This Privacy Policy (this “Policy”) of The Confucius Institute U.S. Center, Inc. (the “Center”) describes our privacy practices and how we use information gathered at or through our website at http://www.ciuscenter.org (such site and services, collectively, the “Site”). By using the Site, you agree to the terms of this Policy. If you do not agree to the terms and conditions of this Policy, you must stop using the Site. The Center may update this Policy from time to time at our sole discretion. It is your responsibility to check for changes to the Policy each time you use the Site. Your use of the Site following posting of a new privacy policy on our Site constitutes your agreement with and acceptance of the Policy as modified.

In this Policy, forms of the pronoun “we” refer to the Center, and forms of the pronoun “you” refer to you, the user of the Site.

Who We Are

We are 501(c)(3) non-profit engaged in support services for transnational educational exchanges.

What Information We Collect and Why We Collect It

We collect information on you in various ways, including through voluntary submissions, participation in services through the Site, and through cookie and other tracking technology. We collect the following types of information:

Personal Info

“Personal Info” is information that can personally identify you, such as name, phone number, email, and address in combination with any other information. A unique device identifier may also be automatically assigned to the device you use to access the Site. We may also associate the device identifier with other Personal Info and will treat the combined information as Personal Info in accordance with this Policy for as long as it is combined.
User Submitted Content

Information and data you voluntarily submit, which may include messages, posts, images, comments, responses, reviews, profile pictures, data, and ratings (such messages, etc., “User Submitted Information”), is collected and stored by us. In our sole discretion, we may share User Submitted Information with others. If you do not want your User Submitted Information shared with others, you should not submit it. By submitting User Submitted Information, you are granting us a royalty-free, paid up, nonexclusive, nonforfeitable, unlimited right to publish it in any medium and for any purpose anywhere in the world. Please note that User Submitted Information may be shared by other users of the Site who have permission to access or who are otherwise provided access to such User Submitted Information pursuant to the functionality of the Site, and we have no control over, and will not be liable to you in any manner with regard to, how those users might use, disperse, publish or share such User Submitted Information. If you upload images to the Site, you should avoid uploading images containing embedded location data (EXIF GPS) because other visitors to the Site can download and extract any location data from images on the Site.

Other User Provided Information

When you register with the Site, you may provide us with (a) your name, email address, age, user name, password and other registration information; (b) transaction-related information, such as when you respond to offers or invitations, or download or use other applications; (c) information you provide us when you contact us for support; (d) credit card information (if the Site has been enabled to accept payments); (e) information you enter into our system, such as contact information; (f) your mobile device or phone number; (g) any name you might have assigned to your device; and (h) your browsing history on the Site. We may use such information collected through the Site to operate and assess the performance of the Site or other online services, prevent fraud, provide technical support, conduct research, generate analytics, address internal online services operations, respond to your needs or market events, products or services, or to provide you information concerning new and events of interest to the Center. We may also use the information you provide us, in accordance with applicable laws, to contact you from time to time to provide you with important information. Information may also be collected via the use of cookies, web beacons, and other tracking technologies. For more information about the use of cookies and similar technology, see below under “Tracking Technologies.”

Log Information

When you use the Site, we may automatically collect and store certain information in server logs, including but not limited to internet protocol (IP) addresses, device information, internet service provider (ISP) information, clickstream data, browser information, type and language, viewed and exited pages and date or time stamps. We may use log information to operate and assess the performance of the Site or other online services, prevent fraud, provide technical support and/or respond to your needs. An anonymized string created from your email address (also called a hash) may also be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/.

Whom We Share Information with and How We Use It

Use

We use information we collect for a number of purposes. These include improving the Site, offering or marketing products or services by us, our affiliates, or our third-party business partners, verifying other information, operating, maintaining, assessing and improving the Site, internal analysis, providing services and products, enforcing or monitoring the use of the Site, preventing fraud, providing technical support, conducting research, generating analytics, addressing internal online services operations, responding to your needs or requests, and other uses described in this Policy.

Sharing

At times, we may share your information, including Personal Info. with others for various purposes. The following outlines the ways in which your information may be shared with others.

Aggregate Information: We may share aggregate information such as demographics and usage statistics with our affiliates, advertisers, business partners, sponsors or other organizations.

Partners Affiliates: We may share your information (including, without limitation, Personal Info) with our affiliates, service providers, and business partners. If you do not want us to share your information in such a manner, you should not provide Personal Info through the Site.

Legal Process: In the event we are required to respond to subpoenas, court orders or other legal process your Personal Info may be disclosed pursuant to such subpoena, court order or legal process, which may be without notice to you.

Services: We may share information with third party services providers, such as spam detection services, to ensure the Site is operating the way we intend it.

How Long We Retain Your Information

Except as described in “Tracking Technologies” below, your information may be retained indefinitely. For users that register on our website (if any), we also store the personal information they provide in their user profile. All users can see, edit, or delete their personal information at any time (except they cannot change their username and they cannot remove comments or other postings).

What Rights You Have in Your Information

Except as described in “Tracking Technologies,” below, if you have an account on the Site, or have left comments, 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, nor any comments or other postings you have made on the Site. Erasure of data will require deletion of any account you may have with the Site and your removal from any mailing or other lists.

Security

Personal Info may be stored within databases controlled directly by us or through our service providers. As we deem appropriate and as may be required by applicable law, we employ security appropriate for the types of Personal Info consistent with industry standards. We also use industry standard encryption technology to protect credit card and password information. However, no security system is infallible, and therefore we cannot guarantee the security of our databases nor that information you supply will not be intercepted while being transmitted to us over the Internet. Therefore, we shall not be liable to you under any circumstances for any inadvertent or unintentional disclosure of any information, including Personal Info.

