Dallas Paleontological Society Privacy Policy and Terms of Use

YOUR SECURITY & PRIVACY ARE IMPORTANT TO US

Thank you for your interest in and use of our website, membership software, and the content contained therein (“Services”).  The society provides these Services to you, subject to the terms contained in this “Dallas Paleontological Society Privacy Policy and Terms of Use” (this “Agreement”).  This Agreement is a binding legal agreement between you and the Dallas Paleontological Society("DPS," "we" or "us").  Please read the terms and conditions of this agreement carefully, before using our Services.  The Services and all data, design, text, images and graphics, contained therein are proprietary, confidential, and are licensed to you under this Agreement.  If you are not willing to be bound by the terms of this Agreement, you may not access or otherwise use any portion of the Services.

Ability to Use the Services

In order to accept this Agreement and to use the Services, you must be at least 18 years of age, or have parental or guardian consent.  The Services are not intended for users under the age of 18.  You hereby affirmatively represent that (a) you are at least 18, (b) you have the consent of your parents(s) to use the Services if you are under 18 years of age, (c) you have all the applicable rights and authority to grant DPS the rights granted  herein, and (d) you have read, understood, and agree to be bound by this agreement.  If you are not at least 18 years of age, do hot have parental consent, or you do not agree to all the terms and conditions of this Agreement, you may not use the Services.

DPS is committed to protecting our users' privacy. We feel it is important that you fully understand the terms and conditions under which we use the information we gather from you through the use of our Web site located at, or linked to, the URL: www.dallaspaleo.org. Please read this Privacy Policy ("Policy") carefully to understand how we will use and protect your personal information. We will never share your personal information with anyone except as described in this Policy.

COLLECTION AND USE OF INFORMATION

In general, you can visit our Site without telling us who you are or revealing any personal information about yourself. In order to better provide you with numerous products and services, our Site collects two types of information about its visitors: Personally Identifiable Information and Non-Personally Identifiable Information.

NON-PERSONALLY IDENTIFIABLE INFORMATION

When you visit our Site, we may collect some basic Non-Personally Identifiable Information about you. This information may include information regarding your operating system, browser software, and IP (Internet Protocol) address. Non-Personally Identifiable Information is collected in order to provide you with satisfactory service. We may use the information to detect problems with our server and to administer our Site. In addition, Non-Personally Identifiable Information is compiled by us and analyzed on an aggregate basis.

PERSONALLY IDENTIFIABLE INFORMATION

When you become a member of the DPS, register for an event, contact us via email or telephone, or access our website, or agree to interact with third party sites, applications or services, such as Facebook or Twitter, we may collect or request that you send us Personally Identifiable Information. This information lets us know, among other things, the specifics of who you are and can be used to identify, contact or locate you. Personally Identifiable Information may consist of: your name, address, telephone number, email address, birth date, billing information (credit card number, expiration date and billing address), and any other information you may provide to us or allow us to collect ("Personally Identifiable Information" ). We use Personally Identifiable Information for internal purposes, such as confirming and tracking your membership, newsletters, email contact, subscription or registration, analyzing trends and statistics, informing you of our new services and offers. Personally Identifiable Information is compiled by us and analyzed on both a personal and an aggregated basis.

To serve you better, we may combine Personally Identifiable Information you give us online or through our meetings. We may also combine that information with publicly available information about you that we may receive from third parties. We use that combined information to enhance and personalize communication with us, to communicate with you about the DPS and for other promotional purposes.

We may contract with third-party companies or persons to provide certain services including credit card processing, distribution, data management, promotional services, etc. ("Service Providers"). We provide our Service Providers with the information needed for them to perform these services. We also ask our Service Providers to confirm that their privacy practices are consistent with ours.

BECOMING A MEMBER

When you become a member, we require you to provide us with Personal Information. We use this information to give you a customized experience. For your convenience, personal information you provide to us online to set up your Personal Account is automatically saved and stored by us. This includes information such as your billing address, email address, telephone number(s), credit card number (which is stored in encrypted form by our processor).  Your Personal Account is password protected. You may access your Personal Account by requesting your password from us (go to My Account) and then signing in with that password. Afterward, you may change your password, and edit your Personal Information or request a password reminder at any time.

USE OF COOKIES/CLEAR GIFS

Cookies: Like many other commercial sites, our Site utilizes standard technologies called "cookies" and clear GIFs to collect information about how our Site is used. A cookie is a small data text file, which a Web site stores on your computer's hard drive (if your Web browser permits) that can later be retrieved to identify you to us. Cookies were designed to help a Web site recognize a user's browser as a previous visitor and thus save and remember any preferences that may have been set while the user was browsing the site. A cookie cannot be read by a Web site other than the one that set the cookie. Cookies can securely store a customer's password instance, cookies allow us to pre-populate (or fill in) an email field with your email address if you revisit our Site and want to send an email.  When you become a member or sign in as a member, we send a cookie to your hard drive to record the amount paid, the membership level selected, date of membership, and other pertinent information. No Personally Identifiable Information is recorded. When you become a member through our Site, our Service Provider may send a cookie to your hard drive recording your IP address and other related information.

