How we protect your privacy
Our collection of information
a) Information collected directly from you. When you visit our Sites, we may ask you for personal information to provide a service or carry out a transaction that you have requested. You may also provide personal information to us when you contact us (e.g., with a comment, inquiry or customer support request) or register for an account to use our Sites.
The personal information we collect from you when you use our Sites may include:
Your feedback, including feedback from you about our Sites as well as our products and services generally.
Identity data, such as your name, title, company/organization name, e-mail address, telephone and fax numbers and physical address (including street, city, state, postal code, and/or country);
Registration data, such as information provided by you when you register for an account to use our Sites, including user names and passwords;
Recruitment data, including information submitted in connection with a job application or inquiry (as described below);
Marketing and communications data including your marketing preferences and your subscriptions to our publications;
Export control information, such as your nationality, citizenship and country of residence, that allows us to determine your eligibility under export control regulations to receive information about certain technologies;
Event registration information, including information you provide when filling in e-registration forms; and
When you do not provide requested information, we may not be able to provide you the requested service or complete your transaction.
b) Information we collect about you. We collect certain information about your visit to our Sites, including:
- Usage data, including information about how you use our Sites, what pages you view, the number of bytes transferred, the links you click, the materials you access, the date and time you access the Site, the website from which you linked to one of our Sites and other actions taken within the Sites; and
- Technical data, such as your Internet Protocol (IP) address, your browser type and capabilities and language and your operating system.
For information about the cookies we use on our Sites, please refer to the section entitled “Cookies” below.
c) Geo-location information. For certain Sites, with your express consent, we may collect the precise, real-time location (i.e., geo-location) of your mobile device. This information will be used only for purposes of facilitating your use of the Sites. The geo-location of your mobile device may be disclosed to our service providers who may process this information in connection with providing services on our behalf. Once you have consented to the collection of the precise, real-time location of your mobile device, you may adjust this consent by managing your Location Services preferences through the settings of your mobile device.
d) Information collected from third parties.
In accordance with applicable law, we may collect personal information about you from third parties, such as social media websites/applications, which we may combine with the information we already hold about you in order to help us improve and customize our Sites to your preferences and for other purposes set forth in this Privacy Statement.
An anonymized string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.
Cookies
Cookies and similar technologies
Categories of cookies and similar technologies that we use The type of cookie or similar technology that may be used on our Sites can be put into 1 of 4 categories: Strictly Necessary, Performance, Functionality & Profile and Advertising.
- Strictly Necessary Cookies These cookies are essential, as they enable you to move around our Sites and use their features, particularly in connection with information searches and order placement. Without these cookies, services you have asked for cannot be provided. These cookies do not gather information about you that could be used for marketing or remembering where you have been on the internet. An example of a strictly necessary cookie is a “shopping basket cookie,” which is used to remember the products that you wish to purchase when you add products to your shopping basket or proceed to checkout.
- Performance Cookies These cookies collect information about how you use our Sites, for example which pages you go to most often and if you get any error messages from certain pages. These cookies collect information that is used to improve how our Sites work. Without these cookies we cannot learn how our Sites are performing and make relevant improvements that could better your browsing experience. Examples of performance cookies that our Sites use include Google and Adobe Analytics (see further discussion below).
- Functionality & Profile Cookies These cookies allow our Sites to store information that you provide such as your site language preferences and to store technical information useful for your interactions with our Sites. For instance, they remember your user ID and elements of your user profile. They also ensure that your experience using the Sites and our marketing efforts are relevant to you. They may also be used to provide services you have asked for such as watching a video or commenting on a blog. These cookies will not be used to track your browsing activity on other websites. Without these cookies, a website cannot remember choices you have previously made or personalize your browsing experience. For example, we use a cookie to store your language preferences, which allows us to present you with product search results in the correct language, and we use a cookie to store your choice about the appearance of the cookie information banner that we display on our Sites. This cookie will help us remember your choice about the appearance of the cookie information banner when you subsequently visit the same site where you made your choice about the banner and any other Company sites with the same domain or the same top-level domain.
- Advertising Cookies and Similar Technologies These cookies or similar technologies may be used to deliver advertisements that are more relevant to you and your interests. They may also be used to limit the times you see an advertisement as well as help to measure the effectiveness of the advertising campaign. These cookies may track your visits to other websites. Without these cookies or other technologies, online advertisements you encounter will be less relevant to you and your interests. We permit third-party advertising partners to use cookies and other technologies to collect information about your browsing activities over time and across different websites when you use our Sites, including products that you browse or purchase and your location. Examples of advertising cookies or similar technologies that we use include Google AdWords and Facebook Pixels.
What is a cookie? Cookies are text files containing small amounts of information which is downloaded to your hard disk or to your browser’s memory when you visit one of our Sites. Cookies are useful because they help arrange the content and layout of our Sites and allow us to recognize those computers or other devices that have been to our Sites before. Cookies do many different jobs, such as allowing our Sites to remember your preference settings and helping us to enhance the usability and performance of our Sites and your experience using them. Our Sites also may contain electronic images known as web beacons – sometimes called single-pixel gifs – that allow us to count the number of users who have visited specific pages. We may include web beacons in promotional e-mail messages or newsletters in order to determine whether messages have been opened and acted upon.
If you edit or publish an article, an additional cookie will be saved in your browser. This cookie includes no personal data and simply indicates the post ID of the article you just edited. It expires after 1 day.
Embedded content from other websites
Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.
These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.
Who we share your data with
If you request a password reset, your IP address will be included in the reset email.
How long we retain your data
If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognize and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.
For users that register on our website (if any), we also store the personal information they provide in their user profile. All users can see, edit, or delete their personal information at any time (except they cannot change their username). Website administrators can also see and edit that information.
What rights you have over your data
If you have an account on this site, or have left comments, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.
Where your data is sent
Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service.