Privacy Policy
We, the Operators of this Website, provide it as a public service to our users.
Your privacy is important to the us. Our goal is to provide you with a personalized online
experience that provides you with the information, resources, and services that are most relevant
and helpful to you. This Privacy Policy has been written to describe the conditions under which
this web site is being made available to you. The Privacy Policy discusses, among other things,
how data obtained during your visit to this web site may be collected and used. We strongly
recommend that you read the Privacy Policy carefully. By using this web site, you agree to be
bound by the terms of this Privacy Policy. If you do not accept the terms of the Privacy Policy,
you are directed to discontinue accessing or otherwise using the web site or any materials
obtained from it. If you are dissatisfied with the web site, by all means contact us; otherwise,
your only recourse is to disconnect from this site and refrain from visiting the site in the future.
The process of maintaining a web site is an evolving one, and the Operators may decide at some
point in the future, without advance notice, to modify the terms of this Privacy Policy. Your use
of the web site, or materials obtained from the web site, indicates your assent to the Privacy
Policy at the time of such use. The effective Privacy Policy will be posted on the web site, and
you should check upon every visit for any changes.
Sites Covered by this Privacy Policy
This Privacy Policy applies to all the Operators-maintained web sites, domains, information
portals, and registries.
Children’s Privacy
The Operators are committed to protecting the privacy needs of children, and we encourage
parents and guardians to take an active role in their children’s online activities and interests. The
Operators do not intentionally collect information from minors, and the Operators do not target
its web site to children.
Links to Non-Operators Web Sites
The Operators’s web sites may provide links to third-party web sites for the convenience of our
users. If you access those links, you will leave the Operators’s web site. the Operators do not
control these third-party websites and cannot represent that their policies and practices will be
consistent with this Privacy Policy. For example, other web sites may collect or use personal
information about you in a manner different from that described in this document. Therefore, you
should use other web sites with caution, and you do so at your own risk. We encourage you to
review the privacy policy of any web site before submitting personal information.
Types of Information We Collect
Non-Personal Information
Non-personal information is data about usage and service operation that is not directly associated
with a specific personal identity. The Operators may collect and analyze non-personal
information to evaluate how visitors use the Operators’s web sites.
Aggregate Information
The Operators may gather aggregate information, which refers to information your computer
automatically provides to us and that cannot be tied back to you as a specific individual.
Examples include referral data (the web sites you visited just before and just after our site), the
pages viewed, time spent at our Web site, and Internet Protocol (IP) addresses. An IP address is a
number that is automatically assigned to your computer whenever you access the Internet. For
example, when you request a page from one of our sites, our servers log your IP address to create
aggregate reports on user demographics and traffic patterns and for purposes of system
administration.
Log Files
Every time you request or download a file from the web site, the Operators may store data about
these events and your IP address in a log file. The Operators may use this information to analyze
trends, administer the web site, track users’ movements, and gather broad demographic
information for aggregate use or for other business purposes.
Cookies
Our site may use a feature of your browser to set a “cookie” on your computer. Cookies are
small packets of information that a web site’s computer stores on your computer. The
Operators’s web sites can then read the cookies whenever you visit our site. We may use cookies
in a number of ways, such as to save your password so you don’t have to re-enter it each time
you visit our site, to deliver content specific to your interests and to track the pages you’ve
visited. These cookies allow us to use the information we collect to customize your experience so
that your visit to our site is as relevant and as valuable to you as possible.
Most browser software can be set up to deal with cookies. You may modify your browser
preference to provide you with choices relating to cookies. You have the choice to accept all
cookies, to be notified when a cookie is set or to reject all cookies. If you choose to reject
cookies, certain of the functions and conveniences of our web site may not work properly, and
you may be unable to use those of the Operators’s services that require registration in order to
participate, or you will have to re-register each time you visit our site. Most browsers offer
instructions on how to reset the browser to reject cookies in the “Help” section of the toolbar. We
do not link non-personal information from cookies to personally identifiable information without
your permission.
Web Beacons
The Operators’s web site also may use web beacons to collect non-personal information about
your use of our web site and the web sites of selected sponsors or members, your use of special
promotions or newsletters, and other activities. The information collected by web beacons allows
us to statistically monitor how many people are using our web site and selected sponsors’ sites;
how many people open our emails; and for what purposes these actions are being taken. Our web
beacons are not used to track your activity outside of our web site or those of our sponsors. The
Operators do not link non-personal information from web beacons to personally identifiable
information without your permission.
Personal Information
Personal information is information that is associated with your name or personal identity. The
Operators use personal information to better understand your needs and interests and to provide
you with better service. On some of the Operators web pages, you may be able to request
information, subscribe to mailing lists, participate in online discussions, collaborate on
documents, provide feedback, submit information into registries, register for events, apply for
membership, or join technical committees or working groups. The types of personal information
you provide to us on these pages may include name, address, phone number, e-mail address, user
IDs, passwords, billing information, or credit card information.
Members-Only Web Sites
Information you provide on Operators’s membership applications is used to create a member
profile, and some information may be shared with other of the Operators’s individual member
representatives and organizations. Member contact information may be provided to other
members on a secure web site to encourage and facilitate collaboration, research, and the free
exchange of information among the Operators’s members, but we expressly prohibit members
from using member contact information to send unsolicited commercial correspondence. The
Operators’s members may be automatically added to the Operators’s mailing lists. From time to
time, member information may be shared with event organizers and/or other organizations that
provide additional benefits to the Operators’s members. By providing us with your personal
information on the membership application, you expressly consent to our storing, processing,
and distributing your information for these purposes.
