Privacy Policy
Privacy Policy
Date of Last Revision: September 10, 2020
1. Purpose
Born This Way Foundation respects and protects the privacy of our users.
The purpose of this Privacy Policy is to disclose to you what information the Born This Way Foundation may collect from visitors to our website, BornThisWay.Foundation, and from those who register for our Born Brave Network, their affiliate sites, subdomains, mobile versions, and any associated applications that are owned and/or operated by the Born This Way Foundation (collectively, the “Website”), and how we collect, use and share this information. In this Privacy Policy, the Born This Way Foundation is referred to as “BTWF,” “BBN” “us,” “we,” or “our,” as the context requires, including our role as administrator of the Born Brave Network (“BBN”).
Please read this Privacy Policy carefully. This Privacy Policy applies to all users (“you”) of the Website. By using our services and the Website, including any content posted on the Website, you signify your acceptance of our Terms of Service, including this Privacy Policy. If you do not agree to the Terms of Service, you must stop accessing or using our Website. Please contact us with any questions or concerns about this Privacy Policy at [email protected].
2. Changes to Privacy Policy
We may, in our sole discretion, modify or revise this Privacy Policy at any time. Such changes or updates are effective immediately after we give notice of the change or update, which we may do so by revising the “Date of Last Revision” date of this Privacy Policy or by otherwise posting on the Website at https://bornthisway.foundation/privacy-policy/, or by email, conventional mail and/or by any other means that provides reasonable notice. If registered with our Website, you must provide us with your correct email address and make sure that email from BTWF and BBN is not filtered from your inbox by your ISP or email software. You agree that your use of the Website, after the date such notice is posted, means that you accept and agree to be bound by such modifications or revisions to the Privacy Policy. You agree that we shall not be liable to you for any damages that might result form any changes to the Privacy Policy, if any.
3. Information You Provide
(a) What is Personally Identifiable Information?
Personally Identifiable Information (“PII”) is information that identifies a specific individual, such as name, address, email address, payment card information, birth date, employment history, veteran status, certain health related data, passport information and photographs. PII does not include aggregated information that does not allow you to be identified.
(b) Collecting Personal Information
You can decide what PII you provide us. We will collect the PII that you choose to provide, via the Services. When you register for an account or engage in certain activities on the Website, we may ask you to provide certain PII about yourself. Depending on the activity, some of the information we ask you to provide is mandatory and some is voluntary. If you do not provide the mandatory information for a particular activity requiring disclosure of such information, you will not be permitted to engage in that activity.
Examples of activities in which we collect PII via the Services include but are not limited to (1) requesting newsletters or other BTWF communications, (2) making a donation to the BTWF, (3) purchasing merchandise, and (4) pledging to support a campaign in which BTWF is participating. Examples of PII that we may collect include but are not limited to (1) your name, (2) address (street, city, state, zip code and country), (3) email address, (4) birthdate, (5) phone number, and (6) credit card number. You may also post certain public content, such as testimonials, forum posts, and comments, to our Website. Any such content you post may be viewable by the general public and is governed by our Terms of Service.
We may also collect information about you from other third parties, including demographic information, and combine this information with other information we collect about you.
(c) Non-Personally Identifiable Information
Non-PII is information that does not identify a specific user. This type of information may include the Uniform Resource Locator (“URL”) of the website you visited before coming to our Website, the URL of the website you visit after leaving our Website, the type of browser you are using and your Internet Protocol (“IP”) address. We may automatically collect this information when you visit our Website through the use of electronic tools like cookies and web beacons or pixel tags, such as Facebook tracking pixels which we use to track ad conversions.
(d) Use of Cookies and other Technologies
In common with many websites, we use ‘cookies’ and other similar technologies such as pixel tags and web beacons to help us gather information from visitors to our Services, as further described below.
A ‘cookie’ is a small data file that can be placed on the hard drive of your computer. The use of cookies helps us to assist your use of certain aspects of the Services. You can delete cookies stored by your browser at any time, or you can set your browser to reject or disable cookies. If you do disable cookies some functions of the Services may not function correctly or optimally.
Pixel tags and web beacons are tiny graphic images placed on certain pages on our Website, or in our emails that allow us to determine whether you have performed a specific action. When you access these pages, or open or click an email, pixel tags and web beacons generate a Non-Personally Identifiable notice of that action. Pixel tags allow us to measure and improve our understanding of visitor traffic and behavior on our Website, as well as give us a way to measure our promotions and performance. We may also utilize pixel tags and web beacons provided by our Affiliates and/or Partners for the same purposes.
