The Foundation for the Study of Cycles is committed to protecting the private sensitive information of our customers.
In order to use some of our services, we ask our customers to give us contact information (name, address and phone number). We use this information to contact customers about services or products that may interest them. We also ask our customers to give us their e-mail addresses and credit card information for certain services. We DO NOT distribute e-mail addresses or phone numbers outside of Trading Planets, its parent, subsidiaries, affiliates and strategic business partners. We DO NOT disclose credit card information to any entity other than credit card processing companies that assist us in billing customers for goods and services.
A cookie is a piece of data stored on the user’s computer tied to information about the user. Usage of a cookie is in no way linked to any personally identifiable information while on our site. We use both session ID cookies and persistent cookies. For the session ID cookie, once users close the browser, the cookie simply terminates. A persistent cookie is a small text file stored on the user’s hard drive for an extended period of time. Users can set up their web browser to inform them when cookies are set or to prevent cookies from being set. If users reject cookies, they may still use our website, but will be limited in using some areas of our website. We use cookies to store our customers user name and password so that they do not have to input these items every time they visit our website. We also use cookies to track our customers’ preferences, such as services or products previously purchased, so that we can provide a better customized service when our customers return to our website. See the Profile section.
Like most standard Web site servers we use log files. This includes internet protocol (IP) addresses, browser type, internet service provider (ISP), referring/exit pages, platform type, date/time stamp, and number of clicks to analyze trends, administer the site, track user’s movement in the aggregate, and gather broad demographic information for aggregate use. IP addresses, etc. are not linked to our customers’ contact or Sensitive Information.
We store information that we collect through cookies, log files, clear gifs, and/or third parties to create a profile of our users. A profile is stored information that we keep on individual users that details their viewing preferences. Consequently, collected information is tied to the users personally identifiable information to provide offers and improve the content of the site for the user. This profile is used to tailor a user’s visit to our Web site, and to direct pertinent marketing promotions to them.
We provide information about trading. Since our customers often have widely differing uses for our products and services, our strongly held belief and experience is that the more we know about our customers, the more value we can offer them. We use the information our customers provide during registration to offer them personalized collection, filtering, and delivery of information (such as strategies and articles) that is of the greatest interest and value to them.
The ads appearing on our website are delivered to our customers by our Web advertising partners. Information about our customers’ visit to this site, such as number of times they have viewed an ad (but not user name, address or other contact information), is used to serve ads to users on our website. This privacy statement covers the use of cookies by Trading Planets only and does not cover the use of cookies by any advertisers.
Communications from the site
Special offers and updates
We send all new members a welcoming e-mail to verify password and username. Established members will occasionally receive information on products, services and special deals. Out of respect for the privacy of our users we present the option to not receive these types of communications in these e-mails.
If a user wishes to subscribe to our newsletters, we ask for contact information such as name and e-mail address. Out of respect for our users privacy we provide a way to opt-out of these communications.
On rare occasions it is necessary to send out a strictly service related announcement. For instance, if our service is temporarily suspended for maintenance we might send users an e-mail. Generally, users may not opt-out of these communications, though they can deactivate their account. However, these communications are not promotional in nature.
We communicate with users on a regular basis to provide requested services and in regards to issues relating to their account we reply via e-mail or phone, in accordance with the users wishes.
Though we make every effort to preserve customer privacy, we may need to disclose personal information when required by law wherein we have a good-faith belief that such action is necessary to comply with a current judicial proceeding, a court order or legal process served on our website.
Sharing With Third Parties
We do NOT share our customers’ e-mail addresses with third parties, except for when required by law (see legal disclaimer). In order to present our customers with potentially interesting opportunities, we do occasionally share information from certain third parties with you. We believe that our customers will benefit from these arrangements, but out of respect of our clients’ privacy, we will remove such information from disclosure upon request (via our
online form) by our customers.
Third Party Intermediaries
We use an outside shipping company to ship orders, and a credit card processing company to bill users for goods and services. These companies do not retain, share, store or use personally identifiable information for any secondary purposes.
Our customers are given the opportunity to ‘opt-out’ of having their information used for purposes not directly related to our site at the point where we ask for information. Customers who no longer wish to receive our newsletters and promotional communications via e-mail may opt-out of receiving these communications by clicking on the link provided in the e-mail or by sending us an e-mail through our
online form.
If a customer elects to use our referral service for informing a friend about our site or forwards a Trading Planets’ commentary to a friend, we ask for the friend’s name and e-mail address. Trading Planets may send the friend a one-time e-mail inviting them to visit the site. Trading Planets stores this information for the sole purpose of sending this one-time e-mail and tracking the success of our referral program. The friend may contact Trading Planets via our
online form to request the removal of this information from our database.
We take every precaution to protect our customers’ information. When customers submit sensitive information via our website, their information is protected both online and off-line.
When our registration form asks users to enter sensitive information (such as credit card number), that information is encrypted and is protected with the best encryption software in the industry – SSL. While on a secure page, such as our order form, the lock icon on the bottom of Web browsers such as Microsoft Internet Explorer becomes locked, as opposed to un-locked, or open, when users are just ‘surfing’.
We also do everything in our power to protect user-information off-line. We restrict all of our customers’ information to our offices, and only employees who need the information to perform a specific job (for example, our billing clerk or a customer service representative) are granted access to personally identifiable information. Our employees must use passwords to access the information and are kept up-to-date on our security and privacy practices. Finally, the servers that store personally identifiable information are kept in a secure environment.
If you have any questions about the security at our website, please contact us via our online form.
Supplementation of Information
To fulfill our obligation to our customers, it is sometimes necessary that we supplement the information that we receive with information from third party sources.
In order for this Web site to enhance its ability to tailor the site to a user’s preference, we combine information about a customer’s purchasing habits to create a personalized customer profile.
Correcting/Updating/Deleting/Deactivating Personal Information
If a customer’s personally identifiable information changes (such as zip code, phone, e-mail or mailing address), or if a customer no longer desires our service, we provide a way to correct, update or delete/deactivate the customer’s personally identifiable information. This can usually be done at the member information page,via our
online form.
If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post those changes to this privacy statement, the homepage, and other places we deem appropriate so our customers are always aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances, if any, we disclose it.
If you have any questions or suggestions regarding our privacy policy, please contact us via our
online form.
