Privacy Policy

Last Updated June, 2024

Welcome to the Privacy Policy (the “Policy”) of Christian Counseling & Educational Foundation, and its related, affiliated or subsidiary companies (“CCEF”). The purpose of this Policy is to inform you how we collect, use, and share your information when you provide such information or use CCEF’s website available at www.ccef.org (the “Site”), as well as other related CCEF’s webpages, applications and products, services or content accessible through the Site (collectively the “Services”).

When we refer to “you” or “your” in this Policy we mean any individual who interacts or uses our Services. By using the Services, you represent that you understand and agree to this Policy, and consent to the collection, use, and sharing of information as described in this Policy. If you do not consent to our practices, you can choose not to use the Services.

Privacy Policy Changes. We reserve the right to modify this Policy at any time without notice. All changes are effective immediately upon posting. Your continued use of the Services after changes are posted constitutes your acknowledgement of the modified privacy policy and agreement to abide and be bound by that privacy policy. For reference, the effective date of this Policy is posted at the top of this page. Therefore, it is important that you periodically check this page for changes made to this Policy.

INFORMATION WE COLLECT

Information You Voluntarily Provide

CCEF collects information about you when you interact with our Services including information that you voluntarily provide when you use the Services; register and create an account for any of the Services; add or update your account information; register for CCEF’s School of Biblical Counseling, CCEF’s consultations and/or counseling services, CCEF’s National Conference and/or any other CCEF event; complete the Speaker Request Form, Copyright Permission Request Form, as well as any other application, survey, questionnaire, or form of information request from CCEF; purchase our content, products and/or services; share your experience with CCEF on any of our social media accounts; sign up to CCEF’s community to receive our weekly E-News and/or our ministry updates; subscribe to CCEF’s Journal of Biblical Counseling; make any donations to CCEF; submit a Contact Intake Form, or otherwise contact us via the Site, email, mail or phone call; log into the Site or use the Services from one or more of your devices or otherwise interact with the Services. Information that we collect may depend on how you interact with CCEF and use the Services. A description of the types of information we may collect is described in detail below.

Profile Data such as user name, password, and user settings.
Personal Identifiers such as first name, last name, maiden name, middle initial, nickname; date of birth; demographic information (e.g. gender, race, time zone, country of origin and current country of residency); and marital information (e.g. marital status, and spouse first and last name).
Educational Information such as highest level of education completed and languages skills (e.g. whether English is your first language and languages that you speak fluently).
Professional Information such as occupation and details about your ministry role and other information regarding your connections with CCEF (e.g. expected ministry goals to be achieved with CCEF’s School of Bilical Counseling, membership in CCEF’s Alumni Network, subscription to CCEF’s weekly E-News, prior participation in CCEF’s courses and CCEF donor/supporting church status), as applicable.
Contact Information such as your billing address, shipping/mailing address, email address, mobile phone number, home phone number and work phone number.
Financial Information such as billing information, credit or debit card information, bank account information, payment and donation details, or other payment and donation information.
Religious Affiliations Information such as, church, ministry or organization religion, name and website; church, ministry or organization details (e.g. leaders, audience, mission and goals); other details about events organized by the church, ministry or organization in connection with filing a Speaker Request Form (e.g. coordinator’s data, prior events hosted, event venue, event topic, event objectives, event length, event schedule and partnership with other churches, ministries or organizations).
Commercial Data such as purchase and/or donation amount, details about content, products and/or services that you have purchased through our Site, transaction records, and/or other details of content, products and/or services you have acquired from us or donations you have made to us in the past.
Usage Data, includes information about how you use our Site and Services, such as statistics regarding the opening and clicking on emails, other activities on the Site, including abandoned cart items, referring/exit pages, and clickstream data.
Marketing and Communications Information such as marketing campaign data, click-throughs, your preferences and consent to receiving marketing from us and third parties, your communication preferences, email, phone calls and text communications.
Audio and Visual Information such as video and audio recordings.

Information We Collect When You Use the Services

Automated technologies or interactions. As you navigate around the Site and/or use the Services, certain information can be collected using various technologies to help us personalize your CCEF’s experience. This information may include internet protocol (IP) addresses, browser type, internet service provider (ISP), referring/exit pages, operating system, date/time stamp, time zone setting and location, language preferences, device type and ID, and other technical information from the devices you use to access our Services.

Cookies and Tracking Technologies. We and our service providers use cookies, pixels, and other tracking technology to recognize your browser or device and to capture and remember certain information about your activities on our Services with the purpose of delivering customized and personalized services.

Cookies. A cookie is a small text file that is saved on your web browser when you visit a website. You can view and delete existing cookies through your browser. If you do not want to store cookies on your computer, you can set your browser to refuse cookies or to alert you when cookies are being sent. However, some parts of the Services may not function properly if you choose not to accept cookies.

Pixel Tags (aka clear gifs). These are tiny graphics with a unique identifier, similar in function to cookies, which allow us to monitor the use of our Services, for example, to count users who have visited those pages and for other related website statistics. Pixel tags generally work in conjunction with cookies, registering when a particular device visits a particular page. You cannot decline pixel tags; however, if you turn off cookies the pixel tag will simply detect an anonymous visit. In addition, we use pixel tags in our HTML-based emails to let us know which emails have been opened by the recipients. This allows us to gauge the effectiveness of certain communications and the effectiveness of our marketing campaigns.

