Overview
Welcome! This Privacy Policy describes the ways in which your Personal Information is collected and used by the Society for Mining, Metallurgy & Exploration Inc., or our affiliates (collectively, "SME," "we" or "us"). This Policy also describes your rights and choices regarding the personal data that you provide to us. Please read this Policy carefully before providing any Personal Information to SME.
If you do not accept and agree to the Privacy Policy, please refrain from providing your Personal Information to us, accessing our websites, and/or utilizing our products and services. With our websites and services constantly evolving, our Privacy Policy may also change from time to time. Whenever there are changes, the modified policies will be posted on our websites and will be effective at that time.
This Policy describes our privacy practices regarding:
If you are a resident of, or currently located in, the European Economic Area (the “EEA”), you may have additional rights with respect to your Personal Information as a result of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (the “GDPR”) and other similar laws. To understand those additional rights, please see” EEA Visitors to Our Website” below.
If you have questions about this Privacy Policy, please contact us at cs@smenet.org.
Personal Information We Collect:
Personal Information we collect directly from youGenerally – We may collect Personal Information such as your address, email, telephone number and other demographic information, such as age and gender.
Members – We may collect additional Personal Information, such as your employer’s name, your job title, education, job function and personal or professional interests during the SME membership application process.
Education, Events, and Publications – We may also collect Personal Information on your technical discipline, geographic location, and your event and publication interests. When you are registering for an event or purchasing goods or services from us, such as an item from our bookstore, we may also collect other Personal Information, like credit card numbers or other payment information.
Exhibition, Advertising, and Sponsorship Opportunities – We sometimes collect additional Personal Information in connection with opportunities that you may wish to explore with SME, such as exhibition space, advertising and sponsorships, as well as scholarships and awards given to members or others.
Certification Information – We may collect Personal Information needed for granting certifications. This may include extensive information about specified educational or employment experience requirements, passing an exam, and continuing education.
Customer Service – We may collect Personal Information when you contact SME Customer Service that will be used to address any customer service, membership, or other related issues.
Contests and Other Promotions – We sometimes collect Personal Information for contests or other promotions. Participation in these promotions may require registration, including Personal Information, or we may automatically enter you and others using some of the Personal Information that you have given us.
Information collected automatically when you visit our websites
Personalization and Tracking Technologies –Like most websites and mobile application operators, SME, our service providers or other third parties acting on our behalf or with our permission, use embedded scripts, "cookies," web beacons, device identifiers and other tracking technologies in the operation of our websites in order to analyze and improve our services and tailor content and advertising to user interests.
Cookies – When visiting SME’s websites, “cookies” may be used. Cookies are small amounts of data (often containing a unique identifier) that are stored in separate files within the Internet browser on your computer or other device. Cookies allow websites to remember a user’s information (such as items added to the shopping cart in an online store) or to record the user's browsing activity (including clicking particular buttons, logged-in status, or recording pages visited). They can also be used to remember arbitrary pieces of information that the user previously entered. You can set your browser to accept or reject most cookies, or to notify you when a cookie is set. (Each browser is different, so you may want to check the "Help" menu of your browser to learn how to change your cookie preferences.) It is up to you to decide whether to allow us or third parties to set cookies, but if you block cookies, you may not be able to view or access some of the features of our services.
Web Beacons and Other Tracking Technologies –SME may also use web beacons and other tracking technologies. Web beacons (sometimes called "transparent GIFs," "clear GIFs," or "pixel tags") are small strings of code that embed a small graphic image (usually invisible) on a web page or in an email or advertisement. Web beacons and other tracking technologies can recognize and store certain types of information such as cookies previously set, the time and date that you viewed the page embedded with the beacon and a description of that page. When your browser downloads a web beacon, relevant data is then sent to your browser based on the information gathered.
Geolocation Information – When you are visiting SME’s websites, we collect your IP address and other information that may indicate your geographic location in order to provide you with content regarding membership, events, and other content specific to your geographic region.
