Who We Are 

AIMS Education Foundation and The AIMS Center (“We” or “Our” or “Us” or “AIMS”) collects and uses your Personal Data in accordance with this privacy policy and in compliance with the applicable data protection laws. This policy provides you with the necessary information regarding your rights and our obligations, and explains how, why and when we process your personal data. AIMS Education Foundation, is a non-profit registered in the state of California, and acts as the data controller when processing your data. Our address is 1595 S Chestnut Ave, Fresno, CA 93702.

Our Privacy Commitment

AIMS does not collect nor process any Personal Data that is not provided by our users specifically, voluntarily and consciously. We guarantee that our staff complies with the strictest standards of safety and confidentiality and that processing of said Personal Data is carried out with total respect of international legislation.

What is Personal Data

In the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”) personal data is defined as:

“…any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person (‘data subject’); an identifiable natural person is one who can be identified, directly or indirectly, in particular by reference to an identifier such as a name, an identification number, location data, an online identifier or to one or more factors specific to the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural or social identity of that natural person”.

Information We Collect

We take your privacy very seriously and will never disclose, share or sell your data without your consent, unless required to do so by law. We only retain your Personal Data for as long as is necessary and for the purposes specified in this policy. The information we collect helps us deliver, protect, and improve our products, services, content, and customer communications. Personal Data is collected and stored if and only if you purchase a product or service from AIMS, sign up for our email newsletters, or fill out a contact or other online form. For the types of information we collect, see below.

Types of Information Collected

For purchases and service/event transactions:

  • Name, address, email, contact phone, (Optional; Purchase Order numbers)

  • Payment information via encrypted channel.

  • Other data collected for services/events will vary based upon the need for said data in managing or operating the purchased service or event.

When filling out a “Contact” or other form:

  • Information submitted via a “contact” or other form varies by form and is used to facilitate communication between us and is only used for the time period required to answer a contact request or to process the data provided in any other public form. Information provided on a public form does NOT constitute consent to receive our email newsletters, unless the form contains an “opt-in” consent checkbox or other such field.

How We Use It

We process your personal data to meet our legal and contractual obligations, and to provide you with our products and services. We will never collect any unnecessary personal data from you and do not process your information in any way, other than as specified in this policy. AIMS may use your email address and name to send transaction specific emails (emails regarding a product or service purchase or to provide product updates). AIMS may use the email and name provided on a “contact” or other form to reply to a public form submission. AIMS will NEVER send you marketing or news email except where you have expressly indicated your desire to receive our email newsletters. You are free to withdraw this consent at any time. There’s an easy to find Opt-Out link in the emails you may receive from AIMS.

Cookies & Anonymous Data

AIMS may use cookies to collect anonymous information such as browser type, operating system version and date of access. Our cookies cannot be used to identify users. A cookie is a small package of information sent to your browser and stored in the hard drive of your computer. A cookie in no way gives us access to your computer or any information about you other than the data you choose to share with us. We use the information we collect in this manner to better understand our users’ interaction with our websites and to optimize the user experience. You can disable cookies in your browser settings, but please note that certain features on our websites may not be available as a result. Here are some examples of non-personal information that we collect – either by ourselves or through the use of third-party services:

When you visit our websites we collect:

  • Browser type and language

  • Referring and exit pages

  • Operating system

  • Date/time stamp

We use Google Analytics to collect strictly anonymous information on the usage of our websites. If you’d like to block Google Analytics, follow the instructions here.

NOTE: As of May 25th, 2018, we have configured Google Analytics to not log actual user Internet Protocol (IP) address, but rather Anonymized (IP) addresses, which makes you non-identifiable in Google Analytics. This change was made to satisfy GDPR requirements. To further protect your privacy within Google Analytics we have elected NOT to use the following tracking features on our websites:

  1. No Remarketing

  2. No Advertising Reporting Features

  3. No UserID No Ad Exchange Links

  4. No Ad Sense Link

  5. No Postbacks

  6. No DoubleClick features

In our email communications, we may use other technologies like “pixel tags” and “click-through URLs” in order to determine if an email has been opened and which links have been clicked. This way, we can determine and improve the effectiveness of our communications. Pixel tags are small images shown inside an HTML email; you can disable tracking by disabling HTML in your email client. A link with a click-through URL, when clicked, first sends the user to a web server which records the click, and then to the link’s destination.

