PRIVACY & ACCESSIBILITY POLICIES |
PRIVACY POLICY
Last updated: August 16, 2022
The Society for Canadian Aquatic Sciences (“SCAS”) values your privacy. In this Privacy Policy ("Policy"), we describe the information that we collect about you when you visit our website, scas-scsa.ca / societyofcanadianaquaticsciences.wildapricot.org (the "Website") and use the services available on the Website ("Services"), and how we use and disclose that information.
A. Collection of Your Personal Information
1. COLLECTION OF PERSONAL INFORMATION
You are required to create an account to be able to access certain portions of our Website, such as to submit questions, participate in polls or surveys, to request services, to submit a review, and possibly to request information. The type of personal information that we collect from you varies based on your particular interaction with our Website.
2. COLLECTION OF AUTOMATIC INFORMATION, USE OF COOKIES AND OTHER TRACKING DEVICES
We and our third party service providers, which include ad networks, use cookies, web beacons, and other technologies to collect information about your use of our Website and Services, such as your browser type, your ISP or operating system, your domain name, your access time, the URL of the previous website you visited, your page views, your IP address, and the type of device that you use. We also note how frequently you visit our Website and use our Services. We use this information (including the information collected by our third party service providers) for Website analytics (including to determine which portions of our Website are used most frequently, what our users like/do not like), to assist us in determining relevant advertising (both on and off our Website), to evaluate the success of our advertising campaigns, and as otherwise described in this policy. Currently, we do not honor browser requests not to be tracked.
Cookies. We and our third party service providers collect information from you by using cookies. A cookie is a small file stored on user's computer hard drive containing information about the user. The cookie helps us analyze web traffic or informs you about your use of a particular website. Cookies allow web applications to respond to you as an individual, tailoring its operations to your needs, likes and dislikes by gathering and remembering information about your preferences. When you visit the Website, we may send one or more cookies (i.e., a small text file containing a string of alphanumeric characters) to your computer that identifies your browser.
Some of these cookies may be connected to third party companies or websites. The terms of use of such cookies are governed by this Policy and the privacy policy of the relevant third-party company or website. For example, Google measures the performance of advertisements by placing cookies on your computer when you click on ads. If you visit the Website when you have such cookies on your computer, we, and Google will be able to tell that you saw the ad delivered by Google. The terms of use of these cookies are governed by this Policy and Google's Privacy Policy.
Disabling Cookies. You can choose to accept or decline cookies. Most web browsers automatically accept cookies, but you can usually modify your browser setting to decline cookies if you prefer. If you disable cookies you may be prevented from taking full advantage of the Website because it may not function properly if the ability to accept cookies is disabled.
Clear GIFs, pixel tags and other technologies. Clear GIFs are tiny graphics with a unique identifier, similar in function to cookies. In contrast to cookies, which are stored on your computer's hard drive, clear GIFs are embedded invisibly on web pages. We may use clear GIFs (a.k.a. web beacons, web bugs or pixel tags), in connection with our Website to, among other things, log the activities of Website visitors, help us manage content, and compile statistics about Website usage. We and our third party service providers also use clear GIFs in HTML emails to our customers, to help us track email response rates, identify when our emails are viewed, and track whether our emails are forwarded.
B. How SCAS Uses the Information We Collect
1. HOW PERSONAL INFORMATION IS USED
We collect your personal information and aggregate information about the use of our Website and Services to better understand your needs and to provide you with a better Website experience. Specifically, we may use your personal information for any of the following reasons:
To provide our Services to you, including registering you for our Services, verifying your identity and authority to use our Services, and to otherwise enable you to use our Website and our Services;
For customer support and to respond to your inquiries;
For internal record-keeping purposes;
To improve and maintain our Website and our Services (for example, we track information entered through the "Search" function; this helps us determine which areas of our Website users like best and areas that we may want to enhance; we also will use for trouble-shooting purposes, where applicable);
To periodically send promotional emails to the email address you provide regarding new products from SCAS, special offers from SCAS or other information about SCAS that we think you may find interesting;
To contact you via email, telephone or mail, or, where requested, by text message, to deliver certain services or information you have requested;
For SCAS's market research purposes, including, but not limited to, the customization of the Website according to your interests;
We may use your demographic information (i.e., age, postal code, residential and commercial addresses, and other various data) to more effectively facilitate the promotion of goods and services to appropriate target audiences and for other research and analytical purposes.
C. Electronic Newsletters, Invitations, Polls and Surveys
At our sole discretion, SCAS may offer any of the following free services on the Website, which you may select to use or receive at your option. Certain of the following services may require you to provide additional personal information as detailed below:
1. ELECTRONIC NEWSLETTERS
We may offer a free electronic newsletter to users. We will gather the email addresses of users who sign up for SCAS for the newsletter mailing list. Users may remove themselves from this mailing list by opting out of receiving newsletters during the registration process, or by following the link provided in each newsletter that points users to a subscription management page where the user can unsubscribe from receiving newsletters.
