VisGuides knows that you care about how your personal information is used and shared, and we take your privacy seriously. Please read the following to learn more about our Privacy Statement. By using the visguides.org website or any related services and/or features (collectively, the “Service”) you acknowledge that you accept the practices and policies outlined in this Privacy Statement. If you are a resident of the European Union (“EU”), United Kingdom, Lichtenstein, Norway, or Iceland, you may have additional rights under the EU General Data Protection Regulation (the “GDPR”) with respect to your Personal Information, as outlined below.

What information do we collect?

We use the terms “Personal Data” as it is defined in the GDPR, but “Personal Data” generally means information that can be used to individually identify a person.

We collect information from you when you register on our site and gather data when you participate in the forum by reading, writing, and evaluating the content shared here.

When registering on our site, you may be asked to enter your name and e-mail address. You may, however, visit our site without registering. Your e-mail address will be verified by an email containing a unique link. If that link is visited, we know that you control the e-mail address.

When registered and posting, we record the IP address that the post originated from. We also may retain server logs which include the IP address of every request to our server.

Information you elect to post to VisGuides is disclosed to other users of the Application or the general public (“User Submission(s)”). For example–if you make a post that includes any personal information – such information will be made publicly available.

What do we use your information for?

Any of the information we collect from you may be used in one of the following ways:

• To foster non-commercial research through scientific publications, restricted only to the post and thread discussions. Post and thread discussions are public and the author of the post is fully responsible for its content. Be careful to do not post information you do not want to be disclosed or that is copyrighted.

How do we protect your information?

We implement a variety of security measures to maintain the safety of your personal information when you enter, submit, or access your personal information.

What is your data retention policy?

We will make a good faith effort to:

• Retain server logs containing the IP address of all requests to this server no more than one year.
• Retain the IP addresses associated with registered users and their posts no more than 5 years.
• Retain user information as long as the user is registered. Account deletion implies immediate deletion of personal data. Post and discussions threads will be kept since they are public information unless the account user explicitly ask for the deletion of the posts and discussions threads.

Do we use cookies?

Yes. Cookies are small files that a site or its service provider transfers to your computer’s hard drive through your Web browser (if you allow). These cookies enable the site to recognize your browser and, if you have a registered account, associate it with your registered account.

We use cookies to understand and save your preferences for future visits and compile aggregate data about site traffic and site interaction so that we can offer better site experiences and tools in the future.

Do we disclose any information to outside parties?

We do not sell, trade, or otherwise transfer to outside parties your personally identifiable information. We may also release your information when we believe release is appropriate to comply with the law, enforce our site policies, or protect ours or others rights, property, or safety. However, non-personally identifiable visitor information may be provided to other parties for research purposes.

Third party links

Occasionally, at our discretion, we may include or offer third party products or services on our site. These third party sites have separate and independent privacy policies. We therefore have no responsibility or liability for the content and activities of these linked sites. Nonetheless, we seek to protect the integrity of our site and welcome any feedback about these sites.

Children Data Protection

The safety and privacy of children are extremely important to us. Every user of the Service must be 16 years of age or older. Any person that does not meet the foregoing age requirements is a “Minor”. Minors are prohibited from signing up or using the Service in any way. If you are a Minor, please do not attempt to register for the Services or send any personal information about yourself to us. We do not knowingly collect or solicit Personal Data from Minors. If we learn that we have collected Personal Data from a Minor, we will delete that information as quickly as possible. If you believe that a child under 16 may have provided us Personal Data, please contact us at info@visguides.org</>. We reserve the right to require any user to verify that the user is not a Minor, and if a user does not provide such verification in a timely manner, we will terminate the user’s account and delete all personally identifiable information displaying on the site and collected from such user.

Online Privacy Policy Only

This online privacy policy applies only to information collected through our site and not to information collected offline.

User Rights

You have certain rights with respect to your Personal Data, including those set forth below. For more information about these rights, or to submit a request, please email info@visguides.org. Please note that in some circumstances, we may not be able to fully comply with your request, such as if it is frivolous or extremely impractical, if it jeopardizes the rights of others, or if it is not required by law, but in those circumstances, we will still respond to notify you of such a decision. In some cases, we may also need to you to provide us with additional information, which may include Personal Data, if necessary to verify your identity and the nature of your request.

Access: You can request more information about the Personal Data we hold about you and request a copy of such Personal Data. You can also access your Personal Data by visiting Account Settings.

Rectification: If you believe that any Personal Data we are holding about you is incorrect or incomplete, you can request that we correct or supplement such data. In certain circumstances, you can correct some of this information directly by either updating directly in the relevant Account settings pane or emailing us directly info@visguides.org.

Erasure: You can request that we erase some or all of your Personal Data from our systems.

Withdrawal of Consent: If we are processing your Personal Data based on your consent you have the right to withdraw your consent at any time.

Portability: You can ask for a copy of your Personal Data in a machine-readable format. You can also request that we transmit the data to another controller where technically feasible.

Objection: You can contact us to let us know that you object to the further use or disclosure of your Personal Data for certain purposes.

Restriction of Processing: You can ask us to restrict further processing of your Personal Data.

Right to File Complaint: You have the right to lodge a complaint about VisGuides practices with respect to your Personal Data with the supervisory authority of your country or EU Member State, if applicable to you.

Your Consent

By using our site, you consent to our web site privacy policy.

Changes to our Privacy Policy

If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post those changes on this page.

This document was last updated on February 11, 2020.