Privacy Policy
Welcome to the Online Policy Group
("OPG")! We want OPG to be your source
for online policy research, outreach, and action on issues such as access,
privacy, digital defamation, the digital divide, and Internet participants'
civil liberties and human rights. We
know that your privacy is important to you, so your privacy as you use our site
is very important to us. This privacy
policy describes what information we gather from you, how we use that
information and what we do to protect it. We hope that this privacy policy is straightforward and clear, but if
you have any questions about it, please email privacy@onlinepolicy.org.
This
Privacy Policy applies to the OPG at onlinepolicy.org and its projects, which
include the California Community Colocation Project (communitycolo.net) and
QueerNet (queernet.org). It does not
extend to any other sites or services, including sites hosted by or colocated
at OPG or any other site on the Internet. Use of your information at those sites is governed by their privacy
policies that OPG encourages you to find and read.
Information We Gather
Personally Identifiable Information
In order to participate in many of
the activities and services that we offer, we ask you to provide some personal
information. For example, to subscribe
to mailing lists hosted by OPG, we require a valid email address. To register as an OPG client, we request
that you provide more information, including your
name, address and other personal information. In order to get a sense of the composition of the OPG community, we may
also request that you provide us with certain optional information.
We encourage you to make donations
to OPG at our site. To do so, we need
to gather certain information relating to the donation, which may include the
amount of the donation, your method of payment and other associated
information. We will use that donation
information only to complete the transaction, provide donation history,
facilitate and solicit future donations, and as we believe required by
law. We may also use information about
the donation for aggregate reporting (where we summarize the data in a report
that does not contain your personally identifiable information). We refer potential donors to outside
services such as PayPal and Network for Good for processing donations. Your use of those sites and their use of
your information is governed by their individual privacy policies.
We may
receive additional personally identifiable information from you through
communications directly to us, such as emails to customer support. If so, we will use that information to
fulfill your request, improve our service, and for aggregate reporting. For example, if you email OPG to ask a
question, we will use that information to give you an answer, to make sure that
you are satisfied with our answer, to have a history of our service to you and
to make our service better.
Other Information
In order to maintain and improve
OPG, we also gather some statistical data when you visit the site. The exact information we collect may vary,
but can include the numerical Internet Protocol (IP) address of the computer
you are using, the pages requested, the date and time you access our site,
computer and connection information such as browser type and operating system,
and the Internet address of the website from which you linked directly to our
site.
Public Information
OPG provides you with many ways
to submit information to be made public including but not limited to
participating in our email lists, chat forums, discussion groups, or message
boards. In each of these circumstances,
OPG gathers information from you. Information submitted through these services
can be read, recorded, retained and used by any third party or by OPG. Be aware
that anything you submit to OPG through these services may be made public, so
please remember not to include any information you want kept private.
Cookies
Cookies are small files stored by
your browser in your computer when you visit our website. We use cookies to
improve our website and make it easier to use. Cookies permit us to recognize
users and avoid repetitive requests for the same information. For example,
cookie technology makes it possible for you to leave and return to OPG without
having to login repeatedly. Most
browsers will accept cookies until you change browser settings to refuse them.
You should be aware, however, that by disabling cookies you may be unable to
access certain services and features of our website. For more information about cookies, please visit http://www.cookiecentral.com.
Children
OPG is not designed for children.
We do not knowingly collect any information from children under 13.
Our Use of Your Information
We use your information to
facilitate and improve our services. For example, we use your information to
allocate system resources and communicate with you about updates and new
features, among other things. We do not rent, sell, transfer or otherwise
disclose your personally identifiable information to any third party, except as
expressly stated below.
We also aggregate information
supplied by users during registration and information about their use of OPG to
maintain our services, analyze site usage, make improvements to our site, and
describe our user base. In providing
this information, however, we supply only summary data about our community of
users, not any personally identifiable information.
We may occasionally use your
personal information to send you information about OPG administration, services
or policies, or to encourage donations. In some cases, we may also deliver information to you that we believe is targeted to your interests, such as
announcements from related organizations.
Our Disclosure of Your Information
There are some limited
circumstances in which we may need to disclose personally identifiable
information about you, and we want you to know about them.
Agents
We may employ other companies to
perform functions on our behalf, such as processing credit card payments,
transmitting emails in response to your requests or other
service-related functions. OPG may not be able to secure their compliance
with this privacy policy.
Transfer
Although under current U.S. law OPG can only transfer assets to another
nonprofit entity, we may
transfer any information in our possession, including any personally
identifiable information, to a third party in connection with a merger,
bankruptcy, or sale of all or most of the assets of the company. We will attempt to offer our users the
opportunity to opt out of the use of their personal information in the instance
of a transfer. In such cases, we will
make an effort to notify you via email, provided that we have your email
address on record as a patron, client, email list subscriber, or other
participant in our services.
Unauthorized Usage and Violation
of Policies
We may collect additional
information and reveal user information if we believe that an OPG user is
harming or interfering with other users or anyone else; violating (either
intentionally or unintentionally) our Terms of Service; or infringing any of
OPG's rights, or trespassing on, damaging, or abusing any of OPG's property.
Legal
OPG will reveal information,
including personally identifiable information, to the extent we believe we are
required to do so by law. If we are
asked by subpoena or other legal means to disclose any of your personally
identifiable information, we will, if permitted by law, attempt to notify you
via the email address you supplied when enrolling in our services. We may at our sole discretion decide to
challenge a subpoena or other court order that we feel is inappropriate, but we
are under no obligation to do so given that the expenses related to legal
action could adversely impact the ability of OPG to provide quality services to
all of its clients and users.
Accessing and Changing Your Information
OPG is committed to ensuring that
you have control over your Personal Information. You can change your email
address, password, or other Personal Information
using the information you provided when you signed up to
the OPG service that you originally gave your personal information, such
as an OPG e-mail list.
Policy Changes
We may amend this Privacy Policy
at our discretion at any time. If we change this privacy policy in any
substantial way, we will notify you at least thirty days in advance by posting
a notice of the change on our website. We will make an effort to send notice of the change to our users via
email, provided that we have your email address on record as a patron, client,
email list subscriber, or other participant in our services. All amended terms shall automatically be
effective 30 days after they are initially posted on our site for all valid
accounts. If you disagree with the
terms of the amended policy, you may choose to discontinue subscribing to our
services within the 30-day period before the changes take effect. You have the
option of discontinuing use of many of our services on the OPG Services Page, available
at http://www.onlinepolicy.org/services/services-expert.shtml.
Questions About This Policy
If you have any questions about
this privacy policy or other privacy questions about us, please send an email
to privacy@onlinepolicy.org.