HORSE PUBLICATIONS GROUP PRIVACY POLICY

1. About Horse Publications Group

Horse Publications Group (HPG) is the largest equestrian publishing company in Canada. HPG publishes five Canadian titles including Horse Sport, Horse-Canada, Canadian Thoroughbred, Racing Quarterly and Canadian Horse Annual. This Privacy Policy applies to our collection, use and disclosure of personal information regarding the clients and consumers of our products and services, including our online and print publications, and our individual service providers.

2. The Collection of Personal Information

Canadian privacy legislation defines personal information broadly as information about “an identifiable individual” or as information that allows an individual to be identified. The types of personal information that we may collect from you from time to time include: your name, address, telephone number, e-mail address, your forwarding address (e.g. during a vacation), previous address(es), payment information (for billing purposes), your mailing preferences (such as “no wrappers”, etc.), delivery instructions, and individual customer service preferences (such as “do not solicit”). In addition, from time to time, we may ask you to provide us with more detailed information regarding your interests, occupation, and background. For example, we sometimes ask our customers to complete surveys in order to get a better sense of who they are and what issues, products or services may be of interest to them and our readership. Finally, we use the Google Analytics Demographics and Interest Reporting which is a web analysis service provided by Google. Google utilizes the data (ie: Cookies and Usage data) collected to track and examine the use of www.Horse-Canada.com, to prepare reports on its activities and share them with other Google services. Google may use the data collected to contextualize and personalize the ads of its own advertising network. Visitors can opt-out of the Google Analytics Advertising Features, including through Ads Settings, Ad Settings for mobile apps, or any other available means by using this service: https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout/

3. Why we Collect your Personal Information

We collect your personal information for the purposes listed below: (a) To provide the product, service or information you requested If you are a customer of one of our publications, we use your name and address (postal and/or e-mail) in order to deliver the product, service or information you requested and to follow up with you about the transaction (i.e., send a bill, notify you that your subscription is expiring, etc.). If you enter into a contest offered through one of our websites or printed publications, we use your personal information to administer the contest on our ownbehalf or on behalf of our sponsors. (b) To process payment Your credit card number, debit card number, or banking information for pre-authorized payments is used only for processing payments and for presenting you with payment options – not for marketing purposes. (c) To send you information From time to time we may send you further information about the publication, its offers, or otherproducts produced under its name. (d) Other purposes In addition, from time to time, we may use your personal information for the following purposes:

  • to detect and protect HPG and other third parties against error, fraud, theft and other illegal activity, and to audit compliance with HPG policies and contractual obligations;
  • to understand your needs and preferences, including to contact and communicate with you and to conduct surveys, research and evaluations;
  • to obtain audited statements regarding numbers of subscribers per publication;
  • to engage in business transactions, including the purchase, sale, lease, merger, amalgamation or any other type of acquisition, disposal, securitization or financing involving HPG;
  • for any other purpose we may indicate to you from time to time.

4. The Disclosure of Your Personal Information to Third Parties

We may disclose your personal information to the following third parties in the following circumstances: (a) Disclosure to Service Providers We may disclose your personal information to other companies that provide services on our behalf, including label printers, invoice printers, fulfillment contractors, auditors, our software developers (including website developers and hosts), data processing, document management and office services. In addition, we may disclose your personal information to an organization or individual retained by HPG to evaluate your creditworthiness or to collect debts outstanding on an account or to our auditors. We will only provide those companies the information they need to deliver the service and they are prohibited from using that information for any other purpose. (b) Disclosure to Affiliates and Business Units We may disclose your personal information to any of the companies and business units that form part of the HPG group (i.e. amongst HPG, its subsidiaries and affiliates) in order to serve you better and to provide you with information about our group’s products and services. (c) Disclosure to Trading Partners From time to time our magazines or websites may make their list of customers available to other carefully screened organizations (such as other magazines, book publishers, banks or charities) that want to let you know about a product or service that might interest you. The material to be sent to you is reviewed by us before the names and addresses (including e-mail addresses) are released to ensure the organization is reputable and material is appropriate and not misleading. (d) Disclosure in Business Transfers HPG may be involved in the sale or transfer of some or all of its business. As part of that sale or transfer, HPG may disclose your personal information to the acquiring organization, but will require the acquiring organization to agree to protect the privacy of your personal information in a manner that is consistent with this Privacy Policy. (e) Law Enforcement and Legal Disclosure HPG may disclose your personal information to a government institution that has asserted its lawful authority to obtain the information or where HPG has reasonable grounds to believe the information could be useful in the investigation of unlawful activity, or to comply with a subpoena or warrant or an order made by a court, person or body with jurisdiction to compel the production of information, or to comply with court rules regarding the production of records and information, or to HPG’s legal counsel. If you would prefer for us NOT to share your information as described above in sections 4(a)-4(d), simply inform us (see “Contact Us” below).

5. Control of your Personal Information

At HPG, we want you to be able to maintain control over how we use your personal information. In particular:

  • You may have the right to “opt out” of some or all of the identified purposes, uses and disclosures listed in sections 3 and 4 above.
  • You always have the option to instruct us not to use your name, address, e-mail address, etc. beyond providing you with the product, service or information you requested. See “Contact Us” below.
  • E-mail communications will always include an identification of the sender and an “Unsubscribe” option. If you receive a mailing from any of our consumer magazines and you wish to know the source of your name (i.e. what list it came from), we will make every reasonable effort to determine the source and provide you with the information. For this request, or to confirm that any personal information we may have is correct, please contact us (See “Contact Us” below). (Note that some account information can be confirmed by visiting the customer care section of our consumer magazine websites).

