Welcome to ParmigianoReggiano.US (the “Website”), an interactive online service operated by Consorzio del Formaggio Parmigiano–Reggiano and its subsidiaries (the “Consortium”, “us”, “we”, or “our”).

We believe strongly in protecting user privacy, and as such we take all appropriate steps to limit the risk that it may be lost, damaged or misused. Therefore we have adopted this Privacy Policy, which details important information regarding the use and disclosure of information collected on this Website.

We reserve the right in our sole discretion to change, modify, add, or delete portions of this Privacy Policy at any time. We will provide notice of such changes only by posting the updated Privacy Policy on our Website and changing the “last updated” date listed above. This Privacy Policy applies exclusively to your access to, interaction with, and use of, this Website and does not alter in any way the terms or conditions of any other agreement you might have with the Consortium for products, services, or otherwise.

By accessing this Website, you agree to be bound by this Privacy Policy. If you do not agree to be bound by this Privacy Policy, including any and all modifications, changes and/or revisions, do not use this Website. We encourage you to review our Privacy Policy each time you visit this Website to see if it has been updated since your last visit.

This Privacy Policy, together with the Terms of Use posted on our Website, sets forth the general rules and policies governing your use of our Website. Depending on your activities when visiting our Website, you may be required to agree to additional terms and conditions.

If you have any questions regarding the use of the Website, please refer to the Frequently Asked Questions section within Customer Support. All other questions or comments about the Website should be directed to info@parmigianoreggiano.us

 

1. Types of Information We Collect

As detailed below, our Website collects two kinds of information about you: (i) information that you provide that personally identifies you; and (ii) information that does not personally identify you, which we automatically collect when you visit our Website or that you provide to us.

(i) Personal Information. Personal information is information to specifically identify an individual, including your name, address, telephone number, email address, credit card or other account numbers. Personal information may also include purchase information, demographic information, such as date of birth, gender, geographic area, and preferences. For instance, we may collect personal information in the following circumstances: (a) Registration. When you register to become a member on our Website, you are asked to create a unique login and password, and are required to give certain personal information; (b) Recipes and Other User Submissions. We collect any content that you voluntarily disclose on the Website, including recipes, tastes, preferences, user reviews, comments, etc.; (c) Email. When you submit your email address to us to initiate a subscription to one of our newsletters we ask for personal information such as your name and email address. Additionally, when you elect to use our referral service for emailing a recipe or other content to a friend, we ask you for your friend’s name and email address; (d) Contests, Promotions, Offers, or Surveys. From time to time this Website may request personal information from users via contests, promotions, offers and surveys. Participation in these contests, promotions, offers, and surveys is completely voluntary and you therefore may choose whether to disclose personal information in connection with these activities. Personal Information requested in these activities might include contact information (e.g., your name and shipping address) and demographic information (e.g., your zip code or age level); and (e) Customer Service. We collect personal information when you submit comments, questions or suggestions to our customer service department. In general, whether or not you provide this information is your choice; however, in many instances this type of information is required to participate in the particular activity, realize a benefit we may offer, or gain access to certain content on our Website.

(ii) Non-Personal (Aggregate) Information. Personal information does not include “aggregate” information. Aggregate information is data we collect about a group or category of products, services or customers, from which individual customer identities have been removed. In other words, information about how you use a service might be collected and combined with information about how others use the same service, but no personal information will be included in the resulting data. Likewise, information about the products you purchase might be collected and combined with information about the products purchased by others. When you visit the Website, we may send one or more “cookies” to your computer that uniquely identifies your browser session. We might place one or more cookies in the browser file of your computer. Although such cookies do not contain any personal information about you, we might link this information to personal information about you. If we do, we will treat it as personal information under this Privacy Policy. Aggregate data helps us understand trends and customer needs so that we can better consider new products and services, and tailor existing products and services to customer desires. We might share aggregate information about our users with third parties for various purposes, such as helping us better understand and improve our services, and for advertising and marketing purposes.

