BFC News April 2010

This site has been designed with your privacy, security and convenience in mind. We will not rent or sell your name or personal information to any third party.

Some of our sites include an ordering system, enabling you to purchase products from one of our subsidiaries, dealers, or other third parties. In the case of dealers or other third parties, we will only provide them with your name, address and other non-financial information to help them to serve you.

Our sites have the ability to store information to save you from having to re-enter it on a subsequent visit to that site. Financial information such as credit card details that you enter whilst ordering from an Esselte subsidiary are not stored on our web servers after your order has been fully processed.

If you have set up an account with us or entered personal information including your e-mail address, we may occasionally update you via e-mail with newsletters and messages of special opportunities. If you would rather not be alerted to such opportunities, you have the ability to opt out by editing your account details or unsubscribing upon receipt of the e-mail.

Other sites to which this site is linked have a similar policy, but you should check their policy statements before supplying further personal information on their site. Other resellers listed in our dealer locator systems may operate web sites with different policies to this site. You should always check their policy statements carefully before supplying them with any personal information.

What kinds of personal information does Esselte collect?

In general, you can visit Esselte's site on the Web without telling us who you are or revealing any personal information about yourself. The more information you volunteer (and the more accurate it is), the better we are able to customize your experience. We ask for information from you in several ways from different parts of our Web site.

•We ask for personal information from you when you become a registered user of Esselte's site. You are required to register and receive a logon name to be able to access and use certain features of Esselte's site. At that time, Esselte asks for certain required information such as your name, e-mail address, credit card number and expiration date, and other information to process your registration. We also request certain other optional information that will enable us to provide you with a more personalized experience when using Esselte's site. We will let you know what information is optional, and you decide whether or not you want to provide that information or to receive newsletters or third party correspondence. As you use Esselte's site, you may be required to enter personal information in order to receive specific benefits. For example, we ask for information from you when you register for a course, purchase product or service through our catalog or affiliate relationships, or when you enter a contest or promotion sponsored by Esselte or its many partners. This enables us to administer the contest and notify winners. •In the course of using our site, we automatically track certain information about you. This information may include the URL that you just came from and the next URL you go to, regardless of whether these URLs are on our Web site or not. It also includes your IP address. Esselte uses this information to identify broad demographic trends that may be used to provide information tailored to your interests.

•If you choose to buy products or services on our site or through affiliate relationships, we collect information about your buying behavior. If a third party provides those products or services, then we will send the third party information about you that is needed to process the order. We do not control how the third party uses that information, and this policy does not cover the privacy practices of those businesses.

•We monitor customer traffic patterns and site usage to help us refine and improve the design and layout of Esselte sites and the user experience.

•If you send us personal correspondence, such as e-mails or letters, we may keep a record of that correspondence. We also periodically ask users for feedback that we use to improve our service and products and add new features. If you respond to these requests, we may keep a record of your response.

•We collect IP addresses for system administration.

How does Esselte use my information?

We collect personal information to give you a customized experience and to help Esselte understand its customers better. Esselte does not sell, trade, or rent your personal information to others.

•The personal information you choose to give us allows Esselte to process and fulfill your orders and to notify you of your order status. • We use the personal information you give us to provide you with up-to-date information about Esselte's products and services.

•We may use the information we collect to notify you from time to time about important functionality changes to the Web site, new Supplier services and products, and special offers we think you will find valuable.

•When you provide us with personal information to enter a contest or promotion sponsored by Esselte or its partners, we use this information to administer the contest and notify winners. We store all information relating to such contests and promotions. • In order for Esselte to provide free services on our Web site, we may include third party advertisements on our Web site.

•We will deliver targeted advertisements to our customers using the personal information you give us. Third parties provide us with advertisements and identify an audience they want to reach. We display these advertisements on our Web site to people who fit the criteria. We do not allow advertisers to have access to individual account information. These advertisements are usually banner ads and promotional e-mails. You will only receive e-mail announcements of special offers if you have asked to receive newsletters and/or third party information when registering on our Web site. You can change your preferences at any time.

