Privacy policy

Your privacy is very important to us! Please read this statement below to learn more about what information we collect, how we use it and what steps we take to protect your privacy. This Privacy Policy applies to all PeaceGeeks operations and online services, including but not limited to our websites ( https://peacegeeks.org/ and https://meshkatcommunity.org/ and https://giveitup4peace.org ) and applications (including Arrival Advisor).

What Personal Data We Collect and Why

We may collect personal data when you:

Submit your application to join PeaceGeeks as a volunteer, contractor or employee When you send your application to join PeaceGeeks, we will ask you to fill in one or more “Application Forms’. Therein we will ask you for various information needed to establish your identity, relevant education, professional experience, your area of expertise and any other information that can better help us to match your skills and interests with one of the different activities we run within PeaceGeeks.

Contact us with your questions/ comments/ ideas/ concerns We may collect various information, depending on the manner in which you contact us (e.g., if you send us an email, we will collect your email address and name) and the reason for contacting us (e.g., if you have a concern). In any case, we will collect your contact details so we can appropriately respond to your query.
Subscribe to our newsletter/mailing list We will collect your name and your email address if you wish to subscribe to our newsletter or mailing list.

When you donate as an individual or become a corporate sponsor We will collect your name (or the name of the contact person, in case of corporate sponsor), contact and address details, donation amount, payment details (such as credit/debit card/PayPal account number), and any other information you voluntarily choose to provide that is related to the donation and the interests and priorities of the donor.
When you report a problem with one of our services We will collect your first and last names and your contact details so we can respond to your report. You will also need to describe the problem that you have experienced so we can take care of it.

When you use our services We collect the content, communications and other information you provide when you use our services, including when you sign up for an account, create or share content, and message or communicate with others. This can include information in or about the content you provide (like metadata), such as the location of a photo or the date a file was created.

When you visit our websites We may also collect certain data from your device and Internet connection, including the IP address of your computer, the date and time you accessed our websites, the Internet address from which you link to our websites, the computer technology you are using (such as desktop or mobile device) and your movements and preferences on our websites. When visitors leave comments on our website or communications platforms, we may collect the data shown in the comments form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection.

From other sources We may receive your personal information from other online sources, such as our Social Media channels, or offline, such as at conferences, when you attend one of our events or when you call us. If you share images or content with PeaceGeeks social media channels and websites, you should avoid uploading images with embedded location data included. Visitors to the website may be able to download and extract any location data from images on the website.

We may use a third-party payment services to process your donations. If you wish to make a donation, your personal information may be collected by such third party and will be subject to the third party’s privacy policy, rather than this Privacy Policy. We have no control over and are not responsible for, this third party’s collection, use, and disclosure of your personal information.

If you submit any personal information relating to other people to us or to our service providers, you represent that you have the authority to do so and to permit us to use the information in accordance with this Privacy Policy.

How We Use Your Personal Information

We may use personal information:

  • To respond to your inquiries and fulfill your requests, such as to send you newsletters;
  • To send administrative information to you, for example, information regarding the services and changes to our terms, conditions and policies;
  • To process your donations and communicate with you regarding your donations;
  • To process your application to join PeaceGeeks;
  • To send you communications that we believe may be of interest to you;
  • To communicate with you about side projects, including but not limited to training opportunities, communication projects, participation on beta testing, etc. that fit your skills and interests;
  • To facilitate social media sharing functionalities, such as Facebook, LinkedIn or Instagram share buttons;
  • To improve current and future delivery of our services (monitoring and evaluation);
  • For our business purposes, such as data analysis, audits, fraud monitoring and prevention, developing new products, enhancing, improving or modifying our services, identifying usage trends, determining the effectiveness of our promotional campaigns and operating and expanding our business activities;
  • As we determine necessary or appropriate: (a) under applicable law, including laws outside your country of residence; (b) to comply with legal process; (c) to respond to requests from public and government authorities, including public and government authorities outside your country of residence; (d) to enforce our terms and conditions; (e) to protect our operations or those of any of our affiliates; (f) to protect our rights, privacy, safety or property, and/or that of our affiliates, you or others; and (g) to allow us to pursue available remedies or limit the damages that we may sustain.

Data Sharing Practices

We do not share your information with any third parties. Only those people within our team who have a direct need to access your personal information will have access to your profile information.
Specifically, your personal information may be disclosed:

  • To our paid staff, contractors, interns and volunteers, located all over the world, for the purposes described in this Privacy Policy on a need to know basis. PeaceGeeks Society is responsible for the management of personal information;
  • To our third party service providers who provide services, such as website hosting, data analysis, payment processing, information technology and related infrastructure provision, email delivery, auditing and other services;
  • To identify you to anyone to whom you send messages through these services;
  • By you, on message boards, chat, profile pages, blogs, and other services to which you are able to post information and materials (including our Social Media Channels and Slack Channel). Please note that any information you post or disclose through these services may become public and may be available to other users and the general public. We urge you to be very careful when deciding to disclose any information on the services;
  • To a third party in the event of any reorganization, merger, joint venture, assignment, transfer or other disposition of all or any portion of our business, or assets (including in connection with any bankruptcy or similar proceedings);
  • As we believe to be necessary or appropriate: (a) under applicable law, including laws outside your country of residence; (b) to comply with legal process; (c) to respond to requests from public and government authorities, including public and government authorities outside your country of residence; (d) to enforce our terms and conditions; (e) to protect our operations or those of any of our affiliates; (f) to protect our rights, privacy, safety or property, and/or that of our affiliates, you or others; and (g) to allow us to pursue available remedies or limit the damages that we may sustain.

