Privacy Policy

LAST UPDATED: December 4, 2012

W. L. Gore & Associates, Inc. and our affiliates (referred to below collectively as “Gore”) are concerned about privacy issues and want you to be familiar with how we collect, use and disclose personal information (“PI,” as defined below). This Privacy Policy describes our practices in connection with PI that we collect through this website ("Site"). This Privacy Policy does not address the collection, use or disclosure of information by any third parties, on other websites or offline.

By providing PI to us, you agree to the terms and conditions of this Privacy Policy. We may change this Privacy Policy by posting a new privacy policy on the website. You can determine when this Privacy Policy was last revised by referring to the "LAST UPDATED" legend at the top of this page. Any changes to our Privacy Policy will become effective upon our posting of the revised Privacy Policy on the Site. If you use the Site after we make changes, you will be deemed to accept the Privacy Policy.

PERSONAL INFORMATION

PI” is information that identifies an individual, which we collect when you use the Site such as, name, postal address (including billing and shipping addresses), telephone number, fax number, email address, credit and debit card information.

If you provide PI of another person, please make sure that you have the right to share that information with us.

How Gore Uses PI

Gore uses PI primarily to do business with you. We may also use PI for the following purposes:

    fulfill your requests, such as to respond to a question regarding our products, to help you locate a store near you, fulfill your order, process your payment card, and/or to provide you with customer service. send you important information regarding the Site, changes to our terms, conditions, and policies and/or other administrative information. Because this information may be important, you may not opt-out of receiving such communications. inform you of products, programs, services and promotions that we believe may be of interest to you. allow you to send email to others through our “send to a friend” type functionality. (By using this functionality, you are telling us that you are entitled to use and provide us with your friend’s name and email address.) register you for a seminar. allow you to participate in sweepstakes, contests and similar promotions and to administer these activities. Some of these activities have additional rules, which could contain additional information about how we use and disclose your PI. customize content for you on our Site and provide you with customized offers. facilitate our internal business purposes, such as data analysis, audits, developing new products, enhancing our website, improving our services, identifying usage trends and determining the effectiveness of our promotional campaigns.

How PI is Shared

We may share PI with third parties for the following purposes:

    to third party service providers for web hosting, data analysis, IT services, e‑mail delivery services, survey fulfillment, social media applications and postings, payment and credit card processing, order fulfillment and other similar services. to third parties to allow them to contact you regarding products, programs, services, information and promotions that they believe may be of interest to you. to identify you to any person to whom you send messages through the Site. to third party sponsors of sweepstakes, contests and similar promotions, if you participate. by you, on services (for example, message boards, chat functionality, “profile pages” and blogs, community sites where you can “share your story” and review products, among other services) to which you are able to post information and materials. Please note that any information you post or disclose through these services (for example, PI contained in the photos, stories, comments and videos that you submit) will become public information, and may be available to visitors to the Site and to the general public. in the event of any reorganization, merger, sale, joint venture, assignment, transfer or other disposition of all or any portion of our business, assets or stock (including without limitation in connection with any bankruptcy or similar proceedings). as we believe to be appropriate (a) under applicable law including laws outside your country of residence; (b) to comply with legal process (c) to respond to requests from public and government authorities including public and government authorities outside your country of residence; (d) to enforce our terms and conditions; (e) to protect our operations; (f) to protect our rights, privacy, safety or property, and/or that of you or others; and (g) to permit us to pursue available remedies or limit the damages that we may sustain.

OTHER INFORMATION

We and our third party service providers may collect Other Information from you, including your IP address, MAC address, your computer type, screen resolution, OS version and Internet browser, as well as information collected through the use of cookies, pixel tags, web beacons, and other similar technologies to better serve you with more tailored information and facilitate your ongoing use of the Site. We and our third party service providers may also collect Other Information such as demographic data, for example your city or state as well as aggregate PI in a manner such that the end-product does not personally identify you or any other user of the Site, for example, by using PI to calculate the percentage of our users who have a particular telephone area code.

Cookies

Cookies allow us to collect information such as browser type, time spent on the Site, pages visited, language preferences, navigation path and products browsed. We and our service providers use the information for security purposes, to facilitate navigation, remember you when you come back to the Site, display information more effectively, and to personalize your experience while visiting the Site (including to recommend products and offers to you based on your use of the Site), as well as for online tracking purposes. We can recognize your computer to assist your use of the Site. We also gather statistical information about the usage of the Site in order to continually improve the design and functionality, understand how customers use the Site and to assist us with resolving questions regarding the Site. Cookies further allow us to select which of our advertisements or offers are most likely to appeal to you and display them while you are on the Site. We may also use cookies in online advertising to track consumer responses to our advertisements and we may use cookies or other files to track your use of other websites.

