Effective date: May 13, 2018
We collect your information only with your consent; we only collect the minimum amount of personal information that is necessary to fulfill the purpose of your interaction with us; we don't sell it to third parties; and we only use it as this Privacy Statement describes.
Of course, the short version doesn't tell you everything, so please read on for more details!
If you're just browsing the website, we collect the same basic information that most websites collect. We use common internet technologies, such as cookies and web server logs. This is stuff we collect from everybody, whether they have an account or not.
The information we collect about all visitors to our website includes the visitor's browser type, language preference, referring site, additional websites requested, and the date and time of each visitor request. We also collect potentially personally-identifying information like Internet Protocol (IP) addresses.
We collect this information to better understand how our website visitors use Veripool, and to monitor and protect the security of the website.
If you create an account, we require some basic information at the time of account creation. You will create your own user name and password, and we will ask you for a valid email account. You also have the option to give us more information if you want to, and this may include "User Personal Information."
"User Personal Information" is any information about one of our users which could, alone or together with other information, personally identify him or her. Information such as a user name and password, an email address, a real name, and a photograph are examples of "User Personal Information."
User Personal Information does not include aggregated, non-personally identifying information. We may use aggregated, non-personally identifying information to operate, improve, and optimize our website and service.
Why do we collect this?
We do not intentionally collect sensitive personal information, such as social security numbers, genetic data, health information, or religious information. Although Veripool does not request or intentionally collect any sensitive personal information, although we do not recommend it, you might post this kind of information. If you post any sensitive personal information on our servers, including email addresses, you are consenting to our storage of that information on our servers, which are in the United States, and this information may be indexed by search engines or used by third parties.
If you're a child under the age of 13, you may not have an account on Veripool. Veripool does not knowingly collect information from or direct any of our content specifically to children under 13. If we learn or have reason to suspect that you are a user who is under the age of 13, we will unfortunately have to close your account.
Much of Veripool is public-facing. If your contributed content is public-facing, third parties may access and use it in compliance with our link:terms_of_service[Terms of Service]. We do not sell that content. However, we do allow third parties, such as research organizations or archives, to compile public-facing Veripool information.
Your Personal Information, associated with your contributed content, may be gathered by third parties in these compilations of Veripool data. If you do not want your Personal Information to appear in third parties compilations of Veripool data, please do not make your Personal Information publicly available and be sure to configure your email address to be private in your user profile.
If you would like to compile Veripool data, you may only use any public-facing Personal Information you gather for the purpose for which our user has authorized it. For example, where a Veripool user has made an email address public-facing for the purpose of identification and attribution, do not use that email address for commercial advertising. We expect you to reasonably secure any Personal Information you have gathered from Veripool, and to respond promptly to complaints, removal requests, and "do not contact" requests from Veripool or Veripool users.
Veripool uses cookies to make interactions with our service easy and meaningful. We use cookies (and similar technologies, like HTML5 localStorage) to keep you logged in, remember your preferences, and provide information for future development of Veripool.
A cookie is a small piece of text that our web server stores on your computer or mobile device, which your browser sends to us when you return to our site. Cookies do not necessarily identify you if you are merely visiting Veripool; however, a cookie may store a unique identifier for each logged in user. The cookies Veripool sets are essential for the operation of the website, or are used for performance or functionality. By using our website, you agree that we can place these types of cookies on your computer or device. If you disable your browser or device's ability to accept cookies, you may not be able to log in or use Veripool's services.
We may use Google Analytics as a third party tracking service, but we won't use it to track you individually or collect your User Personal Information. We may use Google Analytics to collect information about how our website performs and how our users, in general, navigate through and use Veripool. This helps us evaluate our users' use of Veripool; compile statistical reports on activity; and improve our content and website performance.
Google Analytics gathers certain simple, non-personally identifying information over time, such as your IP address, browser type, internet service provider, referring and exit pages, time stamp, and similar data about your use of Veripool. We do not link this information to any of your personal information such as your user name.
Veripool will not, nor will we allow any third party to, use the Google Analytics tool to track our users individually; collect any User Personal Information other than IP address; or correlate your IP address with your identity. Google provides further information about its own privacy practices and offers a browser add-on to opt out of Google Analytics tracking.
