Privacy Policy

Note: This privacy policy was updated in February 2024

We are committed to protecting your privacy.

To make your experience on this website and our email lists more convenient, we gather information from you. We maintain the privacy of your information using security technologies and adhere to policies that prevent unauthorized use of your personal information.

What personal information do we collect, and how is it used?

We collect personal information from visitors when they register to join our organization, subscribe to a newsletter or email list, take action on an issue or make a contribution using our service. Such information may include your name, address, email address, phone number, and information about your interests and preferences. The personal information we collect is always voluntarily submitted by you. This information is used by us to communicate with you in the future, and to understand your interests and activities. In certain circumstances we may share your information with third parties as described below in “Protecting Your Privacy.” If you would like to review any personal information we have collected or request corrections, please contact us.

If, for any reason, you would like to be removed from any or all of our email lists, you can unsubscribe by simply visiting the subscription management page on our website and clicking the unsubscribe button, or you can opt out of future emails by simply stating this desire in a reply to any email we send you.

By providing us with your mobile number and opting in, you give us permission to send recurring text alerts, voice mails, and calls from Friends of the Earth on breaking news, important events, and key issues where your voice can make a critical difference for the planet. For text messages, text STOP to opt out and text HELP for info. Standard message and data rates from your carrier apply to sending and/or receiving text messages. Check with your carrier if you have questions about your plan and costs. No purchase necessary. Read our full Mobile Text (SMS) Messaging Terms and Conditions here.

We may also monitor and track information such as visitor usage patterns of our website. We compile this information into a statistical aggregate that we use for internal purposes including improving our web service and our client service.

Protecting Your Privacy

As part of our commitment to ensuring the privacy of our visitors, email subscribers and donors, we do not sell names or any other personally identifiable information about our online visitors and activists to for-profit businesses.

We may provide personal information to third parties on a confidential basis to enable such third parties to perform certain tasks, such as maintain a membership database or send email alerts and/or newsletters, on our behalf. These third-party providers are committed to protecting the privacy of our members and subscribers, and will utilize your information to provide the services for which we contract. We may share aggregate information about website usage and traffic patterns, stripped of any personally identifiable information, to third parties to comply with various reporting obligations and for business or marketing purposes.

Like many other groups, Friends of the Earth may share personal information we collect with other nonprofit organizations — many of which we work with in our environmental advocacy work — either directly or indirectly through a third party. Friends of the Earth will not share text messaging originator opt-in data and consents with other organizations or companies that will use this data for their own outreach. If you do not want your personal information shared with other organizations, please contact us and we will remove you from any shared lists.

When you contribute to Friends of the Earth online, the payment is processed by a third party, such as WorldPay, PayPal, Apple Pay, Authorize.net, and ActBlue Charities. Please note your submission of financial and other personal information to the payment processor is subject to its privacy policy rather than ours. Friends of the Earth never has access to your financial information.

Data Security

The data we gather from Friends of the Earth supporters on foe.org is stored on servers at a secure third-party site, Engaging Networks, whose server network uses industry-standard methods to protect the confidentiality and integrity of personal information. Engaging Networks stores and processes all data transactions for Friends of the Earth through a central managed hosting provider, to ensure continuous monitoring, data backup and incident management based on escalation procedures and communications protocols, threat monitoring and response (e.g. SQL injection attacks, brute force attacks, etc.), as well as steps to ensure continuing PCI DSS compliance. All connections to Engaging Networks dashboards and pages are made secure using TLS 1.0 or higher and encrypted using cyphers with 256 or 128-bit encryption. Engaging Networks does not store any data in servers open to untrusted networks. In addition to its network firewall, Engaging Networks maintains a firewall between application servers and database servers to further segment and harden internal systems. Application and database servers are physically and logically separated. All data and transmissions are secured and encrypted in transit using current security best practices, and all sensitive user data stored within the databases are hashed and salted.

Access to Friends of the Earth’s data is restricted within the company, and all employees are aware that this data is private. If you have any further questions about Engaging Networks’ privacy or security, please contact Engaging Networks by sending an email to [email protected]. You can also read Engaging Networks’ own privacy policy here.

Use of Cookies

Cookies are pieces of information that are stored on your computer and that can be used to help identify you when you visit our website. We use cookies to make visiting and using our website easier — first, so that you don’t have to continually re-enter information and second, so that we can tailor your visit to your expressed preferences.

Links to Other Sites

This website provides links to several other third party websites. While we make efforts to choose our links carefully, we cannot take any responsibility for the content of linked websites, or for the privacy policies of websites we link to. Our Take Action pages often provide links in order for you submit comments to federal agencies. Usually those agencies collect contact information and frequently they publish the contact information along with the comments submitted. Since we do not control these websites, we encourage you to review the privacy policies posted on these third party websites prior to any use.

Privacy Policy Changes

We may amend this privacy policy from time to time. We maintain the option to change this privacy policy at any time by electronic notice posted on our website. Your continued use of our website after the date that such notices are posted will be deemed to be your agreement to the changed terms.