We may use information from the following categories of cookies or other similar technologies for the following purposes:
- Necessary cookies: these cookies are necessary to make our website work properly. We use them to enable core functionality such as displaying the correct web page, or keeping the website secure.
- Analytics cookies: these cookies help us to analyze our website through traffic monitoring, for example: by tracking the IP address from which you access a Service, the type of browser and operating system used to access a Service, the date and time of your access to a Service, the pages you visit, the referencing URL, and the recognition of repeat visitors for statistical/analytical purposes.
- Marketing cookies: these cookies anonymously track interaction with online advertising, for example, to monitor the number of times that a banner ad is displayed and the number of times it is clicked.
- Targeting cookies: these cookies compile and report to third parties (such as advertisers) aggregate statistics about our users in terms of numbers, traffic patterns, and related Service information.
List of cookies used by our website
| Cookie Name | Function | Persistent or Session?* | Duration | Source | Information Shared with third parties? |
| _ga | Google Analytics cookie, tracking visitors by providing them unique USER ID. (Click here to learn more about Google cookies) | Session | End of the browser session | Yes (Google) | |
| _gid | Google Analytics cookie used to group the user behavior together for each user. providing them unique USER ID. providing them unique USER ID. (Click here to learn more about Google cookies) | Session | End of the browser session | Yes (Google) | |
| BTW4 | Cookie for showing or hiding a popup and banner | Persistent | Persistent | None | |
| PHPSESSID | An auto generated session cookie by the server which contains a random long number which is given out by the server itself. (Learn more on WordPress’ Support page) | Session | End of the browser session | WordPress | Yes (WordPress) |
| wordpress_test_cookie | WordPress sets a test cookie (wordpress_test_cookie) for every visitor to check if the browser accepts cookies. (Learn more on WordPress’ Support page) | Session | End of the browser session | WordPress | Yes (WordPress) |
| _fbp | When the Facebook pixel is installed on a website, and the pixel uses first-party cookies, the pixel automatically saves a unique identifier to an _fbp cookie for the website domain if one does not already exist. (Click here to learn more) | Persistent | Persistent | Yes (Facebook) |
We may connect the information that we collect through cookies and other technologies with PII that you provide to us for purposes, including:
- To customize or personalize your experience of a Service, for example, so that we can greet you on the Service by name.
- For transactional purposes, such as payment card purchases.
- To monitor your use of our Services in order to make our communications to you as relevant as possible, for example, sending you email communications relevant to the parts of a Service that you visit most often or by letting you know about features of the Service that you have not accessed previously.
We may also collect IP addresses or click-stream data. An IP address is a number that is automatically assigned to your computer whenever you access the Internet. Our computers identify your computer by its IP address. When you request pages from our Website, our computers log your IP address.
We collect IP addresses and click-stream data for purposes including:
- To perform System Administration.
- To improve our Website.
- To report aggregate information internally or to sponsors. Click-stream data is information collected by our computers when you request pages from our Website. Click-stream data may include such information as the page served, the time, the source of the request, the type of browser making the request, the preceding page view and other such non-personal information. When analyzed, this data helps us determine, among other things, how visitors arrive at our Website, what type of content is most popular, and what type of visitors in the aggregate are interested in particular kinds of content and advertising.
In addition to cookies (and similar technologies) which we use on our website, third-party advertising companies may place separate cookies on your computer when you visit our website. Third party cookies originate from a domain that’s different to the website you’re visiting here. Please see below for further details of the third parties which set cookies and may collect personal data. We have no control over third party cookies, however you can disable them by changing the settings on your browser.
| Third Party | Cookie Name | Function | Duration | For Further Information |
| DSID | Used by Google to make advertising more engaging to users and more valuable to publishers and advertisers. Some common applications of cookies are to select advertising based on what’s relevant to a user; to improve reporting on campaign performance and to avoid showing ads that the user has already seen. | 14 days | https://policies.google.com/technologies/types under “Advertising” |
Management of Cookies
You can control whether cookies are placed on your computer or not.
- For necessary cookies, you can change your cookie settings at any time in your web browser. The ‘help’ menu of most browsers will tell you how to do so. Please note that blocking necessary cookies may result in our website not functioning correctly.
- For analytics, marketing and targeting cookies, in addition to your browser settings, you can change your preferences for these cookies at any time by [selecting the ‘manage cookie preferences’ link and selecting the cookies you wish to enable / disable from the [window/page] that is displayed]. Please note that the effect of blocking analytics, marketing and targeting cookies could be.
- For third party cookies, please check the cookie policy of each relevant third party to see how you can manage them.
(e) Do Not Track Disclosures
We may use the above tracking technologies to collect information about your online activities over time and across third-party websites or other online services (behavioral tracking).
