Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy describes the policies and practices of Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences (“Bigelow,” “we,” “our,” or “us”) regarding its collection and use of your personal information on any of our websites, e.g. www.bigelow.org (“Site”), or in email, text, and other electronic messages between you and this Site.

We recognize that information privacy is an ongoing responsibility. We will from time to time update this Privacy Policy as we undertake new data or privacy practices. Your continued use of our Site after we make changes to this Privacy Policy is deemed to be an acceptance of those changes. We recommend that you review this Privacy Policy periodically for any updates.

Information from Children

Our Site is not intended for use by children. We do not knowingly solicit or attempt to receive information from children. If we learn that we have collected or received personal information from a child without verification of parental consent, we will delete that information.

How we Collect and Use your Personal Information

You may interact with our Site and provide us with your personal information in one or more of the following ways:

1. Donations

When you donate to Bigelow, we collect information about you, including your name, your mailing address, your phone number, and your email address. We will process your personal information to administer your donation, to deliver donor benefits to you, and to inform you of events, content, and other opportunities associated with your donation. We may also use this information to help us understand and tailor our Site or services to meet our donors’ needs and interests.

2. Events and Educational Courses

Bigelow hosts many events and educational workshops and courses throughout the year. If you register for one of our events, attend as a presenter, or decided to become a sponsor, we may collect your name, your mailing address, the name of the business or entity that you represent, your phone number, and your email address. We will store this information in our database and will use it to provide you with information and services associated with the event.

We may keep a record of your participation in Bigelow events as an attendee, presenter, or sponsor. This information may be used to provide you with services or to tell you about other events. It may also be used to help Bigelow understand your needs and interests to better tailor our services.

3. Corresponding with Us

If you correspond with us by email or otherwise through our Site, we may retain such correspondence and the information contained in it. We may use this information to respond to your inquiry, to notify you of events, courses, or other services, or to keep a record of your communication with us.

If you wish to have Bigelow delete your personal information or otherwise refrain from communicating with you, please contact us at privacy@bigelow.org. If you ask Bigelow not to contact you by email at a certain email address, Bigelow will retain a copy of that email address on its “do not send” list in order to comply with your request.

4. Payment Card Information

You may choose to make a donation or purchase services from Bigelow using a payment card. During this process, payment card information is provided directly by users, via our Site, to the payment processing service to which Bigelow subscribes. This information includes name, payment card number, security code, expiration date, and billing address. Bigelow does not, itself, process or store your payment card information. All web traffic to and from our payment processor is encrypted using SSL.

5. Surveys and Feedback

Our Site may request information from users via online surveys. Participation in these surveys is completely voluntary and the user therefore has a choice whether or not to disclose certain information. Information requested may include demographic information (such as education level), but will not include information that can identify any individual person. Survey information will be used for purposes of monitoring or improving this Site.

6. Send This to a Friend

If a user elects to use the "Send This to a Friend" function on our Site, we will ask the user for the friend's name and e-mail address. Bigelow will automatically send the friend a one-time e-mail inviting them to visit our Site to view certain content. Bigelow stores this information temporarily for the sole purpose of sending this one-time e-mail.

Automatic Data Collection During Your Use of Our Site

As is true of most other websites, Bigelow’s Site collects certain information automatically and stores it in log files. This information may include internet protocol (IP) addresses, the region or general location where your computer or device is accessing the internet, browser type, operating system, and other information about your use of the Site, including a history of the pages you view. We use this information to help us design our Site to better suit our users’ needs. We may also use your IP address to help diagnose problems with our server and to administer our website, analyze trends, track visitor website movements, and gather broad demographic information that may allow us to identify user preferences, report to donors, and for sponsorship purposes. Our Site does not track users when they cross to third party websites and does not provide targeted advertising to users.

1. Cookies and Web Beacons

Our Site may use cookies and web beacons to provide enhanced functionality and aggregate traffic data. Cookies are pieces of data that a website transfers to a user's hard drive for record keeping purposes. Web beacons are transparent pixel images that are used to collect information about website usage, e-mail response, and tracking.

Our Site also captures limited information (user-agent, HTTP referrer, last URL requested by the user, etc.) about visits to our Site. We may use this information to analyze general traffic patterns and to perform routine system maintenance. You have many choices with regard to the management of cookies and web beacons on your computer. All major browsers allow you to block or delete cookies from your system. To learn more about your ability to manage cookies and web beacons, please consult the privacy features in your browser. No personally identifiable information (e-mail address, name, etc.) is collected with the cookies that we set, and accepting cookies while on our Site will not put you at risk for marketing to other sites.

