Welcome to Friends of Michael Williams (“we”, “us”, “our”) official website (the “website” or “site”). We understand that visitors to our website may have questions about how this website collects and uses information. This statement informs you of the privacy principles that govern the site. By using this site or continuing to use this site, you agree that this policy governs your use of this site. The terms of this policy may be updated from time to time and you consent to these updates by continuing to use the site.

Browsing: This website does not collect personally identifiable information from your computer when you browse the site. This means that, unless you voluntarily provide us with personally identifiable information, we will not know your name, your e-mail address, or any other personally identifiable information.

Voluntary Information: You may voluntarily provide information to us in the course of using this website. By entering your name, email address, postal address, phone number, cell phone number, or other personal information in forms, registering, signing up, making a contribution, or otherwise providing the information through this website, we collect information you voluntarily provide. By providing this information, you consent to our contacting you through these means. Additionally, from time to time, we may share your voluntarily provided information to like-minded organizations.

Internet Protocol (IP) Address: An IP address is a number that is automatically assigned to your computer when you browse the Internet. When users request a page from our site, our servers log the user’s current IP address. We use IP addresses to help diagnose problems. We do not link IP addresses to any personally identifiable information about you.

Cookies: Our website uses cookie technology. Cookies are strings of text that a website may store on a user’s computer. Our website uses cookies. Cookies enable our website to keep track of your preferences and activities relating to the website. Our website creates session cookies for each visit in order to facilitate your visit. The session cookie expires at the end of the session.

Use of Cookies and E-Mails - We use a third party service provider to send e-mails on behalf of us. There are no cookies in the e-mail. However, when an e-mail recipient clicks on a link to Williams website included in the e-mail, a persistent cookie is placed on the user’s computer. This cookie is used to measure the effectiveness of our e-mail marketing efforts and better understand how our users navigate through the site. The cookie set by our service provider will remain on your hard drive 30 days after the last time you clicked on the coded link in the e-mail, or until you delete it.

Use of Cookies for Advertising - We use third party service providers to serve and host our advertisements. These third parties use persistent cookies to track the number of times our site is accessed and whether the site was accessed from the advertisement. The cookies generated from the advertisements do not contain personally identifiable information and may remain on your hard drive three or more years unless deleted by you.

The third party service providers mentioned above are contractually bound not to use any information they gather for any purpose other than providing services to us. Cookies do not corrupt or damage your computer or computer files. In addition, we do not use cookies to gather information concerning your visits to other websites. If you do not wish to receive these cookies, you may set your browser to reject the cookies (consult the instructions for your particular browser on how to do this), although doing so may affect your ability to perform certain functions on our website.

Pixel Tags: The third party service providers mentioned above serve and host our advertisements on other sites. To track the effectiveness of our advertisements on other sites, we use pixel tags (also known as clear gifs, beacon gifs, 1-by-1 gifs, or web bugs). Pixel tags are not visible to the user of the site and consist of a few lines of computer coding. If you are visiting our site from an advertisement on another site, the pixel tag references the cookie you received when you clicked on the advertisement. The pixel tag then registers this activity with the third party advertising company to allow us to count the number of times an advertisement is accessed. In addition, we also measure the responses generated from a particular ad. At no time is personally identifiable information about you collected by the third party advertising company, nor is any tracking information generated from the pixel tag allowed to be used by them for any other purpose other than to report website activity to us or allow us to better target future interactive advertising.

Our third party service providers may use pixel tags in our e-mails that help us send the e-mail in a format you can read, to allow us to know which e-mails you act upon and to better target the content of future e-mails. In addition, we track the aggregate number of e-mails read and whether any of the links in the e-mail were accessed. No other information is collected or used from pixel tags.

Securing the Transmission and Storage of Information: In limited circumstances, we may collect payment information such as credit card numbers and billing information where needed to complete a transaction such as making an online contribution. Your payment information is transferred over a Secured Sockets Layer (SSL) line provided you are using a SSL enabled browser. This ensures that your information is encrypted as it travels over the Internet. This secure mode is enabled before any such information is transmitted from your computer. You will know you are in secure mode when the padlock or key icon in the lower right-hand or left-hand corner of the computer screen appears in the locked position. In addition, when accessing a secure server, the first characters of the site address will change from http to https. After information reaches us it is stored on a secure server that resides behind firewalls designed to block unauthorized access from outside our organization.

E-Mail: When you provide your e-mail address, we will occasionally contact you via e-mail and provide information or updates that may be of interest to you. We use a third party e-mail service provider to send e-mails. This service provider is prohibited from using your e-mail address for any purpose other than to send our e-mail. Every time you receive e-mail you will be provided the choice to opt-out of future e-mails by following the instructions provided in the e-mail. We may share your email address or other personal information with like-minded organizations.

Links to Other Sites: If you choose to leave this our site via links to other websites, including those of advertisers, we are not responsible for the privacy policies or content of those sites, nor are we responsible for the cookies those sites use.

Children and International Visitors: Our Site is not intended for children under 13 years of age and no one under age 13 may provide any personal information to or on the Site. If you are under 13, do not use or provide any information on this Site or on or through any of its features/register on the Site, make any purchases through the Site, use any of the interactive or public comment features of this Site or provide any information about yourself to us, including your name, address, telephone number, e-mail address or any screen name or user name you may use. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you notify us or we learn we have collected or received personal information from a child under 13 without verification of parental consent, we will delete that information as soon as reasonably possible. If you are visiting our Site from outside of the United States of America, please be aware that your information may be transferred to, stored or processed in the United States, where our servers are located and our central database is operated, and governed by privacy laws of the United States and this Privacy Policy.