Clear GIFs: Some of our Service Providers may employ clear GIFs (also known as pixel tags, single pixel GIFs, web beacons or action tags) for our benefit to help us measure advertising effectiveness. Clear GIFs help us better manage content on our Site by informing us of what content is effective. Clear GIFs are tiny graphics with a unique identifier, similar in function to cookies, and are used to track the online movements of our users. The main difference between the two is that clear GIFs are invisible on the page and are much smaller, about the size of the period at the end of this sentence. Clear GIFs are not tied to your Personally Identifiable Information. Our Service Providers may use clear GIFs: (i) in HTML based emails to determine which emails have been opened by recipients; (ii) to record when products have been ordered from our Site; and (iii) to track the visitor traffic on our Site. These clear GIFs allow us to measure the usage of our Site by our visitors and the effectiveness of certain communications and marketing campaigns. We may also use clear GIFs in a similar manner in our own emails and on our Site. Clear GIFs can "work with" existing cookies on a computer if they are both from the same Web site or advertising company. That means, for example, that if a person visited "www.companyX.com", which uses an advertising company's clear GIF, the Web site would match the clear GIFs identifier and the advertising company's cookie ID number, to show the past online behavior for that computer. This collected information can be shared with the advertising company. We may provide such information to our Service Providers, but that information can only be used by our Service Providers for our benefit.

SURVEYS AND RESEARCH

In an effort to improve our Site and services, we occasionally request that some customers and recipients voluntarily complete surveys, which may be collected by an independent third party. Individual survey answers are confidential, although non-personal information may be collected and disclosed to third parties. If you do not wish to participate in a survey, simply decline to participate when asked.

INTERACTIVE TOOLS

Within your Personal Account, you have the option to opt in for our additional services, which include a personal date reminder service and a free online directory. We use your contact information so that you may take full advantage of these interactive tools. You may view, edit or opt out of these additional services at anytime.

COOPERATION WITH LAW ENFORCEMENT

We will disclose Personally Identifiable Information, after subpoena or written request, to cooperate with a law enforcement investigation. We reserve the right to report to law enforcement agencies any activities that we in good faith believe to be unlawful.

SECURITY

We use the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) technology. SSL encrypts your information as additional protection against the decoding of that information by anyone other than us. However, despite all reasonable security precautions and processes, such as password protection, encryption technology, and use of firewall technology, no data transmission over the Internet can be guaranteed to be 100% secure. As a result, while we strive to protect your Personally Identifiable Information, we cannot guarantee or warrant the security of any information you transmit to or from our Site, and you do so at your own risk. Once we receive your transmission, we will take commercially reasonable precautions to protect its security on our systems.

Your password(s) will be your personal, secret entry code(s) to access your Personal Account(s) at our Site(s). When you access your account information, it is kept on a secure server and a password is needed to access any account areas. You can change your password as many times as you like. We recommend that you keep your password in a safe place and that you always sign off your account and close your browser window once you have finished your visit. These precautions will help prevent someone else from accessing your account, especially if you share a computer with other people or use a computer in a public place such as an Internet café or library.

LINKS TO OTHER WEB SITES

Our Sites may contain links to other Web sites. Privacy policies on such linked sites may be different from our Policy. We are not responsible for the privacy practices and content of these third-party Web sites. You access such linked sites at your own risk. We urge you to follow safe Internet practices and do not supply Personal Information to these Web sites unless you have verified their security and privacy policies.

CHILD PROTECTION

We take special care to protect the safety and privacy of children. Our Site is a general audience site. Those becoming members on our Site must have a valid credit card and be 18 years of age or older. It is the policy of the DPS not to collect personal information on any person under the age of 18 unless done so by the parent or legal guardian.  Only a parent or legal guardian is authorized by this site to load or maintain children under 18 years of age.

OPT OUT / MODIFY

We want to communicate with you only if you want to hear from us. You will receive email offers from us if you've registered or become a member of the DPS.  In addition, if you provide Personally Identifiable Information such as your email address but do not become a member, we may use that information regarding the DPS and its services.
 We do not send unsolicited promotional email and we respect mail preferences. www.dallaspaleo.org gives you several options for altering or removing your information from the database at any time.   Please be sure to include your email address, full name, and specifically what information you do not want to receive. You may also unsubscribe or opt-out of receiving promotional emails by following the unsubscribe instructions included in any of the promotional emails that we send you. Once your unsubscribe request is processed, we will not send you further promotional emails from that site from which you have requested to be unsubscribed, unless you opt back into receiving promotional emails from our Site.

When you become a member or access our site, we may need to contact you via phone, email or mail, even if you have opted out of these communication channels. Certain transactional communications (including but not limited to registration, password reminder, reminder service), whose primary purpose is not promotional (these communications may nevertheless include promotional content but that is not their primary purpose), are necessary for us to complete such registration or provide the services that you have requested.

YOUR CONSENT

By accessing our site, or becoming a member of the DPS, you consent to the use of your Personally Identifiable Information by DPS in the manner specified in this Policy. We, however, have the option to change, modify, or add to the terms and conditions of the Policy at any time. We will inform you of any material changes by posting the revised Policy on our Site 30 days prior to implementing the change. Any customer who does not agree to the revised Policy has the option to opt-out. The Policy will go into effect on the date posted. The new Policy will apply to all current and past users of our Site and will replace any prior policies that are inconsistent.

Because our Site reaches international contacts, if you are located outside of the United States, please be aware that any information you provide will be transferred to the United States. By using our site or providing us with your information, you hereby consent to this transfer. In addition, if you provide data about other individuals, you agree that you have obtained consent from each such individual to the submission and processing of such information to the terms of this Policy, including without limitation the transfer of such data to the United States. Although we will collect and use your information only as stated in this Policy, laws generally applicable to the protection of personal data in the United States may not be as stringent as those in some users' home jurisdictions.