PRIVACY POLICY
Our church changes constantly, so we may amend this Policy from time to time – your continued use of this service acts as your agreement to any amendments, of which you will always receive notice. This Policy was last revised on December 30th, 2019.
The Universal Life Church Ministries herein referred to as “the ULC”, “the Church”, “we”, and “our”) cares about the privacy of visitors (herein referred to as “you” and “yours”) to our site. We also know you care how information about you is used and shared, and we appreciate your trust that we will do so carefully and sensibly. Please read on for a full discussion/understanding of privacy policy and how we may utilize, disclose, and protect this information. By visiting our websites, you accept the practices described in this Privacy Notice and our Terms of Use.
1. What Information We Collect
There are three types of information we collect or use. The first is personally-identifying information, which is information provided by you and includes your name, email address, telephone number, and physical address. The second type of information we collect or use is your financial information. This is information provided by you when you make a purchase, such as your credit card number. The final type of information is automatic, non-personal information. This is data obtained from your computer when you visit one of our web properties and includes things like cookies, your IP address, and your browsing activity on our sites (e.g. the date and time you visited, how much time you spent on the site, the areas or pages you visited, etc.).
2. How We Use Your Information
2.a Personally-Identifying Information In order to provide you a legal and valid ordination, we require all of our ministers to provide us with their full legal name, email address, and physical address. This personally-identifying information is collected to, among other things, verify your identity, populate our member records, and aid us in generating legally valid ministerial documents for you if you choose to acquire any of these from our online store. We may also use it to contact you if necessary. Your personal information is stored in our secure records. As a valid church, the law requires that we retain this personally-identifying information in our records. The storage and utilization of this data is vital to the operations of the Church and the activities of its ministers around the world. The member-ministers of the Church often perform activities, like wedding ceremonies, in the public sphere that can and often do require the Church to verify and endorse these tasks on an organizational level.
2.b Should any of your personal information change, such as your name or address, we require that you contact us to update your records accordingly. We have also made it possible for registered members to update some of their account information on the website itself by accessing the information editor located in the “My Account” section of the website once you have logged in using the email address and password you used when you became ordained/created your account. In this section, you will also be able to privately review your historical order information and any other personally-identifying information you have submitted to the site.
2.c Financial Information Should you ever make a purchase in our online store, we may also need to collect your credit card number, credit card expiration date, and billing address (“financial information”). This information is securely stored and is used only to process payment and fulfill your order. Only authorized personnel have access to this information, and the most sensitive elements are largely obfuscated internally to provide an additional level of protection. Your financial information will never be shared for any other purpose with outside or third parties. We limit the time we maintain your financial information to the minimum required to satisfy all legal and business requirements. When your transaction is completed, your financial information is permanently deleted from our systems, unless you initiate post-transaction activity (e.g. initiating a chargeback proceeding with your bank).
2.d Non-Personal Information Automatic, non-personal information such as cookies is used to improve our products, services and operations; to detect and investigate activities that may violate our policies or be illegal; and to keep track of activity on our websites. Because many of the religious activities of the Church occur in the cyber-sphere, we strive to improve and expand these services for our users on a daily basis. Cookies are digital files stored on your computer, and are not stored anywhere online. Wherever possible, we do additionally seek user consent and seek to inform the user about how and why their information will be collected and stored, but a user’s continued usage of the Church’s online services is her or his agreement and consent with both this Privacy Policy. When a user initially requests ordination with the Church, they must affirmatively click a button opting-in to the storage and utilization of the information as described herein, and in geographic areas where it is required users have the ability to opt-in to receive additional communications (i.e. bi-monthly email newsletters) from the Church.
2.e We also work with third party partners and tools, like Google Analytics, to make constant improvements to our online environment to ensure that it is working effectively and efficiently. As these partners and tools analyze our online performance they may have access to some of the automatic non-personal information, but will never have access to your personally-identifying or financial information.
2.f Your Data Rights The Church stores and utilizes the information that it does in order to continue providing high quality services to its member-ministers around the world. We acknowledge that individuals have the right to control when and how their personal data is stored and used and as such have made provisions for both the deletion and sharing of any information collected at the request of the user who provided that information. If you would like a copy of the personally-identifying information the Church has collected about you, please contact our support staff and request that that data be sent to you electronically. You can contact our support staff and make this information request either by emailing help@themonastery.org, or by writing to us at 1425 Broadway, Ste. 67, Seattle, WA 98122. After your request has been processed and your identity verified, your information will be dispatched to you electronically within 30 days. You may be asked by a member of our support staff to produce legally valid proof of your identity before any information request you make is processed, and we will be unable to honor any information access, change, or deletion request until we are assured you are the individual whose data will be affected.Please note that you can always view all of the personally-identifying information you have submitted to the Church yourself by logging into your minister account on our website and navigating to the account information and account settings sections, without the need to make a formal request.
