Customer Privacy Policy

Ricon Consulting Inc., ("Ricon Consulting" and "We"), does not collect personal information about individual users or businesses ("You") except when such personal information is provided to us on a voluntary basis. Your privacy is important to Ricon Consulting and we are committed to protecting and safeguarding your personal information. Personal information may be gathered from the registration process for subscription or products and services and in connection with content submissions, postings in discussion areas or other public areas, suggestions, voting/polling activities and transactional areas. We may request personal information from time to time in order to enable you to participate in and enjoy various Ricon Consulting product and service offerings.

This statement and the Privacy Code disclose Ricon Consulting's privacy practices and policies. By using Ricon Consulting's products and services, you agree to be bound by this Privacy Policy.

Personal Information

Personal Information is defined as "information about an identifiable individual" and includes information concerning matters such as race, ethnic origin, colour, age, marital status, religion, education, medical, criminal, employment or financial history, address and telephone number, numerical identifiers such as Social Insurance Number, fingerprints, blood type, tissue or biological sample, and views or personal opinions. It also includes information about your product and service subscriptions and usage. Publicly available information, such as public directory listings of your name, address, telephone number, is not considered personal information.

What Information do we collect and what do we use the Information for?

We collect and use personal information about you and your use of our products and services and our web sites (the "Information"):

to consider initiating and to initiate, maintain and develop our relationship with you in connection with our offering and servicing of products and services;
to administer billing and accounting services and security measures in relation to your business with us;
to monitor your customer history, evaluate your credit standing, to share or exchange credit reports and information with credit reporting agencies and credit bureaus and to collect any unpaid amounts owing to us;
to promote and to market additional products, goods and services offered by us, including by means of direct marketing;
to provide you with newsletters via email;
to customize content on your web pages;
to customize software on your computer systems;
to provide personalized features and services;
to analyze traffic and use of the Ricon Consulting web sites in order to determine which features and services people like and don't like so that we can improve what we do;
to prepare aggregated user statistics or information summaries in order to describe our services to third parties such as prospective business partners and advertisers and for other lawful purposes;
to present web page advertisements that we hope will be of particular interest to you; and
to comply with any legal and regulatory requirements, including requirements or requests of government agencies or pursuant to a subpoena or other legal proceeding.

If you choose not to provide the requested information, Ricon Consulting may not be able to offer you some of the personalized products and services that depend on this type of information to function.

We may request you to provide additional personal information such as your date of birth, SIN number, health card number or drivers license number. This information is obtained solely for security purposes such as identifying you when you call us with respect to your account and services. You do not have to provide it to us, but if you do, it will help us to ensure that we take instructions with respect to your account only from you.

You consent to our collection from, verification with and communication to, any third party and our use of, the Information for the above purposes. You also authorize these parties to give us the Information. In addition, you agree that we may disclose Information to:

any person who, in our reasonable judgment, is seeking the Information as your agent or
a person involved directly or indirectly in supplying the product or service to you, including, without limitation, our sales and marketing agents, to the extent the Information is required and used only for such purposes, including the efficient supply of products and services to you, and provided that such person is required to keep the Information confidential; or
a person retained by us to collect amounts which you owe us or to enforce our rights under our terms of service, if the Information is required for, and is to be used only for that purpose and that person is required to keep such Information confidential.

We may also use Information in our records for as long as it is needed for the purposes described above and your consent remains valid after the termination of our relationship with you.

We reserve the right to conduct statistical analyses of your behavior and characteristics in order to measure interest in and use of Ricon Consulting's products and services, Ricon Consulting's proposed products and services, the Ricon Consulting web sites and the Internet and to provide advertisers with information such as the number of users that have been exposed to or clicked on their advertising banners. We will provide only aggregated data from these analyses to third parties. Also, you are advised that we may permit third parties to offer subscription and/or registration-based services through the Ricon Consulting web sites. We are not responsible for any actions or policies of such third parties and you should check the applicable privacy policy of each such third party when providing personal information. We are also not responsible for any actions of any third party sites that you access through the Ricon Consulting web sites and the Internet and you are responsible for checking the applicable privacy policy of such third party sites.

What are "cookies" and how do we use them?

You should also be aware that non-personal information and data may be automatically collected through the standard operation of our Internet servers or through the use of "cookies". "Cookies" are small text files that contain a unique identification number that is transferred from a web site to the hard drive of your computer so that we may:

recognize repeat users;
track usage behavior; and
compile aggregate data that will permit content improvements and targeted advertising.

Cookies cannot extract information from your hard disk. You should be aware that we cannot control or prevent the use of cookies or any information obtained through such cookies by advertisers or third party content providers. If you do not want information collected through the use of cookies, most browsers permit you to disable the cookie feature. However, you are advised that cookies may be required for the use of certain features on the Ricon Consulting web sites.

