Privacy Policy

Last revised on January 2. 2023

The www.thelaughing cow.com website (herein referred to as the “Website” or the “Site”) is operated by Bel Brands USA, Inc. (herein referred to as “BEL”). This Privacy Policy describes how www.belbrandsusa.com collects, uses and shares personally identifiable information (referred to herein “Personal Data” or “PII”), “non-PII” information and Passive Information obtained from and about individuals who visit this Site.

1. BEL’S COMMITMENT TO PRIVACY

To best meet our consumers’ expectation and forge with them the strongest links possible, Bel Brands USA, Inc. often needs to collect Personal Data via different means. Consumers are assured that BEL strives to safeguard the confidentiality of all personal information shared with us.

We undertake not to violate your privacy and we seek to ensure transparency and security while collecting and storing your personal data.

As a part of this commitment, we have implemented a policy on processing our consumer’s Personal Data. This Privacy Policy describes how we will collect and use your personal data.

This Privacy Policy applies only to this Site. Although this Site may provide you with links to other websites, including those of our business partners and/or service providers, those websites are not covered by this Privacy Policy. Likewise, although this Site may provide links to websites that are owned or operated by us or our affiliates, this Privacy Policy does not apply to such websites. We strongly encourage you to read the privacy policy of every website you visit, including those websites to which this Site provides links. Whenever you link to any other website from this Site, you are solely responsible for any interactions you may have with that website. Links from this Site to other websites will typically open in a separate browser window while the browser window for this Site remains open in the background.

We may receive your PII from other sources than this website: if you choose to connect your social media account to the Site, certain Personal Information from your social media account may be shared with us including PII that is part of your profile or your friends’ profiles.

2. CONSENT

By “Personal Data” or “PII” as used herein we mean any collected information relating to an individual that enables us to identify our consumers directly or indirectly.

Before you give us any Personal Data, we ask that you read carefully this Policy.

BEL will use your Personal Data for marketing purposes. Your consent will be asked before any collection of personal information and for the purpose of such collection.

Agreement to This Privacy Policy and Its Modifications.

By using our Site you are agreeing to this Privacy Policy and the Terms and Conditions of the Site. If you do not agree with any of the terms of the Privacy Policy or the Terms and Conditions, you should not use this Site and continued use hereof waives any claims or rights with respect to any information collected. Please do not provide your PII, for example, your name, address, telephone number, screen name, email address or credit card information. From time to time, and at any time, this Privacy Policy may be revised or changed. By using the Site you are agreeing to any such revisions or changes in effect at the time you visit the Site. Therefore, all website users should review this Privacy Policy periodically to be up to date on our most current privacy policies and practices.

Collection of Your Personal Identifiable Information (“PII”) and Other Personal Information

We have developed this Site to provide a unique and entertaining experience for users, without requiring them to submit any more PII than is necessary to participate in particular activities which may be offered, or to use the Site effectively. We do not require users to register or submit PII in order to visit the Site. Most activities on our Site can be performed without supplying PII.

Opting In

When we ask for PII we will not require anyone to disclose more PII than we believe is reasonably necessary to participate in an activity. At times, users may be asked to provide non-PII such as your first name, age, gender, zip code, city, and/or state of residence. We will not knowingly ask for, or accept, PII from persons under the age of 18.

Opting Out

At the time we gather any of your PII, we will give you the opportunity to opt-out of allowing us to use your PII for other purposes, such as sending you future emails or advertising or sharing your PII with business partners or other advertisers. When you opt-out of any specific use, we will not use your PII for that purpose. However, if you opt-out, we may still use your PII for internal purposes, or as may be necessary to administer the Site, for example, sharing that data with those persons or entities who administer the Site. Your PII may further still be used to comply with applicable law, for example, but not limited to, comply with valid legal process such as a search warrant, subpoena or court order; and to report sweepstakes and contest winnings as required by law. And it may be used in special cases when we have reason to believe that disclosing this information is necessary to identify or contact you, or bring legal action against you if, for example, you may be causing injury to, or interference with our Site’s or company’s rights or property, or other users of the Site, whether your actions are intentional or unintentional. Further, your PII may be shared with any successors and assignees we may have.