How We Use the Personal Information We Collect:
Our primary goal in collecting Personal Information from you is to provide you with a customized experience when using our services and to make them more valuable to you. We only use payment and identity verification information as necessary to complete a particular transaction, provide a requested service, enforce legal rights or comply with applicable law.In addition, we may use the Personal Information that we collect, typically through our authorized service providers, to:
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Customize the content you see when you use our services as you navigate online;
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Analyze, operate and improve our services, and fulfill your requests for products, services, and information;
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Send you electronic newsletters and other email that we believe, based on the information provided to us, may be of interest to you;
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Help us recognize your browser as a previous visitor in order to remember any preferences that may have been set while your browser was visiting one of our services;
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Enable you to participate in features such as surveys, polls, sweepstakes, and message boards;
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Attribute content to you that you post to forums we may operate on our services;
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Recognize you as the same user when you access online or mobile services using multiple browsers or devices;
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Provide you with special offers, promotions and information from companies within our corporate family, and select third parties, in accordance with applicable law;
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Control the display of advertising and deliver advertising tailored to your interests, including advertising that you see on our services, advertising you see on third-party websites, mobile applications and email programs, and offers and advertising you may receive offline or as push-notifications, from us or others;
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Measure and analyze visitor traffic and usage patterns and improve the quality and effectiveness of our content, features, advertisements, and other communications;
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Conduct market or audience analysis and related reporting;
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Understand whether our users read email messages and click on links contained within those messages;
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Prevent potentially prohibited or illegal activities, comply with applicable laws and enforce our Terms of Service Agreement;
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For other purposes that are disclosed to you at the time we collect your information or for which we obtain your consent.
Disclosure of Your Personal Information:
We may share your Personal Information, such as your name, postal address, email address, and other information we have collected with our own SME-affiliated companies, our provider partners and service providers, and with carefully selected third-party organizations and marketers of products and services potentially of interest to you.Email - We may share our users' email addresses with service providers that send email messages and deliver targeted advertising on our behalf. These service providers may collect data about how you interact with those messages (including information about whether and when you opened a particular message or clicked on a link within a message, and the device you used to do so) and analyze it in conjunction with similar information they collect when you respond to emails they send on behalf of their other clients who are not affiliated with us. They may then use this information to target and optimize the delivery of emails and email advertising they send on our behalf and for their other clients. We may also provide our service providers with lists of our user email addresses in a hashed, encrypted or anonymized form that they use to recognize our users as they navigate online or use third-party email services and enable the delivery of interest-based advertising to those users. We do not authorize our service providers to share your email address with their other clients. If you use our websites or other services to sign up for special email offers from third-party advertisers, we will also share your email address and any other information you provided to the advertisers you selected based on your consent. Except as described in this Policy, we will not sell or rent your email address to unaffiliated third parties for their email marketing purposes without your consent.
Co-Registration Offers –If you choose to access offers for goods or services that are available from selected third-party companies during registration, we may share contact and demographic information you have provided to us (e.g., name, age, and/or email address) to these vendors based on your consent.
Provider Partners and Service Providers –To make your experience with our services more useful and enjoyable, we may offer additional features in conjunction with third-party providers, or Provider Partners. We may share with these Provider Partners information that we believe would be useful or necessary to provide you with the services we offer through the particular Provider Partner. Some of our Provider Partners may collect information directly from you. Any such collection would be subject to the Provider Partner’s privacy policies, which may differ from ours. We may share additional Personal Information about you with our Provider Partners and/or authorize them to collect additional information directly from you to support the services they provide to us.
Contests and Other Promotions – We may share this information with co-sponsors or other third parties that we identify in the rules or entry materials. We do not control these third parties' privacy practices, and our Privacy Policy does not apply to their collection and use of your information. We may also share some of your entry information with third parties or the public in connection with the administration of the promotion, such as winner selection and prize fulfillment, and as permitted by the promotion's official rules, such as on a winners list.
Privacy Management – A privacy preference center has been established on our websites to enable visitors to our websites to manage their privacy preferences. Members and non-members can access the privacy preference center and change or delete any Personal Information that has been collected as well as change privacy preferences. You may also voluntarily provide additional information to tailor the information that is provided to you.
In addition, all SME newsletters and correspondence provide a link to unsubscribe if you no longer prefer to receive future correspondence of this type. You may also choose to opt out of receiving newsletters and other correspondence by email.
If you do not want your geolocation information to be collected in the first place, you may use the Private Browsing setting on your Internet browser or a proxy setting when visiting our websites.
Your Opt-Out Choices:
Postal mailTo remove your name and postal address from lists that we sell or rent to third parties for their marketing purposes, or to opt-out of receiving marketing offers for other SME events and products by mail, please use the opt-out form available online or send your request to us in a letter addressed to SME, Opt-Out Postal, Attn: Customer Service, 12999 East Adam Aircraft Circle, Englewood, CO 80112 USA. Please note that, if you do choose to opt-out of SME’s promotional mailings, you may still receive renewal notices and related offers for your membership and for any periodicals to which you subscribe.
Email
You can opt-out from any SME email newsletter or commercial email list and prevent the collection of related email response information by our email service providers by using the unsubscribe link at the bottom of each message, or by visiting the Communication Preferences page in your SME Profile online and updating your preferences. If you no longer want to receive third-party email offers that you initially requested, you may follow the advertiser's unsubscribe link or opt-out instructions. If you wish to disable web beacons in our email messages, turn images “off” in your email client (e.g., Outlook or Outlook Express). Please refer to the settings or options menu in your email client for more information.
