Privacy Policy

Privacy Policy

Last Updated: June 15, 2018

Note Regarding Children Under 18

To be a member of the Novanty.com community, you must be a legal U.S. resident 18 years of age or older. Children under the age of 18 are not eligible to participate on this website.
How we collect information about you:

We collect personal and financial information about you that you provide. We collect most of this information during the registration process. There is some information that members are required to provide and other information that they provide voluntarily. Additional information may be gathered during your subsequent use of the site, whenever you choose to provide it.

Certain personal information must be supplied during the Buyer registration processes, as indicated below, in order to (a) determine eligibility for Group-Buys, (b) verify Buyer identities, (c) establish Buyer’s ability to participate in Group-Buys by verifying that they are at least 18 years of age, and (d) guard against potential fraud. This basic personal information includes:

§ Your name
§ Your email address
§ Your date of birth
§ Your address and telephone number

When you register, we will request the basic personal information and additional optional information in order to facilitate such activities as:

§ Generating a public Buyer profile on the site.
§ Enabling our financial services partners to implement fund transfers and the receipt of business payments.
§ Contacting you if there is a problem completing a transaction you requested or to discuss a problem with your account.
§ Maintaining regular communications with you as may be necessary to execute transactions you request, such as transferring funds.

In addition, we gather names and email addresses of people who contact us through our website with questions about our company operations. We collect this information for the sole purpose of responding to such inquiries.

Finally, we also collect information about your computer and your visits to our website, such as your IP address, geographical location, browser type, referral source, length of visit, and page views through the use of log files. We use this aggregated information in the administration of our website to improve its usability and to evaluate the success of particular marketing/advertising campaigns, search engine optimization strategies and other marketing activities. We use non-identifying and aggregated information to help optimize our website based on the needs of our users. No personal or personally identifiable information about any individual user is collected through this process.

We retain this information to satisfy legal requirements such as record keeping and tax and credit reporting requirements, as well as for purposes of fraud prevention, audit and data integrity.

We may also use information gained from you to determine certain overall User metrics such as average purchase size, purchase amounts, number of Group-Buys funded, average number of Group-Buys funded, and geographic location. These metrics better help us understand our user base and may be provided from time to time to businesses in order to allow them to better understand our user base. However, your information will never be sold and may be anonymized by your selection of a unique username.
User Referral Activities

Users may choose to refer friends to the site or directly to a Group-Buy listings via email or other social media. If this referral occurs independently of our site or a partner’s site, we do not track the referral other than as a unique page view. Since we do not collect any information from the referring party or the recipient of the external email referencing our site, we do not capture or store any information about either party. If friends refer each other to our site or to a Group-Buy listing via a partner’s site, we will store and track information about the referring and receiving parties only long enough to determine the effectiveness of our marketing activities which contributed to the referral.

Users may choose to electronically forward a link or page to a friend by clicking the “Share” link. The users must provide their own list of recipients in order for these emails to be sent. This information is not used for any other purpose and we do not store the names or email addresses of your friends. These are one-time only emails initiated by friends of the recipients, and the recipients are not added to any mailing list or contacted by Novanty.com apart from this specific email.

Our users can also refer friends to the site by completing a simple form to generate an email invitation. In this case, the email invitations do not track back to any particular Group-Buy, and the sender will not know whether you are a retailer, partner or simply a member. This information is stored for the sole purpose of sending this one-time email and tracking the success of our referral program. In the case where a bonus is offered to a member in return for the referral, Novanty.com will only retain the information about the referred parties to properly credit the account of the member initiating the referral. The information is not used for any other purpose.
Communications from us

When you register on our site you will receive emails that confirm specific actions you requested. These notifications are typically sent to notify you of a change in status, or for legal or security purposes. These are transactional notifications that you generally cannot opt out of receiving. We may also send you responses to emails you send us, if appropriate or applicable.

