjusted your browser setting so that it will refuse cookies, our system will issue cookies when you direct your browser to our Website.

We do not collect personal information automatically, but we may tie this information to personal information about you that we collect from other sources or you provide to us, in which case we will process such personal information in accordance with the remainder of this Policy.

Third-party advertiser use of cookies and other tracking technologies

Some advertisements on MERI INSURANCE.com are served by third-party advertisers, ad networks and ad servers. Additionally, some of the applications accessible from, or on, our Website may be owned by third parties. These third parties may use cookies alone or in conjunction with other tracking technologies to collect information about our users. We do not control these third parties’ tracking technologies or how they may be used. If you have any questions about an advertisement on MERI INSURANCE.com, you should contact the responsible advertiser directly. For information about how you can opt out of receiving targeted advertising from these providers, see the “Choices about how we use and disclose your information” section below.

How we use your information

We use information we collect about you or that you provide to us, including any personal information

• To present our Website and its contents to you
• To provide you with information, products or services that you request from us
• To offer and fulfill our core business purposes which include:
  • Fulfilling MERI INSURANCE’s obligation to insureds
  • Financial processing
  • Facilitating convention and special event planning
  • Communicating key organizational messages
  • Supporting the product offerings of MERI INSURANCE
  • Complying with any legal obligations
• To fulfill any other purpose for which you provide it
• To carry out our obligations and enforce our rights arising from any contracts entered into between you and us, including for billing and collection
• To notify you about changes to our Website or any products or services we offer or provide though it
• To allow you to participate in interactive features on our Website
• Store information about your preferences, allowing us to customize our Website according to your individual interests
• In any other way we may describe when you provide the information
• For any other purpose where we have your consent

We may also use your information to contact you about our own and third-parties’ goods and services that may be of interest to you. MERI INSURANCE confirms that it will not sell or trade its membership data without the prior approval of the MERI INSURANCE Board of Directors. If you do not want us to use your information in this way, you may opt out of these contacts by notifying us. For more information, see the “Choices about how we use and disclose your information” section below.

Disclosure of your information

We may disclose aggregated information about our users, and information that cannot be used to identify any individual, without restriction.

We may disclose personal information that we collect or you provide as described in this Policy. The information may be sold to third parties or disclosed for a business purpose:

• To contractors, service providers and other third parties we use to support our business and who are bound by contractual obligations to keep personal information confidential and use it only for the purposes for which we disclose it to them
• To third parties to market their products or services to you if you have consented to these disclosures. We contractually require these third parties to keep personal information confidential and use it only for the purposes for which we disclose it to them. For more information, see the “Choices about how we use and disclose your information” section below.
• To educate providers and other companies associated with our business operations
• To fulfill the purpose for which you provide it
• For any other purpose disclosed by us when you provide the information with your consent

We may also disclose your personal information:

• To comply with any court order, law or legal process, including to respond to any government or regulatory request
• If we believe disclosure is necessary or appropriate to protect the rights, property or safety of MERI INSURANCE, MERI INSURANCE insureds, MERI INSURANCE affiliates or others. This includes exchanging information with other companies and organizations for the purposes of fraud protection and credit risk reduction.

The information we sell to third parties or disclose to third parties for a business purpose may include:

• Identifiers including your name, postal address, email address, online identifier Internet Protocol Address, telephone number or other similar identifiers
• Information about you individually, but is not held in a form to identify you, such as age, gender, language preferences, expertise, date of birth
• Education information
• Professional or employment-related information and/or
• Internet or other electronic network activity information, including, but not limited to: browsing history, search history and information regarding a consumer’s interaction with MERI INSURANCE’s internet website, MERI INSURANCE’s applications, and MERI INSURANCE’s advertisements.

