Lawful Basis
We will use consent as a lawful basis for collecting, using, maintaining, protecting, and disclosing personal information. Please note that by accessing the Sites, you consent to the collection, processing, and disclosure of personal information.
Information You Provide to Us
The information we collect on or through our Sites may include:
- Information that you provide by completing forms on our Sites. This includes information provided at the time of registering to use our Sites or to attend one of our programs, posting material, or requesting products or services. We may also ask you for information when you report a problem with our Sites.
- Records and copies of your correspondence (including your email addresses) if you contact us.
- Your search queries on the Sites.
You also may provide information to be published or displayed (hereinafter, “posted“) on public areas of the Sites, or to be transmitted to other users of the Sites or third parties (collectively, “User Contributions“). Your User Contributions are posted and transmitted to others at your own risk. Although you may set certain privacy settings for such information, please be aware that no security measures are perfect or impenetrable. Additionally, we cannot control the actions of other users of the Sites with whom you may choose to share your User Contributions. Therefore, we cannot and do not guarantee that your User Contributions will not be viewed by unauthorized persons.
Information We Collect Through Automatic Data Collection Technologies
As you navigate through and interact with our Sites, we may use automatic data collection technologies to collect certain information about your equipment, browsing actions, and patterns, including:
- Details of your visits to our Sites, including traffic, location, and other communication data and the resources you access and use on the Sites.
- Information about your computer and internet connection, including your IP address, operating system, and browser type.
Your IP address is automatically assigned to your computer by your Internet Service Provider. An IP address may be identified and logged automatically in our server log files whenever a user accesses the Sites(s), along with the time of the visit and the visited page (s). Collecting IP addresses is standard practice and is done automatically by many websites, applications, and other services. We use IP addresses to calculate usage levels, diagnose server problems, and administer the Sites(s). We may also derive your approximate location from your IP address.
The information we collect automatically is only statistical data and does not include personal information. It helps us to improve our Sites and to deliver a better and more personalized service by enabling us to:
- Estimate our audience size and usage patterns.
- Store information about your preferences, allowing us to customize our Sites according to your individual interests.
- Speed up your searches.
- Recognize you when you return to our Sites.
The technologies we use for automatic data collection may include:
- Cookies (or browser cookies). A cookie is a small file placed on your computer’s hard drive. You may refuse to accept browser Cookies by activating the appropriate setting on your browser. However, if you select this setting you may be unable to access certain parts of our Sites. Unless you have adjusted your browser setting so that it will refuse cookies, our system may issue cookies when you direct your browser to our Sites. We use both session and persistent cookies on the Sites and we use different types of cookies to run the Sites:
- Essential/strictly necessary cookies: Some cookies we use are essential to the functioning of the Sites.
- Analytical/performance cookies: Allow us to recognize and count the number of visitors and see how visitors move around the Sites when using them. This helps us improve the way the site functions.
- Functionality cookies: Used to recognize you when you return to the Sites. This enables us to personalize our content for you, greet you by name, and remember your preferences.
- Targeting cookies: Record your visit to the Sites, the pages you have visited, and the links you have followed. We will use this information to make the Sites more relevant to your interests.
- Flash Cookies. Certain features of our Sites may use locally stored objects (or Flash cookies) to collect and store information about your preferences and navigation to, from, and on our Sites. Flash cookies are not managed by the same browser settings used for browser cookies. For information about managing your privacy and security settings for Flash cookies, see Choices About How We Use and Disclose Your Information.
- Web Beacons. Pages of the Sites may contain small electronic files known as web beacons (also referred to as clear gifs, pixel tags, and single-pixel gifs) that permit the Firm, for example, to count users who have visited those pages or opened an email and for other related website statistics (for example, recording the popularity of certain website content and verifying system and server integrity).
- Google Analytics. We use Google Analytics to track how you and others use certain Sites in order to manage and improve those Sites. Google Analytics collects information such as how often users visit this site, what pages they visit when they do so, and what other sites they used prior to coming to this site. Google Analytics collects only the IP address assigned to you on the date you visit this site, rather than your name or other identifying information. We do not combine the information collected through Google Analytics with personally identifiable information. For information on how Google uses this information, and how you can control the usage of that information, please see https://policies.google.com/privacy?hl=en-US.
- Google Adwords. We use the various Google Adwords features to advertise on third party websites, including Google, to previous visitors to the Sites. With Google Ads Remarketing, third- party vendors use Cookies (including third-party Cookies such as those from DoubleClick) to provide our advertisements on the internet based upon your past visits to the Sites, and with Demographics and Interest Reporting, we use aggregate data provided (such as age, gender, and interests) to understand and communicate better with visitors to the Sites. You may opt out of Google’s use of Google Adwords by adjusting your advertising settings.