Privacy Policy

Privacy Policy

We want you to know how we collect, use and protect information about our online customers.

Our Websites

This policy pertains to the following websites:

Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition (fpmt.org)
Foundation Store (shop.fpmt.org)

The Online Learning Center has a separate privacy policy. Further information about handling user data in our Online learning Center can be found under https://fpmt.org/moodle-privacy/

Online Learning Center (onlinelearning.fpmt.org)

Our Privacy Policy

FPMT respects your right to privacy. We value our customers’ trust. To insure your privacy, we only use customer information for donation/order identification, customer service contact, or demographic analysis. We may need to contact users by phone, postal mail, or email if questions arise regarding your donation/order. Demographic analysis is done by fpmt.org only, and information is not shared with anyone not affiliated with FPMT.

We do not send unsolicited or “spam” e-mail. FPMT uses e-mail addresses to communicate with our users, to send information about your order, and newsletters.

We do not sell, rent, or lend any personal information about our customers to any third party. All information provided to us is kept in strict confidence.

Online Profile Updates and Donations

If you complete the Profile update form and share your personally identifying information, this information will be used only to provide you with more targeted content. We may use your contact information to send further information about our organization or to contact you when necessary. You may always opt-out of receiving future mailings; see the “Opt Out” section below.

For users that register on our website (if any), we also store the personal information they provide in their user profile. All users can see, edit, or delete their personal information at any time. Website administrators can also see and edit that information.

Donations to FPMT affiliates through fpmt.org
FPMT International Office processes online donations for some of our affiliates, which include Kopan Monastery, Lawudo Gompa, Lotsawa Rinchen Zangpo Translator Program (LRZTP), Maitri Charitable Trust, Root Institute, Tara Puja Fund, and Tushita Meditation Centre.

When a donation to one of these affiliates is made through a donation form on fpmt.org, the data is collected, stored, and used through fpmt.org in accordance with our privacy policy.

The affiliate that the donation was submitted for also receives a copy of the contact and donation data as they are the main contact and recipient of the funds donated.

What rights you have over your data

If you have an account on this site, or have left comments, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.

How do I request access to my personal data? How do I request changes to it?

If you’d like to know what personal data we have stored about you, please contact us with your request. If upon reviewing that data you need to request changes to it, please let us know and we will work with you to make the necessary corrections.

How do I delete my biographical data?

If you want to delete your biographical data stored on our website, the Foundation Store or our donation system, please contact us with your request and we will be happy to assist you.

Where we send your data

Contact forms may be checked through an automated spam detection service.

Sending us an Email

You also may decide to send us personally identifying information, for example, in an electronic mail message containing a question or comment, or by filling out a Web form that provides us this information. We use personally identifying information from email primarily to respond to your requests. We may forward your email to other employees who are better able to answer you questions. We may also use your email to contact you in the future about our programs that may be of interest.

We want to be very clear: We will not obtain personally identifying information about you when you visit our site, unless you choose to provide such information to us. Providing such information is strictly voluntary. Except as might be required by law, we do not share any information we receive with any outside parties.

If you sign up for one of our email lists, we will only send you the kinds of information you have requested. We won’t share your name or email address with any outside parties.

How to Subscribe to Our Email Lists

You can subscribe to the FPMT e-News & Support the Foundation and the Foundation Store e-News in the following ways:

  • Subscribing through our “RECEIVE OUR NEWSLETTERS” page
  • By donating through a donation form on fpmt.org or my.fpmt.org or placing a Foundation Store order using an email that was not previously in our database

You can subscribe to the Merit Box email list:

  • By donating to the Merit Box Fund using an email that was not previously in our database
  • By ordering a Merit Box practice kit

You can subscribe to receive the monthly recurring donation Receipts:

  • When you have active monthly donations and if you have not opted-out of all FPMT email communications.

You can subscribe to the FPMT Latest News:

How to Opt-out of Our Mailing Lists or Change Your Contact Information

You can opt out of e-News and FPMT Latest News directly through the FPMT.org website, under the NEWS/MEDIA tab.

Each email list has opt-out links for that particular list included in their respective email footers:

What about links to and from other Web sites?

Our Web site may offer links to other sites. Other sites have their own policies regarding privacy. If you visit one of these sites, you may want to review the privacy policy on that site. In addition, you may have linked to our Web site through another site. In such cases the site you linked from may collect information from people who click on the banner or link. You may want to refer to the privacy policies on those sites to see how they collect and use this information.

Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.

These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracing your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.

Our use of Cookies

Cookies are alphanumeric identifiers that we transfer to your computer’s hard drive through your Web browser. Cookies allow us to provide features such as log-in credentials, language preferences, storage of items in your shopping bag between visits, etc.

If you leave a comment on our site you may opt-in to saving your name, email address and website in cookies. These are for your convenience so that you do not have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment. These cookies will last for one year.

If you have an account and you log in to this site, we will set a temporary cookie to determine if your browser accepts cookies. This cookie contains no personal data and is discarded when you close your browser.

