Our Commitment To Privacy
Your privacy is important to us. To better protect your privacy we provide this notice explaining our online information practices and the choices you can make about the way your information is collected and used. To make this notice easy to find, we make it available on our homepage.
The Information We Collect:
This notice applies to all information collected or submitted on the Santa Maria Hostel, Inc. website. On some pages, you can make donations, register for events and/or register to receive materials. The types of personal information collected at these pages are:
Name
Address
Email address
Phone number
Credit/Debit Card Information, etc.
All online donations transactions are handled by Greater Giving, a third party vendor. Please see their Privacy Policy below.
The Way We Use Information:
We use the information you provide about yourself when making a donation. We do not share this information with outside parties except to the extent necessary to complete that donation.
We never use or share the personally identifiable information provided to us online in ways unrelated to the ones described above without also providing you an opportunity to opt-out or otherwise prohibit such unrelated uses.
SMS opt-in or phone numbers for the purpose of SMS are not being shared.
Our Commitment To Data Security
To prevent unauthorized access, maintain data accuracy, and ensure the correct use of information, we have put in place appropriate physical, electronic, and managerial procedures to safeguard and secure the information we collect online.
Our Commitment To Children’s Privacy:
Protecting the privacy of the very young is especially important. For that reason, we never collect or maintain information at our website from those we actually know are under 13, and no part of our website is structured to attract anyone under 13.
How You Can Access Or Correct Your Information
You can access all your personally identifiable information that we collect online and maintain by contacting bpage@santamariahostel.org
You can correct factual errors in your personally identifiable information by sending us a request that credibly shows error.
To protect your privacy and security, we will also take reasonable steps to verify your identity before granting access or making corrections.
How To Contact Us
Should you have other questions or concerns about these privacy policies, please call us at 713-691-0900 or send us an email at bpage@santamariahostel.org
Greater Giving Policies:
Introduction
Greater Giving provides products and services to support nonprofit organizations and schools in their
fundraising efforts. In the implementation of these offerings, Greater Giving manages organization
and donor information and processes payments for clients. Ensuring privacy and security of the
information is an integral part of Greater Giving’s services and is the top priority for its operations.
This document describes Greater Giving’s security and privacy statements including the handling of
financial transactions and how the data is protected from loss.
Security Statement
Greater Giving is in compliance with the Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standard.
The Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standard offers a single approach to safeguarding
sensitive data for all card brands. This Standard is a result of collaboration between Visa and
MasterCard and is designed to create common industry security requirements. Other card companies
operating in the U.S. have also endorsed the PCI Data Security Standard within their respective
programs. The PCI Data Security Standard consists of twelve basic requirements supported by a total
of more than 200 detailed sub-requirements.
See https://usa.visa.com/merchants/risk_management/cisp.html
for reference.
Greater Giving has been certified as a Level 1 Merchant or Level 1 Service Provider with PCI.
Hence, Greater Giving has provided the following material as required for certification with the PCI
Data Security Standard:
- External Audit by a Qualified Security Assessor According to the Payment Card
Industry Data Security Standard
- Quarterly Network Security Scan Report by Approved Vendor
The PCI Data Security Standard defines requirements regarding securing cardholder information,
network security, encryption, data backups and disaster recovery, access control and monitoring, and
vulnerability controls in addition to several other topics and is considered a state-of-the-art program
for information security. Greater Giving fulfills the requirements as stated in the PCI assessment
audit guidelines and passes the network security scans by PCI-approved security audit companies.
Greater Giving used PSC as the PCI auditor, a leading security assessment company.
Greater Giving’s security policy covers several hundred aspects of protecting data and avoiding
fraud. Here are excerpts of the policy addressing frequently asked questions:
Greater Giving www.greatergiving.com
Collection and Storage of Cardholder Information
Any input and transmission of Cardholder Information over the Internet is encrypted using industry
standard encryption technology – typically 128-bit SSL. When Cardholder Information is stored in
databases, the information is securely encrypted. All of the encryption methods use industry standard
certificates. Cardholder Information is only stored for processing and then the data is deleted or
reduced to the first and last four digits of the card number. Card Security Codes are never stored and
are only used during the transaction and track 3 data from credit cards is not read.
