VLDB
PRIVACY POLICY
Effective: January 31st, 2022
- Scope of this Policy
- Agreement to Terms
- Effective Date and Changes to this Policy
- The Information We Collect
- Cookies
- Children’s Privacy
- How We Use Your Personal Information
- How We Share Your Personal Information
- Your Privacy Choices
- How We Store and Safeguard Your Personal Information
- For Our International Users
- Third Party Links
- Contact Us
1. Scope of this Policy
Thank you for visiting the VLDB Endowment website, owned and operated by VLDB Endowment, Inc. (referred to as “VLDB,” “us,” “our,” “we”). We are committed to respecting privacy rights and concerns and have established and implemented this Privacy Policy to inform users of our website, participants, and members of our review boards and committees, of what personal information we collect, and how we use, share, and protect such information. If you have any questions regarding this information or our privacy practices, please see the section entitled Contact Us at the end of this Privacy Policy.
2. Agreement to Terms
If you do not agree with the terms of this Privacy Policy or our Terms of Use, then you should immediately discontinue use of the VLDB website (the “Site”) and/or our services without providing us any personally identifiable information.
3. Effective Date and Changes to this Policy
This Privacy Policy is effective as of the date above and will remain in effect until a new policy supersedes it. We may choose to update this Privacy Policy at our discretion, so you should check this page periodically as the terms may change from time-to-time. The most recent version of the Policy will be reflected by the “Effective” date noted at the top of the page. In the event of a material change to this Privacy Policy, we will provide a conspicuous message either through the Site or where applicable, via an email address that we have on file, informing you of the change. Your affirmative consent or continued use of the Site and/or our services will constitute your acknowledgment of this Policy in its current version and your understanding of the terms of this Policy.
4. The Information We Collect
The types of personal information we collect and process about you can include:
- Personal details: Such as your name, email address, company or university name, areas of research and/or study, education, and other resume or curriculum vitae details.
- Log information: Such as your IP address, geolocation, webpages accessed, information requested along with the date and time of the request, the source of your access to our website (e.g., the website or URL (link) which referred you to our website), browser version, operating system.
- Communications you send us:Such as your inquiries and feedback, our correspondence, your Twitter posts, any other information you provide to us.
- Audio/Visual information:Such as any photographs that you submit to us or any video recordings of VLDB Conferences, including if you present presentations your work at our conferences.
- Publication/Scientific Articles: Such as any articles you submit to us and any articles that you have published.
We collect such personal information directly from you when you visit the Site; you submit a paper (for publication or reproducibility examination) or an application for participation in a board or committee through our Proceedings journal or Proceedings events (see PVLDB Privacy Policy); when you attend one of our conferences, or when you otherwise contact us.
You are not required to provide all personal information identified in this Privacy Policy to use our Site or to interact with us, but certain functionality will not be available if you do not provide certain personal information. For example, if you do not provide certain personal information, we may not be able to respond to your requests or publish your name in association with an award.
5. Cookies and other Tracking Technologies
A cookie is a small string of information that a website that you visit transfers to your browser for identification purposes. Cookies can be used to follow your activity while using a website or across websites, and that information helps organizations understand your preferences and tendencies, as well as improve and personalize your website experience. Some cookies are necessary to operate a website, while others can be functional, analytical, or used for targeted advertising. More information about cookies and how they work is available at allaboutcookies.
Cookies on our Site are generally divided into the following categories:
- Strictly Necessary Cookies: These are required for the operation of our Site. They include, for example, cookies that are intended to secure our Site. These cookies are session cookies that are erased when you close your browser.
- Analytical/Performance Cookies: These allow us to recognize and count the number of users on the Site and understand how such users navigate through the Site (e.g., when and which pages are visited, in what order the pages are visited, how long a user may stay on a particular page, and where a user is located). This helps to improve how the Site works, for example, by ensuring that users can find what they are looking for easily. These cookies are session cookies which are erased when you close your browser. We use Google Analytics for part of this process. For more information about Google Analytics, please visit www.google.com/policies/privacy/partners/ and www.google.com/analytics/learn/privacy.html. You can opt-out of Google Analytics' collection and use of data generated by your use of the Site by going to http://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.
