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Privacy Policies

GENERAL

HMAUS considers the privacy of its clients to be of utmost importance and works to protect it.

The purpose of this privacy policy is to inform you, as a visitor to our website

  • what kinds of information we may gather about you
  • how we may use that information
  • whether we disclose it to anyone, and
  • the choices you have regarding our use of, and your ability to correct, the information

HMAUS requests that you read these Privacy Policies carefully.

HMAUS’ policies and procedures for handling membership information have been created with the understanding that Internet technologies are still evolving and that Internet business methods are continuing to evolve to meet the needs and opportunities of the changing technologies. As a result, HMAUS’ policies and procedures are subject to change.

WHO WE ARE

The Hawaii Macintosh & Apple Users’ Society, Inc. (HMAUS) is a not-for-profit corporation registered in the state of Hawaii, United States of America. Our primary web site URL is http://hmaus.org. We also use http://hmaus.net and http:/hmaus.com.

TYPES OF INFORMATION

In the course of serving its customers, HMAUS acquires, stores and transmits customer communications and information that customers may regard as private or sensitive.

  • Some of this information – such as the member’s name, address, telephone number – is provided to HMAUS by its members in order to establish service.
  • Other information – such as the member’s account status, choice of services, and member logs – is created and maintained by HMAUS in the normal course of providing service.
  • In addition, HMAUS may store members’ electronic mail and other communications as a necessary incident to the transmission and delivery of those communications.

Personal Information

  • It includes, without limitation, your full name, your e-mail address, your home address, or your telephone number.
  • This information is ordinarily used to individualize your experience on our website, communicate separately with you, facilitate your movements throughout our website, and to be able to selectively send you communications that may be of interest to you, either electronically or otherwise. * Generally, you can visit our website without revealing any Personal Information about yourself.
  • The personal information collected from members during the registration process is used to manage each member’s account (such as for billing purposes).
  • This information is not shared with third parties, unless specifically stated otherwise or in special circumstances.

Aggregate Information

  • We collect certain Aggregate information, such as tracking the Internet address of the domains from which you visit our site and analyzing this data for trends and statistics, tracking your IP address (the number that is automatically assigned to your computer when you are using the Web), and tracking your browser type.
  • We use this Aggregate information to help diagnose problems with our servers, to administer our site, and to gather broad demographic information.
  • None of this information is connected with your Personal Information.
  • HMAUS may also generate nonidentifying and aggregate profiles from personal information Members provide during registration (such as the total number, but not the names, of members).

Use of IP Addresses

  • An IP address is a number that is automatically assigned to your computer whenever you’re surfing the Internet.
  • Web servers automatically identify your computer by its IP address.
  • HMAUS and/or its affiliates may collect IP addresses for the purposes of system administration, to report aggregated information to our advertisers, and to audit the use of our website.
  • When members request pages from our website, our servers log the requesting member’s IP addresses.
  • We normally will not link IP addresses to anything personally identifiable, which means that member’s sessions will be logged, but member’s identity remains anonymous to us.
  • We can and will use IP addresses to identify a member when we feel it is necessary to enforce compliance with our rules or terms of service or to protect our service, website, or any person, or where it is otherwise permitted by law.

Web Analytics

Web analytics is the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of web data for purposes of understanding and optimizing web usage.

We use the following analytics services.

Contact Form Inquiries

When Visitors or members send e-mail inquiries to HMAUS, the return e-mail address is used to answer the e-mail inquiry we receive. HMAUS does not use the return e-mail address for any other purpose and does not share the return e-mail address with any third party.

Comments

When visitors leave comments on the site we collect the data shown in the comments form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection.

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.

Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service.

Media

If you upload images to the website, you should avoid uploading images with embedded location data (EXIF GPS) included. Visitors to the website can download and extract any location data from images on the website.