Some internet browsers have incorporated “Do Not Track” features. Most of these features, when turned on, send a signal or preference (the “DNT Signal”) to web sites you visit indicating that you do not wish to be track. At this time, we do not currently respond to DNT Signals.
(f) Information You Provide
If you access our Services on a “social network platform” (including, but not limited to, Facebook and Twitter), we will access and store the information explicitly allowed by the social network platform by their Terms of Service, once you give us permission to do so, through an interface provided by the social network platform. BTWF activities that may be accessible via a social network platform include games, forums, and other activities that may be available on the Website or at in-person events. As we do not have control over the user interface provided by social network platforms, we do not take any responsibility for any changes or problems with the interface or exchange of information provided by any of these social network platforms.
4. How We Use Your Information
We may use information collected from you in the following ways:
(a) Internal Operations.
We may use your PII to enhance your user experience of the Website, enhance your user experience at in-person events sponsored by us, improve the operation of the Website, deliver Services to you and improve our Service offerings, improve our marketing and promotional efforts, analyze Website and Services use, process donations and purchases of products, and facilitate your experience with third-parties. If you use our Services to request that we send information to another person, we may store your PII, and the PII of the recipient you specify, and we may use that recipient’s contact information to allow the recipient to access the information specified in your request. We may also use PII to troubleshoot, resolve disputes, accomplish administrative tasks, contact you, enforce our agreements with you (including our Terms of Service and this Privacy Policy), comply with applicable laws, and cooperate with law enforcement activities.
(b) Charitable Donations
We may use your PII (by way of credit card information) in order to process charitable donations you may wish to make via a Service. The PII you provide will be used by an authorized third party payment processing vendor to process such payment. Additionally, information that you provide to Born This Way Foundation when making a donation, including an employer’s name and contact information, may be used by Born This Way Foundation or donation partners (e.g., Double the Donation) for purposes of processing such donation payment or any associated donation matching.
(c) Transactional Purposes
We may use your PII in order to respond to your queries and requests and to manage transactions such as purchases for any products that you order from us or any of our agents, or for the fulfillment of such transactions (for example delivery). The PII you provide may be used by an authorized vendor to fulfill that order.
(d) Public (or Interactive) Areas of the Service.
Information that you post on or through the any public areas of the Services are generally accessible to, and may be collected and used by, us or others and may result in unsolicited messages or other contact from others. Users of the Services are encouraged to exercise caution when providing PII about themselves in any public (or interactive) areas of a Service.
(e) Non-Personally Identifiable Information
We use Non-PII to troubleshoot technical issues, administer the Services analyze trends, gather demographic information, comply with applicable laws, and cooperate with law enforcement activities. We may also share this information with our authorized third-party service providers and advertisers in order to measure the overall effectiveness of our online advertising, content, and programming.
5. Disclosure of Personally Identifiable Information
We will not share your PII with third-parties without your permission except in the following situations:
- to enforce our Terms of Use;
- if we believe in good faith that it is required by law enforcement or judicial authorities, or if it is necessary to comply with other legal requirements;
- if it is necessary to respond to an emergency that we believe involves potential threats to the safety of persons or property;
- to prevent or investigate suspected fraud, illegal activity, violations of our Terms of Service, or activity that we believe in good faith may expose us to legal liability;
- to provide information to trusted third-party service providers for the sole purpose of processing Personally Identifiable Information in connection with the completion of a donation to us or purchase from us;
- to enable trusted third-parties that provide services on our behalf or with whom we have collaborated to offer a particular service; or
- during any merger, acquisition, or transfer of all or substantially all our assets, or during negotiations for such an event.
We encourage our trusted third-party service providers (including professional advisors, charitable partners of both a not-for-profit and for-profit nature, consultants, data hosting providers, etc.) to adopt and post privacy policies that offer the same level of protection of your Personally Identifiable Information. However, the use of your Personally Identifiable Information by such parties is controlled by those parties and thus, not subject to our control.
6. Disclosure of Specific Personally-Identifiable Information concerning Channel Kindness
If you have opted to submit content via the Channel Kindness section of the Website, we may share that content, in addition to your PII (such as name, address, street, city, state, zip code and country, email address, birthdate, and phone number), with our partner Macmillan Publishing (“Macmillan”). By submitting your content via Channel Kindness, you agree to our sharing of such content and PII with Macmillan.
7. Disclosure of Non-Personally Identifiable Information
We may disclose or share Non-Personally Identifiable Information with our partners, affiliates and advertisers. For example, we may share aggregated demographic information (which does not include any PII) with “third-party advertisers” and other parties as provided herein.
