Privacy Policy.
Your privacy is critically important to us. At ReachSci, we have a few fundamental principles:
· We are thoughtful about the personal information we ask you to provide and the personal information that we collect about you through the operation of our services.
· We store personal information for only as long as we have a reason to keep it.
· We aim to make it as simple as possible for you to control what information on your website is shared publicly (or kept private), indexed by search engines, and permanently deleted.
· We help protect you from overreaching government demands for your personal information.
· We aim for full transparency on how we gather, use, and share your personal information.
Below is our Privacy Policy, which incorporates and clarifies these principles.
Who We Are and What This Policy Covers
We are the PhD students behind ReachSci. Our mission is to Remove barriers to academia and research for individuals interested in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM).
This Privacy Policy applies to information that we collect about you when you use:
· Our website (ReachSci.org);
· Our online forms in Google Forms
· Other services that you use while you are on our website and our programs and events.
This Privacy Policy also applies to information we collect when you apply for a position at ReachSci as a member, volunteer, mentor, advisor, and board member.
Throughout this Privacy Policy we’ll refer to our website, and other products and services collectively as “Services.”
Below we explain how we collect, use, and share information about you, along with the choices that you have with respect to that information.
Credits
We'd like to credit and thank Automattic for having their privacy policy available under the Creative Commons Sharealike license, which we have used for our website.
Information We Collect
We only collect information about you if we have a reason to do so — for example, to provide our Services, to communicate with you, or to make our Services better.
We collect this information from three sources: if and when you provide information to us, automatically through operating our Services, and from outside sources. Let’s go over the information that we collect.
Information You Provide to Us
It’s probably no surprise that we collect information that you provide to us directly. Here are some examples:
· Basic information: We ask for basic information from you in order to apply for our programs. For example, we require individuals who register their interest in our website to provide their name and email address. You may provide us with more information — like your degree and other information you want to share — but we don’t require that information to use our website.
· Public profile information: If you are a member with us, we collect the information that you provide for your public profile. For example, if you have participated as a mentor, your name is part of that public profile, along with any other information you decide to put into your public profile, like a photo or a bio. Your public profile information is just that — public — so please keep that in mind when deciding what information you would like to include.
· Content information: You might provide us with information about you in Google Forms or other application-related forms (forms that would include information on your studies and why you are interested in our program).
· Communications with us (hi there!): You may also provide us with information when you respond to surveys, communicate with our members about a support question, post a question in our public forums, or sign up for a newsletter. When you communicate with us via form, email, phone, social media, or otherwise, we store a copy of our communications.
· Job applicant information: If you apply for a membership with us — awesome! You may provide us with information like your name, contact information, resume or CV, as part of the application process.
Information We Collect Automatically
We also collect some information automatically:
· Log information: Like most online service providers, we collect information that web browsers, mobile devices, and servers typically make available, including the browser type, IP address, unique device identifiers, language preference, referring site, the date and time of access, operating system, and mobile network information.
· Location information: We may determine the approximate location of your device from your IP address. We collect and use this information to, for example, calculate how many people visit our Services from certain geographic regions. We may also collect information about your precise location via our mobile apps (like when you post a photograph with location information) if you allow us to do so through your mobile device operating system’s permissions.
· Information from cookies & other technologies: A cookie is a string of information that a website stores on a visitor’s computer, and that the visitor’s browser provides to the website each time the visitor returns. Pixel tags (also called web beacons) are small blocks of code placed on websites and emails. ReachSci uses cookies and other technologies like pixel tags to help us identify and track visitors, usage, and access preferences for our Services, as well as track and understand email campaign effectiveness and to deliver targeted ads. For more information about the use of cookies and other technologies for tracking, including how you can control the use of cookies, please see the following website Cookie Policy.
How and Why We Use Information
Purposes for Using Information
We use information about you for the purposes listed below:
· To provide our Services. For example, to register your interest, applying to our programs, provide customer service, process applications, and orders, and verify user information.
· To ensure quality, maintain safety, and improve our Services. For example, by providing automatic upgrades and new versions of our Services. Or, for example, by monitoring and analyzing how users interact with our Services so we can create new features that we think our users will enjoy and that will help them or make our Services easier to use.
· To market our Services and measure, gauge, and improve the effectiveness of our marketing. For example, by targeting our marketing messages to groups of our users (like those who have joined a particular program with us or have expressed their interest in our programs), advertising our Services, analyzing the results of our marketing campaigns (like how many people apply to our applications), and understanding and forecasting user retention.
