Privacy Policy

PRIVACY POLICY

LAST UPDATE OF THIS PRIVACY POLICY – April 14, 2021

BEFORE USING OUR SITES, PLEASE READ THIS PRIVACY POLICY CAREFULLY.

This Privacy Policy is applicable to Braun Financial Services Ltd. (“Company”) and sets out our policy on the gathering and use of information on this site and our other sites (collectively “Sites”). The Company is committed to providing safe web sites for visitors of all ages and has implemented this Privacy Policy to demonstrate our firm commitment to your privacy. The Company complies with Canadian Federal and Provincial privacy laws and regulations including the Personal Information and Electronic Documents Act.

There may be links from our Sites to other web sites; note that this Privacy Policy applies only to our Sites and not to web sites of other companies or organizations to which our Sites may be linked. You must check on any linked sites for the privacy policy that applies to that site and/or make any necessary inquiries in respect of that privacy policy with the operator of the linked site. These links to third party websites are provided as a convenience and are for informational purposes only. The Company does not endorse, and is not responsible for, these linked websites.

Although you are not required to register to access our Sites, you may be asked to provide us with personal information when you visit certain sections of our Sites. Your use of our Sites signifies your acknowledgement and consent to our Privacy Policy. If you do not agree to this Privacy Policy, please do not continue to use our Sites. Your continued use of the Sites signifies your acceptance of these terms and any changes in effect at the time of use.

COLLECTION OF PERSONAL INFORMATION

Personal Information is information about you that identifies you as an individual, for example, your name, address, e-mail address, or telephone number.

We collect information that you voluntarily provide to us through responses to surveys, search functions, questionnaires, feedback, Tell Your Story forms and the like. On some of our Sites, we may offer health assessment tools that ask you to provide self-assessment information. We may also ask you to provide additional information such as your e-mail address if you want to obtain additional services, information, participate in a contest or to resolve complaints or concerns.

HOW DOES COMPANY USE INFORMATION GATHERED ABOUT ONLINE VISITORS?

Before forwarding us any personal information, please be advised that any information gathered on our Sites may be used in the aggregate for research and development relating to our Sites and/or for future site development and, if you ask us to, to send you promotional materials. In particular, we may use information gathered about you for the following purposes: to monitor interest in our range of products and to assist us to tailor the content of our Sites to your needs by collecting information about your preferences through tracking of patterns page views on our Sites; to create a profile relating to you in order to show you the content that might be of interest to you and to display the content according to your preferences; and, in circumstances where you have indicated that you wish to receive additional information, to send you information about us and promotional material about our products together with details of any offers we may have available from time to time.

PROMOTIONAL AND INFORMATIONAL OFFERS

With the permission of an online visitor, information submitted at the time of registration or submission may be used for marketing and promotional purposes by the Company provided notice of this fact is made available online. If a visitor objects to such use for any reason, he/she may prevent that use, either by e-mail request or by modifying the registration information provided. The Company uses reasonable efforts to maintain visitors’ information in a secure environment. If you have submitted personal information and want to change it or opt-out, please contact us as described below.

DISCLOSURE OF INFORMATION

The Company will not disclose personal information that you provide on its Sites to any third parties other than to a Company agent except: i) in accordance with the terms of this Privacy Policy, or ii) to comply with legal requirements such as a law, regulation, warrant, subpoena or court order, and/or iii) if you are reporting an adverse event/side effect, in which case the Company may be required to disclose such information to bodies such as, but not limited to, Canadian and/or international regulatory authorities. Please note that any of these disclosures may involve the storage or processing of personal information outside of Canada and may therefore be subject to different privacy laws than those applicable in Canada, including laws that require the disclosure of personal information to governmental authorities under circumstances that are different than those that apply in Canada.

Online data collection tools: Improving and evaluating website functionality and effectiveness

Braun Financial, like many organizations, sometimes gathers data (through Jetpack and Google Analytics), such as your IP address, regarding how visitors explore our websites – information about the number of new and repeat visitors, where on the website a visitor explores, how long they visit, where they are geographically located and similar details. We may also track how many users visit advertisements promoting our products and services that appear on other company websites. All such information is collected in an unidentifiable form and is used to improve our websites’ performance and functionality, create a better experience for our visitors, measure the response to web marketing campaigns and provide you with more relevant content based on your possible interests in Braun Financial content, products and services.

Braun Financial or its agents on our behalf collect this information through the use of cookies and electronic images known as web beacons.

What are cookies and web beacons?

A cookie is a small piece of information that a website sends to your computer where it is stored on your hard drive. The next time you visit our website, we may use the information stored on your cookie to make your visit easier. A cookie does not tell us your identity unless you have chosen to provide it to us. Cookies cannot access other information or files from your computer. There are 2 types of cookies – session cookies and permanent or persistent cookies.

A session cookie (sometimes called a “transient” cookie) is erased when you close your Internet browser and leave our website. In the United Kingdom, only session cookies are used.

