Privacy Policy

Welcome to Grief Recovery Method’s web site. We appreciate your interest in us and understand you share our commitment to privacy. This statement explains to you how we use and protect information gathered through this site. Please read it carefully.

Last Revised: September 25, 2024

Summary: We do not sell or share your personally identifiable information (PII) for third-party marketing purposes, and we will not do so in the future unless we first ask for and obtain your verifiable consent. We do not knowingly collect any PII of children or teenagers. We promptly honor do-not-contact requests. We take measures to help protect PII in our control from misuse or unauthorized access (see Data Security, below).

Overview: We are the Grief Recovery Institute, an Idaho corporation (“us” or “GRI”). We respect your privacy, and try to comply with all applicable laws relating to consumer privacy and data security. Our privacy practices are based on the fundamental principles of notice, choice, accuracy, data minimization, and limited disclosure. Read on for the details about how GRI handles personal data.

Personally Identifiable Information. Personally identifiable information (“PII”) is information that identifies, relates to, describes, is reasonably capable of being associated with, or could reasonably be linked, directly or indirectly, to you. PII does not include information that has been effectively aggregated or de-identified.

No Sales of PII:  We do not sell PII for monetary compensation, and we will not do so in the future unless we first ask for and obtain your verifiable consent. We do share PII with service providers for purposes of targeted advertising and marketing of our own goods and services. However, you may stop marketing communications from us at any time (Marketing Communications, below).

Application: This Privacy Policy is our representation and notice to you regarding our information privacy practices and your rights. It applies to all PII and other personal information obtained by us, from all sources and in all media, including through our website https://www.griefrecoverymethod.com (the “Site”). This Privacy Policy explains:

  • what categories of information we collect and from where;

  • how we use the information;

  • with whom we may share the information;

  • what choices you have about our collection, use and disclosure of the information;

  • what security procedures are in place to protect against the loss, misuse or alteration the information; and

  • how you can correct any inaccuracies in the information.

When you visit the Site, we collect information in these categories: 

  • Identifiers – We collect PII, such as your first and last name and email address. We may ask for your name, mailing address, email address, and phone number. We may ask you to create a username and password linked to your PII. If you sign up to take a course with one of our certified specialists, then that specialist may share your PII with us. You can identify specialists with current certification by their use our registered mark: Grief Recovery Method Specialist, Certified by the Grief Recovery Institute®. 

  • Financial – When you purchase a product through our Site, or apply for a certification program, your payment is processed by Stripe, using one of the payment methods listed at https://stripe.com/payments/payment-methods. You can access Stripe’s privacy policy here.

  • Commercial – We collect PII about your transactions on our Site, such as what products and services you browsed, purchased, or placed in the shopping cart for future purchase.

  • Online Activity – When you visit the Site, we passively collect information about your device such as its IP address, MAC address, and associated advertising identifier (such as IDFA or AAID). If permitted, we may collect PII related to your online activity, such as your browsing history. This Privacy Policy describes some ways to limit this type of collection.

  • Geolocation – We may collect PII about the approximate location of your device, but you can limit our ability to collect this type of information. 

  • Likeness & Biometrics – We may collect biometric PII such as your image or likeness, for example if we verify your identity using official documents such as a driver’s license or passport. With actual notice to you, we may record your voice or video calls with us.

  • Content – We collect the content of messages sent to us or our officers.  

  • Inferences – We may draw inferences from the PII and other information described above, such as inferences about the identity of the user of a particular device.

  • Sensitive Information – We do not knowingly collect sensitive PII such as racial/ethnic origin, religious beliefs, health conditions or diagnoses, alternative gender identity or sexual orientation, citizenship or immigration status, consumer health data, genetic data, or precise geolocation data. Users of public platforms for publishing comments, including our Site and the social media channels associated with it, should not expect to maintain privacy in posts that disclose their own sensitive PII.

Updates & Changes: We may update or modify this Privacy Policy from time to time, and we will post the changes here. If we change this Privacy Policy in a way that materially alters your rights, we will provide notice to your last-known email address, and an opportunity to exercise your rights. If state law or other applicable law gives you additional rights in these circumstances, we will follow the applicable law (Rights under State Law, below).

