Privacy Policy

Effective: June 15, 2018.

Welcome! Thank you for visiting store.tou.org. We, at Temple of the Universe, Inc., are committed to being clear about our privacy practices, including how we treat your personal information. This policy explains our privacy practices for our online store website: store.tou.org (“the Site”). We collect personal information necessary to deliver our services and we handle it carefully and sensibly. Temple of the Universe is the data controller for the Site. If you have any questions, comments or concerns about any aspect of our Privacy Policy, please contact us using the details set out in the "Contact Us" section at the end of this Privacy Policy.

Information We Collect

Temple of the Universe gathers and retains personal information about you when you voluntarily submit it to us, and we automatically collect statistical information about visitors’ use of the Site, and we maintain some logfiles for IT purposes.

Contact information - We receive and store any contact information you voluntarily enter on the Site. The personal information you give us may include your name, address, telephone number, email address, and password so you can create an account, place orders, request information, and get support.

Payments and billing information - When you purchase our products on the Site, you enter personal and payment information which may include your name, billing address and shipping address. As part of the purchasing process, information such as your IP address, the date and time of purchase, a transaction ID for the purchase, and payment gateway utilized, is stored on the Site’s servers. Actual credit card information and PayPal information you enter is not stored on the Site’s servers. That data is collected by/transmitted to the payment processor.

How We Utilize Your Information

Information you provide:
We collect, store and use the information you provide for the following reasons:

1. Contact information – to respond to your requests or inquiries, to contact you regarding the progress of your orders, status of the services, functionality changes to our products and the Site, and to notify you of new products and services.

2. Payment and billing information – we need it together with your contact details, to open an account for you, to process your orders, to invoice you and to fulfill our legal obligations for tax calculations. Payments made on the Site are made through our payment gateway providers, PayPal and Braintree. You will be providing credit or debit card information directly to payment gateway providers which operate a secure server to process payment details, encrypting your credit/debit card information and authorizing payment. Information which you supply to payment gateway providers is not within our control and is subject to payment gateway providers’ own privacy policy and terms and conditions. Additionally, some information you provide is sent to Endicia and the USPS to create postage labels and calculate postage. Sales Order data may be sent to Avalara to calculate sales taxes.

Cookies, Website Analytics and Social Media Widgets
To improve your experience on the Site, we use ‘cookies’. Cookies are an industry standard and most major websites use them. A cookie is a small text file that the Site may place on your computer as a tool to remember your preferences. By using the Site and visiting the various pages within it, you are consenting to the use of cookies. You may refuse the use of cookies by selecting the appropriate settings on your browser, however, please note that if you do this you may not be able to use the full functionality of the Site.

The Site uses Google Analytics, a service which transmits website traffic data to Google servers in the United States. Google Analytics does not identify individual users or associate your IP address with any other data held by Google. We use reports provided by Google Analytics to help us understand website traffic and webpage usage.

The Site may include social media features, such as the Facebook and Twitter share buttons. These features may collect your IP address, which page you are visiting on the Site, and may set a cookie to enable the features to function properly. Certain social media features are hosted by the applicable provider (e.g. Facebook). Your interactions with these features are governed by the privacy policy of the company providing the features.

Information Retention
Information collected on the Site will be retained for as long as necessary to fulfill the purpose for which it was collected, for as long as your account is active (i.e., for the lifetime of your member account), as needed to provide services to you, and for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements. If you no longer want to purchase products from us, you may request that we delete your account profile that holds personal information. To make such a request, use the details in the “Contact Us” section of this policy. However, Temple of the Universe will retain and use your information to the extent necessary to comply with our legal obligations (for example, if we are required to retain your information to comply with applicable tax/revenue laws), resolve disputes, enforce our agreements, and as otherwise described in this policy.

Disclosure of Your Information to Third Parties
Disclosure By Law. You acknowledge and agree that we may disclose information you provide if required to do so by law at the request of a third party, or if we, in our sole discretion, believe that disclosure is reasonable to comply with the law, requests or orders from law enforcement or any legal process, protect or defend our rights or property, or protect someone’s health or safety.

