Who We Are
MacRAE’S provides digital marketing and information services to North American businesses. In addition, MacRAE’S owns and operates a selection of business directories and data services providers including Scott’s Directories, MacRAE’S Blue Book, Profile Canada, and The Canadian Trade Index. MacRAE’S is wholly owned by Owen Media Partners Ltd.
Fundamental to our mission is to be transparent about the data we collect about our Users and how it is used and shared.
Our Commitment to Privacy:
MacRAE’S knows that protecting your privacy and confidentiality is important to you. This Privacy Policy governs the collection, use and disclosure of your personal information in any form, whether written or electronic, by MacRAE’S. The collection, use and disclosure of your personal information is governed by the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (the “Act”), and any applicable provincial legislation. This Privacy Policy explains what personal information may be collected from you and how it is used. It also explains how you can ask questions, make suggestions, and express concerns about our privacy practices.
Please be aware that our websites in all of their versions and formats may contain links to other websites that are maintained by third parties that are not required to comply with this Privacy Policy and for which MacRAE’S has no responsibility. Please review the privacy policies on any third party websites to determine their information handling practices.
If you have any additional concerns or questions, please feel free to contact us and we will address your concerns to the best of our ability.
What is Personal Information?
Personal information is any information about an identifiable individual. MacRAE’S is responsible for personal information in its possession and under its control. MacRAE’S has implemented policies and practices to give effect to this Privacy Policy, including training and communicating with our employees about the importance of privacy and implementing security procedures that reasonably protect the personal information you provide to us.
This Privacy Policy does not impose restrictions on business contact information (e.g. name, title, work contact information) collected, used or disclosed solely for the purpose of communicating with the individual in relation to their employment, business or profession; publicly available information, such as an individual’s name, telephone number and address when listed in a directory or made available through directory assistance; or information that is aggregated and not associated with a specific individual, including demographic information and statistics.
MacRAE’S may collect personal contact information (such as your name, address, email address and telephone numbers) through forms or other means of communication.
For our member-based web properties, such as Scott’s online portal, we will retain your subscriber ID and password to allow you to login to the dashboard and so that upon request by you we may remind you of them. We will also retain any user setting preference you set for the dashboard so that we can respect those settings.
We may retain transactional information (such as purchase history, a list of promotions offered to you, vouchers used, contests entered and coupons ordered) in order to fulfill your request for information, products or services, to respond to your inquiries, and to provide a more personalized experience on our Sites.
We may ask you to provide and update location preferences, which we use to gain a better understanding of your interests so that we may improve our products and services and develop new products and services and so that we can provide you with more targeted offers, advertising, information and content (including offers and other information that has been supplied by our affiliates and selected sponsors or advertisers), including on websites you visit (“Marketing Offers”). We may also collect, use and store your current location or a history or location preferences or settings to establish your location, improve your experience and, from time to time, to send you information, such as Marketing Offers, that is most relevant to your geographic location. You may manage how your mobile device and mobile browser share location information with us, as well as how your mobile browser handles cookies and related technologies, by adjusting your mobile device privacy and security settings. Please refer to instructions provided by your mobile services provider or the manufacturer of your device to learn how to adjust your settings.
We may collect demographic information, as well as express interests or category preferences, and may use this information along with your personal contact information and language preference in order to gain a better understanding of your interests so that we may improve our products and services and develop new products and services, and to determine your eligibility for other products and services.
We may also use demographic information, personal contact information, language preference, transactional information and express interests or category preferences to contact you about changes, enhancements or other notices related to products or services you requested from us or which we provide. In addition, we may use this information to send you Marketing Offers. If you do not wish to receive Marketing Offers, you may opt-out at any time by following the opt-out procedure below.