 

2. Uses of Information Collected

(i) Use of Personal Information. We use personal information for the purpose for which it was collected (such as to provide services or complete transactions you have requested, for billing purposes, and to anticipate and resolve problems with our Website and our products and services), for our own internal business operations, to respond to customer support inquiries, or in other ways naturally associated with the circumstances in which you provided the information. For instance, we may use personal information for editorial purposes, such as when you submit a recipe to us (e.g., to attribute your submitted recipe to you); to contact you for any reason regarding content you have submitted to the Website (e.g., to ask you a question about a recipe you have submitted); and to identify you by name when posting content you submit to us on the Website (e.g., when you request a recipe on the Website, to post your name and a description of the recipe you are requesting). Please note that all recipes, comments, suggestions, and all other user submissions to this Website become property of the Consortium after they are submitted. Any such recipes or other user submissions may be used or redistributed for any purpose and in any way. We may use personal information that you provide for a variety of other reasons, such as customer service, providing you promotional information for our products or those of our parent company, subsidiaries or other affiliated companies, or to communicate with you about content or other information you have posted or shared with us via our Website. In certain instances we may also share your personal information with our third party vendors performing functions on our behalf (or on behalf of our affiliated companies) – e.g., vendors that process credit card orders, deliver our merchandise, administer our promotions, provide us marketing or promotional assistance, analyze our data, assist us with customer service, etc. Our vendors agree to use this information, and we share information with them, only to carry out our requests. In addition, we may share your personal information with participating sponsors to a program or promotion (e.g., a sweepstakes or contest) you enter via our Website, and with third parties who assist us in using the content or other information you have posted or shared with us via our Website (e.g., production companies we may use). Further, we may share your personal information with third parties such as our co-promotional partners and others with whom we have marketing or other relationships. Except as provided in this Privacy Policy, our Terms of Use, or as set forth when you submit the information, your personal information will not be shared or sold to any third parties without your prior approval. You may opt-out from receiving future promotional information from us or our affiliated companies, or direct that we not share your information with any affiliated companies.

(ii) Use of Non-Personal Information. We use non-personal information in a variety of ways, including in analyzing site traffic, understanding customer needs and trends, carrying out targeted promotional activities, and improving our services and content. We may use your non-personal information by itself or aggregate it with information we have obtained from others. We may share your non-personal information with our affiliated companies and third parties to achieve these objectives and others, but remember that aggregate information is anonymous information that does not personally identify you.

 

3. Other Information & Uses

(i) IP Addresses. An IP address is a number that is automatically assigned to your computer whenever you use the Internet. Web servers automatically identify your computer by its IP address. When visitors request pages from our Website, our servers typically log their IP addresses. We collect IP addresses for purposes of system administration, to report non-personal aggregate information to others, and to track the use of our Website. IP addresses are considered non-personal information and may also be shared as provided above. It is not our practice to link IP addresses to anything personally identifiable; that is, the visitor’s session will be logged, but the visitor remains anonymous to us. However, we reserve the right to use IP addresses to identify a visitor when we feel it is necessary to enforce compliance with our Website rules or to: (a) fulfill a government request; (b) conform with the requirements of the law or legal process; (c) protect or defend our legal rights or property, our Website, or other users; or (d) in an emergency to protect the health and safety of our Website’s users or the general public.

(ii) Cookies, etc. “Cookies” are small text files from a website that are stored on your hard drive. These files are used to make our Website more convenient by saving your passwords and preferences for you, among other things. They may also be used to determine the number of visits to our website and to allow the management of other languages. However, cookies themselves do not typically contain any personal information. We may analyze the information derived from these cookies and other technological tools we employ and match this information with data provided by you or another party. We may provide our analysis and certain non-personal information to third parties (who may in turn use this information to provide advertisements tailored to your interests), but this will not involve disclosing any of your personal information. Please note that advertisers that serve advertisements on our Website and third-party content providers that serve content on our Website may also use their own cookies and other technological tools, which are subject to the advertiser’s privacy policies, not this Privacy Policy. At any moment, users can disable cookies tracing functions in their browser, but in certain cases this may cause malfunctioning of this Website.

