Privacy Policy

1. Purpose of Policy

The Center for Humane Technology is committed to protecting your privacy as you use our service! We created this Privacy Policy (“Policy”) to give you confidence as you visit and use the CHT website (the “Website”). This Policy covers how we collect, use, store, and share your information which on its own, or in combination with other information, may be used to identify you as an individual (“Personal Data”). The provisions of our Terms of Use (the “Terms”) apply to this Policy as well. All references to “we”, “us”, “our”, or “CHT” refer to Center for Humane Technology, a California nonprofit corporation. This Policy is written to comply with the requirements of a new data privacy law known as the EU General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”).  All references to “you”, “your”, or “user” refers to the user of the Website. You agree that this Privacy Policy and our Terms or (as applicable) apply to your past use, if any, of the Website prior to the Effective Date.

By using the Website and agreeing to this Policy, you consent to the privacy practices described in this Policy.

Do not hesitate to contact us at hello@humanetech.com if you have any questions or want to discuss this Policy. Capitalized terms used but not defined shall have the respective meanings given to them in the Terms.

2. Information We Collect and How We Use It

Required Information You Voluntarily Provide Us
You are not required to provide us with any Personal Data in order to browse the Website. However, to access certain features of the Website and services offered by CHT, you may be required to register with your name and email address.

We use this information for the purpose of providing you with information and updates about the Website and other features or services offered by CHT, including to contact users about events, online conversations, news articles, or other areas of interest users have indicated interest in, and for any other purposes with your consent. In addition, by registering your name and email address on the Website, you agree to receive commercial and promotional emails from us. These emails may include information about events, online conversations, news articles, or other areas of interest you may have communicated to us. If you receive a commercial email from us, you may unsubscribe at any time by following the instructions contained within the email. You may also opt-out from receiving commercial email from us, and any other promotional communications that we may send to you from time to time, by contacting us as described at the end of this Policy. 

Optional Information You Voluntarily Provide Us.
In addition to the required information that you provide to CHT by accessing certain features of the Website as described above, there are various pieces of information you can, or may in the future be able to or choose to provide through the Website, including through integrations with third party goods and services. 

We also may collect and store communications that occur through the Website between you and CHT, and communications that occur through the Website between users. These communications may contain your Personal Data. 

The various categories of information in this subsection is, or may be, considered Personal Data, and is used for the purpose of providing you with the Website’s functionality. 

Information Collected Automatically As You Use The Website.
In addition to the information that you provide to us voluntarily, CHT may automatically collect information through the Website about how you use and interact with the Website and other similar activities in order to better understand our users and how they use the Website, and to improve the Website.

Cookies and Analytics
We may use cookies to automatically collect information about your use of the Website. You can learn more about these technologies below. We may use this information to provide you with a better user experience, to comply with our legal obligations, to protect you and detect irregular or suspicious account activities, to customize our services and content for you, and to better understand how our users interact with the Website.

Cookies.
A cookie is a small file placed on your computer when you visit certain websites. Cookies may be either first-party or third-party cookies, and they may be either permanent or temporary (i.e. session) cookies. It may be possible to refuse to accept cookies by activating the appropriate setting within your browser. However, if you disable or refuse cookies, please note that some parts of the Website may be inaccessible or may not function properly. 

We may use cookies to automatically collect information about your use of the Website. We may use this information to provide you with a better user experience and to better understand how our users interact with the Website. For example, we use Google Analytics to analyze our web traffic and improve user experience. Google Analytics uses cookies to generate statistical information about how our Website is being used. For more information on these cookies, please see here.

Other Technologies.
We may use other third party services that automatically collect information about you to better understand how you use and interact with the Website, including, for example, Google Analytics. We may also use third-party services to deliver advertising with such third parties. The information collected through this process by the third-party service providers does not enable us or them to identify your name, contact details or other personal information that directly identifies you unless you choose to provide these.

Do Not Track Signals.
To the extent that we receive any Do-Not-Track signals, we reserve the right to not comply with them to the extent permitted by applicable law.