If you wish to change your decision to ‘opt-out’ or to ‘opt-in’, as applicable, you can email us at [email protected].

California Privacy Rights Act (“CPRA”) Rights and Choices

As a California consumer, you have the right to…

know (request disclosure of) personal information we collect about you, from whom it was collected, why it was collected, and, if sold, to whom;
delete personal information we collected;
opt-out of the sale of personal information (if applicable);
opt-in to the sale of personal information of consumers under the age of 16 (if applicable);
non-discriminatory treatment for exercising any rights; and
initiate a private cause of action for data breaches

During the period January 1, 2022 to December 31, 2022, we received:

0 Request to Know
0 Request to Delete
0 Request to Opt-out

Bel Brands USA, Inc. does not transfer your personal information to third parties in exchange for money but may share information with certain third parties for targeted advertising and joint marketing efforts and this may qualify as a “sale” of information under the law . To exercise your “Do Not Sell” right related to Personal Information, website cookies and tracking technologies or any rights mentioned above, please contact us as described below:

Email:
[email protected]

Mail:
Customer Service
Bel Brands USA, Inc.
30 South Wacker Drive
Suite 3000
Chicago, IL 60606

or you may also phone:

1-800-272-1224

We will respond to your verifiable requests subject to any legal restrictions.

3. PROTECTION OF CONSUMERS’ PERSONAL DATA: PRINCIPLES

Legitimacy: PII will be collected for specific, explicit and legitimate purposes; Processing will not involve sensitive data (e.g. racial or ethnic origin, political, philosophical or religious opinion, union membership of persons, health or sex life, offenses, sentences and security measures).

Relevance: Collected data will be suitable, relevant and non-excessive with regard to the purposes for which it is collected;

Accuracy: The data will be accurate, complete and, if applicable, up-to-date;

Transparency: When collecting your Personal Data, you will be provided with any relevant information and notification regarding their collection and processing (especially as to the purpose and recipients of such information.)

Storage: PII will be kept for a time period that does not exceed the period required for the purposes for which the PII is collected and processed;

Consent: The person concerned must have given his consent to the processing of his/her PII;

Confidentiality & Security: We will strive to assure confidentiality and security of all collected Personal Data by implementing reasonable technical measures

4. SCOPE

This Policy is applicable to the processing of all Personal Data provided within the context of our relationship with our consumers.

5. TYPE OF COLLECTED PERSONAL DATA

Depending on the kind of business relationship we have with you, we may need to ask you information about you and/or family members such as:

contact information (last name, first name, phone number, e-mail, …)
personal information (date of birth, …)
information about your family (number of household members, age, …)
consumption habits as regards cheese / dairy products

BEL considers that parents should be informed of the relation between our company and our brands and their young children. That is why BEL will ask for parents’/guardians’ e-mail addresses of Internet users under 13 in order to copy them on every e-mail involving their children’s personal data. At any time, parents/guardians will be entitled on request to have access to personal data concerning their child and ask for their modification or deletion from our consumer’s database by contacting our consumer service.

6. TIME OF COLLECTION OF PERSONAL DATA and Non-PII

Your Personal Data may be collected at different points and in particular:

When contacting our customer service (questions, claims, …)
When browsing our BEL websites

Registration or input of PII will also be required to participate in activities such as sweepstakes, contests, specific promotional activities, surveys, or e-commerce (should it be introduced on the Site). If PII is requested for participation in an activity, you cannot participate without disclosing the requested PII.

From time to time, we may also ask you to provide us with non-PII which does not allow us to identify you by email address, full name or full address. We may use this information for internal purposes, or for creating reports for ourselves and third party advertisers and partners.

