Privacy Policy
IntroductionVANTAGE ORTHOTIC TAKES PRIVACY SERIOUSLY. At VANTAGE ORTHOTIC ("VANTAGE"), we are committed to protecting the privacy and security of our customers and site visitors, including you. The VANTAGE team members are customers themselves, both of VANTAGE and other Internet sites. We therefore fully appreciate and respect the importance of data privacy and security on the Internet. Please read the following to learn more about our privacy policy (“Privacy Policy”). This Privacy Policy applies to the use of the Services (as defined below), including by customers and other persons. Except as otherwise indicated, customers and other persons using the Services are individually and collectively referred to as “you”, “your” or “Customer”, and VANTAGE and its subsidiaries and affiliates are referred to as, "VANTAGE", "we", "us" and "our."The family of Web sites operated by or on behalf of VANTAGE (the "Services"), including, but not limited to, Web sites located at www.vantageorthotic.com, our blog(s), and any other Web site(s) owned and/or operated by VANTAGE and any of their associated Web pages, are committed to implementing policies and procedures designed to protect your privacy and security, in addition to providing you with the best possible online experience. To achieve that goal, we want you to understand what kinds of information we gather from and about you, how this information is used, shared and safeguarded, and how you can control its use. In order to offer various products and services to our Customers, VANTAGE needs to collect certain information as described in this Privacy Policy.Our Over-arching Data Principles:Everything we do relating to your information is covered by the following over-arching data principles:
Your information belongs to you, not us – you should be able to control it, and you should know about, and be comfortable with, everything that we do with your information;
We will only collect, keep, use and share your information either (a) for genuine business purposes that we’ve explained clearly to you and that you haven’t objected to, or (b) where we’re legally required to do so – and as soon as those purposes have been fully achieved, we will delete your information;
We will be as clear and open as we can with you on what information we collect, why we collect it and how we use it, so you are informed and able to make decisions to control your information in the ways you’re comfortable with;
As long as we have your information, we will keep it up to date and protect it as if it was our own sensitive information, using appropriate security safeguards, having kept on top of and appropriately taken into account the latest industry standards and best practice.Information We Collect From You:Information we, our service providers and other third-parties, collect from you will vary, depending on how you use the Services and information you may choose to provide to us (whether through email, phone, internet or otherwise).
Personal Information: We, our service providers and other third-parties, may require Customers who visit the Services and/or purchase products on the Services to give us personally identifiable information (“Personal Information”). Personal Information is individually identifiable information about you, your friends and contacts, that we collect online, including, but not limited to, your full name, a user name and password, email address, phone number, physical address, financial information, and your credit card information and other billing information. Information in a form that (a) is aggregated with other information, (b) anonymized, or (c) is otherwise is detached, combined, organized, segmented, modified or processed, in each case so as not to be reasonably capable of being associated with you, will not be considered Personal Information, and will not be restricted by this Privacy Policy as to use, sharing or otherwise. You can choose not to provide us with Personal Information, but then you may not be able to fully take advantage of certain features of our Services and we may not be able to provide you with certain requested information, products and/or services. When you use our Services, we automatically collect information on the type of device you use and operating system version.If you create an account using your login from a third party service, like Facebook or Twitter, we will access and collect the information that your privacy settings on that third party service permits us to access so that we can create your account for you. We will also collect the contact information of your friends, if you choose to connect your contacts and address book information with your account, so that you can connect with your friends when you use our Services.
Automatic Collection of Information: Like many Web sites on the Internet, we automatically track certain information about you as you visit and use our Services to help us (i) better understand, improve and modify the Services, (ii) better understand how the Services are used and experienced, and (iii) better understand how we can enhance your or others overall experience on one or more of the Services, including providing advertising and other information that is relevant to you. This tracked or automatically gathered information may include, among other things, your computer’s IP address (Internet Protocol address), browser type, the URLs and pages on the Services you’ve visited, sections of or content on pages on the Services on which you click or in which you are interested, the number of times you visit each page on the Services, what downloads and/or search queries you have made, and how long you spent on particular sections of the Services and on the Services generally. This automatically gathered data includes information provided through the use of "cookies", local storage, e-tags, log files and "clear GIFs" (described in more detail below). We do not link this automatically collected data to other information we collect about you.
