Privacy Notice

​​Last Updated: 5/20/2025

Welcome to the Cowlitz Indian Tribe website and member portal. This Privacy Notice explains how the Cowlitz Indian Tribe (“Cowlitz Indian Tribe”, “we”, “our”, “us”) collects, uses, discloses, and otherwise processes personal data in connection with its website, member-portal, and other services the Cowlitz Indian Tribe provides to its members that link to this page.

This Privacy Notice does not address our privacy practices relating to Cowlitz Indian Tribe job applicants or employees. Similarly, this Privacy Notice does not address our privacy practices relating to deidentified or publicly available information, or relating to other data that is not subject to applicable data protection laws.

This Privacy Notice also does not address how the Cowlitz Indian Tribe collects, uses, discloses, and otherwise processes protected health information (PHI) under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). More information on how we collect, use and process PHI is available here.

This Privacy Notice is also not a contract and does not create any legal rights or obligations not otherwise provided by law.

Our Collection and Use of Personal Data

The categories of personal data we collect depend on how you interact with us and our services. For example, you may provide us your personal data directly when you sign up to access our member portal, submit requests for access to services via our website or submit an online form. We also collect personal data automatically when you interact with our websites and other services and may also collect personal data from other sources and third parties.

​​Personal Data Provided by Individuals

We collect the following categories of personal data individuals provide us:

- Contact Information, including first and last name, phone number, email address, mailing address, and communication preferences. We use this information primarily to fulfill your request or transaction, to communicate with you directly, and to send you tribal updates in accordance with your preferences.

- Account Information, including first and last name, email address, phone number, account credentials or one-time passcodes, and the products or services you are interested in or have otherwise used. We use this information primarily to administer your account, provide you with our services, communicate with you regarding your account and your use of our services, and for member support purposes.

- Member Content, including any files, documents, audio, videos, images, data, or communications you choose to input, upload, or transmit to our services. For example, you may choose to submit forms relating forms relate to member enrollment or housing. We use this content primarily to provide you with our services, to facilitate your requests, and to improve our services.

- Event, Contest, Promotion, and Survey Information, including information provided when you sign up for an event, enter a contest or promotion, complete a survey or submit a testimonial. We use this information primarily to administer and facilitate our services, respond to your submission, communicate with you, improve our services, and facilitate the related event, content, promotion, or survey.

- Feedback and Support Information, including the contents of custom messages sent through the forms, email addresses, or other contact information we make available to members, as well as recordings of calls with us, where permitted by law (including through the use of automated tools provided by us or our third-party providers). We use this information primarily to investigate and respond to your inquiries, to communicate with you via email, phone, or text message, and to improve our services.

If you choose to contact us, we may need additional information to fulfill the request or respond to your inquiry. We may provide additional privacy disclosures where the scope of the request we receive or personal data we require fall outside the scope of this Privacy Notice. In that case, the additional privacy disclosures will govern how we may process the information you provide at that time.

Personal Data Automatically Collected

We, and our third-party partners, automatically collect information you provide to us and information about how you access and use our services when you engage with us. We typically collect this information through the use of a variety of our own and our third-party partners’ automatic data collection technologies, including (i) cookies or small data files that are stored on an individual’s computer and (ii) other, related technologies, such as web beacons, pixels, embedded scripts, mobile SDKs, location-identifying technologies and logging technologies. Information we collect automatically about you may be combined with other personal information we collect directly from you or receive from other sources.

We, and our third-party partners, use automatic data collection technologies to automatically collect the following data when you use our services or otherwise engage with us:

- Information About Your Device and Network, including the device type, manufacturer, and model, operating system, IP address, browser type, Internet service provider, and unique identifiers associated with you, your device, or your network (including, for example, a persistent device identifier or advertising ID). We employ third-party technologies designed to allow us to recognize when two or more devices are likely being used by the same individual and may leverage these technologies (where permitted) to link information collected from different devices.

- Information About the Way Individuals Use Our Services and Interact With Us, including the site from which you came, the site to which you are going when you leave our services, how frequently you access our services, whether you open emails or click the links contained in emails, whether you access our services from multiple devices, and other browsing behavior and actions you take on our services (such as the pages you visit, the content you view, videos you watch, the communications you have through our services, and the content, links and ads you interact with). 

- Information About Your Location, including general geographic location that we or our third-party providers may derive from your IP address.