Sites to Which We Link:
SME’s websites contain links to other sites. Please be aware that we are not responsible for the content or privacy practices of such other sites. We encourage our users to be aware of when they leave our site, and to read the privacy statements of any other site that collects personally identifiable information.
How to Correct or Update Your Information:
SME provides you with the ability to access and edit certain Personal Information that you have provided to us through our websites. Visitors to our websites who wish to access or manage their own Personal Information can visit the privacy preferences page on any of our websites. SME Members and other persons who are registered users of one of our websites may also visit the "My Account" area or comparable feature of the website to enter their information. If you cannot locate such a feature on any of our websites, send us an email at cs@smenet.org.Security, Retention and Storage of Information:
We use commercially reasonable procedures to protect the personally-identifying information that we collect. No security system is impenetrable, however. We cannot guarantee the security of our databases, nor can we guarantee that information you supply won't be intercepted while being transmitted over the Internet. Please see our Terms of Service Agreement for more information related to posting materials on our services, including our use of such materials.Personal Information may be transferred to, processed, stored and accessed by us, our affiliates and our unaffiliated service providers in the United States and in other jurisdictions where we or they operate. Courts and other authorities in these jurisdictions may, in certain circumstances, be entitled to access your Personal Information. By accessing our websites, you consent to this transfer, processing, storage and access of your Personal Information in and/or outside of the jurisdiction in which you reside.
EEA Visitors to Our Websites:
If you are a resident of, or currently located in, the European Economic Area, you may have additional rights with respect to your Personal Information as a result of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (the “GDPR”) and other similar laws. This section of our Privacy Policy explains how we seek to protect and enforce the rights of “EEA Persons” and others under the GDPR and similar laws. Most importantly, we do not collect, retain or process any Personal Information of EEA Persons unless they affirmatively consent to us doing so by checking the box on one of our websites that they consent to this Privacy Policy and the collection, retention and processing of Personal Information described herein. If you are an EEA Person and you have not affirmatively consented to the uses of Personal Information described in this Policy, you are prohibited from using any of the websites until you provide such affirmative consent. In addition, even after EEA Persons have so consented, they continue to have the following additional rights:
Legal Basis for Processing Personal Information of EEA Persons. Our legal basis for collecting and using the Personal Information provided to us by EEA Persons will depend on the personal information concerned and the specific context in which we collect it. We collect and use your information for a variety of business purposes that are in our legitimate interests; namely, to enter into or perform a sales transaction or other contract with you, to comply with our legal obligations or otherwise, with your express consent.
EEA Persons can learn the specific legal grounds we rely on to process your information for any particular purpose, including any legitimate interests we have to process this information, by inquiring of us via the Contact Us form on our websites. For example, to process Personal Information you provide to us for direct marketing purposes, we rely on (a) our legitimate business interests, and (b) our need for fraud prevention and detection, provided that these interests are not overridden by your data protection interests or fundamental rights and freedoms.
Data Protection Rights of EEA Persons. Individuals in or from the EEA and some other regions may have certain rights in relation to your Personal Information, including the right to access, correct, update, or request deletion of your personal information. SME takes reasonable steps to ensure that the data we collect is reliable for its intended use, accurate, complete, and up--to-date. EEA Persons also can request a copy of all Personal Information that we have for them by using the Contact Us form on our websites. EEA Persons can also use the Contact Us form to ask us about accessing, correcting, updating, or deleting your Personal Information, or altering your data or marketing preferences, even if you did not use any of our websites and even if your Personal Information was provided to us by a third party.
EEA Persons can object to any processing of your Personal Information, ask us to restrict processing of your Personal Information, or request that we port your Personal Information to a third party. Again, you can exercise these rights by contacting us via the Contact Us form on the website. You also can deactivate your account with us at any time, require us to delete all Personal Information that we have about you at the time of such deactivation, and obtain a copy of any Personal Information we have about you by the same means.
EEA Persons can complain to a GDPR data protection authority in the EEA about our collection and use of your Personal Information. For more information, please contact your local data protection authority. Contact details for data protection authorities in the EEA and Switzerland are available here: http://ec.europa.eu/justice/article-29/structure/data-protection-authorities/index_en.htm.
Similarly, if we have collected and processed the personal information of an EEA Person with your consent, then you can withdraw your consent at any time. Withdrawing your consent will not affect the lawfulness of any collection, retention, transmission or processing of your Personal Information that we conducted prior to your withdrawal, nor will it affect processing of your Personal Information conducted in reliance on lawful processing grounds other than consent.