Voluntary Customer Surveys

  • We may periodically conduct both business and individual member surveys.
  • We encourage our members to participate in these surveys because they provide us with important information that helps us to improve the types of services we offer and how we provide them to you.
  • Your personal information and responses will remain strictly confidential, even if the survey is conducted by a third party.
  • Participation in our member surveys is voluntary.

“Cookies” and How HMAUS Uses Them

  • A “cookie” is a small data file that can be placed on your hard drive when you visit certain websites.
  • HMAUS may use cookies to collect, store, and sometimes track information for statistical purposes to improve the products and services we provide and to manage our telecommunications networks.
  • These cookies do not enable third parties to access any of your customer information.
  • Most browsers are initially set up to accept cookies. If you’d prefer, you can set yours to refuse cookies or to alert you when cookies are being sent. However, it is possible that some parts of the site will not function if you do so.
  • Advertisers and partners may also use their own cookies. We do not control use of these cookies and expressly disclaim responsibility for information collected through them.

If you leave a comment on our site you may opt-in to saving your name, email address and website in cookies. These are for your convenience so that you do not have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment. These cookies will last for one year.

If you have an account and you log in to this site, we will set a temporary cookie to determine if your browser accepts cookies. This cookie contains no personal data and is discarded when you close your browser.

When you log in, we will also set up several cookies to save your login information and your screen display choices. Login cookies last for two days, and screen options cookies last for a year. If you select “Remember Me”, your login will persist for two weeks. If you log out of your account, the login cookies will be removed.

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 and Links to Other Sites

  • HMAUS is not responsible for the content or the privacy policies of websites to which it may link and our privacy policy does not apply to websites to which we may link.
  • These other sites may send their own cookies to users, collect data, or solicit personal information. These other sites are not subject to the HMAUS privacy policy and HMAUS is not responsible for the privacy policies for these other sites, nor for the use of any information that these sites may collect.
  • Please keep in mind that whenever you give out Information online (for example, via message boards or chat lines), that Information can be collected and used by people you don’t know.
  • While HMAUS and its affiliates strive to protect their members’ Information and privacy, we cannot guarantee the security of any Information you disclose online and so you disclose such Information at your own risk.

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 tracing your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.

How Long is Your Data Kept

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.

DATA SECURITY

  • HMAUS is committed to taking reasonable measures to protect your Personal Information from theft, misuse and alteration.
  • Although HMAUS’ security efforts are consistent with industry practices, complete privacy, confidentiality, and security are not yet possible over the Internet.
  • The member agrees that since the Internet is not a fully secure medium for the communication of information, and since privacy and confidentiality cannot be guaranteed, use of HMAUS’ services may cause the member’s information to be accessed by, or disclosed to, other persons.
  • Therefore, the member agrees that HMAUS shall not be responsible or liable for any damage that the member, or any other person, may suffer in connection with the communication of private, confidential, or sensitive information using HMAUS’ services.
  • While we make every effort to ensure the integrity and security of our network and systems, we cannot guarantee that our security measures will prevent third-party “hackers” from illegally obtaining the members’ information.

Use of Information

  • HMAUS does not make any member data available to third parties.
  • We do not sell lists, accept advertising, or generate any third-party revenue from the data that is generated on this site.
  • We do not share data from any member with other members.
  • We take the information we receive from individuals responding to our member Surveys and combine (or aggregate) it with the responses of other HMAUS members to create broader, generic responses to the survey questions (such as gender, age, residence, hobbies, education, employment, industry sector, or other demographic information). We then use the aggregated information to improve the quality of our services to you, and to develop new services and products.
  • This aggregated, non-personally identifying information may be shared with third parties.
  • However, HMAUS may disclose personal information about Visitors or Members, or information regarding your use of the Services or websites accessible through our Services, for any reason if, in our sole discretion, we believe that it is reasonable to do so, including: to satisfy laws, such as the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, regulations, or governmental or legal requests for such information; to disclose information that is necessary to identify, contact, or bring legal action against someone who may be violating our Acceptable Use Policy or other user policies; to operate the Services properly; or to protect HMAUS and our Members.
  • HMAUS may disclose or access account Information for administrative and other purposes that we deem necessary to maintain, service, and improve our products and services.
  • HMAUS disclaims any intention to censor, edit or engage in ongoing review or surveillance of communications stored on or transmitted through its facilities by customers or others. HMAUS will, however, review, delete or block access to communications that may harm HMAUS, its customers or third parties. The grounds on which HMAUS may take such action include, but are not limited to, actual or potential violations of HMAUS’ Acceptable Use Policy.

