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privacy policy

This privacy statement discloses the privacy practices for the Financial Communications Society. The Financial Communications Society (FCS) is an independent, not-for-profit organization whose mission is improving professional standards in all facets of the financial communications arena. To demonstrate our commitment to your privacy, we disclose our information practices in this document. The FCS agrees to notify you of:

  1. • What personally identifiable information of yours is collected from you through the web site
  2. • The organization collecting the information
  3. • How the information is used
  4. • With whom the information may be shared
  5. • What choices are available to you regarding collection, use and distribution of the information
  6. • The kind of security procedures that are in place to protect the loss, misuse or alteration of information under the Financial Communication Society's control
  7. • How you can correct any inaccuracies in the information.

Information Collection and Use

The FCS is the sole owner of the information collected on this site. We will not sell, share, or rent this information to others in ways different from what is disclosed in this statement. The FCS collects information from our users at several different points on our website.

Registration

In order to book a reservation, purchase a membership, or receive updates from the FCS, a user must first complete the registration form. During registration a user is required to give his/her contact information (such as name and email address). This information is used to contact the user about updates on our site for which he/she have expressed interest.

Order

We request information from the user on our order form. Here a user must provide contact information (like name and billing address) and financial information (like credit card number and expiration date). This information is used for billing purposes and to fill customer's reservation and membership orders. If we have trouble processing an order, this contact information is used to get in touch with the user.

Event Reservations

No tickets will be issued for FCS event reservations. The names of you and your guest(s) will be added to the event reservation list, which will be available at the event Welcome Desk.

Refunds

All FCS event reservations are final. No refunds will be provided, with exception given to any potential booking errors that may occur during the online reservation process.

Membership Canellations

All FCS memberships are non-refundabl after either 1) 30 days or 2) after the 1st event attended, which ever occurs first.

Cookies

A cookie is a piece of data stored on the user's hard drive containing information about the user. Usage of a cookie is in no way linked to any personally identifiable information while on our site. Once the user closes his/her browser, the cookie simply terminates. For instance, by setting a cookie on our site, the user would not have to log in a password more than once, thereby saving time while on our site. If a user rejects the cookie, he/she may still use our site. The only drawback to this is that the user will be limited in some areas of our site. Cookies can also enable us to track and target the interests of our users to enhance the experience on our site.

Some of our business partners may use cookies on our site (for example, our sponsors). However, we have no access to or control over these cookies.

Log Files

We use IP addresses to analyze trends, administer the site, track user's movement, and gather broad demographic information for aggregate use. IP addresses are not linked to personally identifiable information.

Sharing

We will share aggregated information (like membership by job title or professional responsibility) with our partners and sponsors. This is not linked to any personal information that can identify any individual person.

We use an outside credit card processing company to bill users for reservations and membership dues. These companies do not retain, share, store or use personally identifiable information for any secondary purposes.

We may partner with other organizations to provide additional benefits to our users. When the user signs up for these services, we will share names, or other contact information that is necessary for the third party to provide these benefits or services.

These parties are not allowed to use personally identifiable information except for the purpose of providing these services.

Links

This web site contains links to other sites. Please be aware that the FCS is not responsible for the privacy practices of such other sites. We encourage our users to be aware when they leave our site and to read the privacy statements of each and every web site that collects personally identifiable information. This privacy statement applies solely to information collected by this Web site.

Security

This website takes every precaution to protect our users' information. When users submit sensitive information via the website, that information is protected both online and off-line.

When our order form asks users to enter sensitive information (such as credit card number and expiration date), 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 you are just 'surfing'.

While we use SSL encryption to protect sensitive information online, we also do everything in our power to protect user information off-line. All of our users' information, not just the sensitive information mentioned above, is restricted to key individuals. Only FCS administrators who need the information to perform a specific job (for example, a Membership Chair or event administrator) are granted access to personally identifiable information. Finally, the servers that we store personally identifiable information on are kept in a highly secure environment.

If you have any questions about the security at our website, you can send an email to .

Site and Service Updates

We also send the user site and service announcement updates. Members are not able to un-subscribe from service announcements, which contain important information about the service. We communicate with the user to provide requested services and in regards to issues relating to their account via email or phone.

Correction/Updating Personal Information:

If a user's personally identifiable information changes (such as your zip code), or if a user no longer desires our service, we will endeavor to provide a way to correct, update or remove that user's personal data provided to us. This can usually be done from the MY FCS page or by emailing the Membership Committee.

Notification of Changes

If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post those changes on our Homepage so our users are always aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under which circumstances, if any, we disclose it. If at any point we decide to use personally identifiable information in a manner different from that stated at the time it was collected, we will notify users by way of an email. Users will have a choice as to whether or not we use their information in this different manner. We will use information in accordance with the privacy policy under which the information was collected.