Updated: April 2021

Consumer Action Privacy Policy

Consumer Action does not sell, rent, share or trade the names, email addresses or any other information about individuals who correspond with Consumer Action. Saved personal data will never be sold, rented, shared or traded to third parties for commercial or marketing purposes. (On rare occasions, to drum up grassroots support for very important consumer issues, we may send partner alerts but we always try to make it clear that by taking action you may be providing your information to a third-party. This disclosure allows you to make the choice whether to use a third-party platform, which could mean you are opting into emails from that organization.)

Consumer Action does not intentionally or knowingly collect personal information from children under 13.

This Privacy Policy explains the collection, use and disclosure of personal information by Consumer Action online and offline. Consumer Action owns and operates these URLs: Consumer Action (consumer-action.org), Managing Money (managing-money.org), Housing Information (housing-information.org), Privacy Information (privacy-information.org), Insurance Education (insurance-education.org), Know Your Card (knowyourcard.org), WirelessED (wirelessed.org and wireless-education.org), Consumer Services Guide (consumerservicesguide.org) and future domains of currently unspecified websites.

Any personally identifiable information collected by Consumer Action on our websites is handled in accordance with our Privacy Policy. We define personal identifiable information as any information that would allow a party to identify you, such as your name, address, telephone number or email address.

Important Note: There are a number of places on our website where you may click on a link to access other websites that do not operate under this Privacy Policy. These third-party websites may independently solicit and collect information, including personal information, from you. We recommend that you consult the privacy statements of all third-party websites you visit by clicking on the "privacy" link typically located at the bottom of the webpage you are visiting.

To enable consumers to send emails to elected officials and other decision-makers, as well as to send emails to those who sign up for our list, we use the services of VoterVoice, a third-party service owned by FiscalNote, Inc. that provides online organizing and communications tools for non-profit organizations. (Read Fiscal Note's privacy policy.)

We use a third-party surveying company (SurveyMonkey) to get feedback from users and community-based partners. Some of our surveys may allow you to provide contact information to us voluntarily. We do not sell or share this data. Link to SurveyMonkey privacy policy.

Consumer Action is a non-profit 501(c)(3) advocacy and education organization headquartered at 57 Post Street, Suite 611, San Francisco, CA 94104, USA. We were incorporated as a 501(c)(3) in 1972 and our corporate name is "San Francisco Consumer Action" dba Consumer Action). If you have questions about our Privacy Policy, please write to us at this address or send an email to .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address). To learn more about our budgets and finances, view our Annual Reports or visit our profile on GuideStar.org.

Referral and advice hotline

You may submit complaints or questions to our Consumer Advice and Referral Hotline (English | Spanish). To give you the best possible assistance, we need your full name, city and state of residence, and daytime phone number. If your complaint is of major consumer importance, we would like to have the option of referring your name to the media (TV, radio, magazine and newspaper reporters) if we are asked about such issues. However, if you object to being contacted by the media, let us know on the form and we will honor your request. On our hotline intake form we allow you to "opt in" to our email list. If you join our list, you will find that very email we send you will contain prominent information on how to use our easy opt-out feature. Once you have opted out, our email system does not allow us to contact you again at the same email address unless you resubmit your email address to us. If you need help with our mailing list, send a note to TAKEACTION AT CONSUMER-ACTION DOT ORG.

Bulk publications orders

When you order Consumer Action publications, we collect your name, mailing address, contact information (which can include a phone number and/or email address). Consumer Action saves this information about you in order to send you order forms and news about new Consumer Action publications and also to alert you via email about issues that we believe are important to maintaining consumer rights and protections. We may share the names of organizations that use our publications, however personal and contact information will never be made available to any third party. With each email we send you, you will have the opportunity to remove your email address from future mailings. We will not contact you by email if you ask us not to. Because we maintain two mailing lists—one for publications news for community-based organizatons and one for newsletters and other communications—there may be situations where you opt out of one list but continue to receive emails from us. However, you may opt out of any emails we send by following the unsubscribe links.

Consumer Action membership

Consumer Action depends on the financial support of individual members. If you choose to become a member of Consumer Action, your name, mailing address, contact information (which can include a phone number and/or email address) will be collected and added to our membership database so that we can send you our newsletter and other informational mailings as well as membership renewal notices. We will never make this information available to any third party. If you use our online payment system, via PayPal, please review PayPal's privacy policy.

Tracking visitors to our site

Our website does not track personally identifiable information about visitors to our website. We capture limited information about visits to our site, but we do this only to analyze what pages are most or least popular and to perform system maintenance. We do not link browsing information to the personal information you submit to us.

Our servers (which are hosted by a third party service provider) may collect information automatically, directly and indirectly, through cookies, sessions and other general website statistical processes (for example, the use of your "IP address") about your activities while visiting our websites, including the web pages you view and the times you view them and information about the browser you are using.

An IP address is a number that is automatically assigned to your computer when you use the Internet. In some cases your IP address stays the same from browser session to browser session; but if you use a consumer Internet access provider, your IP address probably varies from session to session.

(rev. May 2018)