When you log in, we will also set up several cookies to save your login information and your screen display choices. Login cookies last for two days, and screen options cookies last for a year. If you select “Remember Me”, your login will persist for two weeks. If you log out of your account, the login cookies will be removed.

If you edit or publish an article, an additional cookie will be saved in your browser. This cookie includes no personal data and simply indicates the post ID of the article you just edited. It expires after 1 day.

The “help” portion of the toolbar on most browsers will tell you how to prevent your browser from accepting new cookies, how to have the browser notify you when you receive a new cookie or how to disable cookies altogether. However, cookies allow you to take full advantage of some of our web site’s best features, so we recommend that you leave them turned on.

Media

If you upload images to the website, you should avoid uploading images with embedded location data (EXIF GPS) included. Visitors to the website can download and extract any location data from images on the website.

Other Third Party Services

Google (all of our websites)

Analytics

We use Google Analytics to collect data about our traffic via Google advertising cookies and anonymous identifiers, including DoubleClick.

We do not facilitate the merging of personally-identifiable information with non-personally identifiable information collected through any Google advertising product or feature.

You may opt-out of Google Analytics for the web.

Google Groups (FPMT website: Prayers for the Dead or CPMT e-Group subscriptions)

Messages you email to the group or that you post through the web site for a Group will always include your email address.

    • Full headers of all email postings can be seen by anyone accessing the messages through the web site.

Your full email address will be visible to the owner and moderator(s) of any Group to which you belong.

    • Some Group owners, though, may choose to give members the option to not allow their email addresses to be visible to owner and moderators. Choosing this option may limit your ability to post and take advantage of other features of the Group.

In using Google Groups and its various tools, you may make some of your information public. You may also choose to share some of your information with other Group members.

When you share files, post messages, create polls, or add bookmarks to a Group to which you belong, certain information such as your name, nickname, avatar, image, online status, contact information associated with your account or other information that you have chosen to make public may appear next to the file, message, poll or bookmark on the Groups website.

The personal email address of Group owners and moderators who invite members to join the Group via the “invite” tool are visible to the recipients of an invitation.

Certain information from your Profile may be visible to others such as your name, gender, city, online status and other information that you have chosen to make public.

If you post information online that is accessible to the public, you may receive unsolicited messages from other parties in return.

Google Web Fonts

For uniform representation of fonts, this page uses web fonts provided by Google. When you open a page, your browser loads the required web fonts into your browser cache to display texts and fonts correctly.

For this purpose your browser has to establish a direct connection to Google servers. Google thus becomes aware that our web page was accessed via your IP address. The use of Google Web fonts is done in the interest of a uniform and attractive presentation of our plugin. This constitutes a justified interest pursuant to Art. 6 (1) (f) DSGVO.

If your browser does not support web fonts, a standard font is used by your computer.

Further information about handling user data, can be found at https://developers.google.com/fonts/faq and in Google’s privacy policy at https://www.google.com/policies/privacy/.

YouTube

Our website uses plugins from YouTube, which is operated by Google. The operator of the pages is YouTube LLC, 901 Cherry Ave., San Bruno, CA 94066, USA.

If you visit one of our pages featuring a YouTube plugin, a connection to the YouTube servers is established. Here the YouTube server is informed about which of our pages you have visited.

If you’re logged in to your YouTube account, YouTube allows you to associate your browsing behavior directly with your personal profile. You can prevent this by logging out of your YouTube account.

YouTube is used to help make our website appealing. This constitutes a justified interest pursuant to Art. 6 (1) (f) DSGVO.

Further information about handling user data, can be found in the data protection declaration of YouTube under https://www.google.de/intl/de/policies/privacy.


MailChimp (FPMT website: FPMT Latest News subscription)

(a) Information you voluntarily provide to us: When you sign up for and use the Services, consult with our customer service team, send us an email, post on our blog, integrate the Services with another website or service (for example, when you choose to connect your e-commerce account with MailChimp), or communicate with us in any way, you are voluntarily giving us information that we collect. That information may include either your or your Subscribers’ name, physical address, email address, IP address, phone number, credit card information, as well as details including gender, occupation, location, purchase history, and other demographic information. By giving us this information, you consent to this information being collected, used, disclosed, transferred to the United States and stored by us, as described in our Terms of Use and in this Privacy Policy.

(b) Information we collect automatically: When you use the Services or browse one of our Websites, we may collect information about your visit to our Websites, your usage of the Services, and your web browsing. That information may include your IP address, your operating system, your browser ID, your browsing activity, and other information about how you interacted with our Websites or other websites. We may collect this information as a part of log files as well as through the use of cookies or other tracking technologies. Our use of cookies and other tracking technologies is discussed more below, and in more detail in our Cookie Statement here.

(c) List and email information: When you add a Distribution List or create an email with the Services, we have and may access the data on your list and the information in your email. If a Subscriber chooses to use the ‘forward to a friend’ (FTF) link in an email campaign you send, it will allow the Subscriber to share your email content with individuals not on your Distribution List. When a Subscriber forwards an email to a friend, we do not store your Subscriber’s email address or their friend’s email address, and no one is added to any Distribution List as a result of the FTF. The Member who created the email campaign only sees an aggregate number of times their email campaign was forwarded by a Subscriber and does not have access to the email addresses used to share or receive that forwarded content.

