Archived WPF privacy policy 2013-2018
Privacy Policy
This privacy policy was updated April 3, 2018. Earlier versions of our policy are linked at the bottom of the page.
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This privacy policy applies to the World Privacy Forum web site, www.worldprivacyforum.org, and to other privacy activities of the World Privacy Forum.
All personal information processed at our website is processed in the United States. If you live in another country, if you use our website and provide us with any personal information, you have to recognize and accept that the privacy regime here isn’t as good as either of us would like.
This privacy policy may change from time to time in response to new laws, to changes made to the web site, or otherwise. The World Privacy Forum reserves the right to make changes to the policy, but we do not anticipate making major adjustments to the approach outlined here.
Privacy Framework
We generally follow the principles set out in the OECD Fair Information Practices. These practices represent an international consensus on privacy principles for the collection and management of personal information. OECD Guidelines on the Protection of Privacy and Transborder Flows of Personal Data. We will post any changes to our policy and identify what those changes are in the version history at the end of this policy.
Collection Limitation
The servers that host the WPF Web site include server logs that tell us what parts of the site users visit. The server logs include by default the IP addresses of visitors to the site.
We are interested in which of our pages visitors use, but we don’t normally use the server log information to identify or track WPF visitors. However, it’s possible that if our site is hacked or otherwise used inappropriately, we would turn visitor information over to security consultants, the police, or others to find wrong doers, prevent hacking, or otherwise protect our rights and interests. We’ve never had to do this to date, so this is an unlikely occurrence.
The WPF site is hosted at WPEngine.com. The WPF site and is a WordPress-powered site that uses a variety of plug-ins and widgets to function. WPEngine’s privacy policy is located at: http://wpengine.com/privacy/. WPF has no control over WPEngine’s privacy policy, but its policy seemed okay to us last time we looked.
Purpose Specification and Use Limitation
The World Privacy Forum makes a good faith effort to use information given to us only for the original purposes for which it was provided. Some information coming to us through the website passes through the hands of our webpage host. We may share some information when appropriate or necessary with consultants or lawyers, but that happens rarely. Our general policy is that when a consumer seeking help or information provides us with personal information, we don’t ordinarily disclose the information in identifiable form without the consent or knowledge of the consumer.
We currently use PayPal as our online donation tool. If you choose to donate online, you will share your information with PayPal. We will not receive your credit card information, but we will have your name and email address, which we will use to thank you for your donation. If you are uncomfortable using PayPal and still want to donate, you can donate via check or money order. PayPal’s privacy policy is here. We don’t sell, rent, share, or use information about contributors unless we are required to by law.
We sell or offer some of our materials via ecommerce sites such as Apple’s iTunes. If you choose to purchase our products via a third party ecommerce site, please review the policies of that site. If you buy something from us that way, we may receive a record of what you bought and/or how to contact you. We don’t sell, rent, share, or use information about those who buy our products unless we are required to by law, except that we might let you know about any of our related or updated products. And we won’t do that if you let us know that you object.
Some things are out of our control. We may disclose information you have given us when required by law, in response to a subpoena, or if served with a search warrant. We’ve already disclosed that we may share user information in the event of a hack or other wrongful activity here. If appropriate, feasible, and lawful, we will make reasonable attempts (via telephone or email) tell the data provider and/or data subject about most of these disclosures, either before or after they occur. There are no guarantees here, however. Providing notice may take more resources than we have available.
Data Quality
We may retain any personal data if we conclude that the organization needs the data for legal or tax purposes. We can’t promise that data will be deleted on any fixed schedule. As long as we have your personal data, we will correct or update it as promised in the Individual Participation section below.
Individual Participation
Some visitors to WPF may choose to interact with us in ways that require us to gather personally-identifying information. The amount and type of information that WPF gathers depends on the nature of the interaction. For example, if you ask us for help with a privacy problem, the data we collect is likely to contain some personal information. WPF does not generally disclose personally-identifying information without the consent of the data subject other than as described in this policy.
Any individual who is the subject of personal information that the World Privacy Forum maintains may ask: 1) if we maintain any information about him or her; 2) to see the information that we maintain; 3) to correct, update, or delete the information.
We will consider and grant reasonable requests without charge. If we deny a request, we will state a reason. If we refuse to correct, update, or delete information, the data subject may submit a concise statement of disagreement that we will retain and disseminate to others in the event that we share the disputed information.
Security
We do what we can to provide security for our Internet connection, web hosting, and other activities. We rely a lot on our web host for Internet security, we have locks on our office doors, and we have passwords on our computers and devices. No matter what we do, we can’t guarantee that our records won’t be read by the National Security Agency or others who are persistent or have advanced skills.
Links to Other Sites
This site contains links to external sites and organizations. We provide links mostly for the convenience of our visitors. We don’t guarantee what you will find at those links, and we don’t have control over the privacy practices of other websites. We encourage you to read the privacy policies of all web sites you visit. We doubt that you will, but then again, you read this policy so maybe you are one of the few who read privacy policies. We think privacy policies are important even if no one reads them.
Questions, Contact Information
The World Privacy Forum is the data controller for this site. If you have questions about this privacy policy, please contact us at info@worldprivacyforum.org or at +1 760-712-4281. You can send Postal mail to us at 4 Monroe Parkway, Suite K, Lake Oswego, Oregon, USA.
Version History
In September 2013 we revised the policy generally and added information about our use of PayPal and some other details. There are a lot more words in this version, but we really didn’t make any substantive changes. We clarified a few things and expanded the discussion some. We added this version history, for example. Generally though, we’re still trying to comply with Fair Information Practices as we promised in our original privacy policy. We updated the contact address on the privacy policy April 3, 2018.