Thank you for visiting the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
(CfA) website and reviewing our privacy policy.
We will not collect personal information about you when you visit our
website unless you choose to provide that information to us. If you do, we will use it
consistent with the terms of this Privacy Policy. We will never sell, exchange, or release
your personal information to third parties outside the CfA without your
consent. If you believe that a violation of this policy has taken place,
please contact us by email
or by mail to: Webmaster, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, 60
Garden Street, MS-39, Cambridge, MA 02138. We will do everything possible
to resolve the situation to your satisfaction.
Any changes to our privacy policy will be posted here. If at
any point we decide to use personally identifiable information in a manner
different from that stated at the time it was collected, we will notify
users by email. Users will have a choice as to whether or not we
may use their information in this different manner.
Information Collected and Stored Automatically
If you visit our website, read pages, or download information, we will
gather and store certain information about your visit automatically. This
information does not identify you personally. We automatically collect and
store some or all of the following information about your visit:
- The Internet domain (for example, "xcompany.com" if you use a
private Internet access account, or "yourschool.edu" if you connect from
a university's domain) and IP address (an IP address is a number that is
automatically assigned to your computer whenever you are surfing the
Web) from which you access our website;
- The type of browser and operating system used to access our site;
- The date and time you access our site;
- The pages you visit; and
- If you linked to the CfA website from another website, the address
of that website.
If You Send Us Personal Information
The CfA will only collect
personal information that you knowingly provide via email communication,
registration, survey, on-line contribution, or other specific transaction
in which you voluntarily participate. If you choose to provide us with
personal information, in addition to completing the original transaction,
we may use the information on occasion to provide you with information
about a broad range of CfA activities, programs, contribution
opportunities, and special events that we believe you will find
interesting. When we send you such CfA information, you will always have
an immediate opportunity to decline further correspondence. Additionally,
if at any time you do not want us to send you CfA-related information, you
may request prompt removal by sending an email to the webmaster address
provided in the communication you received.
There may be websites within the CfA network of Web sites where you can
opt-in to receive information from nonCfA entities. If you so choose, from
time to time, you will receive correspondence from these organizations on
programs, products, or services that they believe you will find
interesting. If, at any time, you decide to opt out of receiving further
correspondence, please correspond with that business or organization to be
removed from their mailing list.
Children and Privacy
We at the CfA are especially concerned about protecting children's
privacy. We do not knowingly ask any child under the age of 13 to provide
personal information. We do not collect personally identifiable
information from our sites geared to children nor do we require children
to supply information in order to obtain access to our children's content.
Only a few places on the CfA network of web sites allow children to post
messages or provide feedback; however, children are encouraged NOT to
provide any personal information. If a child sends an email to CfA, we
will only use it to respond to the writer but not to create profiles or
otherwise retain the information. It is important for parents and teachers
to be actively involved in children's Internet explorations and to
emphasize to children that they should not provide personal information
without parental consent.
Security
We take reasonable precautions to ensure that all credit card
transactions are secure. When you submit your credit card for any purchase
or to make a donation at the CfA website, that transaction is encrypted
using "Secure Socket Layer" (SSL) encryption to prevent your credit card
information from being seen as it travels over the Internet to our
servers.
We monitor network traffic to ensure that our site remains available to
all users and to identify unauthorized attempts to access, upload, or
change information or otherwise cause damage. Unauthorized access is
prohibited and is punishable under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of
1986, and the National Information Infrastructure Protection Act.
Linking
There are links from the CfA website to other websites outside the CfA.
When you click on links that take you to third-party websites, you will be
leaving our server and will be subject to the privacy policies of those
third parties. While we support the protection of privacy on the Internet,
the CfA cannot be responsible for the actions of third parties. We
encourage you to read the posted privacy statement when interacting with
any website.
Comments
The CfA welcomes your comments about our websites. Any questions that you may have about this site, this
Privacy Policy, or the CfA are welcome. Please send your inquiry and
comments to: www-admin@cfa.harvard.edu.
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