Access and Sharing of Cardholder Information
Greater Giving’s Online Applications will forward the Cardholder Information only to the credit card
processing network. The only other access to the cardholder information is by select Greater Giving
employees who require the information for legitimate business purposes, such as the resolution of
cardholder disputes or to apply authorized recurring charges. This may involve sharing cardholder
information with Greater Giving’s credit card processor but there is no other sharing of the
information.
Physical Access Control
The servers running Greater Giving’s Online Applications and managing its data are in a hosted data
center with physical access control in order to prevent theft of the equipment holding cardholder
information. Only authorized personnel are allowed to enter the data center.
Electronic Security Control
The servers running Greater Giving’s Online Applications and managing its underlying data are
secured using industry standard practices. A firewall enforcing restrictions to the minimum number
of ports open to the public Internet is maintained at all times by certified personnel. Server software
is kept up-to-date with the latest security patches. Electronic monitoring tools send an alert on a 24×7
basis in case of non-responsiveness, high load conditions or other indications of penetration attacks.
Administrative access to the servers is restricted to very few select personnel who have been screened
for security concerns.
Data Archiving
Greater Giving performs continuous backups of the production data for recovery purposes. Any data
backups of cardholder information are stored in a secure facility and are completely erased when they
expire. The data on the archives maintain the encryption as defined above and are not allowing
decryption from the backup media because it requires a separate security certificate.
Greater Giving www.greatergiving.com
Protecting Sensitive Information
Only select personnel have access to sensitive information (including but not limited to card numbers,
bank account numbers, agreements, client financial details, or other confidential information) and
only if and when required for their job. If personnel receive sensitive information not required to
perform their job, personnel shall inform the sender and intended recipient, if known, and
permanently delete the information. Sensitive information shall be in direct possession or under lock
and key at all times. In particular, sensitive information shall not be sitting on desktops while away
from the desk. Sensitive information shall only be forwarded to other personnel if required by the job.
Any copies of sensitive information that are no longer needed are shredded if in paper form or
permanently deleted otherwise. Original records of sensitive information are only updated by
authorized personnel.
Security Reviews
Greater Giving periodically reviews the use, procedures, and actual source code of Greater Giving
products to ensure that there is no Trojan horse or other malicious use embedded in the product. The
review is performed by independent personnel who are not involved in the development of these
Greater Giving products. These reviews are scheduled quarterly.
Fraud Monitoring
Greater Giving uses certain heuristics developed specifically for Greater Giving Online Payments to
detect fraudulent use. If suspicious transactions are detected, the client will be notified and further
investigation will determine next steps.
Data Protection
Several of Greater Giving’s products provide websites with attached databases to manage data for our
clients. Protecting this data from loss because of server failures is part of the backup procedures and
the business continuity policy.
Greater Giving runs redundant hardware in its data centers. This starts at the server level, where
servers are equipped with hot-swappable redundant arrays of disk drives (RAID), multiple power
supplies and multiple CPUs. Each critical server is accompanied with a stand-by server of the same
configuration that can replace the server in case of a critical failure that the server level redundancy
cannot recover from. The data center has backup power from generators and multiple Internet
connections from different providers so that it is isolated from power failures and Internet
connectivity interruption by a single vendor.
Greater Giving maintains two data centers and subscribes to a commercial backup storage service in
order to protect the data. Incremental backups are run every 10 minutes and shipped to a secondary
location. Furthermore, on a rotating basis, backup tapes are pulled once a day and stored in the secure
commercial backup storage facility.
Greater Giving www.greatergiving.com
Financial Transaction Handling
Greater Giving processes credit card charges from supporters for its clients either using credit card
terminals at events or using online websites. The following describes the handling of those charges
and their deposit into client bank accounts.
