Legal and Online Privacy

Introduction

The Equitable Life Insurance Company of Canada (“Equitable”) would like to express its thanks to all those who visit this website, any other Equitable website or Equitable’s social media sites (collectively, the “Sites”). However, please be aware of the following terms and conditions of using the Sites. If you do not agree with them, please exit the applicable Site. Each time you use a Site you indicate your acceptance of the terms and conditions set out under “Legal and Online Privacy”.

Legal

The contents of each Site, including the manner in which the contents are displayed, are the sole property of Equitable or of its licensors. Except as set out below, you are not granted any rights in or to the contents made available on or via the Site or in or to the Site itself. All such rights remain with, and are reserved by, Equitable or their respective owners.

Equitable grants you a limited licence to: (i) display the contents of the Site on your computer, or other electronic device used to access the Site; and (ii) print, download and use the contents on the Site solely for informational purposes; provided that the Site contents are not modified in any way and that all existing copyright and other notices are displayed. You agree not to, or allow others to, directly or indirectly, attempt to or actually disrupt, impair or interfere with, alter or modify a Site or any of its contents.

Equitable reserves the right to delete any comments on a Site that are spam or commercial promotional comment, contain confidential information, are offensive, disrespectful or abusive to an individual or organization, are off-topic, or use racist, sexist, or offensive language. If you violate these standards, we may exclude you temporarily or permanently from the Site and report you to the social media service provider.

Information provided on a Site is intended to familiarize you with Equitable, and to identify the markets to which our products and services are currently directed. It is not a detailed description of our products and services.

Equitable expressly disclaims all representations, warranties or conditions, express or implied, statutory or otherwise, including, without limitation, the warranties and conditions of merchantable quality and fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement, compatibility, timeliness, security or accuracy, and any representations, warranties or conditions that may arise from a course of dealing or usage of trade.

All information provided on a Site, including the terms and conditions presented under “Legal and Online Privacy”, is subject to change without notice. You should, therefore, review this “Legal and Online Privacy” page each time you visit a Site to inform yourself of any changes. If you do not agree with any changes, please exit the Site. Your continued use of a Site after Equitable has made any changes to this “Legal and Online Privacy” page is deemed to constitute your acceptance of such changes.

Each Site does not, and is not intended to provide any legal, financial, accounting, insurance or tax advice and should not be relied upon by you for such advice. You should secure advice from your own professional advisors. Any medical information provided on or through a Site, either by Equitable or directly, or indirectly, through an independent service provider contracted by Equitable, including any and all information, content, links, graphics, interfaces, web pages, text, files, software, product names, company names, trademarks, logos, tradenames, or other materials contained on the Site (collectively, the “Medical Content”) is provided for informational use only and is not intended to be used or relied upon for any diagnostic or treatment purposes. The Medical Content should not be used as a substitute for professional medical diagnosis and treatment, nor does it create any patient-physician relationship between you and Equitable, any Equitable affiliate nor any independent service provider contracted by Equitable. You should consult your health care professional before making any health care decisions or for guidance about a specific medical condition. Never disregard professional medical or health advice or delay in seeking such advice because of some or all of the Medical Content you have read on a Site. If you think you may have a medical emergency, call your doctor or 911 immediately.

Your use of each Site is entirely at your own risk. Neither Equitable, nor any of its affiliated companies, nor their officers, directors, employees or agents, nor any other person associated with the creation and/or maintenance of the Site or its contents shall be responsible to any person for any harm, loss or damage (including any loss of data or damage to your computer system), however caused, that may arise from your use of the Site or its contents, or the unavailability of the Site for your use, including, without limitation, any direct, indirect, special, third party, or consequential damages, even if it or they have been advised of the possibility of such harm, loss or damage. Without limiting the foregoing, Equitable shall not be responsible for any detrimental reliance that you may place upon a Site, or its contents, including the Medical Content defined above. By accessing and using a Site, you assume the risk that the information and documentation presented may not meet your needs and requirements and that, particularly in the medical and health/wellness areas of websites provided by Equitable and accessed through a Site, such information and documentation may be offensive to some.