From time to time, we will also send user surveys, requests for user feedback regarding user experience and site operations, newsletters, event notifications, group leader notifications, or marketing Group-Buys from us or from us on behalf of our marketing partners. The completion of these surveys or requests for feedback, receipt of these newsletters or notifications, or acceptance of any Group-Buy is strictly voluntary. If you do not wish to receive these surveys or user feedback emails, newsletters, notifications or marketing consignments, please contact us at Info@Novanty.com.
How and When Your Information Is Shared With Other Parties

Information is shared with other parties in the following ways:

§ Required and optional information about Buyers is displayed on public profiles that users can update at any time; certain information is optional and you can choose not to supply it and/or can remove the optional information at any time.
§ Personal but not personally identifiable information about Businesses is contained in Group-Buy listings that can be viewed by all users; this information may also filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission and as such is made publicly available.
§ Financial and credit information about Businesses is displayed to qualified users on Group-Buy listing pages; may be filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission and as such is made publicly available; and is contained anonymously in Group-Buy data files available through Novanty.com Developer Tools and Marketplace Performance pages.
§ Information is shared directly between users and/or potential users. Information shared directly by users and/or potential users might contain personally identifiable information.
§ Information may be shared to meet any applicable law, regulation, legal process or enforceable governmental request, for the purposes of limiting fraud or in connection with the sale of Novanty.com to a third party.
§ Information may be shared with a number of trusted partners that perform vital functions as part of our operations.
§ Information related to overall user metrics may be shared with Businesses submitting Group-Buy or Businesses potentially submitting Group-Buys to better give these Businesses an understanding of our user base and typical user activity.

For privacy purposes, Buyers may remain anonymous on the site and are identified only by their chosen screen names. However, Local Businesses may have public profiles and Group-Buy listings on the site that display their information to any users who view these pages. The Group-Buy listing pages may include Businesses’ credit information and other financial information that is shown to qualified Buyers so that they can effectively evaluate Group-Buy Opportunities. As noted above, this information is also contained anonymously in Group-Buy data files. Group-Buy listings also contain certain personal information. Buyers also have public profiles on the site that display personal information that they have opted to include.

Novanty.com is not responsible for any personal information that Businesses or Buyers may choose to reveal about themselves in their screen names, Group-Buys, public profiles, or blog/forum posts. Given the community nature of any person-to-person transaction site, however, it may be in the best interests of Buyers to share some level of personal information in order to achieve a satisfactory outcome (e.g., it may be necessary for a Business to share a certain amount of personal information in order for the Business’s Group-Buy to receive full partner commitments). Further, User contact information may be provided to Businesses a user followed or funded. Users will have the ability to opt-out of the providing of this information should they so choose.

We may share your information with law enforcement or other government or regulatory agencies as required by law or for the purposes of limiting fraud. We reserve the right to disclose your personally identifiable information when we believe that disclosure is necessary to protect our rights and/or to comply with a judicial proceeding, court order, or legal process served on us.

Novanty.com works with a number of trusted partners that perform vital functions as part of our operations, including platform administrators, inventory Group-Buy servicers, credit bureaus, collection agencies, electronic payment service providers, quality assurance agents, and companies that distribute our emails for us or collect survey information from our customers. Information is shared with these third parties only to the extent necessary for us to process the transactions you initiate or to perform other specific services, like collections. Our partners are legally required to keep your information private and secure.
How Business Credit History and Group-Buy Status Information Are Shared

When we create a Group-Buy, we display Business’s listing—including their screen name, Novanty.com Score, and state of residence—publicly on the Novanty.com website. Registered Novanty.com Buyers will also see certain credit data collected from or calculated based on your credit bureau file as well as certain other credibility metrics in the credibility section of your listing. The credibility section may also include the following information:

§ Credit score range.
§ Debt-to-income (DTI) ratio.
§ Stated income.
§ The number of accounts on which you are currently late on a payment; this includes any unpaid charge-offs or other negative balances.
§ The total past-due amount you owe on all delinquent and charged-off accounts.
§ The number of 90+ days past-due delinquencies in your credit file in the last 7 years.
§ The number of negative public records in your credit file over the last 12 months, and over the last 10 years; negative public records include, among other things, bankruptcies, liens, and judgments.
§ The month and year your first recorded credit line was opened; credit lines may include, among other things, revolving, installment, and mortgage credit.
§ The total number of credit lines appearing in your credit file, along with the number that are open and current; credit lines may include, among other things, revolving, installment, and mortgage credit.
§ The total balance on all of your open revolving credit lines.
§ Your bankcard utilization ratio, expressed as a percentage, reflecting the ratio of the total balance used, to the aggregate credit limit on, all of your open bankcards.
§ The number of inquiries made by creditors in the last six months, as shown in your credit file.