7. PURPOSE FOR COLLECTION OF PERSONAL DATA

Answer every request you may have from our customer service
Improve our products notably thanks to a better understanding of your needs and desires
Download discount vouchers
Send you newsletters, promotions or offers from partners. At any time, you can cancel your subscription to these newsletters by clicking on the provided link at the bottom of these e-mails.
Secure and improve your use of BEL websites (browsing, security of data,…)
Be in compliance with federal, state and local regulations

Use of PII

We may use PII in sweepstakes, contests or promotional activity (i) to register you for those activities, to verify that you comply with the published rules and to notify you if you are a winner; (ii) for coupon, premium or prize delivery; (iii) for notification of special offers; and (iv) to ensure that we comply with all applicable laws. The PII you disclose for these and similar activities may be shared with third parties, such as those who may administer the activity for us, and shipping companies who may deliver a prize or premium. We will inform you at the time we are collecting the PII that such collection is a requirement for participation.

We may also use your PII for the following purposes: (v) to personalize and enhance our Site and your website experience; (vi) to send you personalized information about our Site via email; (vii) to send you advertising or promotional material from us, our advertisers or business partners; and (viii) to contact you for feedback regarding us, our advertisers or business partners.

Should you respond to a particular offer from our business partners or advertisers we may also use your PII to provide a report to our advertisers or business partners that tells them who responded to a particular offer. Further if you accept an offer contained in, for example, an email we may provide the advertiser or business partner with the PII necessary to fulfill that offer to you.

Should your PII be requested by any of our business partners or advertisers for their direct use in advertising or marketing (when the contact with you would come from them and not from us on their behalf) you will, in each case, be given the opportunity to remove yourself from the list.

Your PII may also be shared with those persons or entities that administer our Site.

Your PII will only be shared with administrators, business partners or advertisers for a particular purpose and they will not be permitted to use it for any unauthorized purpose.

Use of Non-PII

Non-PII is data such as first name, zip code, age, gender, product and promotional preferences and household characteristics like presence of children or income bracket. Your non-PII may be aggregated and used for our internal purposes or may be shared with third parties for any lawful purpose, without your permission. No third party will know who you are as a result of the use of your non-PII.

8. SHARING YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION

In some cases, we will need to transfer your personal data to internal and external recipients:

Internal recipients are authorized persons, including without limitation:– IT Services– Marketing services
External recipients, including without limitation:– External service providers: third-party IT service, call centers, printers, … Commercial partners, management of promotional operations companies.

We may also be required to release your personal data to government authorities if legally requested by law.

9. SAFETY AND SECURITY

Through appropriate technical measures, BEL strives to prevent accidental or malevolent Personal Data loss, destruction, unauthorized access or disclosure.

If you share your computer or use a computer that is accessed by the general public, remember to sign off and close your browser window when you have finished your session. This will help to ensure that others cannot access your personal information. We take steps to help ensure that all information provided by you, whether PII or non-PII, is treated securely. No data transmission over the Internet, however, can be guaranteed to be totally secure. While we try to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee the security of any information you transmit to us. You use the Site, and provide us with personal information, at your own risk. To the extent reasonably necessary to protect a user’s safety, we may collect his or her name, address, and/or email address. To protect our security, to protect us against liability, or as required by law, we may collect a user’s name and email address.

PII collected pursuant to this provision will not be used for any other purpose.

10. COOKIES

Our Use of Passive Information

This Site uses various technologies to passively collect information from you while you are visiting (that is, you do not actively provide this information). Such technologies allow the Site to collect a range of non-personally identifiable information, including your Internet Protocol (IP) address (a unique identifier automatically assigned to your computer when logging onto the Internet), the type of Web browser and operating system you use, the date and time you visit the Site, the specific pages you visit on the Site, etc., (‘Passive Information’). Passive Information is generally collected through the use of Cookies. Cookies are small text files that store information about your interactions with a particular website, either temporarily (known as a temporary or session cookie, and deleted once you close your browser window) or more permanently on the hard drive of your computer (known as a permanent or persistent cookie).We refer to both session cookies and persistent cookies as Cookies. Cookies can make it easier to use a website by allowing servers to access certain information quickly.