Information from Cookies: When you visit our Services, we may send a small file to your computer (a “cookie”) which is stored there so that we can recognize your computer as a unique machine the next time you visit the Services, and which also enables us to, among other things, to tailor the Services to your’s and other users’ needs. You are always free to decline any cookies we use if your Internet browser permits. However, please note that by declining cookies, certain functionalities of the Services will not be available to you, including that you will not be able to establish a shopping cart session or make a purchase online through the Services. Additionally, some of our third-party service providers working on our behalf may also utilize their own cookies.
Information from Clear GIFs: Also, we and our third-party service providers sometimes use "clear GIFs" in connection with cookies and other website functions and emails. Clear GIFs perform administrative functions (but without detracting from your online experience), including being used to perform statistical and administrative tasks such as measuring traffic on the Services and its Web pages, verifying advertising avenues and positioning images on the web, and allowing us to gauge the effectiveness of certain communications and email marketing campaigns by letting us know which marketing emails have been opened by you or other recipients. However, please note that clear GIFs do not collect Personal Information.
Information from E-Tags and Scripts: We and our third-party service providers use e-tags and scripts in analyzing trends, administering the Web site, tracking users’ movements around the site, and gathering demographic information about our user base as a whole. We may receive reports based on the use of these technologies by these companies on an individual and aggregated basis. Also, our third party partner may use technologies such as tags and scripts to gather information about your activities on this Web site and other sites in order to provide you advertising based upon your browsing activities and interests.
Use of Local Storage: We use local storage, such as HTML5, to store content information and preferences. Various browsers may offer their own management tools for removing HTML5. Additionally, third-parties with whom we partner to provide certain features on our Web site or to display advertising based upon your web browsing activity also use Flash cookies or HTML5 to collect and store information. Various browsers may offer their own management tools for removing HTML5.
Advertising: As mentioned above, we may partner with third party ad network(s) to either display advertising on our Services or to manage our advertising on other Web sites. Our ad network partner may use cookies and/or Web beacons to collect non-personally identifiable information about your activities on our Services and other Web sites to provide you targeted advertising based upon your interests.Usage of Collected Information:We collect all of this information from you for a number of different purposes, which we want you to understand – all of these purposes apply wherever VANTAGE does business, including countries outside your own. A number of specific uses for specific data is already detailed above. But we often need to use lots of different types of information or data collectively in order for VANTAGE to work and in order to be able to provide the Services to you. These more fundamental purposes include the collective use of your information:
To ensure that our site’s content is presented as effectively as possible for you, and to enable you to participate in interactive features of our site, when you choose to do so - for example by providing you with more customized services and a more customized experience on VANTAGE through things like language-specific profile pages, updates, and content, news, style advice and/or recommendations relevant to you to customize your experience on VANTAGE.
To set up, and manage your account, so you can place orders, so we can provide our products and services to you, so we can make sure that the items you order get to you (and get there on time!), so we can communicate with you about your orders and your account, so we can track potential problems and trends, and customize our support responses to better serve you – basically, this relates to the nuts and bolts of our online retail business. It’s everything involved in putting the products on the website, so you can browse them and then order them, and so we can then deliver them to you and answer any questions or queries you may have.
To ensure that our users are genuine and to ensure that we are paid for goods that we dispatch – for example, by using personal information, or disclosing that personal information to a credit reference or fraud prevention agency, in order to confirm your identity and conduct appropriate anti-fraud checks. Any such credit reference or fraud prevention agency may keep a record of that information but please note that a formal credit check is not performed and your credit rating will not be affected.
To update you on our latest products, news and special offers - If you have registered with us or provided us with your email address and elected to receive marketing communications from us, we will occasionally update you on our latest products, news and special offers via e-mail, post, telephone and other means available through the Services, including mobile text messages and push notifications. You will also be given the opportunity to receive such communications from us and selected third parties. This includes if you choose to use the Facebook “like” button to indicate you like any of our pages. Examples of these communications include: (1) welcome and engagement communications - informing you about how to best use VANTAGE, new features etc.; (2) service communications on things like service availability, security, and other issues about the functioning of VANTAGE; (3) promotional communications, including details of our latest sale or promotion. These messages will be sent to you based on your profile information and messaging preferences as selected by you in relation to your account. Please keep your settings up to date or contact our Customer Care team, via info@vantageorthotic.com, if you wish to change any of these preferences, including unsubscribing from our mailing list.