It is necessary to allow prospective partners to see this information as they evaluate your Group-Buy Opportunities. As noted above, this and other financial and credit information obtained from a credit bureau is also contained anonymously in inventory Group-Buy data files. Such information may also be collected by using search tools such as LexisNexis.
Where You Can Find and/or Correct Your Information

You can access all of your personal and personally identifiable information that we collect online and maintain by contacting us at Info@Novanty.com. Most information on Businesses are collected directly via email or other methods, and not via creating a Novanty.com account.

As a Business, you can update your personal and business information at any time, and if you need to change any other information in your profile or request that we delete/remove your information, you can contact us at info@Novanty.com. To protect your privacy and security, please contact us at info@Novanty.com to make changes to your sensitive account information.

We will retain and use your information as needed to provide you services, to comply with our legal obligations, to resolve disputes, to enforce our agreements or as otherwise required by law.
Web-related Information Collection

Cookies are small text files created by a website that store information on your computer, such as your preferences when visiting that site. Novanty.com uses cookies when you sign in, to keep track of your personal session, including some account identifiers so that we can ensure that you are the only person making changes to your account. Cookies are also used to gather statistical data, such as which pages are visited, what is downloaded, the ISP’s domain name and country of origin, and the addresses of sites visited immediately before and after coming to our site, as well as your “click stream” activity (meaning, the paths taken by visitors to our site as they navigate from page to page) and transactional attributes in accordance with information you voluntarily submit in the course of using our site. These anonymous data are aggregated for analysis to ensure proper functioning of our site, in terms of navigation and usability, as well as to evaluate the effectiveness of our marketing efforts. We also use cookies to track your activity on our site as a unique person. We use session ID cookies to make it easier for you to navigate our site. Session ID cookies expire when you close your browser. We use a persistent cookie that remains on your hard drive for an extended period of time, so that we can recognize you when you return to our website. You can remove persistent cookies by following directions provided in your Internet browser’s “help” file; however, because we use cookies for our sign-in functionality, if you choose to disable cookies you will not be able to log on to the Novanty.com website. All of this information is stored in an encrypted fashion for security reasons, and no personal information about you is stored.

We use third-party tracking services (e.g., Google Analytics) that use cookies to track non-personally identifiable information about visitors to our site in the aggregate (such as page views and referral page information to track the success of our marketing efforts to bring people to our site as well as overall site performance). We also employ a software technology called clear gifs (a.k.a. Web Beacons/Web Bugs), that help us better understand user interaction with our website. Clear gifs are tiny graphics with a unique identifier, similar in function to cookies, and are used to track the online movements of Web users. In contrast to cookies, which are stored on a user’s computer hard drive, clear gifs are embedded invisibly on Web pages and are about the size of the period at the end of this sentence. We do not tie the information gathered by clear gifs to our customers’ personally identifiable information.
Links to Other Sites

We may offer links to partners’ sites. We make the decision to provide links to these sites based on the quality of information provided at the time the links are enabled, and we make every effort to monitor the continuing quality of content provided on these sites. However, these external sites are not subject to this privacy policy. Further, Novanty.com has no control over the content of these sites. Please consult the privacy policies on these sites before you provide them with any of your personal information.
Social Media Features

Our website may include social media features and widgets (“Features”), such as the Facebook Like button. These Features may collect your IP address, which page you are visiting on our site, and may set a cookie to enable the Feature to function properly. Features are either hosted by a third party or hosted directly on our website. Your interactions with these Features are governed by the privacy policy of the company providing it.
Compliance with State and Federal Laws

This privacy policy may not constitute your entire set of privacy rights, as these may also vary from state to state. To be certain of your privacy rights, you may wish to contact the appropriate agency in your state that is charged with overseeing privacy rights of consumers. Certain regulations issued by state and/or federal government agencies may require us to maintain and report demographic information on the collective activities of our membership. We may also be required to maintain your personal information for at least seven years in order to be in compliance with applicable federal and state laws regarding recordkeeping, reporting and audits.
Novanty.com Security Policy
Expert fraud prevention and protection

