Environmental Protection in the Caribbean (EPIC) respects your privacy. We collect information to provide services to you, update you on the impact of your contributions, and communicate about promotions or special services. EPIC recognizes that we must maintain and use your information responsibly.

This policy describes what personal data we collect, how we use it, and your choices. We collect information from you when you visit and take actions on our website. We use this information to provide the services you’ve requested. We use cookies (such as Google Analytics) to provide a better experience and improve our website and and similar technologies to track usage patterns. You can edit your preferences or revoke consent by contacting EPIC via our website. Except for the purposes outlined below, we will not trade, share, or sell your personal data with anyone. Refer to the policy for complete details. We have updated our Privacy Policy to take into account the new requirements of the General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”). If you have any questions about our Privacy Policy, please contact us via the Contact Us page of epicislands.org.

By continuing to access or use epicislands.org (our ‘Website’), you agree to be legally bound by this Privacy Policy and the Terms of Service. These Terms and Supplementary Terms may be modified from time to time and the changes will be posted on our Website (we will notify you of these where appropriate). This policy applies to information collected by the EPIC Foundation of St. Maarten and EPIC, Inc. of the United States through all channels, including online and offline donations. Epicislands.org is operated by EPIC, Inc., a 501(c)3 organization (EIN: 65-1027393) based in Green Cove Springs, Florida, United States, and EPIC Foundation, a registered foundation in Maho, St. Maarten (CRIB #435.140.772), together “EPIC.” For the purposes of the applicable data protection law, including the GDPR, EPIC, Inc. and EPIC Foundation are joint data controllers for the processing of your personal data.

Information Collected from Website Visitors
As a visitor to our Website, EPIC’s servers automatically record certain information, such as your Internet Protocol (“IP”) address (so we understand which country you are connecting from when you visit the Website), your operating system, your browser ID, your browsing activity, and other information about how you interacted with our Website, which can be used to identify you. We may collect this information also through the use of cookies or other tracking technologies (please read the “Cookies” section below for more information). You may choose to interact with our Website by entering data into form fields and providing personal data to EPIC, such as giving us your name, email address, phone number, and/or physical address when signing up for a newsletter or making a donation. We only collect personal data that is reasonable or necessary to accomplish the purpose of your interaction with EPIC as a visitor to our Website. You may choose not to provide this information but you need to understand that as a result, you may not be able to engage in certain activities on the Website. Any personal data provided by you as a visitor to the Website will be used only as described in this Privacy Policy.

Information Collected from Registered Users
We collect information when you donate, contact us, or subscribe to our newsletter as described below.

Making a Donation:
When you make an online donation on epicislands.org, we collect personal data such as your name, billing address, and email address. We collect information about your donation, such as a specific project it is funding and the amount of your donation. We also collect (but do not retain) credit card numbers which are processed by a third-party payment vendor subject to the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards. If you use PayPal, Apple Pay, or a similar service, their use of your information is based on their terms of service and policies, not ours, so we encourage you to review those policies carefully.

Donations in Honor/Memory of Someone:
When you make a donation in honor or memory of a loved one, we collect payment and contact information about you, as well as the name, email address, and mailing address of the recipient. You may create a personal message to the recipient, which is stored on our servers. Except in the limited circumstances described below, we do not read or use your personal messages.

Contests, Promotions, and Surveys:
Periodically, EPIC may invite you to participate in contests, take advantage of special promotions, and complete online surveys. Unless you provide your contact information, these will be anonymous.

EPIC uses the personal data that you provide or we obtain, and the technical information logged by our servers to process your donations, to:

• Process your donations, contact you regarding any questions related to your donation, mail receipts related to your donation (if applicable). Use of this data is necessary for the performance of the contract between you and us in connection with your donation. If you do not provide the necessary data to us or our payment service provider, we will not be able to process your donation.
• Comply with our legal obligations such as court orders.
• Send you updates on how your donation has been used, project appeals, newsletters, events, matching opportunities, information about EPIC, and projects we think we think will be of interest to you. We will only send you this information by email if you consent to us doing so at the time you provide us with your personal data. You may opt-out of receiving such emails by following the instructions contained in each email we send you. You can also unsubscribe from EPIC communications by using the Contact Us page of epicislands.org.
• As necessary for certain legitimate interests, which include the following:
  • Notify your friends and family about your donation in their honor if you ask us to;
  • Using the technical information logged by our servers when you visit our Website (described above) to improve your experience on our Website and prevent fraudulent activity;
  • If you ask us to delete your data or to be removed from our marketing lists and we are required to fulfill your request, we will keep basic data to identify you and prevent further unwanted processing;
  • We may anonymize the information that we collect and use such anonymized data for EPIC’s in-house statistical and market research purposes;
  • Operate the Website and our business; and
  • Compile aggregate statistics that allow us to understand how visitors or registered users use our Website, and to make improvements in design and content to better serve you.

We will share your personal data with our agents, representatives, service providers and contractors in order to process your donations, offer you services in connection with our Website, communicate news and information about EPIC, provide customer service, and complete financial transactions. These service providers are authorized to use your personal data only to the extent necessary to serve these purposes, or as otherwise authorized by this policy. Except for the purposes outlined herein, we will not trade, share, or sell a donor’s personal data with anyone else.
Unless you ask us not to, we share your personal data under the following circumstances:

• When you donate to a mini-campaign fundraiser, we share your name and the date and amount of your donation with the person who created the fundraiser.
• When you make a donation that is part of a campaign sponsored by your employer, and/or when your employer is being asked to match your donation, we will share your name, email address and the amount of your donation with your employer.
• Each time you make a donation, however, we will give you the opportunity to tell us not to share your personal data in the ways described above (except in the case of employer-matched donations) by selecting to be “anonymous” during the checkout process.

