Data Usage Policy

Food & Water Watch is committed to transparency in how it uses your personal information.

We do not require you to provide any information at all to use most basic features of our websites.

There are certain activities and areas of the site that will require you to provide personal information, such as:

Taking an action through Food & Water Watch on one of our campaigns
Signing up to receive emails from us
Making a donation

If you submit your personal information to us, you are agreeing that Food & Water Watch and Food & Water Watch Fund may use the information in accordance with this data usage policy.

If you have questions regarding this data usage policy, please contact us by sending an email to info(at)fwwatch(dot)org or through the address below.

Food & Water Watch 1616 P Street NW Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20036

Voluntary Information We Collect

Why does Food & Water Watch collect certain personal information?

We collect information to help us better meet your needs and to improve our programs. Our reasons for collecting personal information include:

Internal record keeping
To carry out activities where personal information is required, such as advocacy actions
To communicate with you according to your preferences (by email, mail, SMS or phone)
To provide you with content that is relevant to you; for example, information about legislation in your state

What information does Food & Water Watch collect?

We only collect personal information from our visitors when it is supplied to us voluntarily. Certain activities on our website (described in further detail below) may require you to provide information such as your name, email address, mailing address, phone number, or may ask you to submit written comments. If you do not wish to share the required information with Food & Water Watch, do not participate in these activities.

The following are examples of how we may use your personal information when you engage in common activities on our website:

When you sign up to join our main email list or provide us with your email address, we will have a record of your email address and any other information you choose to provide. We will send you email about action alerts to protect our food and water, fundraising campaigns, and other Food & Water Watch activities. You can opt out of these emails at any time (see details below).
When you make an online donation to Food & Water Watch, your information will be added to our donor list and database, and you may be contacted about other Food & Water Watch activities, news, action alerts, and/or fundraising campaigns. Food & Water Watch may rent our donor list (mail addresses, only) to like-minded organizations. This gives you the opportunity to learn about related activities of other nonprofit organizations. If you do not wish to have your mail contact information shared in this manner, please contact us at info(at)fwwatch(dot)org. Food & Water Watch will not share your email address or credit card information with other organizations.
When you take an advocacy action such as sending a message to your elected representatives, government officials or other targets of Food & Water Watch advocacy, we will keep a record of the information you submit and will send your message to these recipients, along with the contact information you provide, such as your name, address, phone number, and email address. Food & Water Watch is not responsible for what these recipients may do with your information. Please note that officials receiving these emails may choose to contact you. Government agencies may add the names of people who submit comments on government proposals into public documents recording feedback on a given proposal. This is often a part of the government process for receiving and recording feedback from the public. Government agencies typically have strict guidelines around not misusing information provided to them by the public for other purposes. However, you should review the policies of the appropriate government body if you are concerned.
We may store and use any other voluntary information you choose to provide. We will use it in a manner consistent with the examples above, and we will never sell your personal information.
When you provide us with your landline or mobile phone number, we may contact you through phone call or text message to let you know about opportunities to get involved in our work. You may opt out of these communications at any time.

In addition to voluntary personal information, Food & Water Watch may also collect aggregated data to help us understand how visitors, including you, use our online tools. This aggregated data contains no personally identifiable information. If you prefer not to have this data collected, you can opt out by disabling cookies in your browser; however, some features on our websites may not work with cookies disabled. (For more, see “Security and Cookies” below.)

No. Food & Water Watch will not give, rent, sell or share your email address or information about your online activities with other organizations, except as specifically required to carry out the given action you requested. For example, if you send a message through our systems to your U.S. Senators, your message will be sent to them from your email address. We may also occasionally send you emails on behalf of reputable advocacy organizations, but will not provide them with your email address unless you choose to give them that information.

All above categories exclude text messaging originator opt-in data and consent; this information will not be shared with any third parties.

No. We do not rent, share, sell or trade information about what activities or donations supporters have undertaken on our website. Occasionally we do make names and postal addresses of select donors available to reputable advocacy, environmental, and animal rights organizations.

If you are a Food & Water Watch or Food & Water Watch donor and you do NOT wish to have your information exchanged with other organizations, please call us at the number below to speak to one of our staff about your preferences.

If you are not a Food & Water Watch donor, your information will not be exchanged.

Financial Information You May Choose to Provide

If you choose to make an online donation to Food & Water Watch, you will have to provide your credit card billing information. The credit card information that you provide at the time of donation is used only to process your donation and will not be stored or used by us for any other purposes. We will store other information about the details of your transaction for our records.

How do I know my credit card information is secure?

Food & Water Watch works with Blackbaud, Inc. to process our donations. Blackbaud, Inc. uses secure server software (SSL) that is the industry standard for secure commerce transactions. It encrypts all of your personal information, including credit card number, name and address, so that it cannot be read as the information travels over the Internet. We do not store your credit card information once your transaction has been processed.