Choices about how we use and disclose your information

We strive to provide you with choices regarding the personal information you provide to us. We have created mechanisms to provide you with the following control over your information:

• Tracking technologies and advertising. You can set your browser to refuse all or some browser cookies or to alert you when cookies are being sent. If you disable or refuse cookies, please note that some parts of this site may then be inaccessible or not function properly.
• Disclosure of your information for third-party advertising. If you do not want us to share your personal information with unaffiliated or non-agent third parties for promotional purposes, for some third-party advertisers send us an email stating your request to [email protected].
• Promotional offers. If you do not want us to share your personal information with unaffiliated or non-agent third parties for promotional purposes, for some third-party advertisers you can opt out by sending us an email stating your request to [email protected]. If we have sent you a promotional email, you may send us a return email asking to be omitted from future email distributions.

Donor privacy information

MERI INSURANCE will not sell, trade or share a donor’s personal information, including their name, phone number, email or physical address with non-MERI INSURANCE third parties nor will it send donors mailings on behalf of other unrelated organizations. This policy applies to all information received by MERI INSURANCE, both online and offline, as well as any electronic, written or oral communication. MERI INSURANCE occasionally uses third-party vendors to manage and process donor information. These vendors are bound by strict confidentiality agreements.

Accessing and correcting your information

Where you are a registered user on this Website, you can review and change your personal information by logging into our Website and visiting your account profile page on My MERI INSURANCE.

You may also send us an email at [email protected] to request access to, correct or delete any personal information you have provided to us. We cannot delete your personal information except by also deleting your user account. We may not accommodate a request to change information if we believe the change would violate any law or legal requirement or cause the information to be incorrect.

If you delete your user content from the Website, copies of your user content may remain viewable in cached and archived pages or might have been copied or stored by other Website users.

Children under the age of 16

Our Website is not intended for children under 16 years of age. No one under age 16 may provide any personal information to or on our Website. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 16. If you are under 16, do not use or provide any information on our Website or on or through any of its features/register on our Website, make any purchases through our Website, use any of the interactive or public comment features of our Website or provide any information about yourself to us, including: your name, address, telephone number, email address or any screen name or username you may use. If we learn we have collected or received personal information from a child under 16 without verification of parental consent, we will delete that information. If you believe we might have any information from or about a child under 16, please contact us at [email protected].

California privacy rights

Under California’s “Shine the Light Law,” California residents who provide personal information in obtaining products or services for personal, family or household use are entitled to request and obtain from us once a calendar year information about the customer information we shared, if any, with other businesses for their own direct marketing purposes. If applicable, this information will include the categories of customer information and the names and addresses of those businesses with which we shared customer information for the immediately prior calendar year.

To make such a request, California residents may send an email to [email protected]. MERI INSURANCE will not discriminate in any way against any users of our Website that exercise their rights provided by law.

Data security

We have implemented technical and operational measures designed to secure your personal information from accidental loss and from unauthorized access, use, alteration and disclosure. All personal information you provide to us is stored on password-protected databases on our secure servers behind firewalls and we use Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) to ensure that the transmission of sensitive data for payments and contributions is encrypted and appropriately safeguarded. We train our employees on the importance of information security and focus specifically on practices for protecting against unauthorized disclosure of personal data. We have a documented incident response plan for acting upon events that violate MERI INSURANCE’s security or privacy policies, should they occur, and this plan is reviewed and updated on an ongoing basis.

The safety and security of your information also depend on you. Where we have given you (or where you have chosen) a password for access to certain parts of our Website, you are responsible for keeping this password confidential. Passwords registered with our Website are encrypted to ensure protection against unauthorized access to your personal information. We ask you not to share your password with anyone. We urge you to be careful about giving out information in public areas of our Website. The information you share in public areas may be viewed by any user of our Website.

Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure. Although we do our best to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee the security of your personal information transmitted to our Website or over any public network. Any transmission of personal information is at your own risk. Without prejudice to any mandatory legal obligations to which we may be subject, we are not responsible for circumvention of any privacy settings or security measures contained on our Website.

Changes to our privacy policy

MERI INSURANCE reserves the right to change, add, modify or remove portions of this Policy at any time, which shall become effective immediately upon posting on this web page. The date the Policy was last revised is November 30, 2021. It is your responsibility to review this Policy for any changes. By continuing to use our Website, you agree to any changes in the Policy.

Contact information

If you have any questions about MERI INSURANCE’s privacy protection practices or believe we have not adhered to this Policy, please contact us at [email protected].