Last updated: May 25, 2018
This is a Privacy Policy for the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America (“OU,” “we,” “us,” “our”). The Privacy Policy applies to the personal data we collect through:
- Official OU websites and apps that link to this Privacy Policy (collectively, the “Sites”) www.ou.org, www.oukosher.org, www.jewishaction.com, www.israelfreespirit.com, www.teachadvocacy.org, www.yachad.org, www.ncsy.org, www.jufny.org, www.resurf.com, www.nextstepisrael.com, www.teamyachad.com, www.oujlic.org, www.ouisrael.org, www.advocacy.ou.org, www.bringbackshabbat.org, www.jsusummer.com, www.ouservices.org, www.ajop.com, www.torahhigh.org, www.teamsoflncsy.com, www.jsu.org and www.upreaching.com.
- OU’s handling of personal data of individuals located outside the United States for
- our kosher certification business and
- marketing and fundraising
We may provide you with additional information relating to our privacy practices in the context of particular services (such as on a form or invitation that requests personal data).
Under applicable law, OU is considered the “data controller” of the personal data we handle under this Privacy Policy. OU’s contact information appears at the end of this Privacy Policy.
“Personal data” means information about a person that can be linked to that person. For example, an identifiable individual’s email address and credit card number are personal data.
CATEGORIES OF PERSONAL DATA WE HANDLE
We handle the following types of personal data:
- Contact information, such as name, postal address, telephone number, and email address
- Registration information
- Payment information, such as credit card number and expiration date
- User content posted on our blogs and or other online locations
- Records of your communications and transactions with us
- Information about religious practice and community participation
- Job application data
- Data collected through cookies and similar technology: We and third parties use cookies (technology that reads and writes data on your browser) and other technology to collect data through automated means when you visit our websites or use our apps. This data is used for marketing, analytics and other purposes described in this Privacy Policy. For more details, including certain opt-out options, please see our Cookies Policy below.
We may collect personal data from you or from other sources. Depending on the nature of our relationship with you, those other sources may include business partners, community members, personal referrals, and publicly available sources such as LinkedIn or company websites.
The specific uses of information we collect will depend on factors including the nature of the information, the purpose and context of the collection, and applicable law. Uses include:
- Providing our services and programs
- Processing, evaluating, and responding to your requests, inquiries, and applications
- Contacting you (such as by text message, email, phone calls, mail, push or messages on third-party platforms) about programs, products, services, companies and events, sponsored by us and others, that you have registered for or that we think might interest you.
- Administering contests, sweepstakes and events
- Determining appropriate advertising channels and venues and to place ads on such channels and venues, including placing advertising on social networking sites
- Measuring and managing the effectiveness of our advertising and marketing
- Conducting surveys, and performing market research and data analytics
- Creating aggregated or otherwise anonymized data, which we may use and disclose without restriction
- Evaluating your job application and contacting you regarding possible employment
- Verifying your identity, protecting against and preventing fraud, unauthorized activity, claims and other liabilities, and managing risk exposure
- Complying with and enforcing applicable legal requirements, industry standards and our policies and terms, such as our terms of use and contract of carriage
- Operating, evaluating, and improving our business in other ways
HOW WE SHARE YOUR PERSONAL DATA
How we share information collected in a particular situation will depend on factors including the nature of the information, the purpose and context of the collection, and applicable law. Subject to such factors, we may share information for the purposes described above in the “How we use your personal data” section and as described below.
- When you contribute to a public area or feature of our Sites, the information that you submit or post will be made available to the general public.
- We may disclose personal data about you (i) if we are legally required to do so, (ii) to law enforcement authorities under appropriate circumstances, or (iii) when we believe disclosure is necessary or appropriate to prevent harm or loss or in connection with an investigation of suspected or actual illegal activity.
- We share personal data with related organizations or companies that assist us with the uses and disclosures of personal data described in this policy. Examples include data backup companies, email service providers, and companies that target advertisements.
- We share personal data with joint marketing partners.
- We share personal data with event, contest, or sweepstakes co-sponsors, unless you opt out of such sharing in accordance with the instructions in “Your Rights and Choices” below.
- We may transfer personal data in connection with a business sale, merger, consolidation, change in control, transfer of substantial assets, bankruptcy, liquidation or reorganization, or as part of pre-transaction review in relation to these transactions. Whether the recipient of data in these cases will handle the data pursuant to this Privacy Policy depends on applicable law and other factors.
- Some third parties’ embedded content or plugins on Sites may allow their operators to learn that you have visited or interacted with us, and they may combine this information with other, identifiable information they have collected about your visits to other websites or online services. These third parties may handle this information, and other information they directly collect through their content and plugins, pursuant to their own privacy policies.
INTERNATIONAL TRANSFERS OF PERSONAL DATA
OU is based in the United States. The recipients of the personal data disclosures described in the “How we share your personal data” section above may be located in the United States or elsewhere in the world. Privacy laws in these countries may not provide protections equivalent to those of your country of residence, and your government may or may not deem such protections adequate.
OUR LEGAL BASES FOR HANDLING YOUR PERSONAL DATA
The laws in some jurisdictions (such as in the European Union) require companies to tell you about the legal ground they rely on to use or disclose your personal data. To the extent those laws apply, our legal grounds are as follows:
- To honor our contractual commitments to you: In some cases, we process personal data to meet our obligation obligations to you, or to take steps at your request in anticipation of entering into such a contract with them.
- Consent: Where required by law, and in some other cases, we handle personal data on the basis of your consent. This may be implied consent where permitted by law, and it will be explicit consent where required by law.