Greater Giving creates a unique merchant account with its processing partner for each client to ensure
that each client’s payment transactions are handled correctly. A few days after the credit card charges
are settled, the payment processor transfers the funds to a special client trust bank account maintained
by Greater Giving. The Greater Giving client trust account is only used for the purpose of handling
client funds, issuing payments to clients and paying processing fees to the processing network. Client
funds in this account are never used to pay any operating expenses and these funds are never
intermixed with Greater Giving’s operating accounts. Within the client settlement period defined in
the agreement for payment services, Greater Giving transfers the funds, less the specified fees, due to
the client directly into the client’s bank account or by check.
Accurate and timely processing of the transactions are of paramount importance to Greater Giving’s
operations. Greater Giving selects its banking partners and payment processors based on their
financial stability and maturity of their processing operations. Greater Giving’s payment processors
for credit card terminal and online transactions process millions of transactions per year on a
worldwide basis and do so with high reliability and security. Greater Giving’s banking partners are
nation-wide public financial institutions with tens of billions of assets and operations well equipped
to handle the financial transactions behind the payments related products and services that Greater
Giving offers its clients.
Greater Giving has implemented an automated system that determines the transaction activity for a
client, subtracts its specified fees, issues the fund transfer for the client, and generates a summary
statement. Separately, clients receive transaction reports from their settlements either from the credit
card terminal or through the reporting available in Greater Giving Online Payments. This allows
clients to verify their summary statements of funds received.
Greater Giving has processed in excess of $3 Billion for more than 11,000 client organizations. Its
system has handled more than 6,000,000 individual credit card transactions with no outstanding
reconciliations.
Greater Giving www.greatergiving.com
Privacy Statement
The following defines Greater Giving’s policies for websites that it maintains either for its own
purposes or on behalf of its clients.
It is our policy that no information of any kind or from any source about visitors to this site,
our clients or our clients’ customers, is sold or released to anyone without the prior consent
of the visitor, client or client’s customer, or without a court order. This includes email
registration to mailing lists, contact forms, and browsing logs. Reports of website visitor
behavior are generated by our system. These reports contain personally identifiable
information only if you choose to identify yourself to us.
Non-personally-identifiable Information Collected by Our Site
We collect the following types of non-personally-identifiable information about users who visit our
website: your IP address (a unique number assigned to every computer on the Internet); domain type
(i.e., .com, .net, or .edu.); and standard information included with every communication sent on the
Internet. Information which we can infer from this standard information includes: your browser
version and type (e.g., Netscape or Internet Explorer); operating system (e.g., Windows or DOS);
browser language (e.g., Java); service provider (e.g., MindSpring or AOL) and; how you navigate the
pages you visit within our site (e.g. which pages you view).
If your browser allows, persistent cookies are placed on your system. These cookies remain on your
system and are automatically retrieved when you return to our site at a later time. It cannot be
associated with an individual, unless you choose to identify yourself. Our site is designed to function
equally well with cookies turned off. However, you may be required to sign in upon each visit if you
have chosen this browser option. Please note: We never place private data inside of these cookies. It
is simply a convenient place to store a single identifier to help us recognize you when you return.
A specific policy applies when Greater Giving maintains Web pages and processes data on behalf of
its clients, in particular, when processing payments through credit cards:
Your personal information will not be shared with anyone other than the client organization
and the payment processor to securely process this transaction.
The following explains further details on use of supporter information provided to the client
organization:
Although Greater Giving consults its client organizations to adhere to standard practices in
usage of the data provided, Greater Giving is not responsible for the information practices of
its clients. Client organizations may collect information from or about supporters, including
personal information. The collection, use, and disclosure of information by a client
organization are subject to their respective privacy policies, which may differ from Greater
Giving’s privacy policy. Greater Giving encourages supporters to review the client
organization’s privacy policy before providing data.