To target VANTAGE banners and ads to you when you’re on certain other websites (what’s called Digital Marketing Re-targeting) – we do this using a variety of digital marketing networks and ad exchanges, and advertising technologies like web beacons, pixels, ad tags, cookies, and mobile identifiers, and the banners and ads you will see will be based on your previous use of VANTAGE (for example, your VANTAGE search history, the content you read on VANTAGE, etc.) or on VANTAGE banners or ads you’ve previously clicked on.
To carry out polls, surveys, analysis and research on how our site is being used, customer views, what we could do better etc, - these polls, surveys, analysis and research may be conducted by VANTAGE, or third parties. VANTAGE or those third parties may follow up with you via email regarding your participation unless you have opted out of receiving email messages. We may use third parties to deliver incentives to you to participate in polls, surveys, analysis or research, and verifying your contact information, which may require your contact information and other personally identifiable information to be provided to the third party fulfilling the incentive offer.
To make VANTAGE’s products and services better and to develop new ones - VANTAGE uses and stores site statistical information and log data, to help it identify potential areas to improve the services we offer.Children's Privacy:Our Services are general audience Web sites and are not directed at children under age 13. VANTAGE nor the Services do not knowingly collect any personal information from children under age 13, and if you are under the age of 13 you should not register or provide information on our Services or to VANTAGE. If you have knowledge that a child under the age of 13 has submitted Personal Information to us, please email info@vantageorthotic.comSharing Aspects of Collected Information:At VANTAGE we collect two types of information:
“personally identifiable” information (meaning it can be used to specifically identify you); or
“non-personally identifiable” information (meaning it relates to you but can’t be used to specifically identify you i.e. anonymous data, such as your unique VANTAGE customer number).
We are aware that it is VANTAGE that you are trusting with your information, not some other company. But, to be able to carry out our business, we do need to work with a number of third parties who are experts in their particular fields – after all, we’re good at what we do, but we’re not good at everything! We are very careful who we share your information with, but it is important that you understand when that sharing takes place and why, and that’s what this section explains. The limited instances where we may share your information include:
We share your information internally within the VANTAGE Group when required for our business to function: Like any global business, VANTAGE is not just a single company, but instead is a group, made up of a number of different company and entities in different parts of the world. We may therefore need to disclose your information (including your personally identifiable information) to any of our group of companies as necessary, in order to operate VANTAGE and to provide the Services. As they are all part of the VANTAGE Group, the requirements set out in this notice apply to all of these companies, as equally as they do to http://www.vantageorthotic.com
We share your information externally with our core service providers when required for our business to function: Also like any global business, VANTAGE relies on a number of external companies to provide it with key services, products and applications in order to be able to provide the Services. These include for example companies who help us pick and pack orders, make deliveries, support our customers, carry out fraud protection and credit risk reduction checks, support our IT systems, help keep us secure, enable our marketing, audit whether we’re doing what we’re supposed to be doing, or make sure we’re keeping the books right. We just can’t do everything ourselves, after all, and working with experts in various fields enables us to improve our Services for you in the quickest, most efficient way.Each of the external companies we work with has been selected by us for their ability to provide what we need to our required specification, including their ability to handle sensitive data (like your personal information) securely and appropriately. Each of these external companies has a contract with us, which clearly sets out our expectations and requirements in handling any of your information, and holds them fully responsible for meeting those expectations and requirements. On that basis and only on that basis, we may therefore disclose your personal information (including your personally identifiable information) to such third parties who need to be given specific tailored access to your information to facilitate our Services by performing key tasks on our behalf, and who are obligated to only use it in line with our instructions, and not to disclose or use it for other purposes. We are confident that we can trust those third party service providers with your information.
We share your information when we’re required to comply with a legal request: to do business in all the countries that we do, VANTAGE is required to liaise with a number of regulators and other law enforcement agencies in each of those countries. Whilst it doesn’t happen often (knock on wood!), some of those regulators or agencies may legally require us to share your information with them, under law, under a court order or subpoena, or as a result of some other legal process. If we do come under a legal or regulatory duty to disclose or share your personal data in order to comply with any legal obligation, we will have to share your information (including your personally identifiable information) if we believe that disclosure is reasonably necessary to comply. Having said that, we may dispute such demands when we believe, in our discretion, that the requests are overboard, vague or lack proper authority. We will also attempt to notify you about legal demands for your personally identifiable information when appropriate in our judgment, unless prohibited by law or court order or when the request is an emergency.
