Privacy Policy & Terms-of-Service (combined)
Introduction
Hello,
I have had my own history of learning experiences with security issues regarding various sites including this one in the past. One important lesson I gained is that the less information I collect from you in all aspects the better your security and experience. For the most part I try tocollect a username, email address and for placement purposes you primary environmental interest. When registering you are taken away to a financial institution for two of three methods of electronic payment, and then reverted back to the site to access the features.
I do now use web components from various vendors. This Policy and Terms of Service are always being updated due to this. Below I cover more about this.
Who we are:
My name is Tito Alvarez and I am the owner and the webmaster of Climate Change Community LLC, located at PO Box 197, New York, NY 10013, United States | Website:https://climatechangecommunity.com.
| The site started as a business, then personal blog and now an Interactive site that includes member profiles, forums, groups, and more. Some might not be available now however will be soon.
Another aspect is that Climate Change Community will be one of the largest information rich site on the planet. This is inevitable due to the amount of information flying out now from all aspects of society, but mainly the grassroots, science community, our youth, and universities.
The Terms-of-Service Policy portion will always be in draft mode but one characteristic that does not change in regard to the Terms-of-Service portion is that I will not tolerate immature activities or Climate Denialism and Anti-Science here. Three or more members that bring your profile to my attention in the form of a complaint or establish you fit one of the three profiles then your account will be deleted and you will be refunded a portion of your subscription fee if applicable. I have first-hand experience on how dangerous, devious and disgusting the Climate Deniers and Anti-Science groups are and they are definitely not welcomed here. To me they are the same as terrorists.
What personal data we collect and why we collect it:
I do not collect any information than name and email address, the security program I use notes your IP address. As this is a membership site, whatever information you share is at your own discretion when communicating with others. This is a very serious site regarding a crisis, so collecting data other than getting you logged in and with the hopes of creating idealistic discourse is the main intention.
As indicated, this is a membership site and that being the case data is collected as part of the sign-on procedure and for your ability to manage your account, forum and group presence. Regarding the actual site and web components data could be collected by these through your interactions with the site’s contact forms, comments, cookies, analytics, and third party embeds.
Comments:
When you leave comments on the site the data shown in the comments form is collected, and as well as your 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. We are working on a where you can opt out of using Gravatar and post a custom profile image if desired.
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.
Contact forms:
I absolutely do no marketing on this site; do not use any of the Google or other company’s ad-revenue engines so rest assured that no information submitted is used for marketing purposes. The contact form I used is very compliant with the current data security standards, as well as GDPR.
Cookies:
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. Unless you are clearing your data cache on a regular basis 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 from other websites:
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 tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.
Analytics:
After much thought and consideration I decided to opt out of using certain type of analytics. Meaning I use ones that average visits and page access but does not pull information for visitors outside of those related to the IP address stats. Criticized for this however I do not care to about analyzing my visitors browsing habits, travels and/or any other information aside from making their stay here comfortable, not inquisitive.
Who we share your data with:
3rd Party Sharing Options – I do not share any information what-so-ever, aside from your setting up a profile which requires some information to create an account to any 3rd party marketing or social media company. The membership payment is executed off this site unless you are mailing a payment in, then we will collaborate through snail-mail then email. Security software used here gathers your IP address.
How long we retain your comment data:
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 visitors that register on our website, we also store the membership information entered in your user profile in the membership program for your continued access to account. At the time of renewal (if you choose not renew) or if you cancel your account then this information is deleted immediately. All members can see, edit, or delete theirmembership information at any time (except change your username).
What rights you have over your data:
If you have an account on this site, or have left comments, you can request to 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.
Where we send your data:
Visitor comments and other forms of communication (whether in forums or groups) may be checked through one of two automated spam and security detection service that I employ. This is required by both the European Union and various data protection standards.
My contact information:
Regarding privacy-specific concerns, please feel free to contact me anytime and I will get back to you as soon as I can. My email iscontact@climatechangecommunity.com | My cell number is: 1-551-254-1086 and feel free to use the contact form on the contact page.