Session cookies can be used to help a user’s browser navigate a website more smoothly and may appear if the user comes from a website with which the subsequent website has some relationship (e.g., a website of an affiliated company) and can give helpful information.
Persistent cookies can be used to customize a website for a user, such as by storing passwords, preferences, and registration and account information so that users do not have to reenter them each time they visit a website. We may use cookies to track unique visitors to our Site. However, we do not use cookies to collect or otherwise record any type of PII provided by or about any visitor to our Site.

We may use cookies to track who has used what areas of the Site, and the path used to get to those areas. We may also use cookies to track non-PII information about users to the Site, such as age or zip code, browser used, and to allow us to create reports for internal use, and for use by third parties. Many computers and computer programs contain features that allow you to block or refuse to accept such cookies. Use of such features may prevent you from being able to access certain portions of the Site, or access certain features.

11. DATA STORAGE BY BEL

Your Personal Data will not be stored for a time period exceeding the time required by the purpose of their collection and according to applicable law.

>12. ACCESS AND MODIFICATION/DELETION

Review and Modification/Deletion of Personal Information: All users may review their PII at any time. If you would like to review, delete or modify this information, please contact us at:

Email: [email protected]

Mail: Customer Service

Bel Brands USA, Inc.

30 South Wacker Drive

Suite 3000

Chicago, IL 60606

We will use reasonable efforts to comply with your requests subject to legal restrictions. Be aware that there may be residual information which we may not be able to alter or delete from our systems and archives.

Comments, Questions or Suggestions: If you would like to communicate with us about our Privacy Policy, please contact us at:

Email: [email protected]

Mail: Customer Service

Bel Brands USA, Inc.

30 South Wacker Drive

Suite 3000

Chicago, IL 60606

13. COLLECTION OF THIRD PERSON PERSONAL DATA

Some of our websites can offer you the chance to send a link to our website’s page to third-parties. In such case, we will have to collect your and the third-party’s e-mail addresses.

Every e-mail address collected in such case will only be used for that purpose and will be deleted right afterwards.

14. UPDATES

This Policy will change periodically and we recommend that you read it regularly.

15. MISCELLANEOUS

Co-Branded Micro Sites

Web pages and/or micro websites may be included within our Site and may be co-branded with third party names, logos, and/or properties, and are operated and maintained by us. While such third parties are sponsors of these web pages or micro websites, they do not share in any PII collected within those web pages or micro websites.

Third Party Advertisements

We may include banner or text advertisements for third parties (or for sites operated by third parties) that are not sponsors of and are not affiliated with our Site. Some of these advertisements may contain links to other websites. As such, we are not responsible for the content, practices, or information practices of websites operated by these third parties. In addition, these advertisements do not constitute sponsorship, endorsement of such products or services by Bel Brands USA or approval by us of the content, policies, or practices of these websites. All users should check the relevant Website’s privacy policy and terms of use in order to understand their policies and practices regarding the collection and use of PII.

E-Commerce

Should we open e-commerce on the Site, purchases from our Site may require disclosure of your PII, your credit card information and information about the name and address of the person receiving the purchases. The credit card information may be subject to verification by the issuing Credit Card Company or other company. Sales and shipping records will also be generated and maintained. Unless you give us permission at the time we collect such information, however, we will not use this information for any purpose except the fulfillment and record keeping of the transaction.

International User Notice: The Site is intended for use exclusively by residents of the United States of America. Our computer systems are based in the United States. Personally Identifiable Information may be treated differently than it is in other parts of the world, for example the European Union. Persons outside the United States should not, therefore, disclose Personally Identifiable Information on this Site.

Do not send us, under any circumstance, any sensitive PII (e.g., information related to racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religion or other beliefs, health or medical condition, criminal background or trade union membership) through the Site or otherwise

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