Data Privacy Policy

Who we are

Our website address is: https://bcpaleontology.ca.

Contact Forms

When you use a contact form to connect with the BCPA, we collect your IP address, browser user agent string to help with spam detection, and whatever text you’ve put into the fields of the form. This information is automatically emailed to a BCPA representative and may be retained in our hosting service provider’s sent email folder and the BCPA representative’s received email folder indefinitely. The contact form related information is not saved by the website.

Comments

A comment may be left only by a logged in BCPA member.

When you as a logged in BCPA member leave a comment on the site, we collect the data shown in the comments form, your username, your IP address, and the browser user agent string.

An anonymized 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, if you have one, is visible to the other BCPA members in the context of your comment.

Media

We do not intentionally allow uploading of media to the website by users, whether or not they are members.

Cookies

When you log in, we will set up cookies to save your login information. Login cookies last until you close your browser (not just the tab, but the browser program or app) or log out.

We do not intentionally allow the editing or publishing of posts, pages or articles by users on our website.

Embedded content from other websites

Articles on this site may 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 website.

These other 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.

Sharing your data

For a user that is also a member, your member information has been provided to the BCPA by a regional society, and it is that regional society that has shared your information with us in order that your membership and logon to this site may be configured.

For a member who is associated with a supporting organization, you will yourself have given your information to the BCPA in the course of email communications.

Your member information is not shared by the BCPA with anyone or anything outside of the regional societies and supporting organization associates from which/whom we have received your information.

How long we retain your data

In general, your membership data is reviewed annually to ensure you remain a paid member of your regional society. Your logon credentials will be deactivated and then destroyed should you fail to remain a paid member of a regional society.

For a member associated with a supporting organization, your logon credentials will remain at least as long as you remain in a BCPA role. Should you depart from that BCPA role, your ability to log on to the BCPA website will be at the discretion of the BCPA board of directors and/or executive.

If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognize and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.

Logging of user activity is done and is retained for a time period that is set by the website administrator. The retention period for logged data is generally one week but may be increased or decreased without notice. Logged data is automatically deleted when the retention period is exceeded.

Managing your data

All members can see, edit, or delete their personal information immediately after logging in (except they cannot change their username or regional society). Your member information is initially populated with data provided by your regional society. Supporting organization associates provide their own contact information. A website administrator creates your membership from this information, and can see and edit this information.

You are welcome to remove all information editable by you, other than your email id.

Your logon username is tied to the email id given to the BCPA by your regional society, or by you if you are from a supporting organization. Should you wish to change your logon username, please request this change from the website administrator using the contact form on this page.

The website membership is configured so that you are recognized as a member of a single regional society, or are from a supporting organization, regardless of the number of regional societies you have paid to support.

What rights you have over your data

If you have logon credentials for this site, whether or not you 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.

Where your data is sent

A member’s comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service. A member’s comments may also be sent to the email id of a person acting in the role of a comment moderator on behalf of the BCPA.