Our commitment to privacy

The SureWest Communications Privacy Policy was developed as an extension of our commitment to combine the highest-quality products and services with the highest level of integrity in dealing with our clients and partners. This privacy policy applies to all SureWest Communications family of companies.

The policy is designed to assist you in understanding how we collect, use and safeguard the personal information you provide to us and to assist you in making informed decisions when using our site and our products and services. This statement will be continuously assessed against new technologies, business practices and our customers' needs.

What information do we collect?

When you visit our website you may provide us with two types of information: personal information you knowingly choose to disclose that is collected on an individual basis and website use information collected on an aggregate basis as you and others browse our website.

1. Personal information you choose to provide

Credit card information

This section applies when online credit card payment options are available through SureWest Communications company websites. If you choose to purchase products or services from us or our partners, you may need to give personal information and authorization to obtain information from various credit services. For example, you may need to provide the following information:

• Name
• Mailing address
• E-mail address
• Credit card number
• Home and business phone number
• Other personal information (for example, your mother's maiden name)

E-mail information

If you choose to correspond further with us through e-mail, we may retain the content of your e-mail messages together with your e-mail address and our responses. We provide the same protections for these electronic communications that we employ in the maintenance of information received by mail and telephone.

2. Website use information

Similar to other commercial websites, our website may utilize a standard technology called "cookies" (see explanation below: What are cookies?) and web server logs to collect information about how our website is used. Information gathered through cookies and web server logs may include the date and time of visits, the pages viewed, time spent at our website, and the websites visited just before and after our website. This information is collected on an aggregate basis. None of this information is associated with you as an individual.

How we use the information that you provide to us

Broadly speaking, we use personal information for purposes of administering our business activities, providing customer service and making available other products and services to our customers and prospective customers.

Occasionally, we may also use the information we collect to notify you about important changes to our website, new services and special offers we think you will find valuable. The lists used to send you product and service offers are developed and managed under our traditional corporate standards designed to safeguard the security and privacy of our customers' personal information. Upon registering for your online account, you will be given the opportunity to indicate whether or not you wish to receive these offers. If you change your mind later, your account preferences are available through your online account and can be adjusted at any time.

What are cookies?

Cookies are a standard feature of web browser software that allow web servers to recognize the computer used to access a website. Cookies are small pieces of data that are stored by a user's web browser on the user's hard drive. Cookies store select pieces of information a user accesses on a web page to simplify subsequent interactions with that website by the same user or to use the information to streamline the user's transactions on related web pages. This makes it easier for a user to move from web page to web page and to complete commercial transactions over the Internet. Cookies should make your online experience easier and more personalized.

Cookies help us collect important business and technical statistics. The information in the cookies lets us trace the paths followed by users to our website as they move from one page to another; this helps us improve our navigation and make it easier for you to find things. Web server logs allow us to count how many people visit our website and evaluate our website's visitor capacity. We do not use these technologies to capture your individual e-mail address or any personally identifying information about you, although they do permit us to display information or advertisements most likely to be of interest to you.

 Sharing information with affiliates

Where not prohibited by law, and normally where a customer has accounts with more than one of our affiliates, we may share information across affiliates to better assist us in providing services to you.  With some affiliates, we may provide for written permission to do so in our contract with you.  Our contracts for some services may be somewhat more restrictive.  We seek to comply with all applicable laws, rules and regulations in this area.  

No sharing of information with third parties

We do not sell, trade or disclose to third parties any customer identifiable information derived from the registration for or use of our online services (including customer names and addresses) without your consent (except as required by subpoena, search warrant or other legal process, or to help you in the case of potential harm to you or members of your household, or in other exceptional cases where we conclude in our discretion that such disclosure would be acceptable to you.)  Again, in some cases, our contracts for some services may be more restrictive.  When we use other agents, contractors or companies to perform services on our behalf, we advise them that they are to protect confidential information and not disclose it except in limited circumstances.  Again, we seek to comply with all applicable laws, rules and regulations in this area.

Some of the pages on our site may contain links to other sites and to other companies.  When you click on those links, you will be connected to pages that are on another site, operated by another entity, and not subject to SureWest's site policies.  If you do business with one of these other companies, you will be providing information directly to that firm, and your relationship will be exclusively with that firm, not with SureWest.  Any information you provide to that firm will be subject to their information disclosure and other policies.  We cannot make any representations about the practices and policies of these companies, and we do not warrant their products or services.

Notice of new services and changes

Occasionally, we may also use the information we collect to notify you about important changes to our website, new services and special offers we think you will find valuable.

As our customer, you will be given the opportunity to indicate whether or not you wish to receive these offers when you register for your online account. If you change your mind later, your account preferences are available through your online account and can be adjusted at any time.

How do we secure information transmissions?

When you send confidential personal credit card information to us on our website, a secure server software which we have licensed encrypts all information you input before it is delivered to us. The information is scrambled en route and decoded once it reaches our web servers.

Other e-mail that you send us may not be secure unless we advise you that security measures will be in place prior to your transmitting the information. For that reason, we ask that you do not send confidential information such as social security or account numbers to us through an unsecured e-mail.

How do we protect your information?

• Information security
  We utilize encryption/security software to safeguard the confidentiality of personal information we collect from unauthorized access or disclosure and accidental loss, alteration or destruction.
• Evaluation of information protection practices
  Periodically, our operations and business practices are reviewed for compliance with corporate policies and procedures governing the security, confidentiality and quality of our information.
• Employee access, training and expectations
  Our corporate values, ethical standards, policies and practices are committed to the protection of customer information as described in this policy. In general, our business practices limit employee access to confidential information, and limit the use and disclosure of such information to authorized persons, processes and transactions.

How can you access and correct your information?

Log in to your online account and click the link to update your online account information. You can then make adjustments to your account information and submit the corrections, which will be automatically updated in our database.

Currently, you can only use your online account to update the information associated directly with your online account. To update your regular account information with any of our family of companies (such as your mailing address, primary customer name, which features or services you subscribe to, or other details), call the customer service number shown on your bill.

Do we disclose information to outside parties?

We may provide aggregate information about our customers, sales, website traffic patterns and related website information to our affiliates or reputable third parties, but this information will not include personally identifying data, except as otherwise provided in this privacy policy.

What about legally compelled disclosure of information?

We may disclose information when legally responsible to do so: under court or legal order, or when we, in good faith, believe that the law requires it for the protection of our legal rights.

What about other websites linked to our website?

We are not responsible for the practices employed by websites linked to or from our website nor the information or content contained therein. Often links to other websites are provided solely as pointers to information on topics that may be useful or of interest to the users of our website.

Please remember that when you use a link to go from our website to another website, our privacy policy is no longer in effect. Your browsing and interaction on any other website, including websites which have a link on our website, is subject to that website's own rules and policies. Please read over those rules and policies before proceeding.

Your consent

By using our website you consent to our collection and use of your personal information as described in this privacy policy. If we change our privacy policies and procedures, we will post those changes on our website to keep you aware of what information we collect, how we use it and under what circumstances we may disclose it.