You can prevent the use of certain cookies by modifying your Internet browser settings, typically under the sections “Help” or “Internet Options.” If you disable or delete certain cookies in your Internet browser settings, you may still access the Site, however, you might not be able to access or use certain functions or features of the Site.
Device Information
Similar to cookies, we may automatically collect certain information about the device you use to access the Site. For example, we may collect and analyze information such as IP addresses, geolocation information, unique device identifiers, browser types, browser language, operating system, the state or country from which you accessed the Site, and other information about your mobile phone or other device(s). In addition to analytical purposes, this information helps us diagnose problems with our server, administer the Site, and display the content according to your preferences.
Do Not Track
VLDB respects your privacy, but we do not alter the information we collect or change the Site upon receiving “do-not-track” signals, as the term appears in Cal. Bus. & Prof. Code § 22575(b)(5). For more information about DNT signals, visit http://allaboutdnt.com.
6. Children’s Privacy
The Site is not intended for users under the age of 16. We do not knowingly or intentionally gather personal information about visitors who are under the age of 16. If you are aware of, or suspect that, someone under the age of 16 is using the Site without permission, please notify us immediately by contacting us as detailed below. If you have questions or concerns about the Internet and privacy for your child, we encourage you to check out the FTC Guidelines for protecting your child’s privacy online.
7. How We Use Your Personal Information
We use or otherwise process your personal information to:
- Providing the Site and our services, including services requested by, or reasonably anticipated within the context of our relationship with, you
- Managing your relationship with us;
- Facilitating your registration for, and attendance at, conferences (both in person and virtual);
- Displaying conference archives, such as photos and videos, Committee and Chair participants, keynote speakers and award winners;
- Processing, reviewing, communicating about, facilitating editorial and/or peer review of, and publishing research;
- Evaluating nominations for, and granting, awards;
- Analyzing your use of the Site;
- Detecting security incidents and protecting against malicious, deceptive, fraudulent, or illegal activity or prosecuting those responsible; and
- Complying with legal requirements.
8. How We Share Your Personal Information
We share your personal information with the following categories of third parties, where applicable:
- Advisers and financial institutionsincluding, legal, tax, auditors, risk and compliance, notaries, and continuity support services;
- Service providers, including, IT outsourcing and management, web analytics providers, academic conference management systems, and conference hosts. In some instances, service providers will be directly responsible to you for their use of your personal information. They may be obliged by law to provide you with additional information regarding the personal information that they hold about you and how and why they process that information. Further information may be provided to you in a separate notice or may be obtained from such service providers directly, for example, via their websites;
- Site visitors and the public, such as when your identification is used in conjunction with your participation on a board, committee or a conference, or authorship of a paper;
- With third parties in connection with a change to the control or financial status of the company, including a corporate restructuring, sale, acquisition, financing, reorganizations, bankruptcy, receivership, transfer, or assignment of assets or business merger or divestiture. Personal information and other information may be shared in the diligence process with counterparties and others assisting with the transaction and transferred to a successor or affiliate as part of that transaction; and
- Government bodies and dispute resolution and law enforcement organizations, as applicable.
If you have questions about the parties with which we share personal information, please contact us as specified below.
9. Your Privacy Choices
With exceptions, you may be able to view, amend, or delete the information we hold about you by contacting us as detailed below.
10. How We Store and Safeguard Your Personal Information
We maintain reasonable technical and organizational measures to protect personal information from loss, misuse, alteration, or unintentional destruction. Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the Internet is not completely secure. Although we will do our best to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee the security of your information as it is transmitted to us. To the extent permitted under applicable law, we assume no liability or responsibility for disclosure of your information due to errors in transmission, unauthorized access by third parties, or other causes beyond our control.