We share your information where we believe it’s reasonably necessary to protect VANTAGE or our customers: Sadly, VANTAGE (like many other companies) can be the subject of attempted fraudulent or criminal activities, which does sometimes require us to take certain steps to protect both our business and our customers. We may therefore disclose your information (including your personally identifiable information) if we have a good faith belief that disclosure is reasonably necessary to (1) detect, investigate, prevent, take action regarding or otherwise address suspected or actual illegal activities, fraud, security or technical issues or to assist government enforcement agencies; (2) enforce or apply our terms and conditions of usage; (3) investigate and defend ourselves against any third-party claims or allegations; (4) protect the security or integrity of our Service; or (5) to exercise or protect the rights, property, or safety of VANTAGE, our customers, or others.
We share your information externally with other partners when we have your consent to do so: VANTAGE works with a number of other partners who, whilst not essential for our business to operate, do enhance your experience with VANTAGE and your usage of the Services, in our opinion. This includes our marketing partners and social media partners (like Facebook or Twitter, if you’ve chosen to link your VANTAGE account to those services or publish your activity on VANTAGE to them) as well as third parties to deliver incentives to you to participate in competitions, offers, polls, surveys, analysis or research. We only believe in partnering with companies that we believe are right for VANTAGE and its customers, and that enhance our Services. On that basis and only on that basis, we may therefore disclose your personal information (including your personally identifiable information) to such third parties who are obligated to ASOS only use it in line with our instructions, and not to disclose or use it for other purposes. We are confident that we can trust those third party service providers with your information. But, as we know that people can feel strongly about their information being shared with companies when it is not essential to do, we will only do so where you have given us your consent to do that. And if you change your mind at any time, we’ll stop that sharing as soon as we can. More details on how to do that are set out below.
We may share your information externally if we are considering a corporate transaction: We are always looking at ways to make our corporate group stronger and more effective. As a result, we may sometime consider certain corporate transactions, such as a merger, acquisition, bankruptcy, dissolution, reorganization, or similar transaction or proceeding. If we were to consider such a transaction, that may involve the transfer of your information (including your personally identifiable information) solely for the purposes of enabling that transaction or proceeding to be assessed. In the event that VANTAGE sells or buys any business or assets, or if VANTAGE or substantially all of its assets are acquired by a third party, your personal data which we hold about our customers may be one of the transferred assets.
We may share aggregated non-personally identifiable information externally: We do also share certain information which, whilst not personally identifiable information relating to you, does include information that relates to your usage of our products, sites and Services, aggregated together with the same information from other users for example. Even though this would not include your personally identifiable information, we nonetheless want you to be able to understand that level of sharing as well. This sharing therefore happens for reasons such as these:
We may provide reports containing aggregated information about your activities on various pages on our websites, or what are called ‘impressions’, to companies hosting VANTAGE plugins and similar technologies to help them measure VANTAGE-generated traffic to their websites.
We may share aggregated or non-personally identifiable information with our brands and other product providers. For example, we may tell brands stocked on VANTAGE how many people viewed or purchased one of their product lines.
We may disclose aggregate, anonymized statistics about the number of visitors to this site or the number of purchases made as required by our investors.How VANTAGE Does Not Use Collected InformationWE WILL NOT Sell your information without your consent: We will not sell your personally identifiable information – including your name, address, e-mail address, or credit card information - to any third party. We believe this is absolutely essential to receive and repay your trust in us.
WE WILL NOT Share your information with third-party advertiser or ad networks: We do not currently display third party adverts on our website and, even if we did, we would not support sharing your personally identifiable information with any third-party advertiser or ad network.Protection of Collected InformationWe want you to have simple and meaningful choices over your information. While we work hard behind the scenes to protect you and your data at all times, we’re also committed to providing you with tools to further manage the privacy and security of your information yourself.With respect to the information relating to you that ends up in our possession, and recognizing that it is your choice to provide us with your personally identifiable information, we commit to giving you the ability to do all of the following:
You can verify the details you have submitted to VANTAGE by contacting our Customer Care team, or via the e-mail address given below. Our security procedures mean that we may request proof of identity before we reveal information, including your e-mail address and possibly your address.
You can also contact us by the same method to change, correct, or delete your personal information controlled by VANTAGE regarding your profile at any time. Please note though that, if you have shared any information with others through the VANTAGE Social Media channels for example, that information may remain visible, even after you have deleted the information from your own account.
