Who We Are and What This Policy Covers

RabbiGregMarcus.com is a website to help unaffiliated Jewish people find a Rabbi to help them create a life cycle event, work through grief or another difficult life situation, or to learn Jewish wisdom.

Your data is yours, and we’ll do our best to ask for your permission, and follow your requests when it comes to your data. And we’ll only ask for the minimal data necessary to fulfill our purpose.

We do marketing – sometimes it is by creating content we think you will like, and sometimes we use ads, like Google Adwords or Facebook ads. The reality is that advertising can help people more easily find an option that can help them on their journey.

Throughout this Privacy Policy we’ll refer to our website, email and other free or paid products and services collectively as “Services.” This includes one on one teaching or pastoral work, as well as group programs.

Below we explain how we collect, use, and share information about you, along with the choices that you have with respect to that information.

Information We Collect

We only collect information about you if we have a reason to do so–for example, to provide our Services, to communicate with you, or to make our Services better. We collect information in three ways: if and when you provide information to us, automatically through operating our Services, and from outside sources. Let’s go over the information that we collect.

It’s probably no surprise that we collect information that you provide to us. The amount and type of information depends on the context and how we use the information. Here are some examples:

• Name and email:We ask for basic information from you in order sign you up for a mailing list. We use an outside service to store and process our emails to you. Right now that service is AWeber, but it may change at any time without notice.
• Transaction and Billing Information:If you buy something from us–you will provide additional personal and payment information that is required to process the transaction and your payment, such as your name, credit card information, and contact information. We use Third party applications, like Square and PayPal to process those transactions.
• Communications With Us (Hi There!):You may also provide us information when you respond to surveys, emails, a comment on a blog post, or in conversation. We may take notes during 1:1 conversations, but this information will not be shared, unless as an anonymized and depersonalized example.

Information We Collect Automatically

Like most website operators, RabbiGregMarcus.com collects non-personally-identifying information through programs like Google Analytics. Our purpose in collecting non-personally identifying information is to better understand how our visitors use the website, so we can make improvements and better serve you.

The information automatically includes:

• Log Information:Like most online service providers, we collect information that web browsers, mobile devices, and servers typically make available, such as the browser type, IP address, unique device identifiers, language preference, referring site, the date and time of access, operating system, and mobile network information.
• Usage Information:We collect information about your usage of our Services. For example, we collect information about what happens when you use our Services (e.g., page views, email opens, link clicks, along with information about your device (e.g. mobile device operating system). We use this information to, for example, provide our Services to you, as well as get insights on how people use our Services, so we can make our Services better.
• Location Information:We may determine the approximate location of your device from your IP address. We collect and use this information to, for example, calculate how many people visit our Services from certain geographic regions. This is true in aggregate for visits to RabbiGregMarcus.com. In addition, when you sign up for an email list, our email provider AWeber stores information based on your IP address, including city, country and area code.
• Information from Cookies & Other Technologies:A cookie is a string of information that a website stores on a visitor’s computer, and that the visitor’s browser provides to the website each time the visitor returns. (Google Analytics uses cookies). Pixel tags (also called web beacons) are small blocks of code placed on websites and emails. It does use other technologies like pixel tags to help us identify and track visitors, usage, and access preferences for our Services, as well as track and understand email campaign effectiveness and to deliver targeted ads on Facebook from time to time.

Purposes for Using Information

We use information about you as mentioned above and for the purposes listed below:

• To further develop and improve our Services–for example by adding new videos or services that we think will answer community questions or meet their needs.
• To monitor and analyze trends and better understand how users interact with our Services, which helps us improve our Services and make them easier to use;
• To communicate with you, for example through an email, about offers and promotions, solicit your feedback, or to offer you new ways to think about your Jewish journey; and
• To personalize your experience using our Services. This includes delivering content or offers only to users with specific interests or in specific geographies. For example, we might inform you when Rabbi Greg is teaching in your area or on zoom.
• We reserve the right to measure, gauge, and improve the effectiveness of our advertising, and better understand user retention and attrition–for example, we may analyze how many individuals purchased a plan after receiving a marketing message or the features used by those who continue to use our Services after a certain length of time. We don’t do this today, but that part of business practice will allow us to more effectively serve the community should we ever decide to employ them.

Legal Bases for Collecting and Using Information

A note here for those in the European Union about our legal grounds for processing information about you under EU data protection laws, which is that our use of your information is based on the grounds that: (1) The use is necessary in order to fulfill our mission to help you on your Jewish journey. This includes both free and paid Services. (2) The use is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation – don’t know why law enforcement would subpoena us, but if they did we may be forced to comply; or (3) We have a legitimate interest in using your information–for example, to provide and update our Services, to improve our Services so that we can offer you an even better user experience, to safeguard our Services, to communicate with you, to measure, gauge, and improve the effectiveness of our advertising, and better understand user retention and attrition, to monitor and prevent any problems with our Services, and to personalize your experience; or (4) You have given us your consent – for example to receive emails from us.