If you register for any Site using any social media login credentials, such as Facebook Login , we may collect, use and disclose your information from the social media account (such as email address and birthday in the case of Facebook Login) for the purpose of fulfilling your request for information, products or services, to respond to your inquiries, to gain a better understanding of your interests so that we may improve our products and services and develop new products and services, to determine your eligibility for other products and services , to contact you about changes, enhancements or other notices related to products or services you requested from us or which we provide, to provide you with Marketing Offers. Our access to your personal information will vary according to the particular social media credentials used. Please refer to the privacy settings of the social media website or application to determine how you may adjust our permissions and manage the interactivity between our properties and your social media account.
We keep notes and special instructions for members to help us fulfill your request and provide customer service. We may record or monitor your telephone calls with our customer service representatives for training and quality assurance purposes. We may also keep records of your interactions with our customer service team, and will use this information to fulfill your request for information, products or services, to respond to your inquiries, to improve our products and services and develop new products and services, to contact you about changes, enhancements or other notices related to products or services you requested from us, or to provide you with Marketing Offers.
We collect your credit card information or PayPal account information if you purchase services through Scott’s online shopping cart for libraries. This credit card information is used only for the purpose of fulfilling your order, or processing refunds or applying credit, if applicable.
If you choose to opt-out of any use of your personal information in accordance with our opt-out policy, we will keep your contact information and details with respect to your opt-out on a list so that your request can be honoured and we may retain your information to fulfill legal or regulatory obligations or for other purposes permitted by law. If you provide a complaint to any of our departments, we will collect your contact information and the nature of your complaint, for the purpose of investigating your concerns and responding to you.
Occasionally, we ask our customers to complete market research surveys. If you choose to participate in these surveys and provide your personal information for that purpose, your information will be aggregated as part of the survey results and shared with our advertisers, sponsors and affiliates in a manner that does not identify you. However, your information will also be used by us to gain a better understanding of your interests so that we may develop new products and services, to determine your eligibility for other products and services, and to provide you with Marketing Offers.
Other than as permitted or required by law, if we wish to collect, use or disclose your personal information for purposes that are not contemplated in this Privacy Policy, we will identify those purposes at the time of collection. You will be given a reasonable opportunity to opt-out of any such additional purposes.
Cookies and Online Behavioural Advertising
If you use any of our Sites, we may assign a cookie. A cookie is a small text file that is stored on your Internet browser and that can collect and store information. We use cookies to better understand how you use our Sites, to make sure our ads and dynamic content are served correctly, to improve the performance of our Sites and to improve your experience. For example, a cookie may recall a set of preferences you have set for our Site and record items that you have registered for. Storing cookies on your web browser allows us to present you with web pages and other content that are attuned with your preferences. For example, if you are a registered user, you may see a welcome page with your name on it. These activities are invisible to you, and are generally intended to improve your Internet surfing convenience. Unless you have set your preferences so that you will be alerted when a cookie is being stored on your computer, you won’t know about it.
If you are concerned about cookies, please review and adjust your web browser preferences. However, please be aware that by disabling cookies, you may not be able to use all portions of our Sites, particularly pages requiring registration.
We may place advertising or other links on our Sites that originate from outside advertisers and other third parties. If you view these ads, the advertisers may assign or recognize cookies. Scott's does not control these cookies, nor is it responsible for any marketing or other use of your information by these advertisers or other third parties.
Our Sites may use Web beacon, gif, or other technologies to better tailor and manage advertising on those sites. These technologies may be in use on a number of pages across web sites. When you access these pages, a notice of that visit is generated which may be processed by us or by our suppliers. These Web beacons or gifs usually work in conjunction with cookies. If you don’t want your cookie information to be associated with your visits to these pages, you can set your browser to turn off cookies. If you turn off cookies, Web beacons, gifs and other technologies will still detect visits to these pages, but the notices they generate cannot be associated with other cookie information and are disregarded.
Analytics
We use IP (Internet protocol) addresses to gather demographic and statistical information about our users, for systems administration and to diagnose problems with our servers, and to administer our Sites.
