Our Commitment: Respecting and Protecting Our Customers' Privacy
Your privacy is important to us. Verendrye Electric Cooperative, Inc. (VEC) respects and protects the privacy of our customers. VEC strives to maintain high standards for the protection of privacy over the internet. We carefully ensure the confidentiality of each customer's account information. We recognize that, as the provider of electrical utility services, we must also ensure the privacy of each customer's electrical usage information.
VEC recognizes that the growth of online services, including Internet services, has created additional privacy concerns, particularly for consumers.
Online privacy concerns focus primarily on the protection of "customer identifiable" information which an individual or other customer reasonably expects to be kept private. As the term suggests, "customer identifiable" information is information that when associated with an individual identifies that individual. For example, a customer's name, address, telephone number, and e-mail address.
The purpose of this statement is to explain to our visitors the type of information VEC obtains about visitors to our website, how we gather it, how we use it, how long we retain it, and how visitors can restrict the use or disclosure of personally identifiable information.
Information We Collect
The personal information VEC obtains about individual visitors to our website is information the visitor supplies voluntarily. This means that you can visit our website without telling us who you are or revealing any information about yourself. To gauge the effectiveness of our website, we do collect some generic information about our visitors. Our web servers automatically recognize a visitor's domain name (such as .com, .edu, etc.), the point of entry from which a visitor enters our site including web pages, news letters, forms, which pages a visitor visits on our site, and how much time a visitor spends on each page. This information is not linked to any personally identifiable information about the visitor.
VEC may collect personally identifiable information (such as name, email address, postal address) and/or personally identifiable information through this website. In certain situations, such as when you register for online billing, VEC will collect billing information, such as your credit card number and billing address, and we may share this information with our third parties contractors (such as your credit card company solely for the purpose of processing the transaction you have requested). You may choose to provide individual information to VEC in a number of ways through our website such as by:
• Requesting a product or service from us;
• Sending us email;
• Applying for a job; or
• Entering a contest.
How Your Information is Used
When visitors supply information about themselves for a specific purpose, VEC uses the information for that purpose (such as to provide the information the visitor has requested or to consider a visitor for a particular job). When visitors use our website to request information about products and services or about them, we may use the individual information as we would use the same information obtained offline - for example, to evaluate your service needs and contact you regarding additional services you may find useful. You have the right to choose not to receive this information by notifying us of your preference.
Confidentiality of Your Information
We do not sell individual information obtained online about our visitors. We will not disclose the individual information provided to us online to anyone outside of VEC unless you specifically authorize it (by using online bill payment, for example, you authorize us to provide information regarding the payment to your credit card company), it is required by law, or disclosure is necessary to protect the safety of customers, employees or property. Examples of disclosures permitted by law include the following:
• To government, regulatory and legal authorities in response to a subpoena, to prevent fraud and to comply with an inquiry by a government agency.
• To credit reporting and/or collection agencies when necessary.
VEC does not send unsolicited "junk" email (spam). We may use email to communicate with our customers, to respond to visitors' emails, to confirm service requests, and to send information that a visitor has requested. If you receive an unwanted email from us, you can simply reply to ask not to receive future emails.
Security
VEC uses Secure Socket Layer technology with encryption for the transmission of sensitive data such as credit card information and Social Security Number.
VEC is committed to safeguarding customer privacy on our website. We employ the following security measures to safeguard your transactions with us:
• We maintain and protect the security of our servers and your personal information.
• To secure the information collected online, prevent unauthorized access, maintain data accuracy and ensure only appropriate use of information, VEC has established appropriate physical, electronic and management safeguards.
• We require user names and passwords to access sensitive data.
• Unless you authorize unencrypted transmission, we will use industry standard encryption methods to protect your data transmission.
Links to Other Sites
The VEC website may contain links to other sites. We are not responsible for the content or the privacy practices employed by other sites.
Our Policy on Online Access by Children
• Protecting the privacy of the very young is especially important.
• The VEC corporate web site is not designed to attract children under the age of 13 and VEC does not knowingly collect personal information from children on our web site.
Privacy Policy Updates
• This Privacy Policy supersedes and replaces all previously posted Privacy Policies.
• Our Privacy Policy is regularly reviewed and revised to make sure we continue to serve the best interests of our customers.
• We reserve the right to update this Privacy Policy to reflect any changes.
• If we decide to change our Privacy Policy, we will post those changes to this Policy, and other places we deem appropriate so our users are always aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances, if any, we disclose it. If, however we are going to use personal information in a manner different from that stated at the time of collection we will notify web visitors by posting a notice on our web site for 30 days.
Contacting Us
For inquiries regarding our privacy statement, contact us. You may send your comments to:
Brad Doll
Verendrye Electric Cooperative, Inc.
615 Highway 52 West
Velva, ND 58790