If EPIC merges with, or becomes an affiliate of another organization, we will ensure the confidentiality of any personal data involved in such transactions and provide notice before personal data is transferred and becomes subject to a different privacy policy.

We may also be required to disclose your personal data in the following circumstances: (1) we need to respond to a subpoena, court order or legal process, including to meet national security or law enforcement requirements; (2) an emergency situation requires disclosure before your permission can be obtained (e.g., situations involving potential threats to personal safety), or; (3) we determine that disclosure is needed to protect our rights or property, or the rights or property of another person, in which case we will implement appropriate safeguards to ensure that your personal data continues to be protected.

We may share aggregated demographic and statistical information with our other partners. This is not linked to any personal data that can identify any individual person.

Like most websites, our servers automatically collect certain technical information when you visit our Website, including your IP address, browser type, browser language, the date and time of your visit, the referring URL, and, if you have visited our Website before, one or more cookies that may uniquely identify your browser. We also collect information about your activities on the Website, such as the pages you access.

In order to collect this information, the Website places a cookie on your hard drive. A cookie is a small file containing a string of characters that is sent to your computer when you visit a website. When you visit the website again, the cookie allows that site to recognize your browser. Cookies may store user preferences and other information. We also use web beacons and other technologies to track usage patterns.

We use several tools to collect information about use of this Website. These tools collect information such as how often you visit this Website, what pages you visit when you do so, what elements you interact with, what other sites you used prior to coming to this Website, or 3rd-party audience data (such as age, gender and interests). We use the information we get from these tools to improve our Website, for website analysis and statistics and respond to service requests you make.

Where required by the law, when you first visit the Website, you will be asked to consent to the use of cookies on the Website, and if you accept we will store cookies on your computer.

For more details on our use of cookies and similar technologies, please refer to our Cookie Policy.

Epicislands.org is a general audience website and does not collect information about a visitor’s age. We do, from time to time, educate children about our work. In those cases, we do not collect personal data from a visitor on pages specifically designed for children. We do not knowingly collect or store any personal data about children under the age of 16 and we do not offer any of our products or services directly to children under the age of 13.

Right to access:  We do our best to keep your data accurate and up to date, to the extent that you provide us with the information we need to do so. If your data changes (for example, if you have a new email address), then you are responsible for notifying us of those changes.

Upon request, we will provide you with a copy of the information that we have. User can submit the request to access a copy of their information by using the Contact Us form at epicislands.org. You must use identifying information in your message to confirm your identify.

Right to erasure: If you wish to delete your account or have your information removed from our system, you can do so by using the Contact Us form at epicislands.org. For privacy and security, requests must come from the email address tied to your account.

Right to rectification: If your personal data is inaccurate or incomplete, you are entitled to ask that we correct or complete it. If we shared your personal data with others, we will tell them about the correction where possible. If you ask us, and where possible and lawful to do so, we will also tell you with whom we shared your personal data so you can contact them directly.

Right to restrict processing: You may ask us to restrict or ‘block’ the processing of your personal data in certain circumstances, such as where you contest the accuracy of the data or object to us processing it (please read below for information on your right to object). We will tell you before we lift any restriction on processing. If we shared your personal data with others, we will tell them about the restriction where possible. If you ask us, and where possible and lawful to do so, we will also tell you with whom we shared your personal data so you can contact them directly.

Right to data portability: You have the right to obtain your personal data from us that you consented to give us or that was provided to us as necessary in connection with our contract with you. We will give you your personal data in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format. You may reuse it elsewhere.

Right to object: You may ask us at any time to stop processing your personal data, and we will do so:

• If we are relying on a legitimate interest (described in this Privacy Policy) to process your personal data — unless we demonstrate compelling legitimate grounds for the processing; or
• If we are processing your personal data for direct marketing.

Right to withdraw consent: If we rely on your consent to process your personal data you have the right to withdraw that consent at any time, but this will not affect any processing of your data that has already taken place.

Right to lodge a complaint with the data protection authority: If you have a concern about our privacy practices, including the way we handled your personal data, you can report it to the data protection authority that is authorized to hear those concerns in your jurisdiction.

Other websites, including those of our partners (links to which appear on Epicislands.org), have their own privacy policies. When you provide personal data at one of those sites, you are subject to the privacy policy of the operator of that site, not the EPIC Privacy Policy. We encourage you to read that policy before submitting any personal data.
You should take additional steps to safeguard your personal data online. To learn more about how to protect yourself, visit the Federal Trade Commission website (US).

EPIC understands the importance of keeping your information secure and confidential. We take reasonable and appropriate measures to protect personal data from loss, misuse and unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration and destruction, taking into account the risks involved in the processing and the nature of the personal data.

Your data will be stored on servers of our hosting service providers in the United States (Weebly, Inc., which is certified under the Privacy Shield). We will take all steps reasonably necessary to ensure that your data is treated securely and in accordance with this Privacy Policy and US and EEA data protection legislation.

You may contact us by:

• Using the “Contact Us” page of our Website
• Sending an email to info@epicislands.org
• Write to 411 Walnut St. #6749, Green Cove Springs, FL 32043

We try to reply promptly to every message we receive. This information is used to respond directly to your questions or comments. We also may file your comments and share them with our team to improve our service in the future.