- Legitimate interests: In many cases, we handle personal data on the ground that it furthers our legitimate interests in commercial activities such as the following in ways that are not overridden by the interests or fundamental rights and freedoms of the affected individuals:
- Customer service
- Marketing
- Protecting our customers, community, users, personnel and property
- Analyzing and improving our business
- Processing job applications
- Managing legal issues
- We may also process personal data for the same legitimate interests of our customers, business partners and related organizations.
- Legal compliance: We need to use and disclose personal data in certain ways to comply with our legal obligations.
- To protect the vital interests of the individual or others: For example, we may collect or share personal data to help resolve an urgent medical situation.
HOW LONG WE KEEP PERSONAL DATA
We generally retain personal data for so long as it may be relevant to the purposes above, or for longer when required by law. To dispose of personal data, we may anonymize it, delete it or take other appropriate steps. Data may persist in copies made for backup and business continuity purposes for additional time.
You may opt out of receiving promotional e-mails by clicking on an opt out link within the promotional e-mail you receive or by sending an e-mail to ouinternet@ou.org indicating which promotional e-mails you no longer wish to receive. Certain other correspondence may contains similar opt-out functionality. Please understand that if you opt out of receiving promotional correspondence from us, we may still contact you in connection with your relationship, activities, transactions and communications with us.
Additional options are available:
- You can opt out from certain cookie-related processing by following the instructions in our Cookie Policy below.
- Under the laws of the European Economic Area (and in some cases in Israel and other countries outside the United States), individuals have certain legal rights to obtain confirmation of whether we hold personal data about them, to access personal data we hold about them (including, in some cases, in portable form), and to obtain its correction, update, amendment or deletion in appropriate circumstances. They may also object to our uses or disclosures of personal data, request a restriction on its processing, or withdraw any consent, though such actions typically will not have retroactive effect. This also will not affect our ability to continue processing data in lawful ways (for example, if you opt out of the use of your telephone number for direct marketing, we might still decide to contact you by phone in an emergency).
- For example, individuals in the European Economic Area have the right to opt out of all of our processing of their personal data for direct marketing purposes. To exercise this right, they may contact us as described at the end of this Privacy Policy.
- Notice to California Residents: Subject to certain limits under California Civil Code § 1798.83, if you are a California resident, you may ask us to provide you with (i) a list of certain categories of personal data that we have disclosed to certain types of third parties for their direct marketing purposes during the immediately preceding calendar year and (ii) the identity of the third parties that received certain personal data from us for their direct marketing purposes during that calendar year.
To exercise any of the above rights or choices (or any other rights under applicable law), please contact us as described at the end of this Privacy Policy.
The rights and options described above are subject to limitations and exceptions under applicable law. In addition to those rights, you have the right to lodge a complaint with the relevant supervisory authority. However, we encourage you to contact us first, and we will do our very best to resolve your concern.
In the event that we believe the security of your personal data in our possession or control may have been compromised, we may seek to notify you of that development. If we believe a notification is appropriate and we have your e-mail address, we may notify you by e-mail. You consent to our use of e-mail as a means of such notification. If you prefer for us to use the United States postal service to notify you in this situation, please contact us as described below.
We may change this Privacy Policy to reflect changes in the law, our data handling practices or the features of our services, websites and apps. The new version will be posted at OU.org. We will indicate in the Privacy Policy when it was updated. Where required by applicable law, we will apply changes only with your consent.
On our websites, we and third parties may collect certain information by automated means such as cookies, Web beacons, JavaScript and mobile device functionality. This information may include unique browser identifiers, IP address, browser and operating system information, device identifiers (such as the Apple IDFA or Android Advertising ID), geolocation, other device information, Internet connection information, as well as details about individuals’ interactions with the websites.
We and third parties may use automated means to read or write information on users’ devices, such as in various types of cookies and other browser-based or plugin-based local storage (such as HTML5 storage or Flash-based storage).
Cookies and local storage are files that contain data, such as unique identifiers, that we or a third party may transfer to or read from a user’s device for the purposes described in this Privacy Policy, such as recognizing the device, service provision, record-keeping, analytics and marketing.
You may be able to set your web browser to refuse certain types of cookies, or to alert you when certain types of cookies are being sent. Some browsers offer similar settings for HTML5 local storage, and Flash storage can be managed here. However, if you block or otherwise reject our cookies, local storage, JavaScript or other technologies, certain websites (including our own websites) may not function properly.
In some cases, we facilitate the collection of information by advertising services administered by third parties. The ad services may track users’ online activities over time by collecting information through automated means such as cookies, and they may use this information to show users ads that are tailored to their individual interests or characteristics and/or based on prior visits to certain sites or apps, or other information we or they know, infer or have collected from the users. For example, we and these providers may use different types of cookies, other automated technology, and data (i) to recognize users and their devices, (ii) to inform, optimize, and serve ads and (iii) to report on our ad impressions, other uses of ad services, and interactions with these ad impressions and ad services (including how they are related to visits to specific sites or apps).
To learn more about interest-based advertising generally, including how to opt out from the targeting of interest-based ads by some of our current ad service partners, visit aboutads.info/choices from each of your browsers. For controls specific to advertising and analytics services offered by Google, click here and here from each of your browsers. If you replace, change or upgrade your browser, or delete your cookies, you may need to use these opt-out tools again. We do not respond to browser-based do-not-track signals.
Please visit your mobile device manufacturer’s website (or the website for its operating system) for instructions on any additional privacy controls in your mobile operating system, such as privacy settings for device identifiers and geolocation.
To update your personal data or your preferences, to exercise your rights under privacy law, or to raise a privacy concern, or do make a data-related request, please contact us:
Orthodox Union
11 Broadway
New York, NY 10004
ouinternet@ou.org.