Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) Web Site Privacy Notice

The Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) is committed to upholding and defending your privacy rights, whether online or offline. CUPW is subject to federal privacy laws in Canada and respect your privacy rights and honours its obligations to you.

This page summarizes our privacy policy and information practices for this web site. It is intended to provide you with a complete and accurate basis for making informed decisions when choosing to communicate with CUPW via this site.

During a visit to our web site, your privacy is respected. We do not collect personal information about you unless you choose to send us an e-mail, in which you voluntarily provide your name and contact information. The nature of the Internet is such that it passively and automatically collects certain information about a user's traffic patterns, linked to their Internet Protocol (IP) addresses. These are unique Internet "addresses" assigned to all web users by their Internet Service Providers (ISP). IP addresses are automatically logged by web servers. While the IP address does not identify an individual on its face, it may with the cooperation of the ISP be used to locate and identify an individual using the web. The IP address is considered personal information because it is an identifying number, and IP addresses are therefore protected by most privacy legislation. The privacy issues surrounding IP addresses are explained further below.

Visitors' personal information received via e-mail (feedback) is provided only to our CUPW office personnel (or their agents) who require the information to respond to inquiries. We do not use this information for any other purpose. We protect all personal information in our custody with strong security safeguards, including strict access controls.

As we cannot guarantee the security of electronic systems or e-mail, we do not recommend sending sensitive personal information or complaints electronically at this time. For all such matters, please contact us by postal mail at: Canadian Union of Postal Workers, 377 Bank Street, Ottawa, Ontario, K2P 1Y3, or by calling 1-613-236-7238, Monday to Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Eastern Time.

Our web site is hosted on servers owned and managed by third-party partners, Magma Communications (Primus) and others.  Any personal information collected on our behalf by Magma Communications (Primus), such as server log data (see below), is managed in accordance with this privacy policy, and is protected by applicable law. We also use Google Analytics to provide us with additional web data about our web sites.

Server logs: Our servers automatically log information about visits to our web site in the normal course of establishing and maintaining web connections. Server logs record statistical information, such as visitors' IP addresses, type of operating systems, time and duration of visit, web pages requested, and identify categories of visitors by items such as domains and browser types. These statistics are reported in aggregate form to our information technology, communications and research staff, and are used to improve our web site and ensure that it provides the optimal web experience for visitors.

However, we may review server logs for security purposes, for example, to detect intrusions into our network. The possibility therefore exists that server log data, which contains visitors' IP addresses, could in instances of criminal malfeasance be used to trace and identify individuals. In such instances, raw data logs would be shared with appropriate investigative bodies authorized to investigate such breaches of security.

Cookies: Both ColdFusion and the website make use of permanent cookies.  For the website the cookies are used to track users between visits, which allows us to accurately assess whether the user is new to the site or a return visitor.  This data is necessary to provide accurate unique user stats in website statistics reports.

In addition to this, for every page view made by a user, the website tracks the following information:

1. The date/time of the visit (server time)
2. The referrer - the page that forwarded the user to a page within the site.  This can be a page within the site referring to another page within the site, or any other external links such as from Google search results or other sites linking to CUPW.
3. The query string - this is the information that appears after index.cfm.
4. The user agent - this is the information that the browser provides which contains information on browser, operating system and sometimes addition add-ons used in the browser.

Electronic Subscription, Newsletter and Distribution Lists:   Subscribers to the CUPW email list for electronic distribution are providing email address and, in some cases, their first and last names. Please also be aware that the newsletter engine works to personalize every link included in dispatched newsletter content.  Every link included in the content is transformed in such a way as to direct users to a central location on the originating web server where the request is logged before forwarding the user to the actual link destination.  This works for all links, including links that reference external sites.  This is done to allow our standard newsletter reports to provide information regarding the number of user click-throughs generated by the dispatch.  All standard reports included in the website only include generic information, like number of click-throughs and do not report on any personalized information, like who clicked on what, although you should be aware that the data to generate such a report is collected in the database.

You may opt out of the email newsletter at any time after registering by using the unsubscribe option. This option adds your email address to an unsubscribed list and ensures that your email address is not sent any future newsletter. You can also re-subscribe at any time.

Other sites to which we provide links may be governed by different policies. The Canadian Union of Postal Workers does not assume responsibility for the information practices of these other web sites, and we strongly encourage all web visitors to review the privacy policies and statements of all externally-linked sites.

Contact: Questions about this policy may be directed to our Secretary-Treasurer, George Kuehnbaum, by e-mail at gkuehnbaum@cupw-sttp.org, through our phone line at 1-613-236-7238 or by postal mail at: 377 Bank Street, Ottawa, Ontario, K2P 1Y3.

Last updated: October 22, 2009