All of the information collected automatically through these tools allows us to improve your member experience. For example, we may use this information to enhance and personalize your user experience, to monitor and improve our services, to offer communications features, and to improve the effectiveness of our products, services, offers, advertising, communications and member service. We may also use this information to: (a) remember information so that you will not have to re-enter it during your visit or the next time you visit the site; (b) provide custom, personalized content and information; (c) identify you across multiple devices; (d) provide and monitor the effectiveness of our services; (e) monitor aggregate metrics such as total number of visitors, traffic, usage, and demographic patterns on our website; (f) diagnose or fix technology problems; and (g) otherwise to plan for and enhance our services.

For information about the choices you may have in relation to our use of automatic data collection technologies, please refer to the Your Privacy Choices section below.

Personal Data from Other Sources and Third Parties

We may receive the same categories of personal data as described above from the following sources and other parties:

- Other Members: We may receive your personal data from our other members. For example, a member may provide us with your contact information when they submit an online form.

- Business Partners: We may receive your information from our business partners, such as companies that offer their products and/or services as a part of or in connection with our services. For example, certain of our services allow our members to integrate third-party services. If you choose to leverage these third-party service integrations, we may receive confirmation from our business partner regarding whether you are an existing member of their services.

- Service Providers: Our service providers that perform services on our behalf, such as analytics, collect personal data and often share some or all of this information with us. For example, we receive personal data you may submit in response to requests for feedback.

- Other Sources: We may also collect personal data about you from other sources, including publicly available sources, third-party data providers, brand partnerships, or through transactions such as mergers and acquisitions.

- Inferences: We may generate inferences or predictions about you and your interests and preferences based on the other personal data we collect and the interactions we have with you.

    Additional Uses of Personal Data

      In addition to the primary purposes for using personal data described above, we may also use personal data we collect to:

      - Fulfill or meet the reason the information was provided, such as to fulfill our contractual obligations, to facilitate payment for our services, or to deliver the services requested;

      - Manage our organization and its day-to-day operations;

      - Communicate with you, including via email, text message, chat, social media and/or telephone calls;

      - Facilitate the relationship we have with you and, where applicable, the company you represent;

      - Request you provide us feedback about our product and service offerings;

      - Address inquiries or complaints made by or about an individual in connection with our products or services;

      - Create and maintain accounts for our users;

      - Verify your identity and entitlement to our services;

      - Administer, improve, and personalize our services, including by recognizing you and remembering your information when you return to our services;

      - Develop, operate, improve, maintain, protect, and provide the features and functionality of our services;

      - Identify and analyze how you use our services;

      - Infer additional information about you from your use of our services, such as your interests.

      - Create aggregated or de-identified information that cannot reasonably be used to identify you, which information we may use for purposes outside the scope of this Privacy Notice;

      - Conduct research and analytics on our user base and our services, including to better understand the demographics of our users;

      - Improve and customize our services to address the needs and interests of our user base and other individuals we interact with;

      - Test, enhance, update, and monitor the services, or diagnose or fix technology problems;

      - Help maintain and enhance the safety, security, and integrity of our property, products, services, technology, assets, and business;

      - Defend, protect, or enforce our rights or applicable contracts and agreements (including our Terms of Use ), as well as to resolve disputes, to carry out our obligations and enforce our rights, and to protect our business interests and the interests and rights of third parties;

      - Detect, prevent, investigate, or provide notice of security incidents or other malicious, deceptive, fraudulent, or illegal activity and protect the rights and property of the Cowlitz Indian Tribe and others;

      - Facilitate business transactions and reorganizations impacting the structure of our business;

      - Comply with contractual and legal obligations and requirements;

       - Fulfill any other purpose for which you provide your personal data, or for which you have otherwise consented.

        Our Disclosure of Personal Data

          We disclose or otherwise make available personal data in the following ways:

          - To Business Partners: We may share personal data with our business partners, or we may allow our business partners to collect personal data directly from you in connection with our services. Our business partners may use your personal data for their own business and commercial purposes, including to send you information about their services.

          - To Service Providers: We engage other third parties to perform certain services on our behalf in connection with the uses of personal data described in the sections above. Depending on the applicable services, these service providers may process personal data on our behalf or have access to personal data while performing services on our behalf.

          - To Other Businesses as Needed to Provide Services: We may share personal data with third parties you engage with through our services or as needed to fulfill a request or transaction including, for example, health and housing services.

          - To Facilitate Legal Obligations and Rights: We may disclose personal data to third parties, such as our legal advisors and law enforcement:
           o in connection with the establishment, exercise, or defense of legal claims;
           o to comply with laws or to respond to lawful requests and legal process;
           o to protect our rights and property and the rights and property of our agents, members, and others, including to enforce our agreements, policies, and terms of use;
           o to detect, suppress, or prevent fraud;
           o to reduce credit risk and collect debts owed to us;
           o to protect the health and safety of us, our members, or any person; or
           o as otherwise required by applicable law.