Limiting Our Collection and Use of Your PII

Industry Organization Opt-Outs: Two major US-based trade organizations offer opt-outs from interest-based advertising by their members. The Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA) and the Network Advertising Initiative (NAI) offer opt-out of interest-based advertising from their members. See the DAA’s opt-out portal and the NAI’s opt-out portal, and for mobile applications the DAA’s application. 

Do Not Contact & Do Not Track: If you do not want to be contacted by us, we will promptly honor your do-not-contact request. You can opt out by replying STOP to any SMS message, following the instructions at the bottom of any GRI marketing email, or contact us. The GRI Services do not recognize the Global Privacy Control browser setting, which opts the user out of cookies on the browser for which it is enabled. See https://globalprivacycontrol.org/.

PII of Minors: Our site does not include any content designed to appeal to children. Our book “When Children Grieve” and the related materials are intended for sale to parents or guardians. We do not knowingly collect or maintain the PII of any persons under 13 years of age. If you are the parent or guardian of a person under 13 years of age and you believe we have collected such information, please ask us to delete it by contacting us. For persons aged 13-18, we will not sell or share your PII for purposes of marketing the goods or services of third parties in the future, unless we first ask for and obtain verifiable consent from you or (if required by applicable law) your parent or guardian.

Sources of PII

PII We Collect Directly from You: Our Site collects PII directly from you if you contact us to express interest in our products or services, to learn about becoming a certified specialist, to inquire about employment opportunities, or for customer service support. In these cases, we will collect your PII including your name, email address, and phone number. Registration is required to sign up for our newsletter, purchase products through our Site, enroll in a Grief Recovery Method® course, post to the Site’s blog, and apply for certification. Registration requires you to provide your full name and email address. Shipping and billing addresses are required for purchase of products. If you sign up for a Grief Recovery Method course with a specialist, then that specialist may share your information, i.e., your name and email, with the Grief Recovery Institute. If you apply for employment or to become a specialist, then we will collect additional PII such as your employment history and educational background.

PII We Collect Indirectly: GRI may pay third-parties for PII that GRI uses to market its services or certification training courses.

Other Information We Collect (Not PII): Our Site use server logs to collect information that is not by itself personally identifiable (such as browser type, ISP, IP address, referring/exit pages, platform type, date/time stamp, and number of clicks) from all visitors to the Site. Our Site also uses cookies to collect information about how the Site is used. Information gathered through cookies may include the pages viewed and the amount of time spent at the Site. Our Site use both session ID cookies and persistent cookies. The session ID cookie terminates once you close the browser. For the persistent cookie, a text file is stored on your computer. Persistent cookies can be removed by following Internet browser help file directions. If you allow the persistent cookie, our Site can recognize your computer and apply your preferences for our Site. If you reject the cookie, your user experience may be limited. We may use web beacons and similar technologies to track your use of our Site. Web beacons (also known as clear gifs, pixel tags or web bugs) are small graphics with a unique identifier, similar in function to cookies, and are used to track the online movements of web users or to access cookies. We also may include web beacons in email messages or newsletters to determine whether messages have been opened and acted upon. We use information that is not by itself personally identifiable to improve our Site, reconstruct activity from a session or by a user, and for troubleshooting. Our Site does not recognize browser do-not-track settings. If we combine your PII with information that is not by itself personally identifiable, we will treat the combined result as PII.

PII From Social Media: We may use social media websites or messaging applications to interact with you and to communicate information about GRI products and services. We may collect PII from your posts on social media that mention us or comment on our content, and we may use it as described in this Policy.

Our Uses of Your PII

Marketing Communications: We may send you notices about GRI products or services. You may withdraw your permission to receive marketing communications from us at any time. You can opt out by following the instructions at the bottom of any GRI marketing email or flyer, calling our toll-free number at 800-334-7606, or by contacting us.

Potential Specialist:  If you express interest in becoming a certified specialist, GRI will use your contact information and communicate with you about the application process and other aspects of certification. We will use your PII to evaluate your eligibility. You may terminate your application process at any time and opt out of further communications from us. If you have consented to receive certification related communications via phone or text message (SMS), you can opt out by replying STOP to any SMS message or contacting us.

