Privacy Policy

Effective July 1, 2019

The California Geotechnical Engineers Association or CalGeo (collectively, "we," "us" or "our") recognizes the importance of protecting the personal information collected in the operation of the association's services and taking reasonable steps to maintain the security, integrity and privacy of any information in accordance with this Privacy Policy. By submitting your information, you consent to the practices described in this policy. If you are under 18 years of age you must first seek the consent of your parent or guardian prior to submitting any personal information.

This Privacy Policy describes how we collect and use the personal information you provide to us. It also describes the choices available to you regarding our use of your personal information and how you can access and update this information.
Whenever we change our policy, we will give reasonable notice by posting a notice on our website’s home page. Since these policy change notices last only for a limited time, however, you should check this Privacy Policy regularly to see if there have been any changes.

How We Collect Information

We may collect personal information from you in the following ways: (1) directly from your verbal or written input (such as by consenting to receiving marketing emails, providing your business card at an event, or registering for an event); (2) automatically through our website technologies including tracking online, such as by Web cookies (which are small text files created by websites that are stored on your computer), by smart devices, by using data sets contributed by associations with similar research interests/collaborative programs, by collecting data from a browser or device for use on a different computer or device, or by published online data.

Information You Provide

The types of personal information that we collect directly from you may include:

• Contact details, such as your name, email address, postal address and telephone number;
• Internet Protocol ("IP") addresses used to connect your computer to the Internet;
• Educational and professional expertise and interests;
• Your willingness to volunteer;
• Tracking codes such as cookies;
• Usernames and passwords;
• Payment information, such as a credit or debit card number (which are used to process immediately, but are not retained);
• Comments, feedback, posts and other content you provide (including through our website or other communication such as email);
• Communication preferences;
• Purchase and search history; and
• Information about your personal preferences and interests.

In order to access certain content and to make use of additional functionality and features of our website and services, we may ask you to register for an account by completing and submitting a registration form, which may request additional information.

Information We Receive from Other Sources

We may receive information about you from other organizations to which you belong, if you use any of the websites we operate or the other services we provide. We also work closely with third parties (including, for example, business partners and sub-contractors in technical, academic institutions, other associations to which you may belong) from whom we may receive information about you.

Use of Your Information

Association Members

We may use your personal information in the performance of services to you as an association member, any contract we enter into with you, to comply with legal obligations, or where we have a legitimate business interest in using your information to enhance the services and products we provide. Legitimate business purposes include but are not limited to one or all of the following: providing direct marketing and assessing the effectiveness of promotions and advertising; modifying, improving or personalizing our services, products and communications; detecting fraud; investigating suspicious activity and otherwise keeping our site safe and secure; and conducting data analytics.

In addition, we may use your information in the following ways:

• To provide you with information about services that you request from us;
• To provide the public with a searchable database of geotechnical engineers or affiliate memebrs where we share your name, address and/or email address;
• To provide Affiliate members with a list of key and branch contacts for all current member firms.
• To send you periodic newsletters, announcements, emails and notices common in the communications provided by associations to its members or contacts;
• To provide you with information about other products, events and services we offer that are either (i) similar to those you have already purchased or inquired about, or (ii) entirely new products, events and services;
• For internal business and research purposes to help enhance, evaluate, develop, and create our websites (including usage statistics, such as "page views”);
• To notify you about changes or updates to our websites, products, or services;
• To administer our services and for internal operations, including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, statistical, and survey purposes;
• To allow you to participate in interactive features of our service; and
• For any other purpose that we may notify you of from time to time.

We do not collect Special Personal Information as defined by the GDPR such as racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious beliefs, trade union activities, physical or mental health, sexual life, or details of criminal offences. The data are maintained for the purpose of providing you membership services, or for contact contacting you with information about the association. If you request us to destroy or erase your personal information, it will be promptly done.

For Association Contacts (not members)
The personal information collected about you includes the following: name, email addresses, organization name, phone numbers, and addresses. It is used to communicate with you as in the bulleted list above.

How You can Manage Your Information
We want to be sure that we keep only the most accurate and up-to-date information about you in our records. Therefore, whenever you believe that your contact information needs to be updated, you are encouraged to logon to our Website and make the corrections yourself. If you have forgotten your password, the system we use has a function to reset your password, and then logon. Alternately, you can email us at [email protected].

