Privacy Policy

Privacy Promise

We take privacy very seriously and we’ve taken many steps to help safeguard your online information.

We promise you that:

• We will safeguard, according to strict standards of security, any information you share with us.
• We will not share information you provide us without your permission.
• You can unsubscribe from our marketing communications at any time.

Because we want to demonstrate our commitment to your privacy, we have agreed to disclose our information practices for public review.

Please continue reading our Privacy Policy below for more information.

Introduction

EnCirca offers domain name registration and value-added services that helps businesses and people establish internet addresses. We know that you’re concerned with privacy on the Internet, and we’ve taken many steps to help safeguard your online information and protect your privacy.

EnCirca is committed to protecting your privacy and to ensuring that you are in control of the information that we maintain about you. The EnCirca privacy policy (“Privacy Policy”) explains what we will and will not do with your personal information. For purposes of this Privacy Policy, “personal information” means individually identifiable information about a user collected online, including a user’s first and last name, home or other physical address, e-mail address or telephone number.

EnCirca’s policies and procedures are based on the eight internationally recognized privacy principles issued in 1980 by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in its Guidelines for Fair Information Practices. The principles pertaining to fair information practices in use at EnCirca are as follows:

• Use Limitation
• Individual Participation
• Security Safeguards
• Openness
• Collection Limitation
• Purpose Specification
• Data Quality
• Accountability
• GDPR Policy
• California Consumer Privacy Act

Use Limitation

EnCirca treats your personal information as confidential and does not disclose it or use it except as permitted by you, as described in this privacy policy, or as required by law, subpoena, court order, legal process or a warrant.

EnCirca will use your contact information, including email address, telephone number and/or postal address to communicate with you at various times, including, but not limited to: registration expirations, whois data acuracy reminders, transfers and marketing communications. You may opt out of marketing communications but not other communications required to process your order or under our Registrar Accreditation Agreement with ICANN.

If we are served with a civil subpoena seeking personal information about a EnCirca user, we will use reasonable efforts to notify the specified user of the request prior to disclosure of such personal information, so as to allow the user the opportunity to oppose the subpoena.

EnCirca will not provide your e-mail address, name, or other personal identifiers to merchants or marketers without your specific prior permission. EnCirca will follow the instructions you indicate through the EnCirca software interface.

EnCirca may engage third parties to perform analysis or data processing of our databases that involves access to your personal information, in order to better provide you with the services for which you joined. If EnCirca does so, it will ensure that such parties are contractually required to keep the information confidential and not to use it in any way other than as is necessary to perform their work for EnCirca.

Individual Participation

As a EnCirca customer, you have access to, and appropriate control over, the data that EnCirca maintains about you, via our  online management page  or through chat or via support@encirca.com.

A request to revise or edit your personally identifiable information may not be accommodated if it would result in incorrect information. Requests for deletion of certain key information, such as e-mail address, may require closing the account.

Most requests for access to personal data are processed within seconds of being made through the EnCirca software Web interface. Some requests may take up to a few days to process, and the results may be delivered by e-mail.

Any other questions should be addressed to support(at)EnCirca.com.

Information about a customer may be withheld or exempted from deletion if this is required by law or is part of a fraud investigation.

Unsubscribe Procedures

All users may at any time opt-out of our marketing by clicking on the opt-out link we include in every email we send.

Security Safeguards

We ensure information quality by employing advanced technology to protect our users’ data. We also have well-defined employee and network partner practices that protect the integrity of and access to our users’ information.

At EnCirca we employ security techniques and well-defined employee practices to ensure that data is protected from unauthorized access and use. We hold our employees and network partners accountable for maintaining the privacy and integrity of our users’information. EnCirca provides ongoing training programs that are designed to keep our employees and network partners informed of our Privacy Policies.

EnCirca may engage employees, contractors, and other companies to perform work that involves access to personal information. If EnCirca does so, it will ensure that such parties are contractually required to keep the information confidential and not to use it in any way other than as is necessary to perform their work for EnCirca.

EnCirca works to reduce the likelihood of loss, misuse, unauthorized access or disclosure, alteration, or destruction, but it is impossible to eliminate this possibility completely.