11. For Our International Users (to the extent required by applicable laws)
International data transfer.We take steps to ensure that we handle your personal information subject to appropriate safeguards. As a US organization, most of our operations are conducted in the United States and in order to provide the Site, personal information will be processed in the United States, where laws regarding processing of personal information may be less stringent than the laws in your country. We provide appropriate protections for cross-border transfers as required by applicable law for international data transfers. Where required by such laws, you may request a copy of the suitable mechanisms we have in place by contacting us as detailed below.
Retention of your personal information.The information we collect and publish as part of our scholarly journal and its archives forms part of our historical archive of scholarly research. Maintaining the scholarly journal and its archives on an on-going basis is fundamental to our mission. Accordingly, we do not automatically delete or remove information form our scholarly journals or its archives after a certain period of time. For personal information regarding your membership as a board or committee member, we typically retain such personal information no longer than 10 years from your last contact with us. In any event, upon request, we will securely delete information regarding your membership as a board or committee member in accordance with and to the extent required by applicable law. For personal information that we collect and process for other purposes, as described above, we typically retain such personal information for no longer than the period necessary to fulfill the purposes outlined in this Privacy Policy, and as otherwise needed to address tax, corporate, compliance, employment, litigation, and other legal rights and obligations.
Lawful bases for handling your data.Where required, we have several different legal grounds on which we collect and process your personal information for the purposes set out in the section above, How We Use Your Personal Information, including: (i) as may be necessary to perform a contract; (ii) as necessary to comply with a legal obligation (such as when we use personal information for recordkeeping in connection with intellectual property rights); (iii) consent (where you have provided consent as appropriate under applicable law); (iv) as necessary for our legitimate interests (such as when we act to maintain our organization generally, including maintaining the safety and security of the Site).
Automated decision-making.We do not use automated decision-making without human intervention, including profiling, in a way that produces legal effects concerning you or that otherwise significantly affects you.
Your Rights
To the extent required under applicable law, you may have the right of:
- Access.You have the right to request a copy of the personal information we are processing about you, which we will provide to you in electronic form.
- Rectification.You have the right to require that any incomplete or inaccurate personal information that we process about you is amended.
- Deletion.You have the right to request that we delete personal information that we process about you, unless, for example, we are required to retain such data in order to comply with a legal obligation or to establish, exercise or defend legal claims.
- Restriction.You have the right to request that we restrict our processing of your personal information where: (i) you believe such data to be inaccurate; (ii) our processing is unlawful; or (iii) we no longer need to process such data for a particular purpose, but where we are not able to delete the data due to a legal or other obligation or because you do not want us to delete it.
- Portability.You have the right to request that we transmit the personal information we hold with respect to you to another data controller.
- Objection.Where the legal justification for our processing of your personal information is our legitimate interest, you have the right to object to such processing on grounds relating to your situation. We will abide by your request unless we have compelling legitimate grounds for the processing which override your interests and rights, or if we need to continue to process the data for the establishment, exercise or defense of a legal claim.
- Withdrawing Consent.If you have consented to our processing of your personal information, you have the right to withdraw your consent at any time, free of charge. Please note that if you withdraw your consent, this will not affect the lawfulness of our use and processing of your information on the basis of your consent before the point in time when you withdraw your consent, nor will it affect the processing of personal information conducted in reliance on lawful processing grounds other than consent.
Some rights may be limited, and we may need to retain certain personal information, as required or permitted by applicable law. To inquire about or exercise the rights listed above, at any time, contact us at web@vldb.org with the subject line “Privacy-[insert your country]” so that we can get your email to the right team. We will respond to your request consistent with applicable law.
If you feel that your request or concern was not satisfactorily resolved by us, you have the right to lodge a complaint with your local data protection authority.
12. Third Party Links
In an attempt to provide increased value to our users, we may choose various third party websites (e.g., universities or other institutions) to link to within our Site. We have no control over these linked sites, each of which has separate privacy and data collection practices independent from us. As such, we have no responsibility or liability for these independent policies or actions and are not responsible for the privacy practices or the content of any such websites.
13. Contact Us
If you have questions or comments regarding this Privacy Policy or our privacy practices, or would like to inquire about or exercise your rights, please contact us at:
VLDB Endowment, Inc.
2092 Donald Bren Hall
Irvine, CA92697-3435