Your Rights Over Your Personal 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.

PHOTO, VIDEO, AUDIO RECORDINGS

Members and public participants shall be notified that HMAUS may record, publish and distribute photographs, video and audio recordings of its meetings, workshops, seminars, and similar events. Members will be advised of this policy and activity through the membership application and renewal processes.

Public participants and members at these events will be made aware of this policy so that they may avoid being recorded during the event.

MODIFICATIONS

Members may not opt out of receiving information from HMAUS which is essential for maintaining or updating members’ accounts or system information.  Members may access and modify their personal information by using the Account Administration Control Panel if available as a service.

WHERE TO DIRECT QUESTIONS ABOUT HMAUS’ PRIVACY POLICIES

If you have any questions about these Privacy Policies or the practices described herein, you may contact: HMAUS Signal, c/o 2860 Waialae Ave PH 1, Honolulu HI 96826; or send email to HMAUS.

HMAUS’ COMMITMENT TO CHILDRENS’ PRIVACY

  • Protecting children’s privacy is especially important to us. It is our policy to comply with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 and all other applicable laws.
  • HMAUS recommends that children ask a parent for permission before sending personal information to HMAUS, or to anyone else online.

ADDITIONAL POLICIES

Akismet

We collect information about visitors who comment on Sites that use our Akismet anti-spam service. The information we collect depends on how the User sets up Akismet for the Site, but typically includes the commenter’s IP address, user agent, referrer, and Site URL (along with other information directly provided by the commenter such as their name, username, email address, and the comment itself).

WP Photo Album Plus

When you leave a comment on a photo or other media item on this site, we send your name, email address, IP address and comment text to the server. When you enter a rating on a photo or other media item on this site, we send your (login)name or IP address and your rating to the server.

WP Recipe Maker

Bootstrapped Ventures, the developer of WP Recipe Maker, does not have access to any of the data collected by the plugin. This is all stored in your local database and not communicated back to us. Take note of the following topics for your own privacy policy.

What personal data we collect and why we collect it

Comments

When comment ratings are enabled we store the rating a user has given to a recipe along with the personal data WordPress core stores.

Cookies

When user ratings are enabled we store a WPRM_User_Voted_%recipe% cookie (with %recipe% the ID of the recipe) that contains the rating this user has given to a particular recipe. This cookie is used as (one of the) measures to prevent rating spam.

IP Address

When user ratings are enabled we store the IP address upon voting. This is used as (one of the) measures to prevent rating spam.

Their own manually input information

With the Recipe Submission feature personal data can be collected, depending on the fields that were added to the form. This can include the user email and name. When using the reCAPTCHA feature you will be agreeing to their terms of use and privacy policy.

How long we retain your data

Our cookies are stored for 30 days. User submitted data is stored indefinitely in the local database.

REVISIONS TO THESE POLICIES

HMAUS reserves the right to revise, amend, or modify this policy, our Internet Service Agreement and our other policies and agreements at any time and in any manner. Notice of any revision, amendment, or modification will be posted in accordance with the Internet Service Agreement.

History

May 24, 2018 Added text to meet GDPR requirements (General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) (EU) 2016/679)

March 5, 2017 Added section titled Photo, Video, Audio Recordings

August 5, 2001 Created and published.