We conduct internal and external audits to determine the effectiveness of our compliance with our Privacy Policy. Our EnCirca-approved network partners are contractually and legally obligated to follow agreed-upon privacy practices. If a EnCirca user feels that they have experienced a violation of these privacy policies, they should contact us at:

EnCirca
Attention: Privacy
400 W. Cummings Park
Suite 1725
Woburn, MA 01801

Fax: 781-823-8911
E-mail: support (at) EnCirca.com

Openness

EnCirca has a general policy of openness about developments, practices and policies with respect to personal data. EnCirca states in detail what personal data it collects and why it collects it.

EnCirca’s Web server may log key information about any visitor to the EnCirca website (both users and non-users), including the following elements:

• The URL of the page requested;
• The time and date of the request;
• The make and version of the web browser being used,
• The version and type of your operating system);
• The “Referrer” (the URL where you clicked on a link to get to EnCirca’s site);
• The IP address where a copy of the page you requested is to be sent for display by your browser.

We use this information in aggregate to get a better picture of where our visitors come from and how to plan for our future needs.

The web server logs may be used in the course of a fraud investigation.

The browser make and version also is used during your visit to indicate to you whether EnCirca’s software will run on your computer’s configuration. The URL may contain tracking codes used only for the purpose of auditing advertising.

Our Use of Cookies

At the present time, EnCirca will be using cookies to manage the session between your browser and our web site. Cookies will also be used to allow you to have a unique ID for access to our services. We will not collect any personally identifiable information via the use of cookies. Any information we collect using cookies will be used only for the purposes of web site administration and will not be shared with anyone. Should our policy change regarding the use of cookies, EnCirca will post those changes to our privacy policy.

A “cookie” is a small piece of information sent by a web server to store on a web browser so it can later be read back from that browser. This is useful for having the browser recustomer some specific information. An example is when a browser stores your passwords and user IDs. They are also used to store preferences of start pages.

Cookies are used to make informed guesses about you. They can be used to access information about your web activities including things like sites you’ve visited, passwords and purchases you’ve made. Companies can only make guesses about who you are because cookies do not necessarily contain personal information about you. Cookies alone are not invasive of your privacy and actually provide benefits to you. Much of what you find on the web today is free because advertising, similar to television and radio, supports it. Advertising, in part, is driven by the information contained in cookies. Cookies provide an effective way for the web sites you visit to personalize your experience when you visit them. In fact, many sites actually require that a cookie be “dropped” on your computer in order for these sites to recognize you and work properly when you visit them.

Our Use of Clear GIFs

EnCirca sometimes uses a common technology called a clear gif or action tags. A clear gif (graphic interface format) is a small graphic image that is a 1×1 pixel placed on our web site, in banner ads, and/or in e-mail communications. A clear gif provides us with important information about how customers use our web site and respond to our e-mail communications, such as whether someone is using an e-mail reader that understands HTML e-mail messages. This information helps us understand the effectiveness of our web-based communications and improve it’s effectiveness. For security purposes, it may also collect your IP address to be used only if fraud is associated with any activity using this IP address

Collection Limitation

EnCirca collects personal data about you only in ways that are fair and lawful. EnCirca collects only the personal data it has said it collects, and only in the ways it has said it collects it.

Purpose Specification

EnCirca always specifies the purposes for which it uses personal data, before collecting it. EnCirca will not use it for other purposes without first obtaining the customer’s consent.

Who Collects Your Information

EnCirca collects your information on servers under our control.

Information We Collect

When you purchase a service, such as a domain name, we ask you to specify a “ship-to” and “bill-to” contact. These contacts include, First Name, Last Name, Email Address, Phone Number, Fax Number (optional), Company (optional), Address, City, State, Other State/Province (optional), Zip Code, Country. In addition,for credit card purchases, we require, credit card type, credit card number, and credit card expiration date.

This information is collected to allow us to use multiple means of contacting you and to help prevent fraud. Under no circumstances will we use this information for anything else not described in the privacy notice. Users can have access to review their information at any time my logging into their account. You can correct factual errors in your personally identifiable information by logging into your account and making the correction yourself. To protect your privacy and security, we will take reasonable steps to verify your identity before granting access or making corrections.