Third Party Services

This Privacy Policy does not address, and we are not responsible for, the privacy, information or other practices of any third parties, including any third party operating any site or service to which the services link.  The inclusion of a link on the services does not imply endorsement of the linked site or service by us or by our affiliates.

In addition, we are not responsible for the information collection, use, disclosure or security policies or practices of other organizations, such as Facebook, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Slack, MailChimp, Chimp, EventBrite or any other app developer, app provider, social media platform provider, operating system provider, wireless service provider or device manufacturer, including with respect to any personal information you disclose to other organizations through or in connection with our Social Media Channels.  If you provide your third party account credentials to us we may receive some content and information from those accounts in your account with us if you authorize such transmissions.

Data Retention

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 users that register on our websites (where applicable), we also store the personal information they provide in their user profile as well as any content those users wish to submit through our sites, channels and platforms. We will retain your personal information for the period necessary to fulfill the purposes outlined in this Privacy Policy unless a longer retention period is required or permitted by law.

Your Rights Over Your Data

If you have an account on our systems, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us. You can also request that 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.

If you would like to review, correct, update, suppress or delete personal information that has been previously provided to us by you, you may contact us at privacy@peacegeeks.org.

In your request, please make clear what personal information you would like to have changed, whether you would like to have your personal information that you have provided to us suppressed from our database and, if applicable, let us know what limitations you would like to put on our use of your personal information that you have provided to us. For your protection, we may only implement requests with respect to the personal information associated with the particular email address that you use to send us your request, and we may need to verify your identity before implementing your request. Please note that we may need to retain certain information for recordkeeping purposes. There may also be residual information that will remain within our databases and other records, and that may not get removed.

You can also opt-out from receiving newsletters or other promotional materials by clicking on the ‘Unsubscribe’ link in each email you receive from us, or by writing to privacy@peacegeeks.org.

Sensitive Personal Information

We ask that you do not send us, and you do not disclose, any sensitive personal information (e.g., social security numbers, information related to racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religion or other beliefs, health, biometrics or genetic characteristics, criminal background or trade union membership) on or through the our sites or otherwise to us.

Protecting Your Data

We seek to use reasonable organisational, technical and administrative measures to protect personal information within our organisation.

We limit access to information on a need-to-know basis and take appropriate measures to ensure that our people are aware that such information is only used in accordance with this Privacy Notice.

We undertake regular reviews of who has access to information that we hold to ensure that your information is only accessible by appropriately trained staff, volunteers and contractors.

Unfortunately, no data transmission or storage system can be guaranteed to be 100% secure.  If you have reason to believe that your interaction with us is no longer secure (for example, if you feel that the security of your account has been compromised), please immediately notify us in accordance with the “Contacting Us” section below.

Protection of Children

We do not collect or use personal information from children under the age of 13. If you are a parent or guardian of a child under the age of 13 and believe that they have provided us with personal information, please contact us immediately using the contact information at the bottom of this Privacy Policy. If you are under 13, please do not attempt to register for the services or send any personal information about yourself to us. If we learn that we have collected personal information is from a child under age 13, we will delete such personal information. If you believe that a child under 13 may have provided us personal information, please contact us immediately using the contact information at the bottom of this Privacy Policy.

Data Breach Procedures

Data Breach is defined as the unauthorized acquisition or access of unencrypted personal information that compromises the confidentiality, integrity and availability of that information. All employees and volunteers are required to immediately notify the PeaceGeeks Board of Directors (board@peacegeeks.org) of any actual or suspected Data Breach – including events that affect our third party vendors that provide PeaceGeeks with services or hosting.

Notice of Data Breaches will be provided to affected individuals and/or governmental agencies in accordance with applicable contractual and legal requirements.

Newsletters

You can opt-out from receiving newsletters or other promotional materials by clicking on the ‘Unsubscribe’ link in each email you receive from us or by writing to privacy@peacegeeks.org.

Cookies

“Cookies" are identifiers we transfer to your device that allow us to recognize your browser, application or device and tell us how and when various pages and features in our services are visited or used and by how many people. You may be able to change the preferences on your browser, application or device to prevent or limit your device's acceptance of cookies, but this may prevent you from taking advantage of some of our features. We may associate the information we collect from your different devices, which helps us provide consistent services across devices.

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.

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.

Embedded Content

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 tracing your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.

Analytics

PeaceGeeks does not share any analytics data from this website with other parties.

Storage & Transfer of Personal Information

The services are controlled and operated by us from Canada. Your personal information may be stored and processed in any country where we have facilities or in which we engage service providers, and by using the services you consent to the transfer of information to countries outside of your country of residence, including the United States, which may have data protection rules that are different from those of your country. Further, personal information might be disclosed to governments or law enforcement agencies in these countries where required by law.  By submitting your personal information to us you agree to this transfer, storing or processing at a location outside a country where you reside.

Updates to This Policy

We may change this Privacy Policy from time to time.  Please take a look at the “Last Updated” legend at the bottom of this page to see when this Privacy Policy was last revised.  If we decide to change this Privacy Policy, we will send you an email with the changes to ensure you are always aware of which information we collect, how we use it and under what circumstances we may publish this information.

Contact Us

If you have any questions or concerns about this Privacy Policy, please contact our privacy office by emailing privacy@peacegeeks.org. Note that email communications are not always secure; so please do not include any sensitive information in your emails to us.

Last Updated on January 9, 2019.