Mountain Equipment Co-op, Montreal

This statement discloses the privacy practices and policies for Mountain Equipment Co-operative’s (MEC’s) website. If you have any questions about these practices and policies, please contact us at:

MEC respects your personal privacy. We believe ensuring the security of your personal information is an important part of our job. If we ask you to provide any personal information, we will tell you the purposes for which we intend to use that information. Your personal information is not sold to anyone for any purpose.

Additional information

To learn more about MEC’s policies, please view the following pages:

Information collection, use and disclosure

Information gathered on mec.ca falls under the following categories:

• Aggregate Site Use Information
• Cookies and Other Technologies
• Social Networking
• Third party Analytics or Ad Serving Services
• Online Order Information and Security
• MEC Membership Information
• Subscriptions, Online Gear Swap, and Events List Information

Aggregate site use information

We record information about the pages viewed by all of our website visitors. This data includes internet protocol (IP) address, browser type, internet service provider (ISP), referring/exit pages, platform type, date/time stamp, connection speed, read time, display time, and number of clicks.

We use this data, in aggregate form, to compile statistics and reports for MEC’s use, and to improve the online experience for all visitors.

We may, on occasion, provide portions of this aggregate information to vendors, consultants, potential advertisers, or news agencies. Typical uses of the data in this fashion would be to gauge the amount of interest in our site and/or to plan for site infrastructure improvements.

Cookies and other technologies

A cookie is a small text file stored on a user’s hard drive. Cookies are required to shop on our site. We also use cookies to assist with anonymous site traffic analysis, which includes tracking the time/date of visits, pages viewed, and referring URLs.

We may use cookies to serve our remarketing campaigns so that third-party vendors, including Google and Facebook, show our ads on sites across the Internet. You can opt out of the third parties’ use of cookies by visiting their advertising preferences settings.

We may also use web beacons or pixel tags to compile tracking information reports regarding website user demographics, website traffic patterns, and website purchases. None of the tracking information in these reports can be connected to the identities or other personal information of individual users. For our own research purposes we may link tracking information with personal information voluntarily provided by website users. Once such a link is made, all of the linked information is treated as personal information and will be used and disclosed only in accordance with this Privacy Policy.

Social networking

When you use certain aspects of MEC’s website or other services, or you post information to other social networking sites (e.g. posting a link to MEC’s Facebook or Twitter pages, or “liking” a product on your Facebook account, or “pinning” a product on your Pinterest account), the personal information that you post or share in connection with these third-party sites is visible to other persons and can be read, collected, used and disclosed by other persons. Any information provided to such third-party social networking sites and other sites is outside of MEC’s control and is not governed by this policy.

Third party analytics or ad serving services

MEC may use certain third-party analytics and/or ad serving services. The providers of these services may independently collect, use, and disclose your IP address together with information about your visits to this and other websites that they service in accordance with their own privacy policies (and not this privacy policy). These services may use their own cookies and other data collection technologies. They may use this information in order to improve your experience, to gain a view of how people are using websites that they service so that improvements can be made, and as otherwise permitted in their privacy policies.

MEC may also use targeted advertising service providers to tailor MEC advertisements to your preferences. These advertisements may appear on MEC’s website or social media sites, or on third party sites. If you have opted in to receive email news or offers, MEC may use your email address to target advertising to you. You may opt out of participating in these targeted ad programs by unsubscribing from MEC email newsletters within your mec.ca account subscription hub.

Online order information and security

If you place an order online, we only require the information needed to complete the processing of your orders and billing. We also share our users’ personal information with outside shipping companies and credit card processing companies in order to bill and ship your order, but we do not provide any more information than necessary for these purposes. We may also use the information to contact you regarding your order.