If you do not want information collected through the use of cookies, there is a simple procedure in most browsers that allows you to decline the use of cookies. To learn more about cookies, please visit http://www.allaboutcookies.org/. If you choose to decline cookies, then some or all of the features, functionality and promotions available through the Site may not be available to you.

Because Other Information does not personally identify you, we may use Other Information for any purpose or share it with third parties. In some instances, we may combine Other Information with PI, such as combining your zip code with your name. If we do combine any Other Information with PI, the combined information will be treated by us as PI as long as it is combined. If local law requires us to treat any of the Other Information as PI, we will comply with those laws.

THIRD PARTY SITES

This Privacy Policy does not address, and we are not responsible for, the privacy, information or other practices of any third parties. The inclusion of a link on the Site does not imply endorsement of the linked site by us or by our affiliates.

In some cases, we may permit you to use third-party payment services to make payments. If you wish to make a payment using a Payment Service, you will be directed to a webpage that is hosted by the Payment Service and not by us. Any information that you provide through a Payment Service Page will be subject to the applicable Payment Service's privacy policy, rather than this Privacy Policy. We have no control over, and are not responsible for, any Payment Service's use of information collected through any Payment Service Page.

THIRD PARTY ADVERTISERS

We may use third-party advertising companies to serve ads about goods and services that may be of interest to you when you visit our Site and other websites, based on information about your visit to this Site and other websites. To do so, these companies may place or recognize a unique cookie on your browser. If you would like more information about this practice and to know your choices about not having this information used by these companies, please visit http://www.networkadvertising.org/choices/ and http://www.aboutads.info/.

SECURITY

We use reasonable organizational, technical and administrative measures to protect PI under our control. Unfortunately, no data transmission over the Internet or data storage system can be guaranteed to be 100% secure.

CHOICES AND ACCESS

If you would like to opt-out from receiving electronic communications from Gore and/or from Gore’s sharing of your PI with third parties for their marketing purposes please contact us.

If you would like to review, correct, update, suppress, delete or otherwise limit our use of your PI that has been previously provided to us, you may please contact us.

CONTACT INFORMATION:

In your request, please make clear what information you would like to have changed, what you are opting out from, whether you would like to have your PI suppressed from our database or otherwise let us know what limitations you would like to put on our use of your PI. We will try to comply with your request as soon as reasonably practicable.

RETENTION PERIOD

We will retain your PI for the period necessary to fulfill the purposes outlined in this Privacy Policy unless a longer retention period is required or allowed by law.

USE OF SITE BY MINORS

The Site is not directed to individuals under the age of eighteen (18) and we request that these individuals not provide PI through the Site.

CROSS-BORDER TRANSFER

Your PI may be stored and processed in any country where we have facilities and operations, and by providing any PI to us, you consent to the transfer of such PI to countries outside of your country of residence, including the United States, which may have different data protection rules from your country of residence.

JOINTLY-USED PI

W. L. Gore & Associates, Inc. and the local Gore affiliate running the Site are the party responsible for the management of PI that is jointly used by Gore.

SENSITIVE INFORMATION

Please do not send us, or disclose, any sensitive Personal Information (e.g., social security numbers, information related to racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religion or other beliefs, health, criminal background or trade union membership) on or through the Site.

Do not disclose any confidential information of any sort. Additionally, to assure compliance with Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) regulations, PLEASE DO NOT DISCLOSE INDIVIDUAL MEDICAL INFORMATION. Details about personal medical conditions should be discussed with your attending physician.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

For North and South America: Gore Information Center, W. L. Gore & Associates, Inc., 201 Airport Road, Elkton, MD 21921, USA. (Tel.: 888 / 914-4673).

For Europe: Gore Corporate & Legal, W. L. Gore & Associates, Hermann-Oberth-Straße 22, 85640 Putzbrunn, Germany (Tel.: +49 / 89-4612-0).

For Asia and the Pacific Region: Gore Corporate Services, W. L. Gore & Associates Hong Kong, Ltd. 12F, Tower 2, Grand Century Place, 193 Prince Edward Road, Mongkok, Kowloon, Hong Kong. (Tel.: +852 / 2622-9622).