As mentioned above, we may not be able to provide you with our services if you withdraw your consent to our use of your personal information.

6. The Storage and Protection of Your Personal Information

Your personal information is stored in secured locations and on servers controlled by HPG, located either at our offices or at the offices of our service providers. We make every reasonable effort to protect against the loss, misuse, and alteration of personal information under our control. Our security policies are periodically reviewed and enhanced as necessary. Only authorized employees and suppliers have access to your personal information. Where information is sent to a third party for processing, we make sure, through our contracts with them, that all your information is kept secure. We keep your information for the time we are providing you with a product or service, and for a reasonable time thereafter in the event that you wish to resume service. We operate secure data networks protected by industry standard firewall and password protection systems. Credit card information is processed using industry-standard encryption and security.

8. Privacy and our websites

HPG sometimes collects personal information through its various websites. In this section, we provide you with additional information regarding such collection. Cookies – When an individual visitor accesses the HPG websites, we may use a browser feature called a “cookie” to collect information such as the type of Internet browser and operating system the visitor uses, the domain name of the websites from which the visitor came, date and duration of the visit, number of visits, average time spent on our websites, pages viewed and number of cookies accumulated. A cookie is a small text file containing a unique identification number that identifies the visitor’s browser, but not necessarily the visitor, to our computers each time our websites are visited. Unless a visitor specifically informs us (e.g. by enrolling for our services or sending us correspondence from the websites), we will not know who the individual visitors are. In addition to the identified purposes described in our Privacy Policy, we may use this website information and share it with other organizations with whom we have a commercial relationship to measure the use of our websites and to improve the functionality and content of the websites. Visitors can reset their browsers either to notify them when they have received a cookie or refuse to accept cookies. However, if a visitor refuses to accept cookies, he or she may not be able to use some of the features available on our websites. Online Communications – In order to provide our website visitors with a product, service or information, visitors may voluntarily submit personal information to us for purposes such as asking a question, obtaining information, subscribing to, reviewing or downloading a publication, participating in contests and surveys. If you are known to HPG as a registered user of an online service, we may combine and store personal information about your use of our websites and the online information you have provided with certain other online and offline information we may have collected. E-Mail Communications – Occasionally, we may send marketing or promotional e-mail communications to you with information that may be useful, including information about the products and services of HPG and other third parties with whom we have a relationship. We will include instructions on how to unsubscribe and inform us of preferences if recipients decide they do not want to receive any future marketing or promotional e-mails from HPG. Also, if you send us an email message, we may retain that message and your email address, as well as any response we send you. Opinion Polls – Opinion polls on our websites are anonymous. We do not correlate votes submitted via such polls with names or individual email addresses, unless otherwise disclosed at the point of collection. Chat Rooms and Bulletin Boards – Some of HPG’s websites offer chat rooms and bulletin boards. Only individuals 18 years of age or older may participate in our chat rooms and bulletin boards. The voluntary disclosure of personal information in a chat room or on an bulletin board is not governed by this Privacy Policy. Any communications which are part of chat rooms or discussion boards are public and not private and you provide such information at your own risk. Although it is prohibited to use our forums as a source of email addresses for sending unfounded or unsolicited messages or spamming, others may still capture your email address and send you email messages if you post your email address and we cannot control such actions by others. We advise you to remain prudent and attentive at all times when you are on line on the Internet. Searches – For your convenience, search functions are sometimes provided on our websites. We keep logs of the words searched to learn more about what kind of information our visitors are seeking, and thus improve our services. Hyperlinks – For your convenience, HPG’s websites sometimes contain hyperlinks to websites managed by third parties. By activating these hyperlinks, you will leave HPG’s websites for those of the third parties, which may have different privacy policies and practices than HPG. HPG cannot be held liable for the use of such third party websites. Individuals Under 18 – No personal information should be submitted or posted on our websites by individuals under 18 years of age without their parent’s or guardian’s permission. We may request name, address, phone number, email address and date of birth from an individual under 18 years of age for contest participation so that we may notify him or her if selected as a winner. In the event we do so, we will request their parent’s or guardian’s consent prior to collection. No information collected from online guests under 18 years of age is used for any marketing or promotional purposes whatsoever by HPG. Unless otherwise disclosed at collection, we do not provide any personal information collected through any HPG website from individuals under 18 years old, regardless of its source, to any third party for any purpose whatsoever.

9. Changes to the Privacy Policy

HPG reserves the right to modify or supplement this Privacy Policy at any time. If we make a change to this Privacy Policy, we will post such change on our websites. However, HPG will obtain the necessary consents required under applicable Privacy Laws if it seeks to collect, use or disclose an individual’s personal information for purposes other than those to which consent is obtained unless otherwise required or permitted by law.

10. Contact Us

The HPG webmaster oversees compliance with this Privacy Policy and applicable Privacy Laws. You can contact the webmaster: Horse-Canada.com Webmaster 220 Industrial Parkway South, Unit 25 Aurora, Ontario L4G 3V6 phone: 1 800 505-7428 e-mail: webmaster@horse-canada.com fax: (905) 841-1530