Your information may be transferred to, and maintained on, computers located outside of your state, province/territory, or country where the privacy laws may not be as protective as those where you live. If you are located outside the United States and choose to provide information to us, you are hereby notified that we transfer, process and store Personal Info in the United States. As a result, this information may be subject to access by governments, courts, law enforcement officials and national security authorities in the United States according to its and its states’ laws. By submitting Personal Info, you consent to having it transferred to, processed, and stored in the United States. We generally assign you a user ID and a password for full access to the Site. Your user ID and password may only be used by you and the members of your household. You may not share your user ID and password with anyone else, and you are solely responsible for maintaining and protecting the confidentiality of your user ID and password. You are fully responsible for all activities that occur under your user ID and password.

Third Party Websites and Links

The Site may contain links to other sites operated by third parties. We do not control such other sites and are not responsible for their content, their privacy policies, or their use of Personal Info. Inclusion of such links on the Site does not, by itself, imply any endorsement of the content on such sites or of their owners or operators except as otherwise expressly stated on the Site. While we support the protection of your privacy on the Internet, we expressly disclaim any and all liability for the actions of third parties, including but without limitation to actions relating to the use and/or disclosure of Personal Info by third parties. Such third parties may collect personally identifiable information about your online activities over time and across different Web sites when you use the Site. The Site may also 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 third-party website. These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.

Tracking Technologies

The Site may automatically collect information and data through the use of cookies. Cookies are small text files a website uses to recognize repeat users, facilitate the user’s ongoing access to the website and facilitate the use of the website. Cookies also allow a website to track usage behavior and compile site usage information that will allow for the improvement of content and targeted advertising. Cookies may also come from third parties with links on the Site. We do not directly control these cookies.

Cookies can generally be disabled, removed or blocked by tools available in or for use with commercial browsers. Disabling, blocking, or removing cookies may cause the Site to not function properly. Web beacons or similar technologies may be used for counting visitors, monitoring user navigation, counting e-mail openings, or counting viewings or link followings. Clear gifs are tiny graphics with a unique identifier, similar in function to cookies. In contrast to HTTP cookies, which are stored on a user’s computer hard drive, clear gifs are embedded invisibly on web pages. An embedded script is programming code that is designed to collect information about your interactions with the Site, such as the links you click on. The code is temporarily downloaded onto your device from us, is active only while you are connected to the Site, and is deactivated or deleted thereafter. A feature of the cache in browsers, an ETag is an opaque identifier assigned by a web server to a specific version of a resource found at a URL. If the resource content at that URL ever changes, a new and different ETag is assigned. Used in this manner ETags are a form of device identifier. ETag tracking may generate unique tracking values even where the consumer blocks HTTP, Flash, and/or HTML5 cookies.

Tracking technologies may record information such as Internet domain and host names; protocol (IP) addresses; browser software and operating system types; clickstream patterns; MAC address or other technical information from your mobile device; location information through GPS, WiFi, Bluetooth, or similar technologies; and dates and times that the Site is accessed. An IP address is a number that is automatically assigned to your device whenever you are surfing the web. Web servers, the computers that ‘serve up’ webpages, automatically identify your computer by its IP address. We may link the information we record using tracking technologies to Personal Info we collect. We may use other tracking technologies in the future as they become available.

The following standard types of cookies used by the Site are dealt with as follows: if you leave a comment on the 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. Such cookies will last for one year. If you have an account and you log in to he Site, we will set a temporary cookie to determine if your browser accepts cookies. This cookie contains no personal data and is discarded when you close your browser. 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. If you edit or publish an article, an additional cookie will be saved in your browser. This cookie includes no personal data and simply indicates the post ID of the article you just edited. It expires after 1 day.

California Privacy Rights

This Policy describes how we may share your information for marketing purposes. It applies to all Site users, including California residents:

We share information with others as more fully set forth above in “Whom We Share Information with and How We Use It.”

We share your information with other parts of our business, affiliates, partners, and our service providers. See above at “Whom We Share Information with and How We Use It.”

You may contact us with any questions. See below at “Contact Us.”

Privacy of Children

The Site is not intended to be used by anyone under the age of majority within the jurisdiction in which they reside without the supervision of a parent or guardian of majority age. An individual under the age of majority may use the Site only with supervision of an adult parent or guardian. We do not seek or knowingly collect any Personal Info about children under 13 years of age. If we become aware that we have collected Personal Info from a child under the age of 13, we will make commercially reasonable efforts to delete such information from our database.

Governing Law, Submission to Jurisdiction, Waiver of Rights

This Policy and the privacy practices of the Center are subject exclusively to and governed exclusively by the laws of the District of Columbia in the United States. Unless otherwise expressly provided for elsewhere in the terms of service for the Site, to the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, you hereby irrevocably submit to the exclusive jurisdiction of the state and federal courts located therein, waive any right to a trial by jury, and waive any right to claim inconvenient forum. The Site is not intended for use by anyone residing outside the United States of America, and the Center is not responsible for any use of or access to the Site by any such person. The Site does not offer any goods or services to customers or businesses outside the United States.

Do Not Track Technology

Do Not Track (DNT) is a privacy technology in some web browsers that allows users to opt out of tracking by websites and online services. California Business & Professions Code Section 22575(b) (as amended effective January 1, 2014) provides that California residents are entitled to know how the Site responds to “Do Not Track” browser settings. The Site does not currently take actions to respond to Do Not Track signals. We continue to review new technologies and may adopt a standard once one is created.

Contact Us

For questions about this Policy or in general, contract us at:

Confucius Institute U.S. Center

Main Office
1776 Massachusetts Ave NW, Suite 410
Washington, DC 20036

General Inquiries
(202) 864-6485