Other Ways We Use Personal Information

Food & Water Watch works with our sister organization, Food & Water Watch. Both organizations may contact you in a manner consistent with that described above and below in this data usage policy.

You should be aware that we use third-party vendors to provide services on this site and in our offline business operations. The information that you submit on this site may be provided to those vendors on a confidential basis so that those vendors can provide services (such as maintaining our database, sending e-mail messages to activists, facilitating our fundraising activities and campaigns, or processing credit card transactions) on our behalf.

Other than as described in this data usage policy, or as may be necessary to protect the rights, property, and safety of our organization or others, or as may be necessary to comply with applicable law, Food & Water Watch will not give, share or sell the personal information you provide online.

Managing Your Personal Information

How to unsubscribe from receiving emails

If for any reason you would like to stop receiving future emails from us:

Click the “Unsubscribe” or “Click here to stop receiving emails” links that are included in every email
Send us an email at info(at)fwwatch(dot)org and ask us to unsubscribe you from our email list

Note that your contact information and your donation and action history will remain in our databases, but we will not send you emails.

Can I change the information I have given to Food & Water Watch?

If you are a Food & Water Watch donor or supporter you can update your account information through one of the following methods:

Log into our self-service portal
Send correspondence to the following postal address:
Tamara Tripp
Food & Water Watch USA
1616 P St. NW Ste. 300
Washington, D.C. 20036
Call us at 347-774-4698 between 9:30 a.m. and 5 p.m. EST, Monday – Friday.
Email [email protected]

Security and Cookies

Information we collect automatically

As is true of most websites you enter, we automatically collect some non-personal information about your computer and your visit and store it in log files. This includes information such as your computer’s (or your Internet Service Provider’s) IP address (this is not your e-mail address); the domain from which you access the Internet (e.g., “AOL.com”); certain specifications of your computer and its operating system; the website, if any, from which you came to our site; the date and time you arrived at our site, how long you spent there, and which pages you visited.

This data is anonymous and is not connected to any personal information. We use this information to help us improve our site’s performance and make it more useful to visitors by monitoring statistics that show, for example, the number of visitors that use different sections of our site.

Does Food & Water Watch use cookies?

Yes, we use cookies for a variety of purposes. Cookies help us provide you with a better website, for example, by letting us monitor which pages our visitors find useful. A cookie does not give us access to your computer or any information about you.

A “cookie” is a tiny element of data that our site can send to your browser, which may then be stored on your hard drive. Cookies that are sent to your browser by our site are only readable by Food & Water Watch and are never shared with any other site.

If you are concerned about your privacy and the use of cookie technology on our website you may set your browser to refuse the cookies our site attempts to send you. If you decide not to accept cookies, you may limit the functionality available when you visit our site.

Security

We are committed to ensuring that your information is secure. In order to prevent unauthorized access or disclosure, we have put in place suitable physical, electronic, and managerial procedures to safeguard and secure the information we collect online from loss, misuse and unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration and destruction.

The security measures used on this site include, but are not limited to, industry-standard Secure Socket Layer (SSL) technology on all pages where we collect financial information, security certificates, and firewalls to maintain the security of stored data. While we follow industry standards to protect the personal information submitted to us, no method of transmission over the Internet, or method of electronic storage, is 100 percent secure. Therefore, while we use commercially acceptable means to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee its absolute security.

Email Security

Emails delivered to you are handled by various systems. Each system uses SSL encryption when sending email and all email sent to us is encrypted as well using SSL. Email sent to Food & Water Watch staff is filtered by spam services. If your domain is blacklisted has otherwise been marked as potential spam, your email may not be delivered to us directly. If you have not gotten a response to an important email please contact us using one of the methods mentioned above.

You can protect your security

Although Food & Water Watch does its best to protect your privacy on this and our other websites, we need your help. Many breaches of security occur when users are not vigilant in protecting their own information. You can help keep your information secure in the following ways:

You have control over your own privacy. Think carefully before providing any personal information.

Although this site has security measures in place to protect the loss, misuse and alteration of information, no email or website can be completely, 100 percent secure. If you are worried because your communication is very sensitive, do not send it via email or submit it online. See above for additional ways to contact us.

We may send you personalized information via email, or provide personalized links in emails that allow web forms to be automatically populated with certain personal information. Always keep your email account secure, and do not allow others to access your email.

You should only forward our email messages to others through the “Tell A Friend” buttons or links provided within the email. If you forward our emails directly to others using your email service, they may be able to see your personal information in that email, or may be able to take actions in your name and/or access your personal information by clicking on links personalized to you. Note: Your credit card and financial information will NEVER be visible to others by clicking on links in our emails.