2. "SEND TO A FRIEND"
Our Website users can voluntarily choose to electronically forward a link, page, or document to someone else by clicking "send to a friend." To do so, the user must provide his or her email address, as well as the email address of the recipient. The user's email address is used only in the case of transmission errors and, of course, to let the recipient know who sent the email. The information is not used for any other purpose.
3. POLLING
We may offer interactive polls to users so they can easily share their opinions with other users and see what our audience thinks about important issues, Services, and/or the Website. Opinions or other responses to polls are aggregated and are not identifiable to any particular user. We may use a system to "tag" users after they have voted, so they can vote only once on a particular question. This tag is not correlated with information about individual users.
4. SURVEYS
We may conduct user surveys from time to time to better target our content to our Website users. We will not share individual responses from these surveys with any third party. We will share aggregate data with third party service providers, partners, and other third parties. We also will post aggregate data containing survey responses on our Website; that data may be viewed and downloaded by other users of our Website.
D. Minor's Privacy
Our Services are not designed for person(s) under 18. If we discover that a person under 18 has provided us with personal information, without the consent of a guardian, we will delete such information from our systems.
E. Security
We employ procedural and technological security measures, which are reasonably designed to help protect your personal information from unauthorized access or disclosure. SCAS may use encryption, passwords, and physical security measures to help protect your personal information against unauthorized access and disclosure. No security measures, however, are 100% complete. Therefore, we do not promise and cannot guarantee, and thus you should not expect, that your personal information or private communications will not be collected and used by others. You should take steps to protect against unauthorized access to your password, phone, and computer by, among other things, signing off after using a shared computer, choosing a robust password that nobody else knows or can easily guess, and keeping your log-in and password private. SCAS is not responsible for the unauthorized use of your information, nor for any lost, stolen, compromised passwords, or for any activity on your Account via unauthorized password activity.
F. Disclosure
We may share the information that we collect about you, including your personal information, as follows:
1. INFORMATION DISCLOSED TO PROTECT US AND OTHERS
We may disclose your personal information to prevent an emergency, protect or enforce our rights, enforce our Terms of Use and/or to protect the safety of users of our Website and our Services or protect or enforce the rights of a third party, or as required by law.
2. INFORMATION DISCLOSED TO THIRD PARTY SERVICE PROVIDERS AND BUSINESS PARTNERS
We may contract with various third parties for the provision and maintenance of the Website, Services and our business operations, and SCAS may need to share your personal information and data generated by cookies and aggregate information (collectively, "information") with these providers and service agencies. The providers and service agencies will not receive any right to use your personal information beyond what is necessary to perform its obligations to provide the Services to you. If you complete a survey, we also may share your information with the survey provider; if we offer a survey in conjunction with another entity, we also will disclose the results to that entity.
3. INFORMATION DISCLOSED TO LAW ENFORCEMENT OR GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS
We will disclose your information, including, without limitation, your name, city, province, telephone number, email address, user ID history, quoting and listing history, and fraud complaints, to law enforcement or other government officials if we are required to do so by law, regulation or other government authority or otherwise in cooperation with an investigation of a governmental authority.
4. IN THE EVENT OF A CHANGE OF CONTROL OR BANKRUPTCY
In the event that SCAS undergoes a change in control, including, without limitation, a merger or sale of all or substantially all of SCAS's assets to which this Website relates or other corporate reorganization in which SCAS participates, and is thus merged with or acquired by a third party entity (a "Successor"), SCAS hereby reserves the right to transfer the information we have collected from the users of the Website and/or Services to such Successor.
In addition, in the event of SCAS's bankruptcy, reorganization, receivership, or assignment for the benefit of creditors, or the application or laws or equitable principles affecting creditors' rights generally, SCAS may not be able to control how your information is transferred, used, or treated and reserves the right to transfer the information we have collected from the users of the Website and/or Services to non-affiliated third parties in such event.
G. Links to External Websites
The Website may contain links to other websites or resources over which SCAS does not have any control. Such links do not constitute an endorsement by SCAS of those external websites. You acknowledge that SCAS is providing these links to you only as a convenience, and further agree that SCAS is not responsible for the content of such external websites. We are not responsible for the protection and privacy of any information which you provide while visiting such external websites and such sites are not governed by this Policy. Your use of any external website is subject to the terms of use and privacy policy located on the linked to external website.
H. Updating, Deleting and Correcting Your Personal Information
You can review, correct and delete your personal information by contacting SCAS:
or by mail to:
SCAS care of...
Steven Cooke
Institute of Environmental and Interdisciplinary Science
Carleton University
1125 Colonel By Dr
Ottawa, ON
K1S 5B6 Canada
ACCESSIBILITY POLICY
Last updated: August 16, 2022
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) defines requirements for designers and developers to improve accessibility for people with disabilities. It defines three levels of conformance: Level A, Level AA, and Level AAA. The scas-scsa.ca website conforms with WCAG 2.0 level AA.
Please let us know if you encounter accessibility barriers on our website:
We try to respond to feedback within 5 business days.