The Church maintains that it is legally obligated to store some essential personally-identifying information - like your name and address - that you submitted as part of the ordination process indefinitely. We will in all cases be unable to permanently delete this information from our servers. Some of the information you may have entered as a minister however, like your telephone number, may not be considered essential. You have the right to contact the Church at any time to make a formal request that any non-essential personal information is permanently deleted. If you would like to make this request, please contact our support team. After your request has been processed and your identity verified, within 30 days your non-essential personal information will be deleted from all Church servers and will be deleted from the servers of any third party with whom that information was shared (please see Section 3 of this policy for more information about when and how your information may be shared with third parties). Please note that many of the online services and tools provided by the Church will not be available to you when your data is deleted. The Church deems your request to have any of your data deleted to be a simultaneous request to have your ordination revoked and your name removed from its minister rolls. You will no longer be able to perform legally valid ceremonies under the umbrella of the Universal Life Church and you will no longer be able to log-in to your account created on any of our websites. If your request to be sent a copy of your information or your request for your non-essential information to be deleted is denied, we will inform you in writing why your request was denied and give you information about the options still available to you within 30 days.
Visitors to the Church’s online properties may have specified Do Not Track (DNT) settings in their web browser prior to their access of those properties. The online properties and platforms operated by the Church do not respond to Do Not Track signals. There is no established legal standard in place for how DNT signals ought to be honored, so at this time we do not respond to them. We anticipate and intend to honor any standard that is established in the future as internet privacy laws continue to evolve.
3. Disclosure And Sharing
3.a We will never sell or rent to any third party your personal or financial information you provide to us, unless you give us consent. Nor will we use personal or financial information in ways not described in this Privacy Policy. From time to time the Church may contract with third parties to conduct surveys or assist us with the creation and distribution of marketing materials directly pertaining to the Church and its services. In such cases, we may provide your email address to these third parties, but we will not share any other personally-identifying information, and never any financial information.
3.b The Church offers pages on our site, such as our forum and our guest book, where users may enter personal information. These pages are publicly accessible and available to third parties via public search engines offering search services. Your entry of data is voluntary, and you assume all liability for what you enter, and agree to hold us harmless from any liability or harm that may occur. If a written request is made to remove any personally-identifying content in one of these areas of the site, the Church will make every effort to remove that information in a timely manner from its sites and servers, but cannot guarantee complete removal from the internet or other sites and users that have captured the data.
3.c At times, we may be required by law to disclose personal information, such as to law enforcement or by court order. By submitting your personal information you authorize us to disclose personal information to law enforcement or to comply with a proper legal order or requirement, as we, in our sole discretion, believe necessary.
3.d We utilize carriers, such as the US Postal Service, to fulfill orders, deliver packages and mail. We also utilize companies to process credit card payments. These third parties have access to some of your personal information needed to perform their limited functions, but are not permitted to use it for other purposes.
3.e As part of our services, our websites often contain links to third-party websites, which may have privacy policies that differ from our own. The ULC is not responsible for the content or privacy practices on those websites. We recommend that you review the privacy policy posted on any site that you may access through our websites.
3.f Certain areas of the site may allow you to log-in to your account via a third-party, independent social media service. When you elect to do so, we may gain access to some of your account information associated with that service, such as your name or other information. The types of information that may be provided is determined and authorized by the policies of the specific third-party social media service used. You do not need to utilize a third-party social media service to access any area of the site, and you may disable the connection you’ve established between your account on the third-party social media service and our site at any time.
4. Those under the age of 18
4.a The Church does not direct its products or services to minors. Furthermore, the Church does not ordain or sell to persons under the age of 18. We do not knowingly collect any personal information from children, and anyone under the age of 18 may use our sites only with the involvement of a parent or guardian.
4.b By entering your personal and sensitive information as part of the ordination/registration process and clicking the submit button (as is indicated on that page) you agree that you are 18 years of age or older and are authorized to do so. If we suspect than an individual has registered/become ordained on the site while under the age of 18 or using false information, we will promptly cancel the ordination and delete this information. If you suspect that an individual under the age of 18 has registered for ordination, please alert us by emailing help@themonastery.org and we will follow up appropriately
5. Security & Integrity
The security, integrity, and confidentiality of your information are important to us. We have implemented technical, administrative, and physical security measures to protect your information from unauthorized access, misuse, disclosure, and alteration by unauthorized third parties. Please be aware that, despite our best efforts, no data transmission over the Internet can be guaranteed to be 100% secure, and no security measures are perfect or impenetrable. Any transmission of your data on or using the ULC websites is at your own risk.
The Church has gone to considerable effort to ensure the integrity and security of its online and offline systems, and continues to work diligently to ensure that the information of all of its users is well-protected. In the unlikely event of a data breach, the Church will immediately assess to what extent the personal data of ministers was accessed, will report this breach to the proper authorities, and whenever necessary will alert users who were personally affected by this breach and advise them to what extent their information was improperly accessed.
7. Questions or Concerns
If you have any questions or concerns about any of the elements of our Privacy Policy described above, we would invite you to contact our office by sending a message to our support team at help@themonastery.org. If you have a more general question about the Universal Life Church and its ordinations and products, you may find that these are answered on our Frequently Asked Questions page. If you have more general questions about this website and its usage, you may find the answers to these in our Terms of Use. If you have a specific question about our policies related to shipping or returns, you may find an answer in our Shipping and Returns Policy.
