Earth Advantage, Inc.
Privacy Notice
Last updated: August 28, 2024Please read this Privacy Notice (this “Notice”) carefully as it describes our collection, use, disclosure, retention, and protection of your information. You are acknowledging and agree with our data privacy practices in accordance with this Notice when you register with, access, visit, or otherwise use (collectively, “interact”):
• www.earthadvantage.org (our “Website”);
• NW Rater Portal hosted at https://nwraterportal.com/login;
• Green Building Registry® hosted at https://us.greenbuildingregistry.com/; or
• Home Energy Fit™ hosted at https://homeenergyfit.com/login.
This Notice also applies when you email, text, call, or otherwise communicate with us, including through social media (your “Communications”). This Notice may also apply to your information if it was provided to us by a third party, such as another user of our Website or web applications.
Our Website, our proprietary web applications (including the websites on which they are hosted) and the content, features and functionality therein, together with any products or services Earth Advantage provides are collectively referred to as our “Services”.
Please read this Notice carefully before you start interacting with our Services. If you do not agree with this Notice, your choice is not to interact with us. By interacting with our Services or otherwise contacting us, you agree to our data privacy policies and practices.
Changes to this Notice
From time to time, we may change this Policy to accommodate new technologies, industry practices, regulatory requirements, or for other purposes. We will provide notice to you by posting notice of such changes on our Services or by emailing you at the last email address you provided us. Where required by applicable law, we will obtain your consent to such changes.Children’s Privacy
Our Services are not for children, and we do not knowingly collect information from children. No one under 18 is permitted to provide any information to us. If you are under 18, do not use our Services or provide us with any of your information, such as your name, address, phone number, or email address. If we find out we have collected information from a child under 18, we will delete it. If you think we might have information from or about a child under 18, please email us at info@earthadvantage.org.Who We Are
Earth Advantage, Inc., a 501(c)(3) nonprofit in the United States whose registered office address is 151 SW 1st AVE., STE 300, Portland, OR 97204.Information We Collect & Why We Collect It
We collect two basic types of information:• Information that identifies (whether directly or indirectly) a particular individual, such as your name, postal address, email address, and telephone number (“Personal Information”); and
• Information that does not directly or indirectly identify, and cannot reasonably be used to identify, an individual (“Anonymous Information”). When Anonymous Information is directly or indirectly associated with Personal Information, the resulting information is also treated as Personal Information.
We may use Personal Information and Anonymous Information to create a third type of information: information about groups or categories of individuals, which does not identify and cannot reasonably be used to identify an individual (“Aggregate Information”).
We may collect information from you in the following ways:
• Directly From You. We collect information you provide to us when you request information, register an account, upload information on or through our Services, respond to surveys, call us, or otherwise interact with us using one or more devices.
• Through Automatic Technologies. We collect information through a variety of technologies, such as cookies, pixels, tags, software development kits, application program interfaces, and Web beacons, including when you interact with our Services, whether or not you are logged in or registered. Please see Automatic Technologies We Use for further information and Your Controls and Choices for information about how we respond to Do Not Track signals and how to disable cookies or otherwise make choices with respect to such data collection.
In particular we collect the following types of Personal Information:
• Contact information you provide to us when you request information, create an account, complete surveys, fill out online forms, register with our web applications, or otherwise contact us, such as your name, address, email address, telephone number, social media account handles, and, if applicable, information related to your business or employer, such as your business name, business address, and business contact details.
• Information you voluntarily provide to us when you request information, contact us, or post, submit, publish, display, or transmit (hereinafter, “upload”) on or through our Services (“User Uploads”).
• Location information including your address of residency and Internet Protocol (“IP”) address(es) or other geolocation information provided by a mobile or other device accessing our Website or web applications or associated with your IP address or other online or device identifiers. We may use your location information to map addresses on our map application(s) and to track assessments and rebates that may be available to you.
• Activity, usage, viewing, technical, and device data when you interact with our Services online (including when you open our emails), such as the content you view, how often you use our website and web applications, browser or device type, unique device identifier, IP address, device identification number and type, device location information, connection information such as statistics on your page views, traffic to and from the sites, referral URL, ad data, and web log information. We may collect this information using cookies or similar technologies (as described below in Automatic Technologies We Use).
• Copies of your Communications with us, including telephone calls (which may be recorded) and your other offline interactions with us.
Automatic Technologies We Use
The technologies we use to automatically collect your information when you interact with our Services include:• Cookies (or browser cookies). Cookies are small text or number files that a website sends to your browser, which stores them for a set period. They help make your experience more personalized and easier by remembering your preferences, login information, and other details like items in your shopping cart or your zip code. Cookies may be temporary (session cookies) or persistent, staying on your device after you close your browser to remember you on future visits. We use cookies to make our Services more user-friendly and personalized, but they do not store Personal Information. You can refuse cookies through your browser settings; however, doing so may limit your access to our Services. We use some cookies that are strictly necessary for the operation of our Services, and these cannot be deactivated.
• Click Tracking. Click tracking is an analytical feature that measures and reports where users click or tap on our Services. When you interact with our Services, we record the event and log your user session for future analysis. We use this information only to improve our Services. Click tracking only collects the IP address assigned to you on the date when you visit our Services, which we may combine and store with other Personal Information we have about you.
• Analytics. We collect analytics information from third-party service providers, such as Google Analytics. This includes information about your interaction(s) with our Services, such as what pages you visit and when, what websites you visited prior interacting with our Services, and your IP address. We use the customer engagement information we get from analytics tools only to improve our Services and may combine the information collected this way with other Personal Information we may have about you.