Novanty.com takes strong steps to safeguard your personal and personally identifiable information through vigorous physical, electronic and operational policies and practices. All data is considered highly confidential. Data can only be read or written through defined service access points, the use of which is password-protected. The physical security of the data is achieved through a combination of network firewalls (there is no direct communication allowed between the database server and the Internet) and servers with hardened operating systems are all housed in a secure facility. Access to the system, both physical and electronic, is tightly controlled and limited to only those employees or third parties who have a need to know. We do not allow visibility to Social Security number, bank account information, or credit card information via the website. Further, we also equip our servers with Secure Socket Layer (SSL) certificate technology to ensure that when you connect to our website you are actually on our site. SSL also ensures that all data entered into the website are encrypted. To verify that SSL is being used, look for the key or padlock icon on your browser. For further encryption protection, we use a 128-bit secure browser for logins and transactions.
100% Identity Theft Guarantee

Although Novanty.com has a stringent process in place to prevent fraudulent persons from using stolen identities to acquire inventory consignments, there are still limited times when identity theft may occur. Novanty.com will work with law enforcement authorities to track down and prosecute persons who have committed identity theft. If you are a Buyer who suspects that you’ve funded a consignment belonging to a person who has committed identity theft, please email customer support and include the Group-Buy number or identifier and the reason you suspect identity theft.
Secure data center

We store all sensitive financial information in a state-of- the-art, highly secure data center that adheres to SSAE 16 standards. Physical access to the data center is strictly controlled and we use the latest in threat prevention technologies including the very best in firewall, VPN, antivirus, Web filtering and antispam technologies.
Session time-outs

We also employ session time-outs to protect your account. You will be logged out of the site automatically after a specified period of inactivity. This time-out feature reduces the risk of others being able to access your account if you leave your computer unattended.
Protection of account numbers

When we contact you about your account to confirm a funds transfer, we only reference the last four digits of your bank account number; this is done for your protection so that you will recognize the source or destination account as one which you own.
What you can do

In addition to our own substantial efforts, you can take several precautions to protect the security of your computer and personal information. For instance, you can start by using a well-chosen password. You should avoid using any information that others can easily learn about you, such as a family member’s name or birthday, and you can also use special characters in place of letters. In addition, we recommend that you change your password frequently.

You can install and regularly update antivirus and firewall software to protect your computer from external attacks by malicious users. When you are finished with a session on our site, be sure that you log out and close the browser window.

To protect your account, we send automatic notifications confirming certain actions taken on your account, such as changes to a password or external linked account. We do this for your own protection so that you can be sure no one else is making changes to your account without your knowledge. However, the security offered through these notifications can be undermined if other people have access to your email account. Therefore, you might consider restricting access to the email account you registered with on this site and/or changing your password on that email account frequently.

If you use a computer that is accessed by other people, such as in a public library or Internet cafe, we recommend that you take special precautions to protect the security of your account and personal data. When you are finished using our site, you should log out completely, then close the browser window and clear the browser’s cache files.

You should also be aware of fraudulent attempts to gain access to your account information known as “phishing.” Phishing is a tactic used by scammers in which unsuspecting people are brought to a website by a genuine-looking email purporting to be from a legitimate company. The phony or “spoof” email takes the person to a website that looks legitimate but in fact is not. Either in the email itself or on this fake site, scammers will ask for login information to gain access to people’s accounts and withdraw their money. Novanty.com will never ask you for your login information in the context of any email. In general, you can protect yourself against phishing by never providing personal or login information via an email—instead, go to the website directly. You might also make it a habit to check the URL of a website to be sure that it begins with the correct domain. In the case of Novanty.com you should always ensure the URL begins with http://www.Novanty.com 
Changes to This Policy

If we make updates to this privacy policy, we will update the privacy policy with the changes and revise the “last updated” information posted at the bottom of this privacy policy. Any updates to the privacy policy become effective when we post the updates on the website. If we make any material changes we will notify you by email (sent to the email address specified in your account) or by means of a notice on this website prior to the change becoming effective. Your use of the website following the update to the privacy policy means that you accept the updated privacy policy.

For additional information, or if you have any questions regarding this policy or the privacy practices at Novanty.com please submit your questions or comments directly to info@Novanty.com via email. Any personal information you submit will be used solely to respond to your requests.

You can also send questions or comments to:
Novanty
Attn: Compliance Department
12404 Chippewa Lane
Burnsville, MN 55337
USA