Our membership database features a member profile and just as you can update your contact information there you can also control your privacy settings and notifications. You may elect to “unsubscribe” from notifications and you will no longer receive blast emails. Additionally, our database features a member directory listing names, email addresses and organizations. You can control whether your record is searchable and visible or invisible to other association members. At no time are non-dues-paying-members able to appear in this directory.

You may choose at any time to completely remove your record in our system and no longer be a member (thus losing all rights of membership) or be contacted by us. To do this, please email us your request at [email protected].

Other Internet sites you visit, including those linked from our website, may have their own privacy policies or no policy at all. Other websites might use personal information differently than our policy permits. We strongly encourage you to review the privacy policies of any site before providing any personal information.

Security
We use appropriate physical, technical and administrative safeguards to protect your data. Access to your personal data will be restricted to only those who need to know that information which is required to perform their job function. In addition, we train our employees about the importance of maintaining the confidentiality and security of your information.

Cookies
As is true of most websites, we gather certain information automatically. This information may include IP addresses, browser type, Internet service provider ("ISP"), referring/exit pages, the files viewed on our site (e.g., HTML pages, graphics, etc.), operating system, date/time stamp, and/or clickstream data to analyze trends in the aggregate and administer the site.
We use cookies or similar technologies to analyze trends, administer the website, track users' movements around the website, and to gather demographic information about our user base as a whole. You can control the use of cookies at the individual browser level, but if you choose to disable cookies, it may limit your use of certain features or functions on our website or services.

Links to Third-Party Websites
Our websites or services may include links to third-party websites. In using such links, please be aware that each third-party website is subject to its own privacy and data protection policies and is not covered by our Privacy Policy. In addition, we allow third-party companies to serve ads and/or collect certain anonymous information when you visit our websites. These companies may be placing and reading cookies in the cookie file of the browser on your computer's hard disk or using web beacons or other technologies to collect information in the course of ads being served on this website. These companies may use information other than personal information (e.g., click stream information, browser type, time and date, subject of advertisements clicked or scrolled over) during your visits to these and other websites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services likely to be of greater interest to you.

How Policy Changes / Communications
Please note that our Privacy Policy is reviewed periodically, and when updated, we will post a notice on the Website home page for a period of one month. We reserve the right to modify this Privacy Policy at any time without notice. Any changes to the Privacy Policy will be posted on this page and will become effective on the date of posting. We encourage you to review this page periodically for the latest information on our privacy practices.

Your Rights
You have the right to make a written request to be informed whether we hold or process any of your personal information (by emailing [email protected]). In your written request, you may:

• Request that we provide you with details of your personal information that we process, the purpose for which it is processed, the recipients of such information, the existence of any automated decision making involving your personal information, and what transfer safeguards we have in place;
• Request that we rectify any errors in your personal information;
• Request that we delete your personal information if our continued processing of such information is not justified;
• Request that we transfer your personal information to a third party;
• Object to direct marketing from us; and
• Object to processing for purposes of scientific, historical research and statistics.

Where applicable under your local laws, we will not use your personal information for marketing purposes, nor sell your information to any third parties, unless we have your prior consent, which we will seek before collecting your personal information. You can exercise your right to prevent such processing by checking certain boxes on the consent forms we use when collecting your personal information. If at any point, you wish to review or change your preferences you can use the "opt-out" or unsubscribe mechanism or other means provided within the communications that you receive from us or by sending an email to [email protected]. Note that you may still receive transactional communications from us. Some territories have national laws requiring a local Data Protection Officer (for example Singapore and Germany). Please understand that in our small association, the Executive Director handles such requests. Email: [email protected] with these requests.

How to Address Concerns over Misuse of Personal Data
Any comments, complaints or questions concerning this policy or complaints or objections about our use of your personal information should be addressed by directing your comments to the Association's Executive Director, whose contact information is found on this website: [email protected]. Letters may be addressed to the attention of the Executive Director, CalGeo Executive Director, 1048 Irvine Ave #994, Newport Beach, CA 92660, or by email at: [email protected].