We may use trusted third-party service providers to track and analyze Non-PII usage and volume statistical information from our users to administer our Website and constantly improve its quality. We may also publish this information for promotional purposes or as a representative audience for advertisers. Please note that this is not PII, only general summaries of the activities of our users. Such data is collected on our behalf, and is owned and used by us.
8. Our Security Procedures
We have implemented security measures to protect your PII from loss, misuse, and alteration. We use industry-standard practices to safeguard the confidentiality of your PII. In addition, your PII resides on a secure server that only selected personnel and contractors have access to. We encrypt certain sensitive information (such as credit card information) at all times in the transmission process using Secure Socket Layer (SSL) technology to ensure that your PII is safe as it is transmitted to us.
Perfect security, however, does not exist on the Internet. As a result, while we employ commercially reasonable security measures to protect data and seek to partner with companies which do the same, we cannot guarantee the security of any information transmitted to or from the Website. We are also not responsible for any information you share with other users of our Website or with third-parties, including advertisers, sponsors, or partners who are linked on our Website.
9. Your Control of Personally Identifiable Information
You may limit the collection and use of different elements of your PII by not participating in those activities for which we collect PII, as described above. You may choose to discontinue the collection, use, and disclosure of your PII by limiting or discontinuing your use of our Website.
We believe that you should have the ability to edit the PII you provide to us. You can access and update your PII by e-mailing [email protected]. You may delete your account and opt out of any further communications from us by either:
clicking on the links provided in our email communications for that purpose; or
sending an email request to [email protected].
You agree to maintain accurate contact information and to promptly update your PII if it changes.
If you wish to have your PII deleted or removed from our system please contact us at [email protected]. Note, however, we retain PII associated with past transactions in order to maintain internal accounting and in connection with internal system backups, and therefore are unable to delete such information. Please note that neither changes to, or deletion of, such personal data will alter personal data already relied upon or no longer in our control, such as that personal data previously shared with advertisers, sponsors, Affiliates and Partners.
10. Children Under 13
The Website is only intended for individuals at least 13 years old. Minors under the age of 13 may not use the Website. In compliance with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, we will not knowingly permit persons under the age of 13 to provide PII to us. If we later learn that you are under the age of 13, we will take appropriate steps to remove your PII from our database and restrict you from accessing our Website. We do not knowingly collect PII from anyone under the age of 13, and no part of the Website is designed to attract anyone under the age of 13. We do not sell products for purchase by children, although in certain instances, we may offer children’s products for purchase by adults. Unless otherwise disclosed during collection, we do not knowingly provide any PII about minors, regardless of its source, to third parties, nor is this information knowingly used by us for any marketing or promotional purposes. Minors are not permitted to participate in contests or sweepstakes on the Website.
11. Third-Party Websites
This Privacy Policy addresses only the use and disclosure of information that we collect. The Services may contain links or references to other Websites, including advertisers, sponsors, Affiliates and Partners, which may have their own policies that are not addressed or controlled by this Privacy Policy. Please note that if you provide any information directly to parties other than us, or if you affirmatively request your information be shared with a third party, including third parties and Websites linked to our Website, different rules may apply to the use or disclosure of the PII you disclose to those parties. We encourage you to investigate and ask questions before consent to any disclosure, or disclosing PII to third-parties.
12. Social Media Platforms
The Services may provide you with the ability to register, log into, “like” or otherwise interact with your social media services, including, but not limited to, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and other social media services. These features may enable integration and/or access to your social media accounts. We do not control these social media services or your profiles on these services, and we do not establish privacy settings or rules for how your PII on those services will be used. Your information will be subject to the applicable social media service’s terms and conditions and your current privacy settings on such social media service. You are encouraged to read all policies and information regarding the applicable social media services to learn more about how they handle your information. By linking to or otherwise accessing any social media service, you will be assuming the risk that the information you provide on that service may be viewed or used by third parties for any purpose. You agree that we are not responsible for any acts or omissions by these social media service providers.
13. International Users
This Privacy Policy is intended to cover the collection of information from residents of the United States. The Website and the services upon which the Website is hosted are located in the United States. When you submit PII using the Website (see Section 3(b) for details), your PII will be transferred to and stored in the United States by BTWF and our authorized third parties (see Section 4 for more detail). This transfer to the United States is necessary due to the location of BTWF and the hosting of the Website. By visiting the Website and submitting your PII you acknowledge that such transfer is necessary in order to: (i) provide you with access to contents of this Website; (ii) provide you with goods and/or Services; and/or (iii) in connection with the reason you have submitted your PII (e.g. in order to donate). Regardless of where your PII is collected from or transferred to, it will be treated in accordance with this Privacy Policy. Please note that there are possible risks involved in your PII being transferred to the United States because the data protection regime may be different to that of your home country. If you do not wish your PII to be transferred to the United States, please refrain from using the Website.
