Effective as of August 11, 2016.
This Online Privacy Statement describes how we treat user data collected during your visit to the ARLI site found at arlinstitute.org.
Privacy and the Internet
The Internet, generally speaking, is not a private place. As you visit websites, use search engines, and conduct business on the Internet, many different companies and organizations are gathering information about your online behavior by tracking your searches, visits, and transactions, and then by matching that data with other information about you. The ARLI takes many steps to protect your privacy when you visit the ARLI website. In order to advance our advocacy and outreach programs and provide a feature-rich experience, we do allow some tracking to take place. How and when we do so is explained below.
Our Collection and Use of Information About You
Passively Collected Data
Like most websites, we may automatically receive and record information in our server logs from your browser when you visit ARLI.org. The information that we collect with these automated methods may include your IP address, cookie information, browser type, system type, and the referring URL.
We use this type of information to measure and improve the performance of our site. On occasion we also access this type of information to investigate or maintain the stability and security of our site.
Voluntarily Submitted Data
Certain pages on the ARLI site may invite you to share personally identifying information, such as your name, address, email address, or telephone number. Sharing that information will allow you to make a donation, join our email list, sign a petition, or participate in other similar online activities.
We may use that voluntarily submitted data to:
• Fulfill your orders or transactions.
• Contact you about other ARLI activities or news, or about opportunities to support the ARLI.
• In the case of petitions, display your first name, last name, city, and state on petition forms that you sign.
• In the case of blog comments, post your comment and, if given, your name.
When We May Share Your Information With Other Organizations
When we give you an opportunity to voluntarily submit information about yourself, we may give you the option of indicating that you permit us to share that data with other parties such as coalition partners or specific legislators. We will not share your data with such parties unless you have indicated that you permit us to do so.
To help facilitate our membership growth, we may also use your name and mailing address in blind exchanges with other nonprofit organizations. However, you may choose not to participate in this type of exchange by visiting our contact page and submitting a request to opt out.
Our Email List
If you sign up for our email list, we may collect data by using an embedded image to track whether you open our email and by using a URL that enables us to identify that you have taken an action, such as clicking a link in an email or signing an online petition.
This allows us to build a more effective advocacy program, to inform you about the ARLI issues you care about most, and to make it simpler for you to sign petitions and fill out surveys.
How We Work With Third-Party Vendors
We work with a variety of vendors who help us process data or otherwise facilitate the operation of the ARLI site. For example, outside vendors may help us analyze traffic on our site, process credit card transactions, or facilitate activities such as the collection and delivery of petition signatures. To the extent that any vendor has access to personally identifiable data about you, by virtue of the fact that it participates in the operation of the ARLI site, we require that vendor to promise that it will keep that data confidential and use it only for the purpose of carrying out the functions we have engaged it to perform. That is true both as to passively collected data and as to voluntarily submitted data.
In some instances, we may agree to allow a vendor to take aggregated and anonymized data about activity on the ARLI site, and use that data for other purposes such as improvement of the vendor’s products or benchmarking for the vendor’s other clients. But we won’t agree to that unless we believe, in each instance, that the data won’t be recombined with other information to create any record about you as an identifiable individual.
Our Use of Cookies
We use cookies to improve website performance, to remember user preferences and settings, and to collect analytic data. By “cookies” we mean small text files placed on to your computer by websites you visit. “Cookies” may also refer to local storage, which is a mechanism similar to cookies where the information is stored within your web browser. In some instances we place these cookies ourselves. In other instances we allow outside service providers to place these cookies. We use cookies as follows:
Website Performance
Website performance cookies allow the ARLI to improve the visitor experience by making the website easier to use. For example, they may enable us to:
• Determine how often and where you see our “breaking news” alerts or promotions.
• Save you time when filling out a form by populating it with information you provided in previous visits.
Registration
If you are visiting our website as a registered user — for example, when you manage your subscriptions for our email lists — we place cookies in your browser that allow our website to recognize that you are logged in.
Analytics
We use analytics tools that place cookies, in order to give us a better understanding of how people engage with our website. That in turn allows us to gauge the current performance of Website features, and to develop better content. Analytics cookies provide us with information like:
• How many individual visitors we have
• How many visitors are new or returning
• How often visitors come to the website
• What content they’ve visited
• How visitors interact with particular pages or content
In addition, if you click on a link in an email we send to you — for example, to sign a petition — a cookie may be generated that enables us to identify that you have signed the petition.
How Certain Content Hosts May Place Cookies and Gather Information About You
Our site is connected in a variety of ways to content residing on other platforms. We provide links to content on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, and to content on other sites, such as articles posted on the sites of news organizations. Our site also features embedded media, such as videos, that are hosted on other platforms (such as YouTube) but viewable directly through the buttons we provide. When you click on links or buttons for any of these types of external content, the providers of that content may place their own cookies on your computer, access existing cookies that were set when you previously visited other websites, or otherwise gather information about you as you access their content.
To learn about how those content hosts treat the data they collect through cookies and otherwise, see their respective online privacy policies and other posted guidance.
Security Measures and Data Transmission
We have taken physical, electronic, and managerial measures to safeguard the information we collect. We work to ensure data accuracy and protect against unauthorized access to, and improper use of, information we collect online.
Information that can be readily linked to you personally, such as your name and address, is stored on secure servers and is not publicly accessible (unless, as discussed above, you have chosen to have us disclose information about you when you have signed a petition or submitted a blog comment). Additionally, all data transmitted to and from our website, including credit card numbers, are encrypted using industry standard measures to provide an additional level of security.
Procedure When We Update This Statement
Our privacy statement may change from time to time. We will post privacy statement changes on this page and, if the changes are significant, we will provide a more prominent notice on our website.
Procedure for Updating Your Personal Information or Preferences
If you wish to withdraw or change personal information you shared with us previously or adjust personal preferences — such as your preferences regarding email lists — you may contact us to update our records. You have the following options to do this:
• Click on the link in the footer of any email you receive from the ARLI and make changes to your profile
• Log In to the website and make changes to your profile
To send us any other feedback, please contact us.