If Equitable provides you with any username and pass phrase to access any secure area of a Site, you agree to keep such username and pass phrase strictly confidential and not to disclose the username and pass phrase to any other person or entity. You agree to be liable for all uses of your username and pass phrase, including unauthorized use without your consent, and you acknowledge that Equitable shall not be responsible for confirming the identity of any user. You agree to notify Equitable immediately of the loss or unauthorized use of your username and pass phrase. Equitable has the right to restrict or cancel your access to any part or parts of a Site, including any website made accessible to you through a Site, where access is controlled by login information and/or pass phrases provided by Equitable at any time, with or without notice.

The limitations expressed above shall apply to your use of each Site regardless of the causes or circumstances giving rise to the claim, even if such claim is based on breach of contract, negligence or other tort, and shall survive a fundamental breach or failure of essential purpose of any limited remedy or these terms and conditions. You acknowledge and agree that any claim or cause of action you may have arising out of, or relating to, the Site must be filed within one (1) year after such claim or cause of action arises, or it will be permanently barred.

All information provided on each Site is used for the business purposes of Equitable. You agree that the Internet is not a secure medium, privacy cannot be ensured and security and/or confidentiality over the Internet are not guaranteed. Without limiting any other disclaimer contained under “Legal and Online Privacy”, Equitable, and its affiliated companies, shall not be responsible for any loss or damages you may incur as a result of your communicating confidential and/or personal information to us over the Internet or of our communicating, at your request, confidential and/or personal information to you over the Internet. Please read our Privacy literature for information about our privacy practices.

Certain secure areas of a Site may contain electronic forms or documents (“E-Documents”) which may be completed and submitted electronically to Equitable in connection with the underwriting, servicing, administration, claims processing and adjudication of Equitable products and services. In completing and submitting E-Documents to Equitable, you agree that E-Documents are the equivalent of written, paper versions of the documents and that your electronic activation of “I agree”, “Submit”, “OK”, “Continue” or similar commands in response to online instructions has the same legal effect as if you had signed and delivered paper versions of the E- Documents to Equitable.

You agree that you will not use, or permit anyone else to use, any robot, scraper, spider or other automated devices or means to access or use a Site for any purpose without the prior expressed written consent of Equitable. You agree that you will not: (i) interfere or attempt to interfere with the proper working of a Site; (ii) bypass any measures used to prevent or restrict access to a Site; or (iii) take any action that imposes an unreasonable or disproportionately large load on the infrastructure used to run and maintain a Site.

Certain information on a Site relating to segregated funds and underlying mutual funds may be provided by third parties. Without limiting any other disclaimer contained under “Legal and Online Privacy”, neither Equitable, nor its affiliated companies will be responsible for any errors in this information, or for any loss or damages to any person caused by reliance on this information.

All products or services described on a Site shall be subject to the terms and conditions set forth in any applicable agreements, contracts and policies and are available and intended for sale and distribution only in Canada. No Site is intended to solicit business from people who reside outside of Canada. Please note that not all Equitable products and services are available in all geographic regions of Canada. The information provided on a Site is not intended to be an offer to buy, sell or solicit the buying or selling of the products or services described on the Site.

The laws of the Province of Ontario and the federal laws of Canada applicable therein, without reference to conflict of laws principles shall govern any use of each Site. You hereby consent and submit to the non-exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of the Province of Ontario in any action or proceeding instituted in respect of your use of each Site.

If any of these terms and conditions are determined to be invalid or unenforceable in whole or in part, such invalidity or unenforceability attaches only to such term or condition and all other terms and conditions shall continue in full force and effect.

Social Media and Third-party Sites

Hypertext links appearing in a Site to other worldwide websites are provided solely as a convenience to you. Hypertext links may appear on other worldwide websites and direct users to a Site. Equitable does not endorse, nor is it responsible for, the contents or accuracy of any linked third-party website.