· To protect our Services, our users, and the public. For example, by detecting security incidents; detecting and protecting against malicious, deceptive, fraudulent, or illegal activity; fighting spam; complying with our legal obligations; and protecting the rights and property of ReachSci and others, which may result in us, for example, declining a transaction or terminating Services.
· To fix problems with our Services. For example, by monitoring, debugging, repairing, and preventing issues.
· To customize the user experience. For example, to personalize your experience by sharing with you relevant events, programs, and materials.
· To communicate with you. For example, by emailing you to ask for your feedback, share tips for getting the most out of our products, or keep you up to date on ReachSci; or contacting you to share programs and opportunities that we think will be of interest to you. If you don’t want to hear from us, you can opt-out of marketing communications at any time. (If you opt-out, we’ll still send you important updates relating to your application/s.)
· To recruit and hire new members. For example, by evaluating new members applicants and communicating with them.
Legal Bases for Collecting and Using Information
A note here for those in the European Union about our legal grounds for processing information about you under EU data protection laws, which is that our use of your information is based on the grounds that:
(1) The use is necessary in order to fulfill our commitments to you under the applicable terms of service or other agreements with you or is necessary to administer your account — for example, in order to enable access to our website on your device or charge you for a paid plan; or
(2) The use is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation; or
(3) The use is necessary in order to protect your vital interests or those of another person; or
(4) We have a legitimate interest in using your information — for example, to provide and update our Services; to improve our Services so that we can offer you an even better user experience; to safeguard our Services; to communicate with you; to measure, gauge, and improve the effectiveness of our advertising; and to understand our user retention and attrition; to monitor and prevent any problems with our Services, and to personalize your experience; or
(5) You have given us your consent — for example before we place certain cookies on your device and access and analyze them later on, as described in Cookie Policy.
Sharing Information
How We Share Information
We share information about you in limited circumstances, and with appropriate safeguards on your privacy.
· Universities and initiative's partners: We may disclose information about you to our partners who need the information to help you with your career if you have expressed your interest in those Services. We require our partners to follow this Privacy Policy for any personal information that we share with them.
· Legal and regulatory requirements: We may disclose information about you in response to a subpoena, court order, or other governmental requests. For more information on how we respond to requests for information about ReachSci.org participants.
· To protect rights, property, and others: We may disclose information about you when we believe in good faith that disclosure is reasonably necessary to protect the property or rights of ReachSci, third parties, or the public at large. For example, if we have a good faith belief that there is an imminent danger of death or serious physical injury, we may disclose information related to the emergency without delay.
· With your consent: We may share and disclose information with your consent or at your direction. For example, we may share your information with third parties when you authorize us to do so, like when you want to be connected to our network of scientists.
· Aggregated or de-identified information: We may share information that has been aggregated or de-identified so that it can no longer reasonably be used to identify you. For instance, we may publish aggregate statistics about the use of our Services, or share a hashed version of your email address to facilitate customized ad campaigns for other programs that might be of your interest.
· Published support requests: If you send us a request for assistance (for example, via a support email or one of our other feedback mechanisms), we reserve the right to publish that request in order to clarify or respond to your request, or to help us support other users.
We have a long-standing policy that we do not sell our users’ data. We aren’t a data broker, we don’t sell your personal information to data brokers, and we don’t sell your information to other companies that want to spam you with marketing emails.
Under a new California law, the California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”), some personalized advertising you see online and on our services might be considered a “sale” even though we don’t share information that identifies you personally, like your name or email address, as part of our advertising program.
Information Shared Publicly
Information that you choose to make public is — you guessed it — disclosed publicly.
For example, a photo that you upload to your presentation in our conferences, this information may also display with your presentation and other submitted materials on the website.
Please keep all of this in mind when deciding what you would like to share publicly.
How Long We Keep Information
We generally discard information about you when it’s no longer needed for the purposes for which we collect and use it — described in the section above on How and Why We Use Information — and we’re not legally required to keep it.
For example, we keep web server logs that record information about a visitor to the ReachSci website, like the visitor’s IP address, browser type, and operating system, for approximately 30 days. We retain the logs for this period of time in order to, among other things, analyze traffic to ReachSci websites and investigate issues if something goes wrong.
Security
While no online service is 100% secure, we work very hard to protect information about you against unauthorized access, use, alteration, or destruction, and take reasonable measures to do so. We monitor our Services for potential vulnerabilities and attacks.
Choices
You have several choices available when it comes to information about you:
· Limit the information that you provide: If apply to our programs, you can choose not to provide the optional account information. Please keep in mind that if you do not provide this information, certain features of our Services — for example, connecting you to our network — may not be accessible.