What data breach procedures I have in place:
If attempted data breach is reported by my security program I will temporarily put the site on maintenance mode and run an in-depth scan as well as have my security agent view the attempts. I am very confident about the level of protection I now have in place and feel comfortable with the mechanism applied by this security program.
As an fyi, I am always educating myself in regards to security and watch closely the pains others go through in their breaches so I can apply better security here. In fact, I use new security technology that has yet to be applied to several other site (even very large ones). I have 26 years in Information Technology experience so I plan to use every bit of it here and learn much more along the way.
What automated idea making and/or profiling we do with user data:
One or two of the websites will run an idea engine, forum, group and profile management. Entering information into these forms is your decision especially regarding the idea engine. This information is shared locally, however, by sharing information in the forums, groups, idea engine or profile, we are not responsible for any information that is shared by others who are part of the community. Please remember this is a climate change website and personal information is not necessarily advisable to post here. Keep to the topic of climate crisis/change/adaptation/justice/action/etc please.
Avatar Privacy in regard to your Selection:
As a reminder, please note that 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. Neither the hash nor your actual email address will be exposed to the public.
Cookies:
If you leave a comment on our site and opt-in to display your Gravatar image, your choice will be stored in a cookie. This is for your convenience so that you do not have to fill the checkbox again when you leave another comment. This cookie will last for one year.
Idea, Forums, Groups, Profile Engine:
What personal data we collect and why we collect it:
The idea, forum, groups and profile engines rely heavily on your data input. When you register for the site, you may be asked to provide certain personal data for display on your profile. The “Name” field is required as well as public, and user profiles are visible to any site visitor. Other profile information may be required or optional, as configured by the site administrator.
User information provided during account registration can be modified or removed on the Profile > Edit panel. In most cases, users also have control over who is able to view a particular piece of profile content, limiting visibility on a field-by-field basis to friends, logged-in users, or administrators only. Site administrators can read and edit all profile data for all users.
Activity:
The forum and community sites record certain portions of your actions, in the form of “activity” data. Activity includes updates and comments posted directly to activity streams, as well as descriptions of other actions performed while using the site, such as new friendships, newly joined groups, and profile updates.
The content of activity items obey the same privacy rules as the contexts in which the activity items are created. For example, activity updates created in a user’s profile is publicly visible, while activity items generated in a private group are visible only to members of that group. Site administrators can view all activity items, regardless of context.Activity items may be deleted at any time by users who created them. Site administrators can edit all activity items.
Messages to Other Members:
The content of private messages (in forums and the community) is visible only to the sender and the recipients of the message. With the exception of site administrators, who can read all private messages, private message content is never visible to other users or site visitors. Site administrators may delete the content of any message. As a rule, I as a site administrator have neither time or desire to view member’s private discourse; it is enough that the site has to be maintained instead of monitoring accounts. It is also not in my nature.
Community and Forum Cookies:
On login, the Forum, Groups, Activity Stream, Idea Stream, and Profile generate specific cookies which are used to show success and failure messages to logged-in users, in response to certain actions, like joining a group. These cookies contain no personal data, and are deleted immediately after the next page load.
We use cookies on group, member, and activity directories to keep track of a user’s browsing preferences. These preferences include the last-selected values of the sort and filter drop downs, as well as pagination information. These cookies contain no personal data, and are deleted after 24 hours.
When a logged-in user creates a new group, we use a number of cookies to keep track of the group creation process. These cookies contain no personal data, and are deleted either upon the successful creation of the group or after 24 hours.
(This aspect is still in test mode, I am seeking testers for the community and forum. I have about 38 testers from France only so far, I’d like to have 100 testers in each. Please let me know if you are interested)
Slider Revolution, Pop-ups, and selected Site Applications:
After much thought and consideration I decided to opt out of using several of these selected web components that highlight and are designed to dazzle visitors to attraction. You decide to partake in the community or you do not, I have no need to try to persuade you to join. These climate crisis are a serious non-laughing or social media bells and whistle crisis. If a component I install adds any of these features, I simply do not use it. Simple! I do have some image headers and some of the components do come built into the Web Template I use. I just do not enable the majority of them.
