COOKIES & 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.

This Privacy Policy applies to all the Operators-maintained web sites, domains, information portals, and registries.

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.

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.

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.

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.