•We also research our users' demographics, interests, and behavior based on the information you give us. We compile and analyze this information in aggregate on an anonymous basis.

•We may use the IP addresses we collect to report aggregate, anonymous information to our advertisers.

Who collects information?

When you supply personal information on Esselte's site, you share that information only with Esselte and its agents appointed to host or manage the site on Esselte's behalf. Such agents will comply with this privacy policy and may use your personal information in the same manner it is used by Esselte.

When companies other than Esselte sponsor promotions, aggregated data collected on Esselte's site in connection with these promotions may be shared with the sponsor, but your personal details will not be shared without your explicit permission.

If you leave our Web site using links to go to other third party Web sites, those third parties may gather information about you. This privacy policy does not cover the practices of those businesses.

Other than as stated in this policy, Esselte does not disclose any of your personal information to third parties without your permission. Read the following sections to learn more.

Does Esselte share my information?

Esselte shopping
When you buy services or products offered through Esselte, the provider of the product or service receives only the information required for the transaction to take place, unless the product or service provider collects additional information. You may be required to give these providers certain additional information to purchase some products or services. These providers have separate privacy and data collection practices. Esselte has no responsibility or liability for their policies. The service provider's home page usually provides a link to its privacy policy.

Third-party data and aggregate data
Esselte discloses aggregate, anonymous statistics (for example, the percentage of users from the western U.S.) to prospective partners and advertisers and for other lawful purposes.

Other situations
Esselte also may disclose your information where disclosure is necessary to identify, contact, or bring legal action against someone who may be causing injury to or interference with our rights or property rights, the users' rights, or others' rights. In the same way, Esselte will disclose information when we reasonably believe disclosure is required by law or to comply with a legal process served on Esselte or its Web site. We may disclose your personal information in the good faith belief that we must act under exigent circumstances to protect the personal safety of users of Esselte, its Web site, or the public.

Do I have a choice about how my information is gathered, used and distributed?

Yes. When you log in or register with Esselte, you can choose to receive newsletters, information, and e-mails. If you change your mind, you can simply update your account information on our Web site or choose to unsubscribe from the service upon receipt of the e-mail so that the information will not be sent in future. It's your choice.

Some of our promotions may request your e-mail address so that you can receive periodic updates about the status of the promotion. When you participate in these types of promotions, you will automatically receive promotion-related e-mail; however, you can choose the no-e-mail option that some promotions offer. Occasionally these promotion-related e-mail messages may include targeted advertisements.

What security precautions does Esselte take to protect me?

Your account information and profile are password-protected so that you are the only one who has access to your personal information. You can edit your account information and profile by using your logon name and password. We recommend that you follow these guidelines to protect yourself:

•• Do not tell anyone your password. If your password has been compromised for any reason, you should immediately change your password.

•• Do not respond to unsolicited e-mail by giving your password, even if the e-mail claims to be from us. Esselte will never ask you for your password in this way.

•• Sign out of your account and close your browser window when you are done using Esselte's site.

No data transmission over the Internet can be guaranteed to be 100% secure. Although we are committed to protecting your personal information, Esselte cannot ensure or warrant the security of any information you send to us or from our online services, and you do so at your own risk.

How does Esselte protect my credit card and financial information?

We are committed to protecting the privacy of your credit card and financial account information. We do not sell, trade, or rent your financial or credit card information. This includes any information you keep in your personal account on our Web site. We do not make this information available to anyone without your permission. We may provide statistical data on our customers to advertisers, partners, vendors, and other reputable third parties, which is comprised of aggregate, anonymous data only, which does not contain any personally identifiable information. For example, we will not disclose that you purchased a specific product, but we might disclose statistics on how many customers have purchased a specific product.

When you enter credit card information on our Web site, we transmit the information in encrypted format, using industry standard, secure socket layer (SSL).

