Privacy Policy

Your privacy is very important to us. At the John H Watson Society (“the Society”), we have a few fundamental principles that we follow:

We don’t ask you for personal information unless we truly need it.

We don’t share your personal information with anyone except to comply with the law, develop our products, or protect our rights.

We don’t store personal information on our servers unless required for the on-going operation of our site.

It is the Society’s policy to respect your privacy regarding any information we may collect while operating our websites.

You may request your data using our Data Access Request form.

Website Visitors

Like most website operators, the Society collects non-personally-identifying information of the sort that web browsers and servers typically make available, such as the browser type, language preference, referring site, and the date and time of each visitor request. The Society’s purpose in collecting non-personally identifying information is to better understand how the Society’s visitors use its website. From time to time, the Society may release non-personally-identifying information in the aggregate, e.g., by publishing a report on trends in the usage of its website.

The Society also collects potentially personally-identifying information like Internet Protocol (IP) addresses for logged in users and for users leaving comments on our blogs. The Society only discloses logged in user and commenter IP addresses under the same circumstances that it uses and discloses personally-identifying information as described below, except that blog commenter IP addresses are visible and disclosed to the administrators of the blog where the comment was left.

Gathering of Personally-Identifying Information

Certain visitors to the Society’s websites choose to interact with the Society in ways that require the Society to gather personally-identifying information. The amount and type of information that the Society gathers depends on the nature of the interaction. For example, we ask visitors who comment on our blog to provide a username and email address. For those who wish to receive Society updates via email, we collect their emails. Individuals purchasing items in the Shop, including Society membership, are asked for name, mailing address, email, and telephone number.  In each case, the Society collects such information only insofar as is necessary or appropriate to fulfill the purpose of the visitor’s interaction with the Society. The Society does not disclose personally-identifying information other than as described below. And visitors can always refuse to supply personally-identifying information, with the caveat that it may prevent them from engaging in certain website-related activities.

Aggregated Statistics

The Society may collect statistics about the behavior of visitors to its websites. For instance, the Society may monitor its most popular pages on the site or use spam screened by the Akismet service to help identify spam. The Society may display this information publicly or provide it to others. However, the Society does not disclose personally-identifying information other than as described below.

Protection of Certain Personally-Identifying Information

The Society maintains a roster of current members disclosing name (or pseudonym if requested), dates of membership, investiture names in ASH and/or BSI, and the names of any local Societies the member wishes to display, which is publicly available.

Otherwise, the Society discloses potentially personally-identifying and personally-identifying information only to those of its employees, contractors and affiliated organizations that (i) need to know that information in order to process it on the Society’s behalf or to provide services available at the Society’s websites, and (ii) that have agreed not to disclose it to others. Some of those employees, contractors and affiliated organizations may be located outside of your home country; by using the Society’s websites, you consent to the transfer of such information to them. The Society will not rent or sell potentially personally-identifying and personally-identifying information to anyone. Other than to its employees, contractors and affiliated organizations, as described above, the Society discloses potentially personally-identifying and personally-identifying information only in response to a subpoena, court order or other governmental request, or when the Society believes in good faith that disclosure is reasonably necessary to protect the property or rights of the Society, third parties or the public at large. If you are a registered user of the Society website and have supplied your email address, the Society may occasionally send you an email to tell you about new features, solicit your feedback, or just keep you up to date with what’s going on with the Society and our products. We primarily use our blog to communicate this type of information, so we expect to keep this type of email to a minimum. If you send us a request (for example via a support email or via one of our feedback mechanisms), we reserve the right to publish it in order to help us clarify or respond to your request or to help us support other users. The Society takes all measures reasonably necessary to protect against the unauthorized access, use, alteration or destruction of potentially personally-identifying and personally-identifying information.

Cookies

A cookie is a string of information that a website stores on a visitor’s computer, and that the visitor’s browser provides to the website each time the visitor returns. The Society may use cookies to help the Society identify and track visitors, their usage of the Society website, and their website access preferences. Visitors who do not wish to have cookies placed on their computers should set their browsers to refuse cookies before using the Society’s websites, with the drawback that certain features of the Society’s websites may not function properly without the aid of cookies.

Business Transfers

If the Society, or substantially all of its assets were acquired, or in the unlikely event that the Society goes out of business or enters bankruptcy, user information would be one of the assets that is transferred or acquired by a third party. You acknowledge that such transfers may occur, and that any acquirer of the Society may continue to use your personal information as set forth in this policy.

Comments

Comments and other content submitted to Akismet anti-spam service are not saved on our servers unless they were marked as false positives, in which case we store them long enough to use them to improve the service to avoid future false positives.

Privacy Policy Changes

Although most changes are likely to be minor, the Society may change its Privacy Policy from time to time, and in the Society’s sole discretion. The Society encourages visitors to frequently check this page for any changes to its Privacy Policy. Your continued use of this site after any change in this Privacy Policy will constitute your acceptance of such change.