Certain pages on our site may set other third party cookies. For example, we may embed content, such as videos, from another site that sets a cookie. While we try to minimize these third party cookies, we can't always control what cookies this third party content sets.
Do Not Track is a privacy preference you can set in your browser if you do not want online services to collect and share certain kinds of information about your online activity from third party tracking services. We do not track your online browsing activity on other online services over time and we do not permit third-party services to track your activity on our site beyond our basic Google Analytics tracking, which you may opt out of here. Because we do not share this kind of data with third party services or permit this kind of third party data collection on Veripool for any of our users, and we do not track our users on third-party websites ourselves, we do not need to respond differently to an individual browser's Do Not Track setting.
If you are interested in turning on your browser's privacy and Do Not Track settings, the Do Not Track website has browser-specific instructions.
Please see the section on email communication to learn about our use of pixel tags in emails.
Veripool takes reasonable measures necessary to protect User Personal Information from unauthorized access, alteration, or destruction; maintain data accuracy; and help ensure the appropriate use of User Personal Information. We follow generally accepted industry standards to protect the personal information submitted to us, both during transmission and once we receive it.
No method of transmission, or method of electronic storage, is 100% secure. Therefore, we cannot guarantee its absolute security.
Information that we collect will be stored and processed in the United States in accordance with this Privacy Statement. However, we understand that we have users from different countries and regions with different privacy expectations, and we try to meet those needs.
We provide the same standard of privacy protection to all our users around the world, regardless of their country of origin or location. We require that if our vendors or affiliates have access to User Personal Information, they must comply with our privacy policies and with applicable data privacy laws, including signing data transfer agreements such as Standard Contractual Clause agreements.
In particular:
If you have concerns about the way Veripool is handling your User Personal Information, please let us know immediately at <wsnyder@wsnyder.org>.
Veripool may disclose personally-identifying information or other information we collect about you to law enforcement in response to a valid subpoena, court order, warrant, or similar government order, or when we believe in good faith that disclosure is reasonably necessary to protect our property or rights, or those of third parties or the public at large.
In complying with court orders and similar legal processes, Veripool strives for transparency. When permitted, we will make a reasonable effort to notify users of any disclosure of their information, unless we are prohibited by law or court order from doing so, or in rare, exigent circumstances.
If you're already a Veripool user, you may access, update, alter, or delete your basic user profile information by editing your user profile or contacting Veripool Support <wsnyder@wsnyder.org>.
Veripool will retain User Personal Information for as long as your account is active or as needed to provide you services.
We may retain certain User Personal Information indefinitely, unless you delete it or request its deletion. For example, we don't automatically delete inactive user accounts, so unless you choose to delete your account, we will retain your account information indefinitely.
If you would like to cancel your account or delete your User Personal Information, contact Veripool Support <wsnyder@wsnyder.org>. We will retain and use your information as necessary to comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes, and enforce our agreements, but barring legal requirements, we will delete your full profile (within reason) within 90 days.
We may use your email address to communicate with you.
If you would like your email address to remain private, you may mark your email address private in your user profile. This will not change how we contact you, but it will affect how others see you.
Depending on your email settings, Veripool may occasionally send notification emails about changes in a issue or message you're watching, new features, tool versions, news, requests for feedback, important policy changes, or offer customer support.
Our emails might contain a pixel tag, which is a small, clear image that can tell us whether or not you have opened an email and what your IP address is. We use this pixel tag to make our email more effective for you and to make sure we're not sending you unwanted email.
Although most changes are likely to be minor, Veripool may change our Privacy Statement from time to time. We will provide notification to Users of material changes to this Privacy Statement through our Website at least 30 days prior to the change taking effect by posting a notice on our News page or sending email to the email address specified in your Veripool primary account. For changes to this Privacy Statement that do not affect your rights, we encourage visitors to check this page frequently.
This Privacy Statement is licensed under the Creative Commons Zero License.
Questions regarding Veripool's Privacy Statement or information practices should be directed to Veripool Support <wsnyder@wsnyder.org>.