Disclosure Necessary for Standard Operations. You acknowledge and agree that we may disclose information you provide when necessary for providing the services you have requested of us. This includes, but is not limited to, transmission of data to payment gateways, Endicia and USPS for shipping rates and labels, and Avalara for tax calculation purposes.

Security Measures
We use Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) software on the Site. This will encrypt the information you enter on the Site in order to protect its security during transmission to and from the Site. Any payment transactions will be encrypted using SSL technology. Where we have given you (or where you have chosen) a password which enables you to access certain parts of the Site, you are responsible for keeping this password confidential. We ask you not to share a password with anyone.

The Site is hosted on BigCommerce, Inc. They provide us with the online e-commerce platform that allows us to sell our products and services to you. Your data is stored through BigCommerce’s data storage, databases and the general BigCommerce application. BigCommerce stores your data on a secure server behind a firewall.

Although we take all these measures to maintain the safety and security of your personal information, please note that no transmission over the Internet can ever be guaranteed to be secure. Consequently, please note that we cannot fully guarantee the security of any personal information that you transfer over the Internet to us. We do not accept liability for unintentional disclosure.

You agree that we may communicate with you electronically regarding security, privacy, and administrative issues relating to your use of the Site. If we learn of a security breach, we will attempt to notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach where we are legally required to do so. We may attempt to notify you of a breach electronically by sending you an email.

Access to Your Personal Information
You have the ability to amend your personal information for your account by accessing your account on the Site and modifying the personal information on your account details page and in your address book. At your request, we can provide you a .csv file of your personal account data you entered at registration. Before sending you any personal information we will ask you to provide proof of your identity. If you are not able to do so, we reserve the right to refuse to send you any personal information. To make a request, use the details in the “Contact Us” section of this policy.

Access from Outside North America - International Transfer
The personal information we receive from you may be processed and held on servers in the United States and elsewhere where laws regarding data protection may be less stringent than those in other countries.

If you access the Site from outside of North America, information that we collect about you may be transferred to servers inside North America or elsewhere, which may involve the transfer of information out of countries located in the European Economic Area. By allowing us to collect information about you, all users, including without limitation users in Canada and the European Union, fully understand and unambiguously consent to the collection, transfer and processing of your data as described in this Privacy Policy.

Third Party Links
Temple of the Universe is not responsible for the privacy practices of websites operated by third parties that may be linked to from the Site. Once you leave the Site via such a link, this Privacy Policy no longer applies and you should check the applicable privacy policy of the third party website to determine how they will handle any personal information they collect from you.

Age Restrictions
In accordance with the Site's Terms and Conditions, we do not knowingly sell products, provide services or collect information from any individual under the age of 16. If you are under the age of 16, you are not allowed to use the Site and you must request your parent or guardian to use the Site instead.

Governing Law
In the event of litigation both parties agree that the Law of the State of business registration of Temple of the Universe, the State of Florida, shall apply and both parties shall consent to the jurisdiction of said State's courts, or in the event of diversity of citizenship, the United States District Court for the Northern District of Florida. Both parties expressly waive a trial by jury.

Acceptance of Privacy Statement
Your use of the Site, including any dispute concerning privacy, is subject to this privacy statement and the applicable Terms and Conditions document. BY USING THE SITE, YOU ARE ACCEPTING THE PRACTICES SET OUT IN THIS PRIVACY STATEMENT AND THE APPLICABLE TERMS AND CONDITIONS DOCUMENT.

If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post those changes to this privacy statement page and any other places we deem appropriate so that you are aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances, if any, we disclose it. We reserve the right to modify this privacy statement at any time, so please review it frequently. If we make material changes to this policy, we will notify you here by changing the “Effective” date above, or by other means, such as email, at our discretion.

Your continued use of any portion of the Site following posting of the updated privacy statement will constitute your acceptance of the changes.

Contact Us
If you have any questions please feel free to contact us:
Temple of the Universe, Inc.
15808 NW 90th Street
Alachua, FL 32615
Phone: 386-462-7279
email: contact@tou.org