          - With Your Consent or Direction: We may disclose your personal data to certain other third parties or publicly with your consent or direction. For example, with your permission, we may post your testimonial on our websites.

            ​​Your Privacy Choices

            The following privacy choices are available to you: 

            ​Communication Preferences

            - Email Communication Preferences: You can stop receiving email communications from us by replying to our emailing and asking not to receive future emails. Please note you cannot opt-out of service-related email communications (such as, account verification, transaction confirmation, or service update emails).

            - Phone Communication Preferences: Please note we may need to communicate with you via phone for certain service-related messages (such as, sending a verification code to your phone via call or text for purposes of verifying the authenticity of a log-in attempt). If you prefer to receive communications via a different method, such as email, you can notify us during the call.

            - Direct Mailing Preferences: You can stop receiving promotional direct mail communications from us by contacting us at enrollment@cowlitz.org. Please note this opt-out does not affect any mailings that are controlled by third parties that may feature or mention our services.

            Automatic Data Collection Preferences

            You can use third-party tools and features to restrict our use of automatic data collection technologies. For example, (i) most browsers allow you to change browser settings to limit automatic data collection technologies on websites, (ii) most email providers allow you to prevent the automatic downloading of images in emails that may contain automatic data collection technologies, and (iii) many devices allow you to change your device settings to limit automatic data collection technologies for device applications. Please note that blocking automatic data collection technologies through third-party tools and features may negatively impact your experience using our services, as some features and offerings may not work properly or at all. Depending on the third-party tool or feature you use, you may not be able to block all automatic data collection technologies or you may need to update your preferences on multiple devices or browsers. We do not have any control over these third-party tools and features and are not responsible if they do not function as intended.

            Modifying or Deleting Your Personal Data

            If you have any questions about reviewing, modifying, or deleting your personal data, you can contact us directly at enrollment@cowlitz.org. We may not be able to modify or delete your personal data in all circumstances.

            Partner-Specific Preferences

            Certain of our third-party providers and partners offer additional ways that you may exercise control over your personal data, or automatically impose limitations on the way we can use personal data in connection with the services they provide:

            - Device-Specific / Platform-Specific Preferences: The device and/or platform you use to interact with us may provide you additional choices with regard to the data you choose to share with us. For example, many mobile devices allow you to change your device permissions to prevent services from accessing certain types of information from your device (such as your contact lists or precise geolocation data). Please refer to your device’s or platform provider’s user guides for additional information about implementing any available platform-specific targeted advertising opt-outs.
            - Google Analytics: Google Analytics allows us to better understand how our members interact with our services. For information on how Google Analytics collects and processes data, as well as how you can control information sent to Google, review Google's website here: www.google.com/policies/privacy/partners/. You can learn about Google Analytics’ currently available opt-outs, including the Google Analytics Browser Add-On here: https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout/. We may also utilize certain forms of display advertising and other advanced features through Google Analytics. These features enable us to use first-party cookies (such as the Google Analytics cookie) and third-party cookies (such as the DoubleClick advertising cookie) or other third-party cookies together to inform, optimize, and display ads based on your past visits to our services. You may control your advertising preferences or opt-out of certain Google advertising products by visiting the Google Ads Preferences Manager, currently available at https://www.adssettings.google.com/anonymous?ref=ps-tech&hl=en.

              Children's Personal Data

              Our services are not directed to children under the age of 18, and we do not intend to, or knowingly, collect or solicit personal data from younger individuals. If an individual is under the age of 18, they should not use our services or otherwise provide us with any personal data either directly or by other means. If a child under the age of 18 has provided personal data to us, we encourage the child’s parent or guardian to contact us to request that we remove the personal data from our systems. If we learn that any personal data we collect has been provided by a child under the age of 18, we will promptly delete that personal data.

              ​​Third-Party Websites and Services

              Our services may include links to third-party websites, plug-ins, applications and other services. Except where we post, link to or expressly adopt or refer to this Privacy Notice, this Privacy Notice does not apply to any personal data practices of third parties. To learn about the personal data practices of third parties, please visit their respective privacy notices.

              Updates to This Privacy Notice

              We may update this Privacy Notice from time to time. When we make changes to this Privacy Notice, we will change the date at the beginning of this Privacy Notice. If we make material changes to this Privacy Notice, we will notify individuals by email to their registered email address, by prominent posting on this website or our other platforms, or through other appropriate communication channels. All changes shall be effective from the date of publication unless otherwise provided.

                Contact Us

                If you have any questions or requests in connection with this Privacy Notice or other privacy-related matters, please email enrollment@cowlitz.org.