Any personal information collected during the course of customer service (your home phone number, for example) will only be used for the purpose of customer service. This information will not be linked to your account, nor will it be shared with anyone else.

In the future, EnCirca may ask for additional information that will help us understand your use of e-mail, your interests and/or preferences, so that we may continue to enhance our services to best serve you. This information will not be shared with any third parties without your explicit permission, and the provision of this information is completely at your option.

If you become a EnCirca user, you give us permission to use the information we have told you we use here, for the purposes stated here, according to the options you indicate via the EnCirca software and website.

Information We Share

EnCirca shares additional technical information (for instance: whether the e-mail program you use can receive html e-mail) collected during the e-mail address change registration process with our network partners, in order for our partners to send you e-mail messages in a format (for instance: html or text) that you can receive.

Whois Data: EnCirca creates Whois contact information based on your personally identifiable information. EnCirca may be required to share your personally identifiable information with a domain name Registry that requests it, or, in the case of a bulk whois license agreement, with a third party who has licensed our whois data, unless you have specifically opted out. It is reasonable to expect that these third parties may have different privacy policies.

Data Quality

EnCirca does not collect personal data from you that is not relevant to the purposes stated in its Privacy Policy. EnCirca strives to keep all personal information accurate,complete, and up-to-date.

As described in our Terms and Conditions, EnCirca may terminate your account for various reasons, such as if you ask us to or if you stop using it for a long time.

After a reasonable period of time (consistent with business requirements such as accounting), the personal information associated with terminated accounts will be destroyed or removed. From time to time, EnCirca reduces the amount of data associated with active customers by converting older data into summary statistics or destroying it.

Accountability

EnCirca always has a person designated as its privacy ombudsman, who is accountable for ensuring that EnCirca protects its customers’ privacy. Questions, concerns, issues or complaints may be sent to support (at) EnCirca.com

If you have any questions regarding our privacy policy, please contact us at:

EnCirca
Attention: Privacy
400 W. Cummings Park
Suite 1725
Woburn, MA 01801

Fax: 781-823-8911
E-mail: support (at) EnCirca.com

Policy Regarding Children’s Use of Our Site

EnCirca complies with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act. EnCirca does not knowingly collect information from children under the age of 13. EnCirca requires users of this site to be at least 13 years of age.

Business Transfers or Bankruptcy

As we continue to develop our business, we might sell or buy companies or assets. In such transactions, customer information generally is one of the transferred business assets. Also, in the unlikely event that EnCirca or substantially all of its assets are acquired, customer information will of course be one of the transferred assets. EnCirca users will be notified of such business transfer or bankruptcy and be given the opportunity to opt-out of any such transfer.

GDPR Policy

The European Union General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) requires a business to limit collection of personal data and to safeguard personal data in its possession; businesses must also comply with requests from individuals related to access, rectification, erasure, and portability of their personal data.

GDPR will be enforceable EU-wide from 25 May 2018, and will apply each time we collect, store, or share personal data relating to a European citizen or resident, or managed in Europe.

On 17 May 2018, the ICANN Board approved a Temporary Specification, to establish temporary requirements for how ICANN and contracted parties will continue to comply with existing contractual and policy requirements while also complying with GDPR.

The Temporary Specification is effective as of 25 May 2018, though we note that the new gTLD Registry Agreement allows for Registry Operators to be afforded a “reasonable period of time” to comply with any new Temporary Policy following ICANN providing notice of such.

Although EnCirca will continue to collect registrant information for our records, ICANN Whois records will redact all identifying information for a customer. This includes all registrant, admin, technical, and billing names, emails and addresses. So, for example, the only identifying information for encirca.com is:

Domain Name: ENCIRCA.COM
Registrar WHOIS Server: whois.encirca.com
Registrar URL: https://www.encirca.com
Registrar: Encirca, Inc.
Registrar IANA ID: 455
Registrar Abuse Contact Email: abuse-2014-2@encirca.com
Registrar Abuse Contact Phone: +1.7819429975
Registrant Organization: EnCirca Inc.
Registrant State/Province: MA
Registrant Country: United States

In order to contact the Registrant, Admin, or Tech contact of the queried domain name, put in a request with support@encirca.com (or go to https://www.encirca.com/whois/).