YouTube:
Climate Change Community uses embeds from YouTube, which is operated by Google. The operator of the pages is YouTube LLC, 901 Cherry Ave., San Bruno, CA 94066, USA.
If you visit one of our pages featuring a YouTube plugin, a connection to the YouTube servers is established. Here the YouTube server is informed about which of our pages you have visited.
If you’re logged in to your YouTube account, YouTube allows you to associate your browsing behavior directly with your personal profile. You can prevent this by logging out of your YouTube account.
YouTube is used to help make our website informative. This constitutes a justified interest pursuant to Art. 6 (1) (f) DSGVO.
Further information about handling user data, can be found in the data protection declaration of YouTube under https://www.google.de/intl/de/policies/privacy.
Vimeo:
Occasionally, I use features provided by the Vimeo video portal. This service is provided by Vimeo Inc., 555 West 18th Street, New York, New York 10011, USA.
If you visit one of our pages featuring a Vimeo plugin, a connection to the Vimeo servers is established. Here the Vimeo server is informed about which of our pages you have visited. In addition, Vimeo will receive your IP address. This also applies if you are not logged in to Vimeo when you visit our plugin or do not have a Vimeo account. The information is transmitted to a Vimeo server in the US, where it is stored.
If you are logged in to your Vimeo account, Vimeo allows you to associate your browsing behavior directly with your personal profile. You can prevent this by logging out of your Vimeo account.
For more information on how to handle user data, please refer to the Vimeo Privacy Policy at https://vimeo.com/privacy.
Google Web Fonts:
For uniform representation of fonts, Climate Change Community uses some web fonts provided by Google. When you open a page, your browser loads the required web fonts into your browser cache to display texts and fonts correctly.
For this purpose your browser has to establish a direct connection to Google servers. Google thus becomes aware that our web page was accessed via your IP address. The use of Google Web fonts is done in the interest of a uniform and attractive presentation of our plugin. This constitutes a justified interest pursuant to Art. 6 (1) (f) DSGVO.
If your browser does not support web fonts, a standard font is used by your computer.
Further information about handling user data, can be foundat https://developers.google.com/fonts/faq and in Google’s privacy policyat https://www.google.com/policies/privacy/.
SoundCloud:
Eventually, I will be using components fromSoundCloud social network (SoundCloud Limited, Berners House, 47-48 Berners Street, London W1T 3NF, UK) may be integrated. The SoundCloud plugins can be recognized by the SoundCloud logo on our site.
A direct connection between your browser and the SoundCloud server will be established via their web-component. This enables SoundCloud to receive information that you have visited our site from your IP address. If you click on the “Like” or “Share” buttons while you are logged into your SoundCloud account, you can link the content of our pages to your SoundCloud profile. This means that SoundCloud can associate visits to our pages with your user account. We would like to point out that, as the provider of these pages, we have no knowledge of the content of the data transmitted or how it will be used by SoundCloud. For more information on SoundCloud’s privacy policy, please go to https://soundcloud.com/pages/privacy.
If you do not want SoundCloud to associate your visit to our site with your SoundCloud account, please log out of your SoundCloud account.
In Closing:
I will be constantly updating and growing this site so changes are inevitable. I will limit membership and a new community will be opened for members who want to join or move to that community. If you have any questions or see anything that I should correct please do not hesitate to contact me. Feel free to write, call (soon), text (soon), or email me.
This Private Policy covers every single Climate Change Community Forums and Communities that are created or will be created and linking on those sites will open a new page to this particular private policy.
I am educating myself about the new EU standard that was implemented September 2019 and will be applying it to this site prior to adding the 38 testing members from France.
As always I am at your disposal for suggestions, ideas and compassionate based critics.
Thank you so much for visiting.
Climate Change Community LLC
(always in draft mode…)