In addition to the other terms of this Privacy Policy, the following terms apply to the extent we collect PII of users located in the European Union (or where the processing of your PII is otherwise subject to the General Data Protection Regulation (EU) 2016/679 or other applicable European Union
(a) Use of Your PII
For the purposes of applicable EU laws, Born This Way Foundation (and each of our affiliates) will each be a controller of any PII collected by us.
For each of the ways in which we use your PII (as identified in Section 4 above), please find set out below the legal basis which we rely upon to process your PII, along with details of the category of potential third party recipients of your PII:
| Purpose | Legal Basis | Third party recipients |
| Internal Operations | Legitimate interest, contractual necessity or consent | Law enforcement agencies (PII is shared with such enforcement agencies only when BTWF is required to do so to answer actual legal claims, or to respond to legal disputes or perceived legal issues.) |
| Charitable Donations | Legitimate interest or contractual necessity | Authorized payment processing vendors |
| Transactional Purposes | Legitimate interest or contractual necessity | Authorized vendors |
| Public (or Interactive) Areas of the Service | Legitimate interest | Generally accessible to others via the internet. |
Where we rely upon our legitimate interests for processing your PII, our interests include seeking donations or selling merchandise to raise funds with which to further our cause, and to engage with users of the Website in order to achieve our strategic objective of supporting the wellness of young people by building a supportive community to provide information, foster connection and drive action.
Note that we may process your PII on more than one legal basis depending on the specific purpose for which we are using your PII.
No automated decision making, including profiling, is used when processing your PII.
Note that failure to provide certain PII means that we may not be able to provide our Services or products to you. In this case, we may have to cancel a product or Service you have with us but we will notify you if this is the case at the time.
(b) Marketing
We will send you direct marketing communications via email to keep you informed of our Services only where we have obtained your prior consent to do so. You may opt-in to receiving such emails from us at any time, by emailing [email protected], or when submitting your PII to us via the Website. You can also click on the “Unsubscribe” link provided in all our marketing emails.
(c) Cookies
See Section 3(d) for details with respect to our use of Cookies.
(d) Data Retention
We will keep your PII only for as long as is reasonably necessary for the purposes set out in this Privacy Policy, unless a longer retention period is required by law. We will not keep more information than we need for those purposes. For further information about how long we will keep your PII, please contact [email protected].
(e) Your Rights
You have the right to access the PII we hold about you, and there are a number of ways you can control the way in which and what information we store and process about you. To exercise these rights and controls, please contact [email protected].
Access: You have the right to ask for a copy of the PII that we hold about you free of charge, however we may charge a ‘reasonable fee’, if we think that your request is excessive, to help us cover the costs of locating the information you have requested.
Correction: You may notify us of changes to such your PII if it is inaccurate or it needs to be updated.
Deletion: If you think that we should not be holding or processing your PII any more, you may request that we delete it. Please note that this may not always be possible due to legal obligations, backups of our website and our requirement to keep track of past transactions (i.e. donations and purchases) on the Website.
Restrictions on use: As an alternative to requesting that we delete your PII, or in certain circumstances where we are not able to delete your PII, you may request instead that we stop processing your PII (other than storing it), if: (i) you contest the accuracy of it (until the accuracy is verified); (ii) you believe the processing is against the law; (iii) you believe that we no longer need your PII for the purposes for which it was collected, but you want us to keep your PII to establish or defend a legal claim; or (iv) you object to the processing, and we are verifying whether our legitimate grounds to process your PII, override your own rights.
Object: You have the right to object to processing of your PII, including: (i) for direct marketing; (ii) for research or statistical purposes; or (iii) where processing is based on legitimate interests.
Portability: If you wish to transfer your PII to another organization (and certain conditions are satisfied), you may ask us to do so, and we will send it directly if we have the technical means.
Withdrawal of consent: If you previously gave us your consent (by a clear affirmative action) to allow us to process your PII for a particular purpose, but you no longer wish to consent to us doing so, you can contact us to let us know that you withdraw that consent.
We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access your PII (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is a security measure to ensure that PII is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it. We may also contact you to ask you for further information in relation to your request to speed up our response.
(f) Complaints
Should you wish to lodge a complaint with regards to how your PII has been processed by us, please contact us at [email protected] or you may contact your local EU Supervisory Authority (see: https://edpb.europa.eu/about-edpb/board/members_en).
14. Contact Us
If you have any questions regarding this Privacy Policy, please contact us at [email protected]