E-mail correspondence to Esselte

Because an e-mail address is personal identifying information, we protect the privacy of the sender by limiting access to these e-mail messages and keeping them in a secure e-mail system. Most e-mail messages are deleted after they are responded to, however in certain cases hard copies or data from certain e-mail correspondence may be kept on file. Any such copies will also be stored in a secure location. In the event that Esselte becomes legally obligated to disclose information obtained from consumers on its web site pursuant to legal or administrative process, Esselte will take all reasonable steps to remove personal information from the data where possible.

What are cookies and how does Esselte use them?

Some of our sites use cookies to keep track of the fact that you have signed in so you don't have to continually enter your username and password on subsequent visits. Also, we use cookies to deliver content specific to your interests and for other purposes. (Cookies are small files downloaded to your computer to track movements within web sites.) Most browsers are automatically set to accept cookies.

You can make decisions about cookies. You can modify your browser preferences to accept all cookies, be notified when a cookie is set, or to reject all cookies. If you decide to reject all cookies, you cannot participate in Esselte's services that require registration to participate. There are many sources for additional information about Internet cookies, and we encourage anyone concerned about the use of cookies to do more research on the topic so you can make an informed decision about accepting them from any site.

This policy does not cover the use of cookies by any advertisers on our Web site.

Web beacons

In addition to cookies, Esselte uses a common Internet technology called "Web beacons" (i.e. "Web bugs," "action tags," "pixel trackers," or "clear GIFs") on some of its sites. Web beacons are small graphic images placed on a Web page, Web-based document, or in an e-mail message that are designed to allow Esselte or a third party to collect certain information and monitor user activity on our sites. Web beacons are invisible to the user because they are typically very small (an image only 1-by-1 pixel) and the same color as the background of the Web page, document or e-mail message.

Esselte may use Web beacons to collect information such as the IP address of the computer that the Web beacon is sent to, the URL of the page the Web user comes from, and the time the Web beacon is activated (such as when you view the Web page, advertisement, or e-mail that contains the Web beacon). We may also use Web beacons to display e-mails in the appropriate HTML or text format. From time to time, we may permit third parties to place Web beacons on our sites or in e-mails sent on our behalf for purposes of collecting the same types of information specified above.

What about the privacy of children?

Esselte is a general audience Web site and does not request the age of its customers. We urge parents to instruct their children to never give out their real names, addresses or phone numbers, without permission, when using the Internet. Esselte recognizes a special obligation to protect personal information obtained from young children.

In order for children under 12 years of age to participate in online activities that require registration, we require prior permission from a parent or guardian (opt-in), and prefer that a parent or guardian do so instead of the child. In this way, we have a parent or guardian's consent before we gather any information from the user.

If you detect any inaccuracy in your account or personal information, we will be happy to make any changes you deem appropriate.

Since offerings and technologies change, we reserve the right, at our discretion, to change, modify, add, or remove portions of our policy at any time. If policy changes are substantial, we will notify each of our customers individually through e-mail, and provide an opportunity to delete or amend account details. Please check back here for changes.

Trademarks, Copyrights and Restrictions

All material on the site, including but not limited to articles, graphics, illustrations and software downloads, is protected by copyrights which are owned and controlled by Esselte or its Associated Companies or by other parties that have licensed their material to Esselte or one of its Associated Companies. Material from the web site may not be copied, reproduced, republished, uploaded, posted, transmitted or distributed in any way. Modification of the materials or use of the materials for any other purpose is a violation of the copyrights and other proprietary rights. For purposes of this Terms of Use Agreement, the use of any such material on any other web site or networked computer environment is prohibited.

Esselte and its business segments Esselte, Leitz and Xyron and their brands are trademarks of Esselte or its Affiliated Companies and are widely protected by registration. All other trademarks are the property of their respective trademark owners.

This site is controlled and operated by Esselte Corporation.


E-mail:smann@esselte.com