More information on ICANN’s GDPR policy can be found  here .

We will also continue to update this page with the latest information about GDPR updates as they become available via ICANN and individual registries.

California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 (“CCPA”)

This section only applies to California residents. Where we collect, process, use, or disclose personal information that is subject to the CCPA, we are committed to processing your personal information in a transparent and fair manner and in compliance with the CCPA. This section describes the rights California residents have in relation to your personal information and provides the notices required by the CCPA.

YOUR CCPA RIGHTS

The CCPA grants California residents the rights described below.

Right to Know General Collection and Use of Personal Information (Access Request) . Under the CCPA, California residents have the right to request that EnCirca disclose what information we have collected, used, disclosed, or sold over the past 12 months. Once we receive and confirm your verifiable consumer request for such information, we will disclose to you, based on your specific request:

• The categories of personal information we collected about you over the past 12 months;
• The categories of sources from which the personal information is collected over the past 12 months;
• The business or commercial purpose for collecting or selling that personal information over the past 12 months;
• The categories of third parties with whom we shared your personal information over the past 12 months;
• If we disclosed your personal information for a business purpose, the personal information categories that each category of recipients obtained; and/or
• If we sold your personal information for a business purpose, the personal information categories that each category of recipients purchased.

Right to Know Specific Pieces of Personal Information (Data Portability) . Upon your verified request for such information, we will disclose to you certain specific pieces of personal information we have collected about you over the past 12 months.

Right to Request Deletion . You have the right to request that we delete any of your personal information that we have collected from you and retained, subject to certain exceptions. Once we receive and confirm your verifiable consumer request, we will delete your personal information from our records, and direct our service providers to do the same, unless an exception applies.

Some of the exceptions that would allow us to deny a request for deletion include if the information is necessary for us or our service provider(s) to do the following:

• Complete the transaction for which we collected the personal information, provide a good or service that you requested, take actions reasonably anticipated within the context of our ongoing business relationship with you, or otherwise perform a contract we have with you.
• Detect security incidents, protect against malicious, deceptive, fraudulent, or illegal activity, or prosecute those responsible for such activities.
• Debug products to identify and repair errors that impair existing intended functionality.
• Exercise free speech, ensure the right of another consumer to exercise their free speech rights, or exercise another right provided for by law.
• Comply with the California Electronic Communications Privacy Act (Cal. Penal Code § 1546 et. seq.).
• Engage in public or peer-reviewed scientific, historical, or statistical research in the public interest that adheres to all other applicable ethics and privacy laws, when the information’s deletion may likely render impossible or seriously impair the research’s achievement, if you previously provided informed consent.
• Enable solely internal uses that are reasonably aligned with consumer expectations based on your relationship with us.
• Comply with a legal obligation.
• Make other internal and lawful uses of that information that are compatible with the context in which you provided it.

Right to Opt-Out of Sale of Personal Information . You have the right to direct businesses that sell personal information to not sell your personal information (the “right to opt-out”). EnCirca currently does not sell personal information of California residents to third parties, including the personal information of California residents who are under 16 years of age.

Right to Non-Discrimination . You have the right not to be discriminated against for having exercised the rights established by the CCPA. We will not discriminate against you for exercising any of your CCPA rights. Unless permitted by the CCPA, we will not:

• Deny you goods or services.
• Charge you different prices or rates for goods or services, including through granting discounts or other benefits or imposing penalties.
• Provide you a different level or quality of goods or services.
• Suggest that you may receive a different price or rate for goods or services or a different level or quality of goods or services.

EXERCISING YOUR CCPA RIGHTS

This section of our Privacy Statement explains how a California resident can exercise their rights.

To exercise your right to know or your right to deletion, you or your authorized agent may submit a verifiable consumer request in one of the following ways:

• Submit a ticket via support@encirca.com.
• Fill out our form at  https://www.encirca.com/contact-us/

Upon receipt of your request to know or request for deletion, we will confirm receipt within 10 business days. If we are able to verify your request, we will make our best effort to respond within forty-five (45) calendar days of our receipt of your request. If we require more time (up to 45 additional calendar days), we will inform you of the reason and extension period in writing.