3rd Party Services

We operate our business in partnership with 3rd parties that operate with the leading standards of privacy applied. Here’s a list of third party services that we use, who they are and what type of data they store. If available, we also include the ability to opt out:

Mi9 Retail Ecommerce – PCI–DSS Compliant

  • Mi9 Retail hosts our Ecommerce website at: https://store.aimsedu.org.

  • Data they store: e-mail, purchase info & history of AIMS products. All payment information is always encrypted and is fully deleted from the system after 90 days of inactivity. Full credit card PAN is not visible to our processing staff. Payment solutions in use: PayPal and PAYA (formerly Sage Exchange/Sage Payment Solutions.)

Get Response and MailChimp

  • Get Response and Mailchimp are our 3rd party mailing list services.

  • Data they store: e-mail (required) and optionally any other data the user provides when signing up to receive our email newsletters. The optional data, if provided, allows us to provide more relevant content to our subscribers. Subscribers can manage their Profiles or Opt-Out completely by using the links provided at the bottom of each email sent.

    • https://www.getresponse.com/legal/privacy.html

    • https://mailchimp.com/legal/

Links to Other Web Services

Our site may contain links that belong to third parties. Any third-party website featured on our site has its own privacy policy. You should check their terms. We do not accept liability or responsibility for their privacy policies, based on our lack of control over these third-party links.

Age Limitations

We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 16. If we learn that we have collected personal information from a child under 16, we will promptly delete this information. Parents or guardians can contact us at chris@aimscenter.org.

Your Rights

You have the right to access any Personal Data that we process about you and to request information about:

  • What personal data we hold about you Purposes of the processing

  • The categories of personal data concerned

  • The recipients to whom the personal data has been/will be disclosed

  • How long we intend to store your personal data for

  • If we did not collect the data directly from you, information about the source

  • If you believe that we hold any incomplete or inaccurate data about you, you have the right to ask us to correct and/or complete the information and we will strive to do so as quickly as possible, unless there is a valid reason for not doing so, at which point you will be notified

  • You also have the right to be forgotten of your personal data or to restrict processing (where applicable) in accordance with the data protection laws; as well as to object to any direct marketing from us

Accordingly, you have the right to request access to your data or to instruct us to remove data permanently from our systems by contacting us at chris@aimscenter.org. Where applicable, you have the right to data portability of your information and the right to be informed about any automated decision-making we may use. If we receive a request from you to exercise any of the above rights, we may ask you to verify your identity before acting on the request; this is to ensure that your data is protected and kept secure.

GDPR Compliance

As a controller of AIMS Education Foundation customers’ personal data, we recognize our responsibility to respect privacy rights and to put in place appropriate standards of data protection.

What’s GDPR

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a new European privacy regulation which will replace the current EU Data Protection Directive (Directive 95/46/EC). The GDPR aims to strengthen the security and protection of personal data in the EU and harmonize EU data protection law. The GDPR applies to AIMS because we hold and process “personal identifiable data” of EU residents. Personal data is any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person.

What are the benefits for you with GDPR?

One of the key aspects of the GDPR is that it creates consistency across EU member states on how personal data can be processed, used, and exchanged securely. We able to demonstrate security of the data we are processing and our compliance with GDPR on a continual basis, by implementing and regularly reviewing robust technical and organizational measures, as well as compliance policies.

Confidentiality & Security

All communications between your web browser and AIMS, as well as between our software products and our servers, are secured by strong SSL encryption. Furthermore, access to Personal Data is restricted to employees directly involved in customer support and analytics – they have been trained to observe our strict standards of confidentiality and respect.

Questions & Support

If you have questions or wish to give us feedback on our current Privacy Policy, please contact us at chris@aimscenter.org.