As described in this Policy, the Website utilizes numerous third party services as part of the functionality of the Website and we may share your Personal Data with third parties. We have no control over such third parties, except to the extent required by GDPR. We encourage you to review the privacy practices of such third parties. We make no guarantees about, and assume no responsibility for, the information, services, or data/privacy practices of third parties, except to the extent required by GDPR. We encourage you to review the privacy practices of such third parties.

3. How We Share Your Information

First of all, we do not sell or share your Personal Data with advertisers. We also do not share your Personal Data with other third parties except to the extent that it is in furtherance of the Website or services CHT offers through the Website, such as virtual conversations you may register for, or when you choose to do so (as described below).

Information Shared By You Through The Website.
You may, now or in the future, be able to choose to voluntarily share information collected through the Website through email, or other means of communication. In addition, as described in this Policy, some aspects of the functionality of the Website will require us to share your Personal Data and Customer Data with third parties. 

Our Personnel
To be able to effectively provide you with the Website, and to improve the functionality of the Website, we may disclose your Personal Data to our employees, contractors, and agents to the extent that such persons or entities have a need-to-know such information in furtherance of the Website. 

Our Vendors.
We work with third party service providers to provide website, application development, hosting, maintenance, data processing, customer service, and other services for us in furtherance of the Website. These third parties may have access to or process your Personal Data as part of providing those services for us. However, we limit the information provided to these service providers to that which is reasonably necessary for them to perform their functions. These vendors may be in countries that the European Commission has determined do not provide for an adequate level of data protection to meet the requirements under the GDPR. If vendors do not have appropriate technical and organizational safeguards, you understand that there might be certain risks affecting your Personal Data, including but not limited to the fact there might not be a supervisory authority, data processing principles, and/or data subject rights in such countries that protect your Personal Data in the same way and to the same extent the principles and standards of the GDPR might. You agree that your consent to the above is our lawful basis under the GDPR for transferring your Personal Data to the vendors.

Other Third Parties

In addition to our practices described above, we may share your information if we have a good-faith belief that such action is necessary to (1) comply with the law (see the section below on “Government Requests”), (2) protect and defend the rights or property of CHT, or (3) prevent an emergency involving danger of death or serious physical or mental injury to any person. 

We will only share your Personal Data for the foregoing reasons to the extent permitted by GDPR.

4. Storing Your Information

Storage and Retention of Your Information
We will store your Personal Data for as long as it is needed to provide the Website, however, we may not know if you have stopped using the Website so we encourage you to contact us at the email listed below if you are no longer using the Website. However, if required by applicable law, we may retain your Personal Data for such period as may be required by such law. To continue to provide an effective service, we may store non-personally identifiable data perpetually and may anonymize and aggregate any Personal Data and store that anonymized information perpetually, and otherwise use and disclose such de-identified, anonymized and aggregated information subject to restrictions under applicable law and regulations. 

Additionally, as described in this Policy, we use third parties to provide the Website and do not have full control over their practices related to storage and retention of your Personal Data. However, we will work with such third parties to delete or modify your Personal Data to the extent required by GDPR and the European Commission’s model contracts for the transfer of personal data to third countries (i.e., the standard contractual clauses pursuant to Decision 2010/87/EU) (the “SCCs”).

If you would like to review your information that we have access to, or request deletion of any information, you may contact us via email at the email listed below.

Security
We use reasonable efforts to secure your information and to attempt to prevent the loss, misuse, and alteration of the information that we obtain from you. For example, we will require our personnel to sign confidentiality agreements that extend to your personal information; we review the privacy practices of new products and services that we integrate into our Website; we train our personnel on privacy issues; we will have personnel to monitor privacy issues; we restrict access to your personal information to individuals within and outside of CHT who need access to such information to provide the Website; and we use encryption technology to secure data at rest and in transmission. In addition, we rely on the technical safeguards provided by the third-party vendors we use to host, store, and process your information. However, you acknowledge and agree that loss, misuse, and alteration may occur despite our efforts to protect your information. We are not responsible to our users or to any third party due to any such loss, misuse, or alteration. We are not responsible to our users or to any third party due to any such loss, misuse, or alteration, except to the extent required by GDPR, the SCCs, or other applicable law.