· Opt-out of marketing communications: You may opt-out of receiving promotional communications from us. Just follow the instructions in those communications or let us know. If you opt-out of promotional communications, we may still send you other communications, like those about your account and legal notices.
· Set your browser to reject cookies: At this time, ReachSci does not respond to “do not track” signals across all of our Services. However, you can usually choose to set your browser to remove or reject browser cookies before using ReachSci’s website, with the drawback that certain features of ReachSci’s websites may not function properly without the aid of cookies.
Your Rights
If you are located in certain parts of the world, including California and countries that fall under the scope of the European General Data Protection Regulation (aka the “GDPR”), you may have certain rights regarding your personal information, like the right to request access to or deletion of your data.
European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
If you are located in a country that falls under the scope of the GDPR, data protection laws give you certain rights with respect to your personal data, subject to any exemptions provided by the law, including the rights to:
· Request access to your personal data;
· Request correction or deletion of your personal data;
· Object to our use and processing of your personal data;
· Request that we limit our use and processing of your personal data; and
· Request portability of your personal data.
You also have the right to make a complaint to a government supervisory authority.
California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA)
The California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”) requires us to provide California residents with some additional information about the categories of personal information we collect and share, where we get that personal information, and how and why we use it.
The CCPA also requires us to provide a list of the “categories” of personal information we collect, as that term is defined in the law, so, here it is. In the last 12 months, we collected the following categories of personal information from California residents, depending on the Services used:
· Identifiers (like your name, contact information, and device and online identifiers);
· Characteristics protected by law (for example, you might provide your gender as part of a research survey for us);
· Geolocation data (such as your location based on your IP address);
· Audio, electronic, visual, or similar information (such as your picture, if you decide to upload one as a member);
If you are a California resident, you have additional rights under the CCPA, subject to any exemptions provided by the law, including the right to:
· Request to know the categories of personal information we collect, the categories of business or commercial purpose for collecting and using it, the categories of sources from which the information came, the categories of third parties we share it with, and the specific pieces of information we collect about you;
· Request deletion of personal information we collect or maintain;
· Opt-out of any sale of personal information; and
· Not receive discriminatory treatment for exercising your rights under the CCPA.
The CCPA & Personalized Advertising in Our Ads Program
Our mission is to remove barriers to academia and research for individuals interested in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM). We might show ads on some of our social media as well as some on our website for some of our Services
The personal information we share includes online identifiers; internet or other network or device activity (such as cookie information, other device identifiers, and IP address); and geolocation data (approximate location information from your IP address). These disclosures may be considered a “sale” of the information under the CCPA. We do not sell (or share) information through our ads program that identifies you personally, like your name or contact information. We don’t knowingly sell the personal information of those under 16. Learn how you can opt-out by going to California: Do Not Sell My Personal Information.
Contacting Us About These Rights
If you'd like us to edit or delete your information scroll down to “How to Reach Us” to, well, find out how to reach us.
When you contact us about one of your rights under this section, we’ll need to verify that you are the right person before we disclose or delete anything. For example, if you are a member, we will need you to contact us from the email address associated with your application. You can also designate an authorized agent to make a request on your behalf by giving us written authorization. We may still require you to verify your identity with us.
How to Reach Us
If you have a question about this Privacy Policy, or you would like to contact us about any of the rights mentioned in the Your Rights section above, please contact us through our contact webpage or via our social media.
Other Things You Should Know (Keep Reading!)
Transferring Information
Because ReachSci’s Services are offered worldwide, the information about you that we process when you use the Services in the EU may be used, stored, and/or accessed by individuals operating outside the European Economic Area (EEA) who work for us, other members of our group of companies, or third-party data processors. This is required for the purposes listed in the How and Why We Use Information section above.
When providing information about you to entities outside the EEA, we will take appropriate measures to ensure that the recipient protects your personal information adequately in accordance with this Privacy Policy as required by applicable law. These measures include entering into European Commission approved standard contractual arrangements with entities based in countries outside the EEA.
You can ask us for more information about the steps we take to protect your personal information when transferring it from the EU.
Translation
This Privacy Policy was originally written in English (US). We may translate these terms into other languages, and in the event of a conflict between a translated version of these Terms and the English version, the English version will control.
Privacy Policy Changes
Although most changes are likely to be minor, ReachSci may change its Privacy Policy from time to time. ReachSci encourages visitors to frequently check this page for any changes to its Privacy Policy. If we make changes, we will notify you by having a change log below, and, in some cases, we may provide additional notice (like adding a statement to our homepage or sending you a notification through email). Your further use of the Services after a change to our Privacy Policy will be subject to the updated policy.
That’s it! Thanks for reading.