Additional Information About Requests to Know

When responding to a request to know, we will not disclose information to you if we cannot verify your identity.

The CCPA allows a California resident to make a verifiable consumer request to know only twice within a 12-month period. Additionally, the verifiable consumer request must:

• Provide sufficient information that allows us to reasonably verify you are: (i) the person about whom we collected personal information, or (ii) an authorized representative.
• Describe your request with sufficient detail that allows us to properly understand, evaluate, and respond to it.

Additional Information About Requests to Delete

When responding to a request for deletion, we will specify the manner in which we have deleted your personal information, in accordance with the CCPA. We will not delete your information if we cannot verify your identity. For us to verify your identity, you must provide sufficient information that allows us to reasonably verify you are: (i) the person about whom we collected personal information, or (ii) an authorized representative.

DESIGNATING AN AUTHORIZED AGENT

Only you as a California resident, or a person registered with the California Secretary of State that you authorize to act on your behalf (Authorized Agent), may make a verifiable request to know or a request for deletion. If you are using an Authorized Agent to exercise your CCPA rights, we require the Authorized Agent to provide us with written confirmation that you have authorized them to act on your behalf. We may also verify the identity of the Authorized Agent.

HOW WE VERIFY CALIFORNIA RESIDENTS’ REQUESTS TO KNOW AND REQUESTS FOR DELETION

We will not respond to requests to know or requests for deletion unless we can verify your identity to a reasonable degree of certainty. To verify your identity, when feasible, we will use information about you that we already have; however, on occasion we may need to request additional information, which we will use only for the purposes of verification. We may also use a third-party identify verification service.

The information we need to verify your request will depend on the type of request, the sensitivity of the personal information requested, and/or the risk of harm to you. Upon receipt of your request, we will notify you if we need additional information from you to verify your request.

NOTICE AT COLLECTION OF PERSONAL INFORMATION (FOR CALIFORNIA RESIDENTS)

This  Notice at Collection of Personal Information (“Notice at Collection”)  is part of EnCirca’s privacy policy and includes details about the personal information we collect from California residents and the purposes for which that personal information will be used. This Notice at Collection applies solely to California residents (“California consumers” or “you”). We adopt this Notice at Collection in accordance with the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 (“CCPA”) and any terms defined in the CCPA have the same meaning when used in this Notice at Collection.

Personal Information We Collect About You

EnCirca collects personal information, which the CCPA defines as information that identifies, relates to, describes, is reasonably capable of being associated with, or could reasonably be linked with a particular California consumer or household. In particular, we may collect the following  categories of personal information  from or about you:

• Customer Contact Data  includes first name, last name, username or similar identifier, job title, company name, company address, email and phone.
• Domain registration data (such as domain name, nameservers, registration data, and the contact information for registrant, administrative contact, technical contact, and billing contact). Specific domain registrars may require additional information for registration.
• Financial Data  includes bank account and payment card details.
• Transaction Data  includes details about payments to and from you and other details of products and services you have purchased from us.
• Technical Data  includes internet protocol (“IP”) address, cookies, java script, web beacons, clear gifs, HTTP headers, your login data, browser type and version, time zone setting and location, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform, and other technology on the devices you use to access Covered Sites.
• Profile Data  includes your username and password, purchases or orders made by you, your interests, preferences, feedback, survey responses, and any unsolicited personal information not otherwise covered by this Privacy Statement that you choose to submit in an enquiry or webchat, on a blog forum or otherwise on our Covered Sites or in person to a EnCirca representative at an event.
• Usage Data  includes information about how you use the Covered Sites (for example time of day, duration of visit, pages visited, actions taken on pages, or other automatically collected meta-data), and/or our products and services.
• Marketing and Communications Data  includes your communication preferences in receiving marketing from us and third parties.