Sharing Information

How We Share Information

We do not sell our users’ private personal information. We share information about you in the limited circumstances spelled out below and with appropriate safeguards on your privacy:

• Subsidiaries, Employees, and Independent Contractors:We may disclose information about you to our subsidiaries, our employees, and individuals who are our independent contractors that need to know the information in order to help us provide our Services or to process the information on our behalf. We require our subsidiaries, employees, and independent contractors to follow this Privacy Policy for personal information that we share with them. To the best of our ability, we only share the information they need to have in order to do the work requested.
• Third Party Vendors:We may share information about you with third party vendors who need to know information about you in order to provide their services to us, or to provide their services to you or your site. This group includes vendors that help us provide our Services to you (like payment providers that process your credit and debit card information, postal and email delivery services that help us stay in touch with you, email support services, a hosting provider, on rare occasions providers to assist us with our marketing efforts (e.g. by providing tools for identifying a specific marketing target group or improving our marketing campaigns), those that help us understand and enhance our Services (like analytics providers). We require vendors to agree to privacy commitments in order to share information with them.
• Legal Requests:We may disclose information about you in response to a subpoena, court order, or other governmental request.
• Business Transfers: If RabbiGregMarcus.com , ever merges with another entity, or enters bankruptcy, user information would be one of the assets that is transferred or acquired by a third party. If any of these events were to happen, this Privacy Policy would continue to apply to your information and the party receiving your information may continue to use your information, but only consistent with this Privacy Policy. (This is not very likely, unless Rabbi Greg starts another organization and folds this in.)
• With Your Consent:We may share and disclose information with your consent or at your direction.
• Aggregated or De-Identified Information:We may share information that has been aggregated or reasonably de-identified, so that the information could not reasonably be used to identify you. For instance, we might create a video to answer a question you send to us by email, we’ll answer in a way that keeps you anonymous and de-identified.
• Published Support Requests:And if you send us a request (for example, via a support email or one of our feedback mechanisms), we reserve the right to include the request in a de-identified way in an FAQ or other page if it helps the community.

Information Shared Publicly

• Information that you choose to make public is–you guessed it–disclosed publicly. That means, of course, that information like comments on public posts (not hidden pages) are all available to others. Public information may also be indexed by search engines or used by third parties. Please keep all of this in mind when deciding what you would like to share. And please keep all comments respectful, even if you disagree.

How Long We Keep Information

• We generally discard information about you when we no longer need the information for the purposes for which we collect and use it–which are described in the section above on How and Why We Use Information–and we are not legally required to continue to keep it. For example, when you opt out of our email database, we generally delete all of your information within one month.

Security

• While no online service is 100% secure, we work very hard to protect information about you against unauthorized access, use, alteration, or destruction, and take reasonable measures to do so, such as monitoring our Services for potential vulnerabilities and attacks. We try to keep the website plugins up to date to limit the chance of hackers exploiting weaknesses.

 

Choices About Your Data

You have several choices available when it comes to information about you:

• Limit the Information that You Provide:You may choose not to provide the optional account information, profile information, and transaction and billing information. Please keep in mind that if you do not provide this information, certain features of our Services–will not be available.
• Opt-Out of Electronic Communications:You may opt out of receiving email messages from us. Just follow the instructions in those messages. In some cases, you can opt out of some lists while remaining on others.

Your Rights About Your Data

If you are located in certain countries, including those that fall under the scope of the European General Data Protection Regulation (AKA the “GDPR”), data protection laws give you rights with respect to your personal data, subject to any exemptions provided by the law. But whatever country you are in, you have a right to:

• Request access to your personal data;
• Request correction or deletion of your personal data;
• Object to our use and processing of your personal data;
• Request that we limit our use and processing of your personal data;

You can sometimes access, correct, or delete your personal data using links in our email messages. Or, you can just email us your request, and we’ll do our best to accommodate you.

How to Reach Us

If you have a question about this Privacy Policy, or you would like to contact us about any of the rights mentioned in the Your Rights section above, please email greg at rabbigregmarcus.com

Privacy Policy Changes

Although most changes are likely to be minor, Rabbigregmarcus.com may change its Privacy Policy from time to time, and at Rabbigregmarcus.com’s sole discretion. Rabbigregmarcus.com encourages visitors to frequently check this page for any changes to its Privacy Policy. If we make changes, we will notify you by revising the change log below, and, in some cases, we may provide additional notice via email. Your continued use of this site after any change in this Privacy Policy will constitute your acceptance of such change.

Creative Commons Sharealike License

This Privacy Policy is based on Automattic’s Privacy Policy, available through its  Creative Commons Sharealike license. You can grab a copy of the original Privacy Policy and other legal documents on Github. You’re more than welcome to copy it, adapt it, and repurpose it for your own use. Just make sure to revise the language so that your policy reflects your actual practices.