(d) Information from your use of the Service: We may receive information about how and when you use the Services, store it in log files or other types of files associated with your account, and link it to other information we collect about you. This information may include, for example, your IP address, time, date, browser used, and actions you have taken within the application. This type of information helps us to improve our Services for both you and for all of our users.

(e) Cookies and tracking: We and our partners may use various technologies to collect and store information when you use our Services, and this may include using cookies and similar tracking technologies on our Website, such as pixels and web beacons, to analyze trends, administer the website, track users’ movements around the website, serve targeted advertisements, and gather demographic information about our user base as a whole. Users can control the use of cookies at the individual browser level. We partner with third parties to display advertising on our website or to manage and serve our advertising on other sites. Our third party partners may use cookies or similar tracking technologies in order to provide you advertising or other content based upon your browsing activities and interests. If you wish to opt out of interest-based advertising click http://preferences-mgr.truste.com/ (or if located in the European Union click http://www.youronlinechoices.eu/). Please note you might continue to receive generic ads. For more information about our use of cookies and other tracking technologies, as well as how to opt out of the use of cookies, please refer to our Cookie Statement here.

(f) Web beacons: We use web beacons on our Websites and in our emails. When we send emails to Members, we may track behavior such as who opened the emails and who clicked the links. This allows us to measure the performance of our email campaigns and to improve our features for specific segments of Members. To do this, we include single pixel gifs, also called web beacons, in emails we send. Web beacons allow us to collect information about when you open the email, your IP address, your browser or email client type, and other similar details. We also include Web Beacons in the emails we deliver for you. We use the data from those Web Beacons to create reports about how your email campaign performed and what actions your Subscribers took. Reports are also available to us when we send email to you, so we may collect and review that information.

(g) Information from other sources: From time to time we may obtain information about you or your Subscribers from third party sources, such as public databases, social media platforms, third party data providers and our joint marketing partners. We take steps to ensure that such third parties are legally permitted or required to disclose such information to us. Examples of the information we may receive from other sources include: demographic information, device information (such as IP addresses), location, and online behavioral data (such as information about your use of social media websites, page view information and search results and links). We use this information, alone or in combination with other information (including Personal Information) we collect, to enhance our ability to provide relevant marketing and content to you and to develop and provide you with more relevant products features, and services. For example, we use this information to develop Social Profiles, a tool that helps you learn about your Subscribers and allows you to send them more relevant content.

(h) Information from the use of our Mobile Apps: When you use our mobile apps, we may collect certain information in addition to information described elsewhere in this Policy. For example, we may collect information about the type of device and operating system you use. We may ask you if you want to receive push notifications about activity in your account. If you have opted in to these notifications and no longer want to receive them, you may turn them off through your operating system. We do not ask for, access or track any location-based information from your mobile device at any time while downloading or using our Mobile Apps or Services. We may use mobile analytics software (such as Fabric.io) to better understand how people use our application. We may collect information about how often you use the application and other performance data.

Questions & Concerns

If you have any questions or comments, or if you want to update, delete, or change any Personal Information we hold, or you have a concern about the way in which we have handled any privacy matter, please use our contact form to send us a message. You may also contact us by postal mail or email at:

MailChimp
Attn. Privacy Officer
privacy@mailchimp.com
675 Ponce de Leon Ave NE, Suite 5000
Atlanta, GA 30308 USA

Moodle (Online Learning website)

The Online Learning Center has a separate privacy policy. Further information about handling user data in our Online learning Center can be found under https://fpmt.org/moodle-privacy/

Vimeo (FPMT website)

Our website uses features provided by the Vimeo video portal. This service is provided by Vimeo Inc., 555 West 18th Street, New York, New York 10011, USA.

If you visit one of our pages featuring a Vimeo plugin, a connection to the Vimeo servers is established. Here the Vimeo server is informed about which of our pages you have visited. In addition, Vimeo will receive your IP address. This also applies if you are not logged in to Vimeo when you visit our plugin or do not have a Vimeo account. The information is transmitted to a Vimeo server in the US, where it is stored.

If you are logged in to your Vimeo account, Vimeo allows you to associate your browsing behavior directly with your personal profile. You can prevent this by logging out of your Vimeo account.

For more information on how to handle user data, please refer to the Vimeo Privacy Policy at https://vimeo.com/privacy.

Your consent

By using our Web site, you consent to our use of customer information as described in this online privacy policy. We may change or add to this privacy policy so we encourage you to review it periodically.

Security

Our commitment to Data Security

We have appropriate physical, electronic and procedural security safeguards to protect and secure the information we collect.

Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)

Our Web site uses 256-bit Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption to protect your personal credit information, including your credit card number, before it travels over the Internet. SSL technology is the industry standard for secure online transactions.

 

Last updated December 8, 2020.