Who We Are

North Essex Astronomical Society (referred to as ‘We’ or ‘Us’ in the remainder of this privacy policy) is a membership organisation based in Essex, United Kingdom dedicated to the pursuit and popularisation of amateur astronomy.  You may contact our committee using the contact form on this web site.

Data Privacy Statement for Members

If you have arrived at this page from our membership page, the North Essex Astronomical Society Data Privacy Statement is available here: Data Privacy Statement. By applying for membership of the society or by renewing your existing membership of the society, you consent to us collecting, storing and processing your personal information as set out in the foregoing statement, including any future version of the statement of which we notify you.

Web Site Privacy Policy for All Visitors

The remainder of this Privacy Policy applies to North Essex Astronomical Society’s collecting, storing and processing of information provided by all visitors to this web site regardless of whether they are a member of the society or not. By visiting this web site, you consent to the collection, storage and processing of information as set out herein.

Information Collected by Us through this Web Site

All Visitors

We collect and use the following information for all visitors to this web site:

  • IP addresses
  • Technical details of the device, operating system and web browser used to visit the site
  • Inputs to and/or results from this site’s interactive features
  • Configuration settings in relation to your privacy preferences
  • Storing information in your web browser using first-party functional cookies or HTML5 local storage objects

The above information collected by us is used for the following purposes:

  • Operation of this site including customisation of the format and content of the site to give you the best browsing experience for your device
  • Respecting your privacy preferences
  • Operation of this site’s interactive features
  • To ensure that relevant advertising materials are displayed to you by attempting to determine the country from which you are browsing.  (We do not attempt to determine your identity or your location any more precisely than at the country level.)

By visiting this site and/or using its interactive features, you consent to the collection, storage and processing of this information for the purposes described.

Visitors Who Register for an Account, Upload Media, Submit a Contact Form or Submit Comments

If you choose to register for a user account, upload media or submit comments, we collect and store the following information through this site:

  • Names
  • Email Addresses
  • Marketing Communication Preferences

This information is used for the following purposes:

  • Administration of user accounts on this site, including detection and investigation of site abuse and potentially illegal activity, and logging and analytics of web site usage
  • Administration of user submitted content including, but not limited to, images, posts and articles and other media uploaded through this site
  • Administration of comments on existing site content
  • Administration of and distribution of content to public email newsletters, updates and marketing materials, including maintenance of opt-out lists
  • Publication of comments and user submitted content (Names only, Email Addresses are not shared publicly)
  • Identification and filtering of spam comments and user submitted content in combination with third party databases
  • An anonymised string created from your email address (also called a hash) may 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/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.
  • If you upload images or other media to this site, you should avoid uploading it with embedded location or other personally identifiable metadata (e.g., EXIF GPS). Note that visitors to this site can download and extract any such metadata data from images or other media.

By registering for a user account, uploading images or media or submitting comments, you consent to the collection, storage and processing of this information for the purposes described above.

We do not use personally identifiable information collected by this site for any other purpose, nor do we combine personally identifiable information with non-personally identifiable information collected by us or with information collected by third party data processors on our behalf for any other purpose.

We do not share personally identifiable information collected by this site with third parties other than:

  • With third party data processors contracted by us to perform the services described herein and not for any other purpose
  • As required by the lawful order of competent authority or in order to comply with any applicable statute, law or regulation

Information Collected by Third Party Data Processors on Our Behalf

Social Media Platforms – Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and Others

If you choose to make use of the social media sharing options on this site (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and others),  you should review the relevant platform’s policies for details about the personally identifiable information that the platform may collect may collect and how it is used.

We will use any information made available to us by the relevant platform strictly in accordance with the policies and terms and conditions of that platform for the following purposes:

  • Administration of and controlling access to our accounts, pages and content on the platform, including detection and investigation of abuse and potentially illegal activity
  • Administration of user submitted content including, but not limited to, images, posts and articles and other media uploaded or shared through the platform, including the sharing, redistribution and publishing of content (where you have made it publicly visible) on this site and on other social media platforms as we see fit
  • Administration of comments submitted on the platform
  • Administration of and distribution of content via the platform, including making use of the advertising and promotional features of the platform

Amazon

This web site is hosted using Amazon Web Services on servers physically located in the United Kingdom.

To manage advertising and promotions on site, we use several Amazon products, including the Amazon.co.uk Amazon Associates programme (for IP addresses identified as being located in the UK, Isle of Man, Guernsey and Jersey), and the Amazon.com Amazon Associates programme (for IP addresses identified as being located elsewhere).  When you visit a page that uses one of these products, various cookies may be sent to your browser by Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com.

If you choose to make use of the Amazon promotional/purchase options on this site you should review the relevant Amazon platform’s policies for details about the personally identifiable information that it may collect and how it is used. You can find out more about Amazon’s privacy policy and use of cookies here:

We will use any information made available to us by Amazon strictly in accordance with Amazon’s policies and terms and conditions for the following purposes:

  • Administration of our accounts with Amazon including recording and analysing commission and referrals data
  • Advertising and promoting products sold by Amazon in exchange for commission or referral fees
  • Making use of the analytics tools provided by Amazon to identify products to advertise, promote or sell and to undertake other related sales and promotional activity

Google

To manage advertising and this site, we use several Google products, including Google AdSense, Google Analytics, and a range of DoubleClick-branded services. When you visit a page that uses one of these products, various cookies may be sent to your browser.