Analytics. We use third party cookies provided by Google Analytics to assist us in better understanding our Site’s visitors. These cookies collect IP address and usage data, such as the length of time a user spends on a page, the pages a user visits, and the websites a user visits before and after visiting our Site. In addition to reporting usage statistics, Google Analytics can also be used to help show more relevant ads on Google properties (like Google Search) and across the web. For more information on Google Analytics, visit Google’s Privacy and Terms.

Information You Provide to A Third Party

We may receive information about you from third parties. We may associate this information with the other information we have collected about you as described in this Policy. The collection, use, and disclosure of information received from third parties may be governed by the third parties’ privacy policies. Please carefully review these third-party privacy policies before submitting your information to a third-party application or otherwise interacting with it to understand how your information may be collected, used, and disclosed by these third parties. We have no control over, and cannot and do not assume responsibility for the data collection and privacy practices employed by any of these third parties or their services.

USE OF YOUR INFORMATION

Our primary purpose for collecting your information is to provide you with the services you request. We may also use your information for the following purposes:

Provide you with our Services and to operate our business.
Verify your identity and account information in connection with our Services you request.
Provide you with required notices, updates about our content, products and services as well as other important information.
Provide you with recommendations for content, products and services that we believe would be of interest to you.
Assist you with setting up and managing your account with us.
Resolve disputes and/or questions about our Services.
Problem troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, system maintenance, support, reporting and hosting data.
Enforce the terms of this Policy.
Customize, measure and improve our Services and content.
For our own internal business purposes.
Communicate with you about content, products, services, updates, events, promotional offers, research, insights, and other information that may be of interest to you from us and our trusted partners.
Protect our interests, including establishing, exercising and defending legal rights and claims.
As necessary to comply with legal requirements, to prevent fraud, to co-operate with law enforcement and regulatory authorities, and to stop other prohibited, illegal, or harmful activities.
For purposes disclosed at the time you provide/we request your information or as otherwise set forth in this Policy.

INFORMATION WE SHARE

Service Providers

We may use third-party service providers to perform certain business services and may disclose your information to such service providers as needed for them to perform these business services. Service providers are only allowed to use, disclose, or retain this information to provide these services. Business services provided include, but are not limited to, hosting services; account authentication and user verification services; billing and accounting services; payment processors services; marketing, promotional and email services; customer and technical support services; quality assurance testing, and back-office support for the Services.

We use the Google reCAPTCHA tool to protect our Site from various types of abusive processing attempts. In order for this tool to work, reCAPTCHA analyzes various information that it collects from each visitor, which may include the IP address, mouse movements, length of stay, and other information gathered by Google. By using reCAPTCHA, this data is sent to Google and used to determine whether the visitor is a natural person or an abusive automated program (e.g. bot). You can find more information about reCAPTCHA at https://www.google.com/recaptcha. All information captured by the Google reCAPTCHA tool is subject to Google’s Terms and Privacy Policy.

Internal Third Parties

We may share your information with our affiliated entities, successors, predecessors, assigns, licensees, or business partners, and others who may use the information for the purposes described above.

Business Transactions

We may do business with third parties to whom we may choose to sell, transfer, or merge parts of our business or our assets. Alternatively, we may seek to acquire other businesses or merge with them. If a change happens to our business, then your information may be transferred to the new owners who may use your information in the same way as set out in this Policy.

Legal Process

Subject to applicable law, we may disclose information about you i) if we are required to do so by law, regulation or legal process, such as a subpoena; ii) in response to requests by government entities, such as law enforcement authorities; iii) when we believe disclosure is necessary or appropriate to prevent physical, financial, or other harm, injury, or loss; or iv) for the purposes of cooperation with law enforcement agencies’ and/or in connection with an investigation of suspected or actual unlawful activity.

COMMUNICATIONS AND OPT-OUT

While we value our communications with you, if you do not want CCEF or its representatives to contact you for marketing purposes, you may opt-out of this preference at any time by following the unsubscribe instructions included in the email. This opt-out will not apply to operational or informational emails related to your account or other administrative purposes. You may continue to receive promotional email messages for a short period while we process your request.

CHILDREN

The Services are intended for users aged eighteen (18) and older. If you are under the age of eighteen (18), you are not authorized to provide us with any personally identifying information, nor access or use our Services in any manner whatsoever. By using the Services, you represent that you are eighteen (18) years of age or older.

USE OF THE SERVICES

By accessing and using the Services, you acknowledge and agree that we control and operate the Services from our offices in the United States of America and that the Services are intended for use by users located in the United States of America. Unless expressly stated to the contrary, we make no representation that the Services are appropriate or will be available for use in other locations.

NOTICE TO CALIFORNIA RESIDENTS

Your California Privacy Rights. California Civil Code Section 1798.83 permits California residents who have provided personally identifiable information to us or our third-party advertisers and marketing partners, if any, to request certain information regarding our disclosure of personally identifiable information to third parties for their own direct marketing purposes. Requests should be submitted via email to customerservice@ccef.org and should include CALIFORNIA PRIVACY RIGHTS in the subject line. Please be aware that not all information sharing is covered by the requirements of Section 1798.83 and only information on covered sharing will be included in our response. This request may be made no more than once per calendar year.

Your ‘Do Not Track’ Browser Setting. Some web browsers incorporate a Do Not Track (“DNT”) feature that signals to the websites that you visit that you do not want to have your online activity tracked. At this time, our Site does not respond to DNT signals. CCEF may allow certain third-party advertising partners to place tracking technology, such as cookies and pixels on our Services. This technology allows us and/or third-parties to collect personally identifiable information about your online activities over time and across different websites.

CONTACT INFORMATION

If you have any questions about our privacy practices or this Policy, please contact us at:

Email address: customerservice@ccef.org