Internal Business Uses: We may use your PII for our internal business purposes, such as:

  • To analyze your use of, or interest in, our services;

  • To measure the overall effectiveness of our advertising and content; and

  • For data analysis, audits, fraud monitoring or prevention, and new product development.

 

Our Limited Disclosures of Your PII

GRI may disclose your PII as follows:

To Service Providers:  We may share your PII with professional service providers that perform services on our behalf. For customers who purchase goods or services from the Site, they include our payment processor Stripe. You can access Stripe’s privacy policy here. 

To GRI Affiliates: If you express interest in GRI’s Grief Recovery Method services or certification program and you are not located in the United States, we will share your PII with the licensed affiliate managing your geographic location. 

As Required By Law or Legal Process:  We may disclose your PII in response to a lawful subpoena, court order or request for cooperation from a law enforcement or other government agency; to establish or exercise our legal rights; to defend against legal claims; or as we reasonably believe is required by law. In such cases, we may raise or waive any legal objection or right available to us. By agreeing to protect your PII, except for a legal process, we are not impliedly waiving our rights to legal claims. 

To Protect Our Business: We may disclose your PII when we reasonably believe disclosure is necessary to investigate or prevent actual or suspected unlawful activity; to protect and defend the rights, property or safety of our company, employees, customers or others; or to enforce our Site’s Terms of Service or other agreements between us and you. 

Business Transition: If GRI goes through a business transition, such as a merger, being acquired by another company, or sale of its assets, PII held by us will, in most instances, be part of the assets transferred. If the transferee assumes the responsibility of maintaining the PII in a manner compliant with this Privacy Policy, the inclusion of the PII will not be considered a sale of the PII for purposes of marketing by third parties.  

Accuracy and Maintenance of Your PII

Accuracy: We will strive to ensure that your PII held by us, if any, is accurate. You will have multiple opportunities to review, update and correct your PII during the specialist application process. You may also contact us to inquire about or correct the accuracy of your records: call us toll-free at 800-334-7606, or contact us.

Maintenance: Although we promptly honor do-not-contact requests, federal and state laws, rules and regulations require that we store information collected for various periods of time. In order to comply with these requirements, we may be unable to fully delete your information from our database until the expiration of the applicable period. We may retain information to prevent or investigate possible misuse of our services or to comply with legal obligations. We may also maintain residual copies of your personal information in our backup systems. 

If you choose to terminate your relationship with us, we may need to keep certain account information, in our database for a period of time. This is necessary to deter fraud and to comply with GRI's legal obligations. However, if you close your account or your Specialist license terminates, your personal information will not be used by us for any further purposes, nor shared with third parties, except as necessary to prevent fraud and assist law enforcement, as required by law, or in accordance with this Privacy Policy. If you are a Specialist, you can tell us to remove your listing from our database of Specialists. See also Rights under State Law, below.

Data Security: We take reasonable precautions in accordance with industry standards to protect PII held by us from unauthorized access. We restrict access to your personal and account information, and we employ information security safeguards allowing employees and settlement service providers with proper authorization to access such information. We use firewalls and other intrusion detection and prevention controls to help prevent unauthorized persons from gaining access to your PII. We also use administrative and physical security measures. These measures include secured files and buildings. Security measures are by their nature not a perfect or complete defense against malicious actors. Accordingly, we can not guarantee that your personal information will be completely secured against unauthorized access.

Data Breach Notification: GRI maintains procedures for notifying you in the event of a data security breach. If GRI experiences a data security breach and is required to notify you under applicable law, GRI will notify you by electronic mail using the e-mail address you have provided. You are responsible for ensuring that your contact information is current and correct. To review or change your information and correct any inaccuracies, call us toll-free at 800-334-7606, or contact us.

Procedures

Questions about this Policy: If you have questions about this Policy, our information practices or other aspects of privacy on our Sites, please call us toll-free at 800-334-7606, contact us, or send us a letter at Grief Recovery Institute, Attention: Customer Relations, 9030 North Hess Street #582, Hayden, ID 83835.