We may, from time to time, track and analyze anonymous usage and browsing patterns of visitors to our Sites to provide our advertisers with more targeted advertising opportunities and to help users see advertising that is most likely to interest them. We may use third party analytics service providers in order to gather such data on user behaviour.
We and our third party service providers may, from time to time, use cookies, web beacons and other technologies to track and analyze certain information about user behaviour and interaction with our Sites, websites operated by our affiliates or websites that are a part of our service provider’s networks (such as browser version and name, how you were directed to the relevant website, or to register with us, page views, date and time of registration or installation, details with respect to use of mobile applications and their functionality) and with e-mails we send to you (such as open and click activity), and about your device (such as device model and type, and OS version and name). We may use third party analytics service providers in order to gather such data on user behaviour, and to provide us with other data collection, reporting, ad response measurement and site analytics. This information is used to improve your experience, to help us develop new products and services, to gain a better understanding of your interests so that we may develop new products and services, to determine your eligibility for other products and services, and to provide you with customized advertising, customized content and Marketing Offers that we believe may be of particular interest to you. These third party service providers may also collect and use certain aggregated or anonymized information, which is subject to their own privacy policies.
We may combine personal information we have collected about you or received from you with publicly available records or with other third party information sources in order to better understand our customers and enhance our ability to provide you with products, services and Marketing Offers that may be of interest to you.
User Generated Content
All information, data, text, graphics, images, messages, reviews, opinions, suggestions or other materials created by Users on any of our sites, including but not limited to comment forums, is public information and may be used and disclosed by Scott's in accordance with Scott's User Agreement.
Who does MacRAE’S Disclose Personal Information to, and Why?
MAcRAE’S may disclose your personal information under the following circumstances:
We may disclose or share non-personally identifiable information with partners, advertisers, merchants and/or prospective merchants to help explain our business and the effectiveness of our business or for promotional purposes. For example, we may disclose aggregated demographic information which does not include any personally identifiable information.
MacRAE’S may transfer your personal information to third party service providers, which may be located outside of Canada (including in the United States), in order to fulfill your order or perform processing and other specialized services (such as credit card or payment processing, prize fulfillment of our contests, collection of overdue accounts, management of customer service requests, data analysis for purposes of managing and administering our business, delivery of Marketing Offers and other communications, product delivery, circulation auditing and industry accreditation).
Legal Purposes
MacRAE’S may disclose your personal information to third parties if you have violated our terms of service or conditions of purchase, or if we need to comply with applicable laws and lawful governmental requests, other legal and regulatory authorities, for other legal reasons (which may include lawful access by Canadian, U.S. or other foreign courts, law enforcement or governmental authorities) and as otherwise permitted or required by law.
Sale of Business
MacRAE’S may disclose your personal information on a confidential basis to parties connected with the contemplated or actual financing, insuring, sale, assignment or other disposal of all or part of our business or assets, including for the purposes of determining whether to proceed or continue with such transaction or business relationship or fulfilling any records or other reporting requirements to such parties.
Safeguards:
MacRAE’S has technical, contractual, administrative and physical security measures to protect your personal information in a manner that is reasonable and appropriate to the nature of the personal information you provide to MacRAE’S. For example, when you provide credit card information to us, we work to help protect the security of your credit card information by using industry standard secure sockets layer (SSL) encryption technology.
Please be aware that email is not a secure medium, and any personal information you send to us by email could be intercepted. If your communication is very sensitive, you should not send it electronically unless the email is encrypted or your browser indicates that the access to our Site is secure. Credit card numbers should not be sent by email. Materials posted to online forums such as bulletin boards or comment sites are public, not secure and may be viewed by anyone. Any personal information you post may be collected and used by anyone and may result in unsolicited messages from other Internet users. MacRAE’S is not responsible for personal information you choose to post or submit in any online forum on any of its Sites.
How to address concerns regarding your privacy. Should you have any concerns about your privacy or this Privacy Policy, please contact Customer Service at privacyofficer@macraes.com.