(iii) Email. If you send us an email with questions or comments, we may use your personal information to respond to your questions or comments, and we may save your questions or comments for future reference. For security reasons, we do not recommend that you send non-public personal information, such as passwords, social security numbers, or bank account information, to us by email. However, aside from our reply to such an email, it is not our standard practice to send you email unless you request a particular service or sign up for a feature that involves email communications, it relates to purchases you have made with us (e.g., product updates, customer support, etc.), we are sending you information about our other products and services, or you consented to being contacted by email for a particular purpose. In certain instances, we may provide you with the option to set your preferences for receiving email communications from us. You may “opt out” of receiving future commercial email communications from us by clicking the “unsubscribe” link included at the bottom of most emails we send, or as provided below. However, we reserve the right to send you transactional emails such as customer service communications.

(iv) Transfer of Assets. As we continue to develop our business, we may sell or purchase assets. If another entity acquires us or all (or substantially all) of our assets, the personal information and non-personal information we have about you will be transferred to and used by this acquiring entity, though we will take reasonable steps to ensure that your preferences are followed. Also, if any bankruptcy or reorganization proceeding is brought by or against us, all such information may be considered an asset of ours and as such may be sold or transferred to third parties.

(v) Other. Notwithstanding anything herein to the contrary, we reserve the right to disclose any personal or non-personal information about you if we are required to do so by law, with respect to copyright and other intellectual property infringement claims, or if we believe that such action is necessary to: (a) fulfill a government request; (b) conform with the requirements of the law or legal process; (c) protect or defend our legal rights or property, our Website, or other users; or (d) in an emergency to protect the health and safety of our Website’s users or the general public.

 

4. Public Forums

We may offer chat rooms, blogs, message boards, bulletin boards, or similar public forums where you and other users of our Website can communicate. The protections described in this Privacy Policy do not apply when you provide information (including personal information) in connection with your use of these public forums. We may use personal and non-personal information about you to identify you with a posting in a public forum. Any information you share in a public forum is public information and may be seen or collected by anyone, including third parties that do not adhere to our Privacy Policy. We are not responsible for events arising from the distribution of any information you choose to publicly post or share through our Website.

 

5. Children

We do not intend, and the Website is not designed, to collect personal information from children under the age of 13. If you are under 13 years old, you should not register for our services or otherwise provide information on this Website and should ask your parent to do so for you. A parent or guardian of a child under the age of 13 may review and request deletion of such child’s personal information as well as prohibit the use thereof.

 

6. Securing Your Information

We have implemented security measures we consider reasonable and appropriate to protect against the loss, misuse and alteration of the information under our control. Please be advised, however, that while we strive to protect your personal information and privacy, we cannot guarantee or warrant the security of any information you disclose or transmit to us online and are not responsible for the theft, destruction, or inadvertent disclosure of your personal information. In the unfortunate event that your personal information is compromised, we may notify you by email (at our sole and absolute discretion) to the last email address you have provided us in the most expedient time reasonable under the circumstances; provided, however, delays in notification may occur while we take necessary measures to determine the scope of the breach and restore reasonable integrity to the system as well as for the legitimate needs of law enforcement if notification would impede a criminal investigation. From time to time we evaluate new technology for protecting information, and when appropriate, we upgrade our information security systems.

 

7. External Sites

Our Website may link to or contain links to other third-party (i.e., external) websites that we do not control or maintain, such as in connection with purchasing products referenced on our Website and banner advertisements. We are not responsible for the privacy practices employed by any third party website. We encourage you to note when you leave our Website and to read the privacy statements of all external websites before submitting any personal information.

 

8. Contact & Opt-Out Information

You may contact us as at info@parmigianoreggiano.us if: (a) you have questions or comments about our Privacy Policy; (b) wish to make corrections to any personal information you have provided; (c) want to opt-out from receiving future commercial correspondence, including emails, from us or our affiliated companies; or (d) wish to withdraw your consent to sharing your personal information with others. We will respond to your request and, if applicable and appropriate, make the requested change in our active databases as soon as reasonably practicable. Please note that we may not be able to fulfill certain requests while allowing you access to certain benefits and features of our Website.

 

9. Sole Statement

This Privacy Policy as posted on this Website is the sole statement of our privacy policy with respect to this Website, and no summary, modification, restatement or other version thereof, or other privacy statement or policy, in any form, is valid unless we post a new or revised policy to the Website.