PRIVACY POLICY
Our Privacy Policy
Small House Lab’s Privacy Policy covers the collection, use and disclosure of personal information that may be collected by Small House Lab anytime you interact with us, such as when you visit our web site (the “Site”), make a purchase, or register and download plans and other materials from the Site. Please take a moment to learn more about our information practices, including what information is collected, how we may use that information, whom we may disclose it to, and the choices you have regarding these practices.
Please note that Small House Lab’s Privacy Policy applies to use of the Site, and the terms described in this policy are made by this reference a part of the Terms of Use that governs interaction with the Site. This means that if you do not wish to consent to the practices described in this policy, you must not access the Site. Based on your ongoing acceptance of this Privacy Policy, Small House Lab grants you a limited privilege to access the Site. If you wish to continue to access the Site over time, it is your responsibility to keep abreast of any changes made to the Privacy Policy by subscribing to our RSS feed, where current amendments and modifications will be posted under the heading “Privacy Policy.”
Small House Lab is committed to safeguard the personal information of our online visitors. Please read the following policy to understand the treatment of your personal information and what options you have to direct our activities.
In accepting the Terms of Use (of which this Privacy Policy is a part), you acknowledge and agree that Internet transmissions can never be completely private or secure. You understand that any message or information you send to the Site may be read or intercepted by persons for whom they were not intended, even when you are notified that the information at issue has been encrypted.
Specific questions or comments regarding this policy should be directed to Small House Lab by sending us an email. A complete description of your rights and duties concerning use of the Site is given in our Terms of Use.
Why we collect personal information
Small House Lab cares about your privacy. To download house plans and other materials, you will need to register using our online registration form where you will be required to provide certain personal information. We collect your personal information when you are on the Site and when you register as one way to enhance our delivery to you of our products and information. Your personal information can help us keep you posted on architectural ideas and developments from a “small house” perspective. Email us directly if you don't wish to be contacted.
Upon request we will remove your personal information from our operational databases (unless your account is in dispute, in which case it will be kept until the dispute is resolved). In order to remove information, please contact us. Technical constraints and the fact that we back up our system may prevent the total elimination of all of your personal identifying information.
Occasionally we solicit additional information from you through the use of optional questionnaires. None of this additional information is required for your continued ability to download future house plans or continue use of the Site.
The nature of the information we collect and its possible uses
We collect information about Site users’ activities on the Site. This helps us make choices about the structure and organization of our website and our communications with users—choices designed with a view to creating more features you may want to take advantage of.
When you interact with Small House Lab, we may use your personal information to offer products that you have requested. In addition, we may gather information on patterns of interaction with the Site, which we store in log files. We do this for auditing, research, and analysis purposes aimed at improving our Site and your user experience. The type of information collected might include information such as demographic information, IP addresses, web pages viewed, referral/exiting pages, requested URLs, browser types, purchasing histories, timestamps, interactions with advertisements, and other data. We may aggregate this collected information (the result being "Aggregate Information"). We use this Aggregate Information, which does not identify individual users, to perform statistical analyses of user behavior and characteristics in order to measure interest in and use of the various areas of the Site. Aggregate Information and other records reside on our server indefinitely.
On certain pages of the Site, and with certain features of the Site’s offerings, we use cookies. You are always free to decline our cookies if your browser permits, although in that case you may not experience a fully customized experience.
If you send us personal correspondence or if other users or third parties send us correspondence about your activities, we may collect such information into a file specific to you.
We may collect credit-card information if you make a purchase through the Site, as well as keep information about products you express an interest in. We may also ask for your personal information when you speak with a representative of the Site regarding technical or service support, or when you participate in voting or polling surveys and other interactive areas of the Site. If you purchase a product for someone else, we will ask for personal information about that person relevant to your transaction, such as a mailing address. However, we do not sell information about you or those third persons to marketers.
We do not store credit-card information. Credit-card transactions are transmitted to a financial gateway, and we endeavor to protect the security of your payment information during transmission by making commercially reasonable efforts to use strategic partners who employ Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) or other advanced technology.
It is possible we will seek to obtain background information about you for market-research purposes. Data such as occupation can expand our understanding of our users and help us diversify our approach to fulfilling user needs, and so we may keep this kind of data on file.
Apart from reasons of legal compliance, Small House Lab does not use collected information for any purpose other than that for which it was collected. Small House Lab does not sell or rent your personal contact information to marketers. Small House Lab does not use information collected from you about a third party to market to that third party. And Small House Lab does not separate out personal data about you embedded in Aggregate Information to sell or rent to behavioral marketers who would use the information to market to you personally.
Use of your Information
We use your personally identifying information and information about your usage internally to improve our Site. We may use your contact information to send you administrative/renewal notices or information on new products, promotions, and targeted advertisements. While you may not opt out of the administrative/renewal notices, you may do so for the promotional ones by choosing this preference on your registration page.
While it is not our practice to monitor or review personal information and material you store on our site, we may access this information for system maintenance, troubleshooting activities or legal reasons. The information we place in the file that we maintain about you, including your current and past activities on our Site, may also be used for similar purposes.