You can withdraw or modify your consent to VANTAGE’s collection and processing of the information you provide at any time. You can do this by changing your account settings. You can access 'Your Account' by logging in.
You can link or unlink your VANTAGE account from an account on another service (e.g., Facebook or Twitter), also by changing your account settings.
You can close your account, also through our account settings. If you close your account(s), we’ll deactivate it and will generally delete closed account information within 30 days of account closure, except as set out in this notice. However, we may retain archived copies of your information as required by law or for legitimate business purposes (including to help address fraud and spam). Please note though that, if you have shared any information with others through the VANTAGE Social Media channels for example, that information may remain visible, even after you have closed your account.
You can opt-out of receiving marketing communications from us at any time. This can be done through your account settings, by clicking on the "unsubscribe" link in any email communications which we might send you, or by contacting our Customer Care team. Once you do this, we will update your profile to ensure that you don’t receive further emails. Please note that this might take a few days for all our systems to have updated with that fact, and that you might receive a small number of emails from us while we process your request.
At any time, you can request a copy of the personal data we hold on our systems about you. If you wish to do so, please contact our Customer Care team who will be able to assist you with your query. We won’t charge you anything for this, but we might need to ask some further questions to confirm your identity before we provide any information.
Whenever Personal Information is stored on our computers (which may be for an indefinite period, or a more limited time based on obsolescence or other factors), that information is protected from unauthorized access or use by way of passwords or other industry-acknowledged means. In addition, servers of ours that store this information are located behind a firewall. Since certain Personal Information (such as credit card data) is especially sensitive, we take special care to keep it secure. We will only electronically transmit or ask for this information over secure Internet connections using generally accepted standards, and security keys. In addition, we require password authentication from any third parties you have authorized to receive this information. Finally, to the extent that we may ask for and will store for a period of time Personal Information consisting of your credit card number or financial information, this information will be stored on secure designated servers where access is limited to individuals in departments charged with using such information only in connection with processing your orders and/or payment for products and services purchased; provided, however, that those orders and/or payments processed by our business partners, marketing allies and/or service providers that provide or participate in providing the services or products requested or that participate in the payment processes related to such may store such information on their servers which are governed by such third party’s privacy policy and security procedures.Of course, we appreciate your help in safeguarding the integrity of your own and others' privacy. We hope you'll use common sense whenever you disclose Personal Information over the Internet. Just as importantly, we encourage you to let us know immediately if you suspect that Personal Information you share with us is being used in any way contrary to this Privacy Policy. Finally, unfortunately no data transmission over the Internet nor any storage of information on servers or other media can be guaranteed or made to be 100% secure; and while we strive to protect Personal Information, as outlined in this Privacy Policy, we cannot promise, guarantee or warrant the complete security of information. To contact us, please see last segment of Privacy Policy for contact information.Special Provisions Applicable to Users Outside The United States:We strive to create a global community with consistent standards for everyone, but we also strive to respect local laws. If you are a user or non-user who interacts with VANTAGE outside the United States, you consent to having your personal data transferred to and processed in the United States.Effective Date and Modifications:This Privacy Policy is effective as of the date first written above. We reserve the right to update, change, modify or otherwise alter this Privacy Policy at any time. If any material changes are made to this Privacy Policy, VANTAGE will notify you by posting the revised Privacy Policy on the Services or notifying you through the Services prior to the change becoming effective. ANY ACCESS OR USE OF THE SERVICES BY YOU AFTER THE CHANGES GO INTO EFFECT SHALL CONSTITUTE AND BE DEEMED YOUR AGREEMENT TO THIS PRIVACY POLICY. Accordingly, we encourage you to periodically review this Privacy Policy and the Services in order to keep apprised of our current privacy practices. If you do not want to be bound by this Privacy Policy, do not use or access any part of the Services.Contacting Vantage Orthotic:We are always keen to hear from our customers (especially if you feel we’ve let you down or fallen short of your expectations). We are always grateful for any time you spend providing us with the knowledge we need to ensure our customers are completely satisfied – after all, we want you to return to the site and to recommend us to your friends and family. If you have any questions or feedback about this statement, or if you would like us to stop processing your information, please do not hesitate to contact a customer service member of the VANTAGE team, who will be delighted to answer any questions you may have. You can contact customer care by sending an email to: