Last modified: June 11, 2009
TheFriends of the SEP Society (“Society”) recognizes theimportance of your privacy. This page outlines our Privacy Policy,and it applies to all the services offered at the Society's website:<https://leibniz.stanford.edu/friends/>.
- Information We Collect. The Society collects the followingkinds of information:
- Information You Provide. When you register to become amember of the Society, we ask you for a limited amount of personalinformation (namely, your name, email address, an account password,and some user preferences). For payment of membership dues, theSociety uses the Stanford University Credit Card Merchant Services(‘eCommerce’) payment system, which routes all credit cardtransactions through a secure CyberSource gateway. The Society itselftherefore doesn't keep any credit card information, though it doesreceive confirmation from the CyberSource gateway that your membership dueshave been received.
- Cookies. (1) When a member logs in to the Society'swebpages, our server responds by sending a string of characters knownas a “cookie” to your computer, to uniquely identify yourbrowser. This is only a “session cookie”, which means itwill be deleted when you close your browser (it is called a“session cookie” because it is correlated with a log-insession on the Society web server). We use this cookie to ensure thateach time you interact with the Society web server you receive all andonly the services you have registered and paid for. When you finishyour session, the cookie expires. (2) When someone joins the Society,the secure servers used by Stanford eCommerce and by the CyberSourcegateway may also use cookies to properly track the paymentprocess.
- Log Information. When you access the Society's webpagesand/or log in to receive services, our servers automatically recordinformation that your browser sends whenever you visit one of ourpages or request a PDF version. These server logs may includeinformation such as the date and time of your web request, theInternet Protocol address of your computer, the type of browser youare using, etc.
- Communications. Should you ever send paper mail, email,or phone the Society to leave voicemail, we may retain suchcommunications in our records for processing your enquiries,responding to your requests, improving our services, etc.
- How We Use The Information We Collect. The Societyprocesses personal information not only for the purposes mentionedabove but also to:
- display customized content (such as a member's list ofpreviously viewed PDF versions),
- audit, research and analyze member accesses (anonymously)in order to maintain, protect and improve our services,
- ensure that our systems are functioning properly, and
- develop new services.
The Society reserves the right toanalyze, and make public, appropriately anonymized usage patterns andstatistics concerning the membership of the Society. These usagepatterns and statistics will be created in such a way that they cannotbe used to identify the habits of any particular member. - Choices for Personal Information. The Society agrees notto share member registration or activity information with thirdparties, with the exception of information that members have opted-into share with members of the Society or other third-parties. Notethat the Society's services cannot be provided to members who haveconfigured their browsers to refuse cookies, since these are essentialto the proper function of the website.
- Information Security. Though the Society does not store thecredit card numbers of its members, we nevertheless take appropriatesecurity measures to protect against unauthorized access to, anddisclosure or destruction of, data. We restrict access to memberpersonal information to Society employees, contractors and agents whoneed to know that information in order to operate, develop or improveour services. These individuals are bound by confidentialityobligations and may be subject to discipline, including terminationand criminal prosecution, if they fail to meet these obligations.
- Data integrity. The Society processes personal informationonly for the purposes for which it was collected and in accordancewith this Privacy Policy. We take reasonable steps to ensure that thepersonal information we process is accurate, complete, and current,and we depend on our members to update or correct their personalinformation whenever necessary.
- Changes to the Privacy Policy. Changes to this PrivacyPolicy may be put into effect from time to time. We anticipate thatsuch changes will be minor, i.e., will not signficantly affect orreduce member rights. Such minor changes will be posted on theSociety's web page and the effective date posted at the top thisPrivacy Policy will be changed accordingly. You will be notified byemail should there be any changes to this Privacy Policy thatsignificantly affect or reduce your rights. The Society incurs noobligation to contact those members with email addresses that havebecome non-functional.
If you have any questions about this policy, you may contact usthrough our website or write to us at the following address:
Friends of the SEP Society
c/o Metaphysics Research Lab
202 Cordura Hall
Stanford University
210 Panama Street
Stanford, CA 94305-4115