How We Use Your Personal Information

We will only use your personal information in a manner that is consistent with applicable laws. Most commonly, we will use the categories of personal information identified above for the following business purposes:

• For the provision of our Covered Products and Services or the operation of our business or a third party’s business. Personal information may be made available to EnCirca businesses if necessary for the provision of our Products and Services, account administration, sales and marketing, customer and technical support, and business and product development, for instance. All employees and contractors are required to follow our data privacy and security policies when handling personal information.
• Where we need to perform a contract that we have entered into with a third party or you or in order to take steps at your request prior to entering into a contract.
• To protect the security and integrity of our business, our products and services, or sites.
• Where we need to protect your interests (or someone else’s interests).
• Where it is needed in the public interest or for official purposes.
• In connection with the sale, merger, acquisition, or other reorganization of our business. Such a transaction may involve the disclosure of personal information to prospective or actual purchasers, or the receipt of it from sellers. It is EnCirca’s practice to seek appropriate protection for information in these types of transactions.
• For compliance with legal obligations and protection of EnCirca and others. Specifically, we may be required to use and retain personal information for legal and compliance reasons, such as the prevention, detection, or investigation of a crime, loss prevention, or fraud. We may also use personal information to meet our internal and external audit requirements, and as we otherwise believe to be necessary or appropriate: (i) under applicable law, which may include laws outside your country of residence; (ii) to respond to requests from courts, law enforcement agencies, regulatory agencies, and other public and government authorities, which may include such authorities outside your country of residence; (iii) to enforce or apply our contractual rights; and (iv) to otherwise protect our rights, privacy, safety, or property, or those of other persons.
• For marketing purposes. Specifically, we may use your personal information (including cookies – for more information on how we use cookies, please see below) to form a view on what we think you may want or need, or what may be of interest to you. This is how we decide which products, services, and offers may be relevant for you (we call this marketing).
  • Where it is necessary for the purposes of our legitimate interests or those of a third party (e.g., for the provision of our services or products, the operation of our business or a third party’s business, or the marketing of products or services by us to you in circumstances where you have already bought or subscribed for similar EnCirca products or services) and your interests and fundamental rights and freedoms do not override our legitimate interests.
  • You may receive marketing communications from us if you have purchased products or services from us, we have identified similar products or services that may be relevant for you and, in each case, you have not opted out of receiving that marketing.
  • We will get your express opt-in consent before we market products or services to you that are not similar to products or services you have purchased from us before, or if we share your personal information with any company outside the EnCirca group of companies for marketing purposes.
  • You can ask us or third parties to stop sending you marketing messages at any time. If you receive a marketing communication from us, the communication will contain an option to opt out of further communications. If you receive a marketing communication from one of our business partners, or from social media providers, you should opt out with that entity directly. You can also contact support at any time to opt out using the details given at the end of this Privacy Statement.
• We may disclose your personal information to entities other than EnCirca for business purposes. When we disclose personal information, we do so in accordance with our data privacy and security requirements.
• We will only use your personal information for the purposes for which we collected it, including where we reasonably consider that we need to use it for a reason that is compatible with the original purpose. If we need to use your personal information for an unrelated purpose, we will notify you as required by law.

Please note that we may process your personal information without your knowledge or consent where this is required or permitted by law.

Collection of Data

Our site uses technologies of third-party partners to help us recognize your device and understand how you use our site(s) so that we can improve our services to reflect your interests and serve you advertisements about the products and/or services that are likely to be of more interest to you. Specifically, collect information about your activity on our site(s) to enable us to:

• measure and analyze traffic and browsing activity on our site(s)
• Show advertisements for our products and/or services to you on third-party sites

Opting-Out

Our partners \[such as NextRoll] may use non-cookie technologies that may not be impacted by browser settings that block cookies. Your browser may not permit you to block such technologies. For this reason, you can use the following third party tools to decline the collection and use of information for the purpose of serving you interest based advertising

The NAI’s opt-out platform: http://www.networkadvertising.org/choices/
The EDAA’s opt-out platform: http://www.youronlinechoices.com/
The DAA’s opt-out platform: http://optout.aboutads.info/?c=2&lang=EN

Notification of Changes

The foregoing policy is effective as of March 11, 2003. EnCirca reserves the right to change this policy at any time. Please check this page periodically for changes. Your continued use of EnCirca’s services following the posting of changes to these terms will mean you accept those changes.

Policy last updated: Dec 14, 2022.