These technologies enable us to:
• Compare specific information from your device or systems directly relevant to your use of our Services with our records to ensure our Services are being used in accordance with our Terms of Use and to troubleshoot any problems.
• Obtain information relating to any technical errors or other issues with our Services.
• Comply with our legal or regulatory obligations.
• Collect information about how you interact with the Services.
• Gather statistical information about the operating system and environment from which you access our Services.
How We Use Your Information
When you provide us with your Personal Information or when we collect it in any of the ways described in Information We Collect & Why We Collect It, we collect, store and use it: (a) in order to perform our contractual obligations to you; (b) based on the legitimate business interests described in this Notice; or (c) based on your consent.
Consistent with applicable law and choices and controls that may be available to you (including consent when required), we may use information collected from you, or from devices associated with you, to:
• Present our Services and their contents to you.
• Provide, manage, and administer the Services you request or interact with.
• Communicate with you about your account or experiences with our Services and send you information or request feedback about our Services and/or changes to our practices and policies.
• For training purposes, quality assurance, to record details about our Services you interact with or ask us about, and in order to meet our general legal and regulatory obligations.
• Operate, understand, optimize, develop, maintain, protect, and improve our Services. This includes researching and developing new functionality and services (including statistical analysis, benchmarking, and insight tactics).
• Provide you with customer service and support.
• Personalize your user experience with our Services, including by recognizing you when you return to our Services and storing information about your preferences.
• Conduct profiling activities to evaluate customer segmentation areas/products/services of interest, adapt our Services, support you, and personalize the communications we send to you in relation to our Services, where permitted by law. To do this, we use data generated by your use of our Services.
• Deliver advertising, marketing (including in-product messaging), or information to you which may be useful to you based on your use of our Services.
• Undertake internal testing of our Services and to test and improve their security, provision, and performance, in which case, we would pseudonymize any Personal Information used for such purposes, as well as ensure is it only displayed at aggregated levels which will not be linked back to you or any other living individual.
• Comply with any other of our regulatory or legal obligations, including to provide you with any information required by such.
• Detect, prevent, investigate, or remediate, crime, illegal, or prohibited activities or to otherwise protect our legal rights, including cooperation with regulators and law enforcement agencies for these purposes.
• To monitor and/or carry out statistical analysis and benchmarking as permitted by law. Because we are committed to innovation, this use of information might involve the use of statistical analysis, benchmarking and forecasting services, predictive analysis, and artificial intelligence/machine learning.
How We Share Your Information
We will not share your Personal Information with a third party except in limited circumstances, including:• When we work with service providers performing services on our behalf; however, these companies are prohibited from using your Personal Information for purposes other than those requested by us or required by law.
• When we share your Personal Information with third parties in connection with the sale of a business, to enforce our Terms of Use, to ensure the safety and security of our users, customers, employees, and/or other third parties, to protect our rights and property and the rights and property of our users, customers, employees, and/or other third parties, to comply with legal process, or in other cases if we believe in good faith that disclosure is required by law.
• When we work with academic or research organizations to perform public interest research or as necessary to, for example, deliver valuable insights to our customers or to enable us to improve our Services. In such a case, we will take additional steps to protect the privacy and confidentiality of your Personal Information, including by pseudonymization, anonymization, or aggregation, before sharing such data. We do this in order to protect the privacy and confidentiality of your Personal Information.
• With any client or partner specifically related to the program or project you are working with, with your consent.
We may publicly share Anonymous Information or anonymized Aggregate Information about your use of our Services with third parties.
Your Controls and Choices
In accordance with applicable law, your controls and choices may include:• Correcting, updating, and deleting your account.
• Choosing or changing your choices for subscriptions, newsletters, alerts, or other notifications.
• Setting your browser to transmit “Do Not Track” signals. However, since uniform standards for “Do Not Track” signals have not been adopted, our Services do not process or respond to such signals.
• Choosing whether to receive from us offers and promotions for our products and services we think may be of interest to you.
• Requesting access to the Personal Information we hold about you and that we amend or delete it.
• Opting out of Google Analytics by following Google’s instructions at https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.
• Controlling targeted advertising from many ad networks and partners, data exchanges, and marketing analytics and digital advertising and marketing service providers (by visiting the Digital Advertising Alliance or the Network Advertising Initiative).
You may exercise these controls and choices in various ways, including as outlined above or by emailing us at info@earthadvantage.org.
Please be aware that if you do not allow us to collect Personal Information from you, we may not be able to deliver our Services to you. If you have questions about the specific Personal Information about you that we process or retain, and your rights regarding that Personal Information, please email us at info@earthadvantage.org.
Your State Privacy Rights
If applicable, state consumer privacy laws may provide their residents with additional rights regarding our use of their Personal Information. Please know that we do not currently trigger the applicability thresholds of current state-specific consumer privacy laws. We do not sell your Personal Information, nor do we process it for targeted advertising or profiling. If you think a state-specific right applies, please send your rights request to info@earthadvantage.org.
Data Security, Integrity, and Retention
We keep your information secure by taking appropriate technical and organizational measures against its unauthorized or unlawful processing and against its accidental loss, destruction, disclosure, or damage. Please be aware that, despite our best efforts, no security measures are perfect or impenetrable. If we have given you (or you have chosen) a password to access certain areas of our Services, please keep this password safe; we will not share this password with anyone. If you believe your account has been compromised, please contact us immediately at info@earthadvantage.org.
To the extent permitted by applicable law, we retain information about you after the closure of your Earth Advantage related account(s). This information will be retained and used for as long as permitted to fulfill the legitimate business purposes outlines in this Notice.