Google and its partners, including Google certified third-party vendors or ad networks, may use these cookies for a number of purposes, such as to stop you seeing the same advertisement over and over again, to detect and stop click fraud, to show advertisements that are likely to be more relevant, and to track visitor and usage statistics on this site.

Google’s use of the DoubleClick cookie enables it and its partners to serve advertisements based on your prior visits to this sites and/or other sites on the Internet.

Google may record the IP address from which you are browsing, including through the use of Google Analytics, for the following purposes:

  • Web site analytics, such as tracking new and repeat visits, analysing browsing behaviour, monitoring sources of web traffic referral to this site and analysis of other non-personally identifiable data
  • Managing the security of this site, including blocking malicious web site traffic and other unacceptable use of this site
  • We do not combine IP Addresses collected by Google with other data in order to identify individuals

We use non-personally identifiable information, including data from Google’s Interest-based advertising or third-party audience data (such as age, gender and interests) to track advertising revenue, and in conjunction with Google Analytics in order to make editorial decisions about production of new site content that will be relevant to visitors and to improve the overall visitor experience of this site.

Third-party cookies may be set from a few different domains, including google.com, doubleclick.net, invitemedia.com, admeld.com, googlesyndication.com, or googleadservices.com. Some of Google’s advertising products enable its partners to use other services in conjunction with Google’s (like an ad measurement and reporting service) and these services may send their own cookies to your browser. These cookies will be set from their domains.

See more detail about the types of cookie used by Google and its partners, and how they use them.

Google’s advertising systems may use other technologies, including Flash and HTML5, for functions like display of interactive ad formats. Google may use the IP address, for example, to identify your general location. Google may also select advertising based on information about your computer or device, such as your device model, browser type, or sensors in your device like the accelerometer.

To serve advertisements in services where cookie technology may not be available (for example, in mobile applications), Google may use anonymous identifiers. These perform similar functions to cookies.

Akismet

Akismet aggregates information about visitors who comment on sites that use the Akismet anti-spam service, including this site. The information collected by Akismet includes:
  • The commenter’s IP address, user agent, referrer, and site URL
  • Other information directly provided by the commenter such as their name, username, email address, and the comment itself

We use Akismet in conjunction with the above information for the following purposes:

  • To identify, flag and block spam or malicious comments on this site
  • To provide aggregate data for the purposes of blocking spam or malicious comments on other sites which use Akismet

Events Manager

Events Manager collects the following information:

  • Information you submit to us when making an event booking
  • Use cookies to temporarily store information about a booking in progress as well as any error/confirmation messages whilst submitting or managing your events and locations

We use Events Manager for the following purposes:

  • To reserve your requested spaces at our event and maintain a record of attendance
  • In conjunction with  Google services to generate maps and provide auto-completion when searching for events by location, which may collect data via your browser in accordance to Google’s privacy policy

iThemes Security

iThemes collects the following information about visitors to this site:

  • The IP address of visitors
  • The user ID of logged in users
  • Use account activity including login attempts, log out requests, requests for suspicious URLs, changes to site content, and password updates

We use iThemes in conjunction with the above information for the following purposes:

  • To check for malicious activity and to protect the site from specific kinds of attacks
  • To scan for potential malware and vulnerabilities by Sucuri’s SiteCheck. We do not send personal information to Sucuri; however, Sucuri could find personal information posted publicly (such as in comments) during their scan. For more details, please see Sucuri’s privacy policy
  • To manage and create database backups and restorations
  • As part of a network of sites to protect against distributed brute force attacks. To enable this protection, the IP address of visitors attempting to log into the site is shared with a service provided by ithemes.com. For privacy policy details, please see the iThemes Privacy Policy

Managing Use of Cookies and other Technologies

  • You may remove any non-personally identifiable information stored in your web browser from your use of this site’s interactive features by clearing your web browser’s cache and cookies.
  • You may manage cookies in your web browser.
  • You may opt out of the use of the DoubleClick cookie for interest-based advertising and manage the Google advertisements you see by visiting Google’s Ads Settings.
  • You may visit some Google certified third-party vendors or ad networks web sites to opt out of the use of cookies for interest-based advertising if the vendor or ad network offers this capability.
  • You may manage Amazon.co.uk’s personalisation of advertising using Amazon Advertising Preferences.
  • You may manage Amazon.com’s personalisation of advertising using Amazon Advertising Preferences.
  • You may also manage many vendors’ cookies used for online advertising at the US-based Digital Advertising Alliance Consumer Choice page, the US-based Network Advertising Initiative’s Consumer Choices page and the EU-based Your Online Choices.
  • You may prevent Google Analytics from collecting data about your use of this site by installing the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on.
  • To control the ads that Google serves to apps on your mobile device, you can use Google’s Ads Settings for apps. To change your preferences, or to opt out of interest-based ads, follow the instructions below for your mobile device.

Android

  • Open the Google Settings app on your device
  • Select Ads

iOS

Some apps on iOS devices use Apple’s Advertising Identifier; to learn more about limiting ad tracking using this identifier, visit the Settings menu on your iOS device. Legacy apps on your iOS device, as well as apps on devices running older versions of iOS, may use a different device identifier. To opt out for these apps:

  • Open the Google Search app on your device
  • Press the Settings icon
  • Go to Ads Preferences