Becker Bible Ministries, Inc.
Privacy Policy
Last Updated: May 23, 2018
ABOUT US
Becker Bible Ministries, Inc., and its non-profit Becker Professional Theology Academy, its for-profit Wise Folk Publishing, and Kathy L. McFarland’s connected site Becker Bible Teacher Resources all subscribe to this Privacy Policy. Our address is PO Box 88 Peck, ID, 83545, and our email beckerbible@gmail.com.
For compliance with the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) we have renewed and published this Privacy Policy on May 23, 2018. We have also provided each of our sites with an opt-out feature pop-up that must be activated before identifying cookies can be made from our site onto your computer or device.
OUR WEBSITES
All websites administrators can be reached with the email beckerbible@gmail.com.
Becker Bible Ministries, Inc. = https://beckerministries.org/
Becker Professional Theology Academy = https://becker.academy/
Becker Bible Teacher Resources = https://biblestudydata.com/
Wise Folk Publishing = http://wisefolk.com/
Guided Bible Studies for Hungry Christians = http://guidedbiblestudies.com/
Becker Bible Studies = http://beckerbiblestudies.com/
INFORMATION WE COLLECT FROM YOU
- Information you provide us in the registration process, such as your email
- Information that you provide during the registration process such as your name, company name, email address, phone number, billing address, credit card information, geographic location and industry, when you call or email us (for support or otherwise) or when you use our products or services
- Payment information that you provide to us when you purchase some of our products and services, including credit card data.
Our different monitoring software can possibly see:
- IP address
- Browser type and version
- Geographic location
- Pages you view
- How you got to our sites and the links you click to leave our sites
- When you update your information, communicate with us or order services
- Metadata about your use of our services and your emails you send (including clicks and opens)
- Your interactions with any videos we offer
- Issues you encounter requiring our support or assistance
- Any device or other method you use to interact us
- Your telephone conversations with us (which we may monitor or record)
We store this data we collect in a variety of places within our administration offices, including system log files, back end databases and analytics systems.
HOW WE USE YOUR INFORMATION
We value the visitors to our website and make all of our Bible Teachings accessible to unregistered guests. We also have created places within our sites that registered students can receive additional resources; for instance, those enrolled in Moodle classes are able to take tests online and keep a record of their progress; this is only possible through registration.
We place the highest importance on respecting and protecting the privacy of our students and unregistered guests. We hope that you feel comfortable and confident in the security of our site.
We do our best to protect your personal information by limiting the access of your personally identifying information to trusted employees. These employees have been trained on industry-recognized safety and security issues to prevent loss, misuse, or unauthorized alteration of your data. Our employees are required to safeguard your information and are restricted to that information for business purposes only. They are monitored for compliance attentiveness.
Because the nature of our ministry reflects Christ, there are numerous and serious threats to our lives and our livelihood that are used against us to stop our teachings. As a result, we sometimes implement a paid web statistic tracking application through statcounter.com that provides us with numerous statistics of each person that visits our site. These stats include a summary of hourly usage, popular pages, entry pages, exit pages, website where the viewer came from, keyword analysis, recent keyword activity, recent came from stats, search engine directs, exit links, exit link activity, download activity, visitor paths, visit length, returning visits, recent page load activity, recent visitor activity, a map of general vicinity of their servers, and the IP address of users. When viable, wicked, and aggressive threats are made against us that warrant Law Enforcement attention we gather the data and history of the threatening user and turn it over to authorities for their investigation and prosecution as necessary. However, police involvement is seldom necessary; once the aggressor recognizes our ability to see the origin of their computer activity, the threats usually cease.
For the majority of our students and non-registered users, Statcounter statistics are sometimes used by our administration to evaluate current needs for ministry in the Internet world, the status of our newest teachings published, and a review of the most commonly searched topics so our teachers can plan their own lessons accordingly. We do not keep accumulative records of our visitors under normal circumstances and have limited Statcounter to keep only the amount of records that are normally accumulated on a mostly daily basis. Almost daily the stats change (dependent upon amount of use), and the previous user information is inaccessible by us from that point of removal.