When we disclose your information
There are also times when it may be expeditious for Small House Lab to share certain personal information about you with companies who help the Site operate on your behalf and with our affiliates. These companies may help us process information, extend credit, fulfill customer orders, deliver products to you, manage and enhance customer data, provide customer service, assess your interest in our services, prioritize new plan offerings geographically, or conduct customer research and satisfaction surveys (with which your cooperation is strictly optional). Small House Lab expects these companies to respect the privacy of our users, and employs diligence in selecting its strategic partners. It provides only so much of your personal information as is necessary to effectuate the purposes of these third-party relationships and your customized experience of the Site. However, if in the case of third-party services offered to you through the Site, you choose to use any of the services of such third parties, including our partners, advertisers, sponsors, affiliates, local government websites, local merchant web sites, message boards, and other content providers accessible through the Site, please bear in mind that these companies are likely to have their own privacy and data collection policies and practices. We have no control over these. Therefore, it is important that you check the privacy policies of these companies and service providers beforehand, to satisfy yourself you wish to interact with them, for example, by clicking on their links.
We collect Aggregated Information and disclose this information to advertisers and use it for other marketing and promotional purposes. We do not disclose to third parties any information that could reasonably be used to personally identify or contact you.
We may use third parties to collect information about our users and their traffic patterns, for example, as mentioned above, to prioritize new plan offerings geographically. In some instances, such third party may collect information directly from you (for example, we ask a third party to conduct a survey for us). These companies may also use cookies as well as other tracking technologies, such as web beacons (also known as clear GIFs, web bugs, tracking pixels or action tags), which are similar in function to cookies, allowing them to determine when users have reached particular web pages on the Site. We contractually restrict how they may access, use and disclose your information. We do not permit the sale of your information to third parties by these contract parties.
Small House Lab has links to other sites. Small House Lab is not responsible for the privacy practices of any of these linked-to sites. Only by investigating them yourself can you reach a proper determination about giving them your information.
At times Small House Lab may disclose your personal information if we are required or permitted to do so by law, in response to governmental request, or during litigation. In addition, we may disclose information about you if for national security, law enforcement, or other issues that impact the public, such disclosure appears to us necessary or compelling. We can (and you authorize us to) disclose any information about you that we, in our sole discretion, believe is necessary or appropriate, in connection with an investigation of fraud, infringement of intellectual property rights, third-party lawsuits, or other activity that is illegal or may expose us to legal liability.
How we protect your personal information
Small House Lab takes precautions to safeguard your personal information against loss, theft, and misuse, as well as unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration, and destruction. These measures include training its personnel in Small House Lab policies, providing secure physical facilities, and using market-tested encryption that helps protect the confidentiality of your personal and credit-card information while it’s transmitted over the Internet.
If a transaction requires your credit-card information to be processed by a third party, such as Paypal, Small House Lab uses providers of payment-processing solutions who maintain best practices in the area of online data safety.
You acknowledge that no security measures protecting the transmittal of data over the Internet are foolproof. You can help keep your information secure by maintaining a safe, accurate and complete profile. Periodically checking and correcting your personal profile can help avoid mishaps. Be cautious with your information while on the Internet; change your password often, using a combination of letters, symbols, and numbers; and make sure you use a secure web browser. Please remember that you may not disclose or share your Small House Lab password with any third party. If you lose control of your password, you may lose substantial control over your personal identifying information and may be subject to legally binding actions taken in your name. Therefore, if your password has been compromised for any reason, you should immediately change it in your personal profile.
Small House Lab uses industry standard efforts to safeguard your personal identifying information. However, “perfect security” does not exist on the Internet and third parties may intercept or access transmissions and your private communications. Therefore, we do not promise, and you not expect, that your personal identifying information or private communications will remain private in all cases. Nevertheless, we take reasonable precautions to keep your information safe.
Children
The Site does not knowingly collect or solicit personal information from or about children under the age of 13, except as permitted by law. If we discover we have received any information from a child under the age of 13 in violation of this policy, we will attempt to delete that information as soon as possible. If you believe the Site has any information from or about anyone under the age of 13, please contact us. Children under the age of 13 are specifically prohibited from registering and downloading from the Site.
Changes to this Privacy Policy
We reserve the right, at our discretion and at any time, to change, modify, add, or remove portions of this Privacy Policy. We will post these amendments on this page. They will become effective as soon as they are posted. We will notify you of all material changes by prominently posting notices and specifics of them on our website and simultaneously on our RSS feed under the heading “Privacy Policy.” You are responsible for keeping current with the version of our Privacy Policy that is in force at any given time.
Changes to this Privacy Policy may affect our use of personal information that you provided us before our notification to you of the changes. If you do not wish to permit any of these changes in our use of your personal information, you must notify us that you wish to deactivate your account with us. Continued use of the Site following publication shall indicate your acknowledgement of these changes and agreement to be bound by the new set of terms and conditions that incorporate them.
E-mails and Opt-out
You may opt-out of receiving notifications from us by changing your notification settings in your personal profile. Despite your indicated e-mail preferences, you are still responsible for checking our RSS feed for legal notices. You are also responsible for updating your personal information to provide us with your current e-mail address. In the event that the last e-mail you have provided us is not valid, or for any reason we are not capable of delivering to you certain important legal notices, our last dispatch of the e-mail containing such notice will nonetheless constitute effective notice of the contents described in the notice.
Non-U.S. Users
If you are a non-U.S. citizen, by downloading Small House Lab plans or by providing any personal identifying information, you explicitly grant us the right to transfer that information to the United States government.
(Last updated: August 2012)