Rights under Applicable State Law

If your state has adopted a law granting you additional rights relating to PII collected by us, and the state law applies to us, we will comply with the state law. As of August, 2024, eight US states had currently effective and potentially applicable laws of this type: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Oregon, Texas, Utah, and Virginia. A number of other states had potentially applicable laws scheduled to take effect within the next year. Applicable state law may give you some or all of these rights: to request additional information from us regarding our collection and use of PII, to ask us to correct or delete your PII, to direct us not to sell your PII, to limit our use and disclosure of sensitive PII, to appeal any denial by us of your request to exercise rights under state law, and to opt out of the use of your PII for automated decision-making. If we initially refuse your request to exercise rights you believe you have under state law, you may appeal for reconsideration, and the request will be re-considered by our senior management. 

 

Verification of Identity for Exercise of State Law Rights

If you contact us to exercise a right under state law, such as the right to access, verify or correct your PII, before granting access we will take reasonable steps to verify your identity securely. We will not use any additional PII acquired by us in this process other than for the purpose of verifying your identity. Our procedure is to match identifying information provided by you with PII held by us, but we may need to request additional information to verify your identity (to be used solely for the purpose). We may also use a third-party identification service. We will not discriminate or take any adverse action against you for exercising these rights. You may designate an authorized agent to exercise these rights on your behalf. To exercise these rights, please call us toll-free at 800-334-7606, contact us, or send us a letter at Grief Recovery Institute, Attention: Customer Relations, 9030 North Hess Street #582, Hayden, ID 83835. We will respond within 10 days or the period required by applicable law. We will comply with verifiable requests within 45 days (90 days if we notify you of the reason for the delay), or as required by applicable law.

 

Requests for Additional Information under State Law. This privacy policy describes the following for the preceding calendar year:

  • The categories of PII we collected;

  • The categories of sources of PII we collected;

  • The purposes for which we collected PII;

  • The categories of third parties that received PII from us; 

  • The categories of business purposes for which we used PII; and

  • The categories of PII sold/shared for marketing purposes, and the recipients.

Your state law may give you the additional right to ask us about specific PII we have collected about you during the preceding calendar year.

State Law Rights of Access, Portability, Correction or Deletion. You may have the right to demand access to your PII collected or maintained by us, to require us to provide a copy in data-interchange format, and to require us to correct or delete it.  If we use effective de-identification to satisfy a deletion request, we will maintain the data in de-identified form and not attempt to reassociate it with PII. Applicable laws and regulations may prevent us from completely deleting all of your PII.  

State Law Rights in Sensitive PII.  Although the definition of sensitive PII varies by state, this category generally includes PII relating to religious or philosophical beliefs, medical information, sexual orientation or practices, gender identity, and racial or ethnic origin. You may have the right to ask us not to collect sensitive PII, or to limit our use and disclosure of sensitive PII in a way that reasonably corresponds to the purpose of collection.

State Law Rights against Targeted Advertising & Sales of PII.  You may have the right to tell us not to use your PII for targeted or behavioral advertising, meaning advertising based on your personal preferences. You may have a related right, to tell us not to sell your PII for monetary compensation, but such data sales are not part of our business model.

State Law Rights against Automated Decision Making, Biometrics Usage, and Discrimination.  You may have the right to tell us not to use your PII for automated decision-making that has legally significant effects, such as for employment, credit or housing decisions. You may have the right to tell us not to collect PII from certain biometric information, such as identifying characteristics of your voice or facial features.  State law may prohibit us from discriminating against you, including for exercising your privacy rights.

State Law Rights of Minors & Teens.  As noted above we do not knowingly gather PII of minors. If you are under 18 and we somehow acquire your PII, state law may require us to assume that you would select the most privacy-protective options for your PII, unless you expressly tell us otherwise. If you believe we have acquired the PII of a minor, please call us toll-free at 800-334-7606, contact us, or send us a letter at Grief Recovery Institute, Attention: Customer Relations, 9030 North Hess Street #582, Hayden, ID 83835. 

Last Revised: September 25, 2024