Who has access to your Information?

Ricon Consulting may disclose, on a confidential basis, to any third party with whom we have business relations, certain relevant information relating to your dealings with us and our products and services. Ricon Consulting does not sell or redistribute your Information. Ricon Consulting may enter into third party agreements from time to time for the purposes of providing you with goods and services we think may interest you and may share your Information with these third parties solely for these purposes. We may share Information with potential business partners of, or investors in, Ricon Consulting. All such disclosure is made solely under a confidentiality agreement with the third party who is required not to disclose or use the Information for any other purpose other than is necessary to fulfill the agreement with Ricon Consulting.

Please note that Ricon Consulting's web sites contain links to other sites. We cannot represent or guarantee that other sites' privacy policies conform to our own, so please bear in mind that sites linked from Ricon Consulting's web sites may have privacy policies which differ from those of Ricon Consulting. Ricon Consulting's privacy policy does not cover third party data collection and Ricon Consulting does not assume any responsibility for the actions of any third parties. You should make every effort to read the individual privacy policies of the partners, advertisers or co-sponsors. You may opt out of sharing your information with such partners, advertisers or co-sponsors by choosing not to use their service or content.

Any submissions to Internet discussion areas or other public Internet areas on the Ricon Consulting web sites are accepted with the understanding that they are accessible to all third parties. If you do not want your comments to be viewed by third parties, you are advised not to make any submissions on the Internet.

Can you access, edit or delete your Information?

At your written request, we will:

provide you with reasonable access to your Information that is in our records within a reasonable time period; and
use reasonable efforts to allow you to update or correct information which you state is incorrect to the extent such updating or correction will not compromise our privacy or security interests and subject to the understanding that it may be impossible to completely delete your Information without some residual information because of back-ups.

In the event that we are unable to grant you access to your Information, we will provide you with a written explanation of the reasons for denying access.

What is our Opt-out Policy?

You may request to decline receiving promotional and/or marketing information from us. Notwithstanding your wish to cease receiving such promotional and/or marketing information, we reserve the right to contact you regarding account status, changes to any Ricon Consulting service agreement and other matters relevant to the underlying service and/or the personal information collected.

You may not opt out Ricon Consulting billing notifications, account renewal or other emergency announcements.

What security measures do we have in place to protect your Information?

Ricon Consulting has security measures in place to attempt to protect your Information against loss, misuse and alteration of your user data under our control. We will keep your Information in secure data storage in order to safeguard it from unauthorized access. Only authorized employees have access to the Information you provide. While Ricon Consulting cannot guarantee that loss, misuse or alteration to data will not occur, we make every effort to prevent such occurrences. We will keep your Information for as long as it remains necessary or relevant for the identified purposes or as required by law.

You are responsible for the security of your Internet ID and password. At the time of signing up for new internet services, Ricon Consulting may provide new customers with a standard password that is required to activate the service. Ricon Consulting strongly recommends new customers log on to their web site and change the password that has been provided to a password of their own choice and that is not known to anyone else, that as soon as the service is activated. Ricon Consulting recommends that you do not divulge your ID and/or password to anyone. You should log out of your browser at the end of each computer session to ensure that others cannot access your personal information and correspondence, especially if you share a computer or are using a computer in a public place.

You should also be aware that when personal information is voluntarily disclosed (i.e. user name, e-mail address, etc.) in the discussion areas or other public areas of the Ricon Consulting web sites and the Internet, that information, along with any information disclosed in your communication, can be collected and used by third parties and may result in unsolicited messages from third parties. Such activities are beyond our control. Ricon Consulting cannot ensure and/or warrant the security of any Information transmitted online. You are advised that conveying personal information online is done at your own risk and you remain solely responsible for maintaining the secrecy of passwords and/or any account and/or credit information.

We reserve the right to change this Customer Privacy Policy at any time and you are advised to check this page periodically for any changes. Your continued use of Ricon Consulting's products and services, the Ricon Consulting web sites and the Internet will constitute your acceptance of such changes.

Questions concerning Privacy Issues

If you have any questions or concerns regarding this policy you may contact us through our web site at www.RiconConsulting.com our call us at the numbers provided on our web site or on your invoice.

If you have any unresolved issues concerning the protection and handling of your personal information, you may address these concerns, in writing, to our Privacy Officer at the following address:

privacy@riconconsulting.com

If our Privacy Officer is unable to resolve the issue to your satisfaction, you may file a written complaint to the federal Privacy Commissioner at the following address:

Updated: December 24, 2003