The Society for Wildlife Forensic Science (SWFS) is committed to your right to privacy and to keeping your personal information private. You can visit The Society for Wildlife Forensic Science web site without telling us who you are or revealing any identifying information about yourself. However, because our web site includes areas in which visitors can provide personally identifying information, we have developed this Privacy Policy to inform you of our policies and practices regarding information we collect about you and to ensure that we are GDPR compliant within the UK.

This Privacy Policy governs the https://www.wildlifeforensicscience.org (our website) and certain electronic communications sent out by The SWFS. This web site is owned and operated by The Society for Wildlife Forensic Science for the benefit of its members and other visitors interested in the protection of all animals. Our headquarters is located in Ashland Oregon United States.

This policy (together with our Terms of Use and any other documents referred to in it) sets out the basis on which any personal data we collect from you, or that you provide to us, will be processed by us. Please read the following carefully to understand our policy and practices regarding your personal data and how we will treat it. By visiting our digital services you are accepting and consenting to the practices described in this policy.

How We Collect Information About You

Information You Voluntarily Provide
The SWFS collects and maintains certain personal information about you when you send us an e-mail or complete any of our online forms, such as when you request information from us, make a donation, subscribe to one of our online newsletters, request to become a member, sign up for mobile text alerts, or forward a web page, electronic postcard, electronic ballot, or electronic newsletter. Such information may include your name, mailing address, and e-mail address; it may also include a mobile phone number, the e-mail addresses of those to whom you forward SWFS electronic content, and any other information collected in the forms. You may be asked to provide credit card information to become a member of SWFS, contribute to the SWFS, purchase certain information or materials from SWFS, or subscribe to various SWFS publications. We will routinely delete member details after five years of continuous member account inactivity has occurred.

Other Information
Our digital services also collect certain other information that cannot identify you personally when you visit our web site. This information includes your IP address and your domain name. wildlifeforensicscience.org logs these IP addresses and domain names, and aggregates them for system administration and to monitor the use of our site. We use the aggregated information to measure the number of visits to our site, the average time spent on our site, the number of pages viewed, and various other site statistics. This monitoring helps us to provide a more useful and engaging online experience to https://www.wildlifeforensicscience.org visitors, and helps us to improve the quality of our content.

Our site uses cookies in order to make the results available for your on-site searches. Cookies are not used for any other reason on this site. A cookie is a small file that is sent out by a web site, accepted by the user's browser, and placed on the user's hard drive. You can always set your browser to warn of cookies being placed, and then chose which cookies you want to accept. The SWFS does not match any information gathered by cookies with personal information you may have voluntarily submitted to SWFS.

SWFS might use single pixel gifs, also called web beacons, in our emails. Web beacons track behaviour such as who has opened an email, when, the IP address, the browser or email type, which links were clicked and other similar information. This allows us to measure the performance of email campaigns, see what actions subscribers took, create reports about email performance, improve the quality of our emails and segment messages for specific audiences.

SWFS may use remarketing with Google Adwords and analytics to display content specific advertisements to visitors that have previously visited our site when those visitors go to other websites that have the Google Display Network implemented. The SWFS may also use Google Analytics Demographics and Interest Reporting.

The SWFS and other third-party vendors, including Google, may use first-party and third-party cookies together to inform and serve ads based on a visitor’s past visits to our website.

You may opt out of Google's use of cookies by visiting Google's Ads Settings at any time. Alternatively, you can opt out of a third-party vendor's use of cookies by visiting the NAI opt-out page.

Ways Information About You Is Used

We may use the information you voluntarily provided to contact you regarding related issues we feel you may be interested in, to keep you updated regarding SWFS's programs, and to extend an invitation to you to support our programs. We may also send such information to the people whose e-mail addresses you provide when forwarding SWFS electronic content. Every recipient of our electronic communications can quickly and easily "opt out" of future communications by contacting us at swfs@wildlifeforensicscience.org.

From time to time, we may make such voluntary information, excluding credit card information (which will never be disclosed), available to SWFS's affiliate organizations or to sponsors or licensees that provide special programs or services we think you might find interesting or beneficial. The SWFS uses very strict standards in determining which reputable companies become sponsors and licensees, to ensure that such organizations are committed to the protection of visitors' privacy and committed to the goals of SWFS. If your volunteered personal information will be used in any manner other than as stated above, such use shall be specifically posted. If you wish to find out what information about you is stored in our records, update or remove your information, or if you do not wish your information to be shared with affiliated third parties, please e-mail us at sherryn.ciavaglia@wildlifeforensicscience.org.

Other
From time to time, SWFS may link to other web sites not affiliated with SWFS. SWFS attempts to link only to those web sites which also respect a visitor's privacy and the goals of The SWFS. However, The SWFS cannot be responsible for the content or policies of third-party web sites. Please check with these third-party organizations or companies for their specific privacy policies. If you find inoperable links or are concerned about any of the sites that The SWFS currently links to, please inform The SWFS by contacting us at swfs@wildlifeforensicscience.org. For more information regarding linking to SWFS's web sites, please contact us at swfs@wildlifeforensicscience.org.

Security
The SWFS uses generally accepted, industry-standard security systems, software, and encryption technologies–-Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)--for the secure transfer of personal and financial data and to protect against unauthorized access to The SWFS's servers, equipment, and other components of our online presence. This includes using industry-standard security systems to protect credit card processing information. Our web servers are stored off-site at multiple, physically secure facilities with limited access.

Contacting The SWFS
If you would like to contact The SWFS about correcting information we might have collected, or if you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, please e-mail us at swfs@wildlifeforensicscience.org.

Cookies

We may obtain information about your general internet usage by using a text file (known as a “cookie”) which is stored on your device. Cookies contain information about your use of our services. They help us to improve our Site and to deliver a better and more personalised service. They enable us to:

  • estimate our audience size and usage pattern;
  • store information about your preferences, and so allow us to customise our Site according to your individual interests;
  • speed up your searches;
  • recognise you when you return to our Site.

Our cookies fall into three broad categories:

  • Essential cookies – These cookies are necessary for the technical operation of our Site. For example, they are used to identify users who have logged into and out of our Site. When you close your browser, these cookies are deleted.
  • Information cookies – These cookies are used for the purposes of recording information about how you use our Site, in accordance with this Policy. This information is used to analyse the URLs from which you arrive at our Site, to determine which pages and features within the Site are popular, and to deliver an improved service to you.
  • Third party cookies – Third party advertisers may also set cookies through advertising displayed on our Site, in order to allow them to, among other things, deliver advertisements that they believe will be of most interest to you. This Policy does not cover the use of cookies, or other processing of your Personal Data, by third party advertisers. We recommend that users review the privacy policies made available by the relevant third party advertisers. In particular, some of the advertising on our Site may be served by Google. Google’s use of the DART cookie enables it to serve advertising to users based on their use of our Site and other websites on the Internet. You may opt out of the use of the DART cookie by visiting the Google advertising privacy policy at http://www.google.com/privacy_ads.html.

All cookies we serve through our Site will expire once they are no longer required, and in any event after a maximum of 2 years.

You may refuse to accept cookies by activating the appropriate setting on your browser. However, if you select this setting you may be unable to access certain parts of our Site or benefit from certain services. Unless you have adjusted your browser setting so that it will refuse cookies, our system will issue cookies when you visit our Site. For more information on deleting or controlling cookies, please visit www.AboutCookies.org.