2. Google Analytics

This website uses Google Analytics, a web analytics service provided by Google, Inc. ("Google"). Google Analytics uses cookies to analyze how users use our Site. The information generated by the cookie about your use of our Site (including your IP address) will be transmitted to and stored by Google on servers in the United States. Google will use this information for the purposes of evaluating your use of the Site, compiling reports on your activity, and providing other services relating to website activity and internet usage. Google may also transfer this information to third parties where required to do so by law or where such third parties process the information on Google's behalf. Google will not associate your IP address with any other data held by Google. You may refuse the use of cookies by selecting the appropriate settings on your browser, however, please note that if you do this you may not be able to use the full functionality of this Site. By using the Site, you consent to the processing of data by Google in the manner and for the purposes set out above.

3. Marketing Software

Bigelow may use a marketing database management program that deploys cookies when a user interacts with a marketing communication, such as a marketing email or a marketing-based landing page on our Site. These cookies would collect personal information such as your name, which pages you visit on the Site, your history arriving at the Site, your purchases, and your donations. We would use this information to evaluate the effectiveness of our marketing campaigns. You may set your browser to block these cookies.

Purposes and Legitimate Interests for Processing your Personal Information

Bigelow may process your information to provide you with the services you have requested or purchased from us. We may use your information to refine our services to better tailor them to your needs and to communicate with you about other services or events the Bigelow offers that may interest you. Most of the time, Bigelow needs to process your personal data to fulfill an order for services, including course, workshop or event registration, or to process your donation. Bigelow may have a legitimate interest in processing data to understand the needs, concerns, and interests of its website users, which allows Bigelow to operate optimally as an organization. At other times, Bigelow has a legitimate interest in maintaining the personal information of those who communicate voluntarily with us through our Site. Bigelow may also rely upon your consent to process your personal information, in which case we will keep a record of it and honor your choices.

When and How we Share Personal Information with Others

The personal information that Bigelow collects from you is stored in one or more of our databases, which may be hosted by third parties. These third parties do not use or have access to your personal information for any purpose other than for storage and retrieval.

We may also gather aggregated data about our Site visitors and disclose the results of such aggregated (but not personally identifiable) information to our partners, service providers, sponsors, donors, or other third parties for marketing or promotional purposes. We share this information to secure funding, which allows us to continue to provide this Site free of charge.

Our donors' information is never sold or exchanged. It is fully protected irrespective of donation method (online, by mail, etc.)

We do not otherwise disclose your personal information to third parties for their independent use unless:

• you request or authorize such disclosure or a person demonstrating legal authority to act on your behalf requests or authorizes such disclosure;
• the information is provided to comply with applicable laws (for example, to comply with a search warrant, subpoena, or court order), to address a dispute or claim, to enforce an agreement we have with you, to protect our rights, property or safety, or the rights, property or safety of our employees or others;
• the information is provided to our agents, vendors, or service providers who perform functions on our behalf; or
• there is an emergency or act of God that necessitates such disclosure.

Links

This Site contains links to other websites. Please be aware that Bigelow does not claim any responsibility for the privacy practices of such other websites. We encourage our users to be aware when they leave our Site and to read the privacy statements of each and every website that collects personally identifiable information. This Privacy Policy applies solely to information collected on this Site.

Security

To help protect the privacy of data and personal information you transmit through use of this Site, we maintain reasonable physical, technical, and administrative safeguards. We update and test our security technology on an ongoing basis. We restrict access to your personal data to those employees who need to know that information to provide benefits or services to you. In addition, we train our employees about the importance of confidentiality and maintaining the privacy and security of your information.

Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure. Although we do our best to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee the security of your personal information transmitted to or on our Site. Any transmission of personal information is at your own risk.

Right to Access and Update Your Information

You have a right to correct and update the record of your personal information maintained by Bigelow if it is inaccurate. You may request that Bigelow erase your data or cease processing it, subject to certain exceptions. You may also request that Bigelow cease using your data for direct marketing purposes. However, we may not accommodate a request to update or change information if we believe the change would violate any law or legal requirement or cause the information to be incorrect.

If you would like to confirm whether Bigelow is processing your personal information or if you would like to obtain a record of or access the personal information that Bigelow may have about you, please contact us at privacy@bigelow.org.

Questions or Comments

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, the practices of this Site, or your dealings with this Site, you can contact us using the information below:

60 Bigelow Drive

East Boothbay, Maine 04544 Telephone: (207) 315-2567 Email: privacy@bigelow.org