Privacy Policy

BEREAVED FAMILIES OF ONTARIO (BFO) is committed to protecting your personal information and your right to privacy. Following is our general privacy policy.

What is personal information?

  • Information that identifies you personally such as your name, address, phone number(s), email address, IP address and signature;
  • The products or services from us which you use or subscribe to;
  • Account information including methods of payment, balances and credit status.

How is your information collected and used?

We may collect your personal information under several different scenarios.

  • When you sign-up for an event, service or subscription on our website;
  • when you sign-on to the website (i.e. dashboard / member areas);
  • when you make a comment on our website;
  • when you upload any information through a form or other means;
  • when you complete a contact or registration form;
  • when you make a purchase through our e-store;
  • when you pay an account balance through this website;

This information is generally transmitted and stored electronically (such as in a ‘cookie’) but may also be stored securely in paper files at our head office. The way this information is used will also vary depending on the purpose of its collection.

What about cookies?

A ‘cookie’ is a small text file that helps our website identify your computer.  Our website may place one or more in your browser as you use our website.  They help us to know what pages you visited, if you logged in and if you did what your preferences are so you get the best experience possible.

You will be notified on your first visit (and again after a period of time or each time depending on your browser configuration) that we are using cookies and have the ability to accept this policy expressly.

Comments

Should you opt to leave comments on our website (where applicable and allowed), we collect the data shown in the comments form, your browser agent string, and your IP address to help spam detection. Your comment may also be checked by an automated spam detection service.

An anonymized string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available at: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture (Gravatar) is visible to the public in the context of your comment.

Additionally, you may opt-in to saving your name, email address and website URL in a cookie. These are solely for your convenience so that you do not have to fill in your personal details again in future comment submissions. These cookies will last for one (1) year.

When you leave a comment (where applicable), the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognize and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.

Media and User-generated Content

If you upload images to the website, you should avoid uploading images with embedded location data (EXIF GPS) included. Visitors to the website can download and extract any location data from images on the website.

Should you publish or edit an article or other content on our site, an additional cookie will be saved in your browser.  This cookie also includes no personal information and simply indicates the “post ID number” of the article(s) or resource(s) you edited. These expire after one (1) day.

Contact Forms

Your information is passed and stored securely in the site database. A notification of your submission is sent to our organization, however no personal information other than your email address and IP address are transmitted via email.

Member Accounts

If you have an account or membership (via our online or offline subscriptions) and you log in to our website, a temporary cookie will be set to determine if your browser accepts cookies. This cookie contains no personal information and is destroyed when you close your browser.

Also, when you log in, several cookies are set up to save your login information and your screen display choices. Login cookies expire after two (2) days and screen options cookies last for one (1) year. If you select “Remember Me”, your login will persist for two (2) weeks. If you log out of your account before the expiration time, the login cookies are removed.

If you have registered on our website (or have been registered by purchasing a membership offline), you have an account on this site. Your personal information provided is stored in your user profile. All users can see, edit, or delete their personal information at any time (except user names cannot change their username). Website administrators can also see and edit this information.

You may request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about your, including any data you have provided to us. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include data that we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal or security purposes.

e-Store Purchases and Event Registrations

Your personal information is stored in the database as a business transaction that attributes the item(s) purchased to you. Notification of your purchase including your name, phone number, email address and the item(s) purchased are also transmitted to our office by email. 

Our online payment processor is fully PCI-DSS and PA-DSS compliant. (BFO) does not store any card information entered onto our site, this is handled only by the compliant provider. (Currently Authorize.net).

Analytics

Our site traffic is monitored using an analytics third-party product from Google Inc. which transmits website traffic data to Google servers in the United States. Google Analytics does not identify individual users or associate your IP address with any other data held by Google. We use reports provided by Google Analytics to help us understand website traffic and webpage usage.

If you wish to opt-out of data collection by Google Analytics, you may optionally install this browser add-on: https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout?hl=en. BFO  is not responsible for the provision, installation or operation of this software and provides this link solely as a convenience to you.

Cookie Summary

If you do not accept our use of cookies while on our websites, you can configure your browser to reject cookies. This is done in your browser settings and varies from different vendors. However, if you choose to do so, we cannot guarantee that all functionality of our website will work as intended.

Further information on what cookies we use and set can be seen in our cookie policy.

Social Media Widgets

We may use social media widgets to enable visitors to engage with or share content from our website on various social platforms (including but not limited to Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn etc.). To understand how and what information is collected and what cookies are set by these third parties, please refer to each platform’s privacy policy statement.

Links

BFO may offer, within the site content, links to other websites solely for the purpose of offering you an opportunity to review connected and interesting information relating to our industry. These third-party websites are outside our control and are not covered by this Privacy Policy.

If you access other websites using the links provided, the operators of these websites may collect your personal information. Please ensure that you are satisfied with the Privacy Policy terms of all third parties before you submit any personal information.

Personal Information Protection Procedures

No information provided by you or tracked using cookies will be disclosed to any third party without your express consent or as required/permitted by applicable law. 

There are a couple of circumstances where we can disclose personal information without your knowledge or consent:

  • Investigating a breach of contract, or the breaking of provincial or federal law;
  • To comply with a subpoena court order or other lawful request;
  • In an emergency where someone’s life, health or security is threatened.

When paying online, no credit card information is stored online by BFO.  We use a third-party card processing service who takes and validates your card information and then returns only an approval or decline message back to our website.  Transactions that are conducted by phone or letter mail to our office are transacted as instructed (through a secure digital card processing terminal) and then destroyed.

Questions or Concerns?

We will be happy to entertain any questions or concerns you may have about this privacy statement or our practices. You can write us at:

  • Bereaved Families of Ontario
    Watline Postal Outlet
    P.O. Box 10015
    Mississauga, Ontario
    L4Z 4G5

If you feel your question or concern has not be adequately addressed, you may contact the Privacy Commissioner of Canada

  • Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
    30 Victoria Street
    Gatineau, Québec, Canada
    K1A 1H3

    1-800-262-1376

    www.priv.gc.ca