Privacy Policy

Last updated: April 22, 2023.

In this Policy, we explain our practices regarding Personal Data and Privacy and present the choices you can make about the way your data is collected and used. Please note that our Website contains links to other sites and this Privacy Policy applies solely to information collected by this Website.

Capitalized terms used but not defined herein have the meanings assigned to them in the Terms of Use - Intervac Trust Agreement.

Purpose

  1. Our Website and services may only be used for non-commercial individual home exchange purposes.

  2. When a Member joins Intervac, he agrees not to contact other members of Intervac for any other purpose than to arrange a personal home exchange.

  3. Anyone who contacts Intervac members for any other purpose than to arrange a personal home exchange will be immediately barred from Intervac and face severe penalties starting at, but not limited to, $125 per member contacted.

Personal Data Collected

  1. We collect two general categories of data – data that you provide to us, and data we collect automatically.

  2. When you become a Member, you are asked to provide data about you and your Property. During your use of the Website, other data may be requested.

  3. Any information provided may be updated by you at any time.

  4. The types of data collected are:

    1. Account
      When you become a Member, we collect information that could reasonably be used to contact you or to identify you personally, such as your name, email address, phone number, birth date or mailing address. Your name and telephone number are presented to other Members when they view your Listing. If you enter your exchange dates or your destination wishlist that will be presented to both Members and Guests. Other personal data, such as your email, will not be shown on the Website or shared by Intervac and shall remain confidential.
    2. Listing
      Your Listing contains information about the Property offered for exchange. Your Listing’s main photo is presented to Guests and Members. You can choose to have a generic picture for the main photo, although we recommend using a photo of your Property to increase your chances of exchange. The “Lifestyle text” and the “About Our Family” text as well as all the photos (apart from the main photo) may be public or visible to other members only, at your discretion. Your Listing’s geographic location may be public, private or visible to other members only, at your discretion. When private, the geographic location will only be used to present your listing correctly in searches but it will not be visible at all when viewing the Listing. The “Listing Headline”, the “Home description text” and all other information about your Property that you choose to enter in these are also presented to Guests and Members.
    3. Conversations
      When you communicate with other Members or us through our messaging system, we collect the information you choose to provide so it later can be presented in your Inbox. You can delete this information at any time, but the Member you sent it too may choose to keep it.
    4. Navigation
      When you visit another Listing as a logged in Member, we keep that information and show it in the other Member’s statistics page. When you add a Member as a Favorite, we may notify the other member that you did so, as a way to encourage a possible exchange.
    5. Payment
      When you sign up as a Member, we or our third-party payment provider may collect your financial information such as your name, address, credit card number or PayPal account number or other information to process transactions.
    6. Other Information
      You may choose to provide us with information by filling in a form, activating Match Alert, or using other features on the Website.

Cookies

  1. Our Website requires that cookies be active to use Member functions.

  2. Personal information may be collected by cookies, which are pieces of data stored by a web browser that contains information relating to the use of the Website. A cookie can not read data off your hard disk or read cookie files created by other sites.

  3. Our Website uses its own and third-party cookies to analyze users’ interactions. These cookies are associated exclusively with a single user and their device.

  4. Our cookies are used solely for the purpose of providing a better service, for example, they allow you the site to remember you Member credentials and not ask for them repeatedly

  5. We use Google Analytics to track how visitors interact with our website, analyze where traffic is generated from and collect information related to general Website engagement.

  6. Third party advertising management services such as Google and Facebook may display tailored messages after you have interacted with our Website, using cookies. You can opt of these ads at any time when displayed.

Use of Personal Data

  1. Intervac is committed to protecting your privacy and your personal data. We will only use the data we collect for the purposes of enhancing your Intervac online service experience.

  2. At no time will we sell, trade, rent or disclose your personal information to third parties unless we have obtained previous consent from you.

  3. Here are the purposes for which we may use your data:

    1. Home exchanging purposes
      The main purpose of the data collected is to allow and encourage Home Exchange between our members.
    2. Transactional purposes
      We may use your personal information in order to respond to your queries and requests and to manage transactions such as credit card payments. The personal information you provide may be used by an authorized third party to fulfill that order.
    3. Marketing purposes
      As a Member, you may occasionally receive email updates from us, including newsletters, special offers, important changes to the functionality of the Website or new services, These e-mail communications may be sent or personalized based on personal data provided. You may, at any time, decline to receive email updates by following the instructions included in each email received.
    4. Administration and Management purposes
      We may transfer your personal information to third parties under confidentiality obligations when the performance of any service in relation to the activities above is sub-contracted (e.g. the development of a website feature).
    5. Legal purposes
      We may collect, use or disclose your personal information if required to do so by law or where we believe such action is necessary in order to protect or defend us or other third parties against theft, fraud or any other illegal or harmful activity, to comply with our audit and security requirements as well as our legal and contractual obligations.

  4. Member information and Listings posted on the Intervac website may not under any circumstance be copied to another web site or presented in any other media for any purposes without explicit previous consent from the Member. Any offenders will be subject to severe penalties starting at, but not limited to, $125 per listing.

Data Retention

  1. The personal data provided will be retained:

    1. As long as you have an Active Membership with Intervac
    2. For a period of five years after your account become inactive, so that if you decide to renew you don’t have to enter all your data again.
    3. Your name and email address will be retained for Marketing Purposes until you unsubscribe from such communications.

  2. If you wish to have your data removed, you may do by using the Profile Deletion tool. If the Profile Deletion tool is used, we will remove your Account, Listing and personal data from our active databases as soon as reasonably possible in accordance with this Privacy Policy and applicable law, typically within three (3) days. This means that the preceding points regarding Data Retention do not apply if the Profile Deletion tool is used.

  3. We may continue to store your personal information longer to allow us to resolve disputes, enforce agreements or comply with legal obligations.

Data Security

  1. We use generally accepted technology security standards, including secure servers, to protect your personal information.

  2. You are responsible for the strict confidentiality of your account password, and for access to your account by you or anyone using your password (that you previously provided to them), whether or not this specific access or use is authorized by you.

  3. You hereby agree to inform us immediately of any unauthorized use of your password or account, or any other security breach. You are solely responsible for monitoring the distribution and use of your password and the access to and use of your account.

Members’ rights

  1. You can exercise the following rights at any time by contacting us to support@intervac.com.

  2. As Member you have the right to:

    1. Be forgotten: for this, you can use the Profile Deletion tool as explained in the Data Retention section
    2. Have part of your personal data removed
    3. Not have your personal data used for marketing purposes: for this, you can use the unsubscribe option in any marketing e-mail.
    4. Get your data

Contacting Intervac International

If you have any questions about this privacy policy statement or the practices of this site, you can email the-board@intervac.org, contact your National Representative or send direct correspondence to Intervac International Home Exchange Holiday Service, PO Box 561, SE - 114 79 Stockholm, Sweden

Changes to the Privacy Policy

If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post notice of a privacy policy update on our homepage or inform Members via email so that each may view our updated policy and be aware on an ongoing basis of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances, if any, we disclose it.