How We Use Your Information
The Operators may use non-personal data that is aggregated for reporting about the Operators’s
web site usability, performance, and effectiveness. It may be used to improve the experience,
usability, and content of the site.
The Operators may use personal information to provide services that support the activities of the
Operators’s members and their collaboration on the Operators’s standards and projects. When
accessing the Operators’s members-only web pages, your personal user information may be
tracked by the Operators in order to support collaboration, ensure authorized access, and enable
communication between members.
Credit card information may be collected to facilitate membership applications; or if you
purchase a product or service from our website, such information will not be kept longer than
necessary for providing the services requested. Credit card numbers are used only for processing
payment and are not used for other purposes. Payment processing services may be provided by a
third-party payment service, and a management company external to the Operators may provide
support for the financial activities of the Operators. the Operators may share your personal
information with its partners to facilitate these transactions.
Information Sharing
The Operators does not sell, rent, or lease any individual’s personal information or lists of email
addresses to anyone for marketing purposes, and we take commercially reasonable steps to
maintain the security of this information. However, the Operators reserve the right to supply any
such information to any organization into which the Operators may merge in the future or to
which it may make any transfer in order to enable a third party to continue part or all of its
mission. We also reserve the right to release personal information to protect our systems or
business, when we reasonably believe you to be in violation of our Terms of Use or if we
reasonably believe you to have initiated or participated in any illegal activity. In addition, please
be aware that in certain circumstances, the Operators may be obligated to release your personal
information pursuant to judicial or other government subpoenas, warrants, or other orders.
In keeping with our open process, the Operators may maintain publicly accessible archives for
the majority of our activities. For example, posting an email to any of the Operators’s-hosted
public mail lists or discussion forums, subscribing to one of our newsletters or registering for one
of our public meetings may result in your email address becoming part of the publicly accessible
archives.
On some sites, anonymous users are allowed to post content and/or participate in forum
discussions. In such a case, since no user name can be associated with such a user, the IP address
number of a user is used as an identifier. When posting content or messages to a Operators site
anonymously, your IP address may be revealed to the public.
If you are a registered member of an Operators’s website or email list, you should be aware that
some items of your personal information may be visible to other members and to the public. The
Operators’s member databases may retain information about your name, e-mail address,
company affiliation (if an organizational member), and such other personal address and
identifying data as you choose to supply. That data may be visible to other of the Operators’s
members and to the public. Your name, e-mail address, and other information you may supply
also may be associated in the Operators’s publicly accessible records with the Operators’s
various committees, working groups, and similar activities that you join, in various places,
including: (i) the permanently-posted attendance and membership records of those activities; (ii)
documents generated by the activity, which may be permanently archived; and, (iii) along with
message content, in the permanent archives of the Operators’s e-mail lists, which also may be
public.
Please remember that any information (including personal information) that you disclose in
public areas of our web site, such as forums, message boards, and news groups, becomes public
information that others may collect, circulate, and use. Because we cannot and do not control the
acts of others, you should exercise caution when deciding to disclose information about yourself
or others in public forums such as these.
Given the international scope of the Operators websites, personal information may be visible to
persons outside your country of residence, including to persons in countries that your own
country’s privacy laws and regulations deem deficient in ensuring an adequate level of protection
for such information. If you are unsure whether this Privacy Policy is in conflict with applicable
local rules, you should not submit your information. If you are located within the European
Union, you should note that your information will be transferred to the United States, which is
deemed by the European Union to have inadequate data protection. Nevertheless, in accordance
with local laws implementing European Union Directive 95/46/EC of 24 October 1995 (“EU
Privacy Directive”) on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal
data and on the free movement of such data, individuals located in countries outside of the
United States of America who submit personal information do thereby consent to the general use
of such information as provided in this Privacy Policy and to its transfer to and/or storage in the
United States of America.
If you do not want your personal information collected and used by the Operators, please do not
visit the Operators’s web site or apply for membership of any of the Operators’ websites or email
lists.
Access to and Accuracy of Member Information
The Operators are committed to keeping the personal information of our members accurate. All
the information you have submitted to us can be verified and changed. In order to do this, please
email us a request. We may provide members with online access to their own personal profiles,
enabling them to update or delete information at any time. To protect our members’ privacy and
security, we also may take reasonable steps to verify identity, such as a user ID and password,
before granting access to modify personal profile data. Certain areas of the Operators’s web sites
may limit access to specific individuals through the use of passwords or other personal
identifiers; a password prompt is your indication that a members-only resource is being accessed.
Security
The Operators make every effort to protect personal information by users of the web site,
including using firewalls and other security measures on its servers. No server, however, is 100%
secure, and you should take this into account when submitting personal or confidential
information about yourself on any web site, including this one. Much of the personal information
is used in conjunction with member services such as collaboration and discussion, so some types
of personal information such as your name, company affiliation, and email address will be
visible to other the Operators’s members and to the public. The Operators assume no liability for
the interception, alteration, or misuse of the information you provide. You alone are responsible
for maintaining the secrecy of your personal information. Please use care when use access this
web site and provide personal information.
Opting Out
From time to time the Operators may email you electronic newsletters, announcements, surveys
or other information. If you prefer not to receive any or all of these communications, you may
opt out by following the directions provided within the electronic newsletters and
announcements.
If you have questions regarding this privacy policy, please contact us.