Your Requests
You may withdraw the consent granted in this Policy for us to use the Personal Data described in this Policy by contacting us as described at the end of this Policy. Please note that if you do so, it will not affect the lawfulness of the use of your Personal Data based on your prior consent.

In addition, you may contact us as described at the end of this Policy to request that we do not disclose your Personal Data to third parties (other than those that are acting as our agent to perform tasks on our behalf, such as data processors) or to request that your Personal Data not be used for a purpose that is materially different from the purposes for which it was originally collected or for purposes subsequently authorized by you.

If you receive commercial email from us, you may unsubscribe at any time by following the instructions contained within the email. You may also opt-out from receiving commercial email from us, and any other promotional communications that we may send to you from time to time, by contacting us as described at the end of this Policy. Please be aware that if you opt-out of receiving commercial email from us or otherwise modify the nature or frequency of promotional communications you receive from us, even after you opt-out from receiving commercial messages from us, you may continue to receive administrative messages from us regarding the Website.

Upon receipt of any of the above request(s), we will use reasonable efforts to reflect any changes you request in our databases to the full extent required by GDPR, the SCCs, or other applicable law.

If you are not happy with how we have attempted to resolve your complaint, you may contact the relevant data protection authority.

5. International Visitors and Data Transfers

The Website is hosted in the United States and is intended for visitors located within the United States as well as users located outside of the United States. If you choose to use the Website from the European Economic Area (“EEA”), Switzerland, or other regions of the world with laws governing data collection and use that may differ from U.S. law, then please note that you are transferring your Personal Data outside of those regions to the United States for storage and processing. By providing any information, including Personal Data, on or to the Website, you consent to such transfer, storage, and processing.  

Information collected in the EEA may be transferred, stored and processed by us or third parties (as provided in this Policy) in the United States and other countries whose data protection laws may be different than the laws of your country. Whenever we transfer your Personal Data out of the EEA, we ensure a similar degree of protection is afforded to it by entering into SCCs with the relevant third party.

As described in this Policy, we may share Personal Data with third parties and may be required to disclose information in response to lawful requests by public authorities, including to meet national security or law enforcement requirements.

6. Government Requests

From time to time, we may receive requests from government agencies to obtain information about our users. In handling such government requests, we greatly value the privacy of your information. While we may be required to turn over user information at times, we will strive to require a search warrant or subpoena, to the extent that we can reasonably demand such warrant or subpoena, before we turn over information about you and we will also strive to notify users when we receive government requests about their data.

7. Third Party Services and Practices Are Beyond Our Control

Our Website may utilize numerous third party services as part of the functionality of the Website, such as hosting services, analytics providers, communications services, and other vendors; and we may share your information with third parties to the extent explained in this Policy. 

Additionally, we use third party payment processing services, such that we do not receive any of your sensitive financial information. We have no control over such third parties, except to the extent required by GDPR and the SCCs. Thus, we make no guarantees about, and assume no responsibility for the information, services, or data/privacy practices of third parties (except to the extent required by GDPR and the SCCs), which may differ significantly from our practices described in this Policy. We encourage you to review the privacy practices of such third parties to the extent possible, and we encourage you to use caution in deciding the information you choose to make available on the Website.

8. Changes to This Policy

CHT reserves the right to change this Policy from time to time, with or without notice to you, except to the extent required by GDPR. Any changes to this Privacy Policy will become effective on the “Effective Date” indicated above. If you continue to use the Website after the Effective Date, you consent to the new Policy. CHT will always have the latest Policy posted on the Website.

9. Please Reach Out to Us With Any Questions or Feedback

If you have any questions about this Policy, our Terms or our Website, please feel free to contact us by email at hello@humanetech.com.

10. Data Protection Officer

In addition, we have appointed a Data Protection Officer (“DPO”). Our DPO can be contacted directly by email at hello@humanetech.com or by mail at:

Center for Humane Technology 
ATTN: Data Protection Officer
77 Van Ness Avenue 101-1601
San Francisco, CA 94102