We also have Google Analytics, Google and Amazon Ads, and Amazon purchase links on some of our pages which operate exactly as Statcounter but aggregates the information we receive into “bigger picture” scenarios. This information is useful to analyze our place on the Internet and compare it with historical information as well as other ministries that do business on the Internet. While we are unable to physically locate an individual user by this aggregate information, Google has the eyes to pinpoint and identify everything, through their searches, browser uses, and analytical statistics.
Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Apple (among many other corporations) have been subpoenaed in the past by government agencies to see the activity of specific users, and they are able to provide that information on a case-by-case basis as necessary according to the laws of the land their business has existed. Users of the Internet must recognize that someone is able to follow their every move. But, we can assure you that we are not able to do this with the use of Google Analytics, or any other statistics program.
We do not mine our users data to sell to other parties, or profit from the sale of any material gathered by statistics on our site. Frankly, we do a really good job of protecting the privacy of users of our site from our end of the Internet. However, we cannot guarantee that other entities, especially the major corporations on the Internet, keep user information safe. You should refer to the corporation’s privacy pages to see how they use the information gathered on you before you are sent to our website.
We are also monitored by many official government agencies, and we assume all Internet ministry websites receive the same detailed looks. We cannot protect our users’ identities from government entities with sophisticated equipment that have abilities to see the private stuff that we can only begin to imagine. Because our ministry website is fully above board in our teachings, we do not fear official monitors; however, if you have need to maintain your identity from the association with things of Christianity, it would be prudent to avoid our site.
Our websites are children-friendly with the materials of Christian Bible Studies that we present. We do not actively gather children’s’ user information. When a child writes to us, our policy is to attempt to have the permission of a responsible adult before correspondence continues; this is done by encouraging the child to have the parent email us with permission to talk to the child. However, there are some life-threatening, serious abuse issues that sometimes (but very rarely) come to our attention through a child’s email. These cases are taken very seriously and handled on an individual basis with the proper authorities and experts are made aware of these troubles with their advice sought in how to proceed.
There are computer applications that can limit the information developed by statistic software; some work better than others but none fully hide users. Every Internet user must assume that all of their information is viewable at all times. Becker Bible Studies administration, teachers, and employees protect your privacy well; sadly, by the time it reaches us, there are many entities already looking at your activity; and that type of monitoring is completely out of the control of us. There is nothing, in our opinion, that can hide users’ information from gatherers of the data and we recommend that the users of our site do so with that foreknowledge.
THIRD PARTY ADVERTISERS
We may use third-party advertising companies to serve advertisements regarding goods and services that may interest you when you access and use our Online websites. To serve such advertisements, these companies place or recognize a unique cookie on your browser (including through use of pixel tags).
To opt out of interest-based advertising, please refer to http://optout.networkadvertising.org/?c=1#!/
YOUR CHOICES
You may contact us at beckerbible@gmail.com to review, correct, update, suppress, restrict or delete Personal Data that you have previously provided to us. You may manually find this information on your personal account profile page under user details and edit profile; all of your information can be deleted from this location.
If you would like to receive an electronic copy of your Personal Data you may email us or write us at our snail mail:
Becker Bible Ministries
PO Box 88
Peck, ID 83545
In your request, please make clear what Personal Data you would like to have changed, whether you would like to have your Personal Data suppressed from our database, or other limitations you would like to put on our use of your Personal Data. For your protection, we only fulfill requests for the Personal Data associated with the particular email address that you use to send us your request, and we may need to verify your identity before fulfilling your request. We will try to comply with your request as soon as reasonably practicable.
Please note that we often need to retain certain data for record keeping purposes and/or to complete any transactions that you began prior to requesting a change or deletion, such as when you make a purchase or receive promotional material from us. There may also be residual data that will remain within our databases and other records, which will not be removed. There is some information and data that we cannot allow you to review because of legal, security or other restrictions.
We do not have access to browser or app programs that keep information about you. Please refer to those browser and program security pages to learn how to opt-out from their gathering places.
SENSITIVE DATA
We do not require that you disclose Sensitive Personal Data (e.g. social security numbers, national identification number, data related to racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religion, ideological or other beliefs, health, biometrics or genetic characteristics, criminal background, trade union membership, or administrative or criminal proceedings and sanctions) to participate in any of our websites. It is “unlikely to result in a risk to the rights and freedoms of natural persons, taking into account the nature, context, scope and purposes of the processing on our websites” according to GDPR requirements; thus, an appointed EU reviewing delegate is not required.
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