A “permanent” cookie is a file that remains on your computer when you close your Internet browser. A permanent cookie can be read only by the website that created the cookie when you revisit that site. Permanent cookies are not used in all of our jurisdictions.

Cookies can identify a visitor only if the visitor has used a website’s login feature. If you ask us to save your access ID to be used the next time you visit our website, we will use a permanent cookie to store your access ID in an encrypted format on your computer so that the next time you visit the website you will be recognized when you sign in. In this way, the website can recall your preferences and provide a more customized experience.

Permanent cookies have expiry dates and are automatically deleted from your computer after their expiry date. You can also clear your stored cookies via your browser preferences on your computer. However, unless you have settings that disallow cookies, the next time you visit our website, a new cookie will be added. You can set your website browser to notify you when you receive a cookie so that you can decide whether to accept or reject it. Since the procedure for altering preferences varies by browser you should check the “Help” menu of your browser to learn how to alter your cookie preferences. Please note, however, that rejecting cookies while visiting a Sun Life website may result in certain parts of the website not functioning correctly or as efficiently as if cookies were allowed.

The permanent cookies that may be placed on your computer by the Google Display Network relating to web marketing campaigns are used to increase the relevance of display ads you may see when you visit other websites that are serviced by the Google Display Network. To opt out of these cookies, select the opt out button on the Google Privacy Centre page.

Web beacons are a collective term used to refer to “pixel tags”, “web beacons” or “clear GIF images” embedded in a web page and usually invisible to the user. Web beacons are used for many of the same purposes as cookies, allowing Sun Life or its agents on behalf of Sun Life to compile aggregate statistics about website usage patterns, such as how many times a link or an area on a website is clicked.

All the information collected by any of these online tracking tools is non-personal and is not used in connection with any other information that could identify you personally unless you have entered your access ID and password or provided it to us through your permanent cookie.

We may share the site visit information obtained using cookies, web beacons and other similar technologies with Google Analytics or other agents to analyze online activity on our websites or in reaction to our online advertisements.

Links to websites outside of Braun Financial

To provide website visitors with more information that may be helpful to them, some of our websites contain links to other websites that are not affiliated with or maintained by Braun Financial. We do not monitor the privacy practices of these third-party sites, and do not have authority over them. As a result, we do not assume any responsibility for the data collection policies and procedures of these sites.

Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.

These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.

PROTECTION OF CHILDREN ONLINE

The Company considers the protection of children’s privacy, especially online, to be of the utmost importance. We do not knowingly collect or solicit personal information from children nor do we allow them to become registered users of, or to request information through, our Sites or help-seeking information lines.

PROTECTION OF INFORMATION:

Our Commitment to Security

We have put in place physical, electronic, and managerial procedures to safeguard and help prevent unauthorized access, maintain data security, and correctly use the information we collect online. The Company applies security safeguards appropriate to the sensitivity of the information, such as retaining information in secure facilities and making personal information accessible only to authorized employees on a need-to-know basis.

Storage of Information:

Personal information you share with us is stored on our database servers at Company data centers (in whatever country they may be located), or hosted by third parties who have entered into agreements with us that require them to observe our Privacy Policy.

POLICY CHANGE:

If we alter our Privacy Policy, any changes will be posted on this page of our Site so that you are always informed of the information we collect about you, how we use it and the circumstances under which we may disclose it.

ACCEPTANCE OF OUR PRIVACY POLICY:

By using this Site or any other The Company Site or interactive banner ads, you signify your acceptance of our Privacy Policy, and you adhere to the terms and conditions posted on the Site. By submitting your information, you agree that it will be governed by our Privacy Policy.

Jetpack Ads

We collect and send the following information (made available from the visitor’s browser) to our Demand Partners: IP address, geographical data (derived from the IP address), user agent, operating system, device type, unique user ID (randomly generated identifier), current URL, and IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) interest category.

Data Retention: Log data (IP address, geographical data, user agent, operating system, device type) is stored for 30 days. The unique user ID is stored in cookies and is retained for 1 year.

We track ad impressions, video-related events (i.e. pause, mute, 100% plays, etc.) or errors, and ad click events.

Various cookies are used for the following purposes: delivering targeted advertisements to specific visitors, storing user identifiers, and collecting anonymous ad platform stats.

Akismet anti-comment spam service

We collect information about visitors who comment on Sites that use our Akismet anti-spam service. The information we collect depends on how the User sets up Akismet for the Site, but typically includes the commenter’s IP address, user agent, referrer, and Site URL (along with other information directly provided by the commenter such as their name, username, email address, and the comment itself).

Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on

This site utilizes Google Analytics Demographics and Interest Reporting to monitor traffic and to ensure proper results from its advertising campaigns.

For more information on how Google processes this information click here, and here.

If you want to opt out, download and install the add-on for your web browser. The Google Analytics opt-out add-on is designed to be compatible with Chrome, Safari, Firefox and Microsoft Edge. In order to function, the opt-out add-on must be able to load and execute properly on your browser. Learn more about the opt-out and how to properly install the browser add-on here.