Each Site may contain tools and/or programs developed by others and housed on a third-party server or website. While accessing a Site, you may be linked to such third-party server or website. Your use of third-party tools and/or programs, whether on a Site or on an independent website developed by others, remains subject to the conditions set out in this “Legal and Online Privacy” section as well as any conditions imposed by the third party once linked to such server or website.

Equitable’s social media sites are owned by third parties that are not affiliated with Equitable. The social media sites may contain advertisements. Equitable is not responsible for the privacy or security policies of the owners of the social media sites and does not endorse any of the opinions, recommendations, products or other information that may appear on social media sites that are not content provided directly by Equitable.

Cookies

We may collect certain information about you as you use the Sites. The information collected may include:

Information about how you interact with the Sites, such as which pages on the Sites you access, the frequency that you access them, and what you click on while using the Sites.
Information about the device you are using to access the Sites, its hardware model, operating system, browser, IP address, and mobile device information including mobile network information, telephone number, device identifiers, mobile carrier, operating system, and other device attributes.
Information about your location which may be determined from GPS and other sensors, Wi-Fi access points, and cell towers.

To collect this information, Equitable, its affiliates and its contracted service providers for the Sites, or for websites accessible through the Sites, may use “cookies” or other similar technologies such as tracking pixels, tags, or web beacons, to facilitate your online experience or to provide you with access to the Sites.

A “cookie” is a text file that is placed on your hard drive by a web page server. Cookies cannot be used to run programs or to deliver viruses to your computer. Cookies are uniquely assigned to you and can only be read by a web server in the domain that issued the cookie to you. One of the primary purposes of cookies is to ensure that you are authorized to use the Site. Encrypted cookies, which contain your life insurance policy and certificate number, may be used for the purposes of authenticating your identity and providing you with access to a Site, or to any other website provided by Equitable through a Site. Your ability to access a Site, or any other website provided through a Site, may be limited should your computer not accept these encrypted cookies.

There are generally two types of cookies: session cookies and persistent cookies.

A session cookie is erased every time that you close your internet browser and leave the Site.

A persistent cookie is a file that remains on your device after closing your Internet browser and remains readable only to the website that created the cookie when you revisit that site.Persistent cookies have expiry dates and will be deleted from your device after a certain amount of time has elapsed or when manually deleted through your internet browser options.

Equitable may use first-party cookies, which are cookies that we place on your device ourselves, and third-party cookies, which are cookies that we allow our contracted services providers to place on your device.

Cookies or other technologies may be shared with or collected by Google Analytics or other providers in an anonymous form for processing. These cookies are used to increase the relevance of display ads you see when you visit other websites. Their servers may be inside or outside of Canada. Information collected may be subject to foreign laws and accessible by foreign governments. All of the information collected is non-personal and is not used to identify you personally. We use this information to evaluate our visitors’ use of the Site and to compile statistics. The information collected helps us understand how and when visitors come to our Sites, what features of the Sites are most popular and how visitors navigate around the Site, which help us optimize the Sites for the best user experience and ability to find information about our products and services.

The internet browser that you use to access the Sites will have options related to the use of cookies. Internet browsers are generally set to accept cookies by default. You will be able to block or limit cookies and other types of web analytics by changing your internet browser settings. If you choose to block cookies, you may not be able to access all or parts of the Sites.You can also stop certain cookies by using the free Google Analytics opt-out tool as well as tools provided by other online digital advertising agencies offering such services.

You can find out more about cookies and how to manage them by visiting the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada’s website at www.priv.gc.ca.

Trademarks

Names, phrases, logos, icons, graphics, images or designs used throughout a Site may be trade names, registered or unregistered trademarks or services marks (collectively “Trademarks”) of Equitable or its affiliates or of their respective owners or their affiliates, or parties associated with Equitable. The display of Trademarks on a Site is not an implied license to any third party for use of the Trademarks. All rights are reserved.