Privacy Policy

Introduction

MIT Climate is committed to supporting the privacy of individuals who participate in the project or connect with us. This Privacy Statement explains how we handle and use the personal information we collect about our members and site visitors.

What Personal Information We Collect & How We Collect It

You can browse the MIT Climate web platform without submitting your personal information to us. However, there are a number of circumstances in which you may need to provide us with your personal information to participate on the Platform. The following lists the most common ways in which we collect your personal information:

  • When you register for a member profile;

  • When you subscribe to receive email newsletters from us (in which all members are automatically enrolled);

When you interact with any MIT Climate group, page or account on a social media platform, such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, or SoundCloud, we may also collect the personal information that you make available to us on that page or through that account, including your account ID or "handle” and your email address.

For all visitors to our Platform (whether or not they are members), we collect and process non-personal analytical information – aggregated information related to web visitor activity and email marketing actions.

We also use a third-party tracking service to track non-personally identifiable information about visitors to our site in the aggregate. The information we track is limited to web visitor activity and email marketing actions. Our systems also collect information from cookies, web beacons, log files, pixel tags, local storage objects, and similar technologies. Cookies, however, are not required for viewing MIT Climate. If your browser is configured not to accept cookies, you will still be able to access MIT Climate and its content.

Occasionally, we report quoted feedback from users. We do not attribute feedback to specific individuals unless we obtain permission to use that person's name along with the feedback.

How We Use Your Personal Information

We use your personal information to operate and enhance the MIT Climate Platform and to communicate with you about the MIT Climate project and your participation.  This includes:

  • Provide you with information about MIT Climate, how to participate on the platform.

  • Communicating with you about your account and sending you information about MIT Climate, our partners,  and other MIT offerings which may be of interest to you;

  • Responding to your inquiries;

  • Communicating with you about changes to our policies;

  • Sending you newsletters

  • Event or webinar registration;

  • Optimizing or improving our programs, services, and operations;

  • Research and development;

  • Verifying your account and account activities;

  • Detecting, investigating, and preventing activities that may violate our policies or be illegal;

  • Performing statistical, demographic, and marketing analyses of users of the Platform and their usage patterns; and

  • Sending you notifications related to your activity on the site, including comments on content that you have published on MIT Climate, or responses to your comments.

If you have concerns about any of these purposes, or how we communicate with you, please contact us at climate@mit.edu. We will always respect a request by you to stop processing your personal information (subject to our legal obligations).

When We Share Your Personal Information

To perform the functions listed above, it may be necessary to share your personal information with third parties and vendors under contract with us. All individuals performing functions for us are informed regarding appropriate handling of your personal information.

We do not, under any circumstances, rent or sell your personal information to any outside third party.

Some of our site(s) and service(s) contain links to other sites whose information practices may be different than ours. Visitors should consult the other sites’ privacy policies as we have no control over information that is submitted to, or collected by, these third parties.

How Your Information is Stored and Secured

MIT uses risk-assessed administrative, technical and physical security measures to protect your personal information. Only authenticated users with specific permissions may access member data. We use firewalls and regular monitoring to evaluate any attempts at accessing the systems without permission.

How Long We Keep Your Personal Information

We consider our relationship with our community to be lifelong. This means that we will maintain a record for you until such time as you tell us that you no longer wish us to keep in touch, or that you change your contact information.  We store the personal information that you provide in your member profile. All users can see and edit their profile personal information at any time. Platform administrators can also see and edit that information.

How to Remove Your Information

At your request, we will remove your proposal, comment, profile, and contact information from our files.

Email

MIT Climate sends registered members emails about site activity that they have subscribed to, as well as occasional newsletters.  To change how often you receive site activity notifications, please follow these steps:

  1. Log in to your MIT Climate account and select "edit profile"

  2. Click “Email me if..."

  3. Select the options that you would like to receive emails for by checking or unchecking the box next to each option.

  4. Uncheck all boxes to stop all email notifications.

  5. Click Save

Compliance with the EU General Data Protection Regulation

The General Data Protection Regulation ("GDPR") is a European Regulation concerning the use and processing of personal information. We are committed to processing your information in compliance with the GDPR upon its effectiveness on May 25, 2018.

We will use reasonable efforts to securely process all personal information in line with the rights specified under the GDPR.  You have the right in certain circumstances to: (1) access your personal information; (2) to correct or erase information; (3) restrict processing; and (4) object to communications, direct marketing, or profiling.

To the extent applicable, the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation provides further information about your rights. You also have the right to lodge complaints with your national or regional data protection authority.

If you are inclined to exercise these rights, we request an opportunity to discuss with you any concerns you may have. To protect the personal information we hold, we may also request further information to verify your identify when exercising these rights. Upon a request to erase information, we may maintain a core set of personal data to ensure we do not contact you inadvertently in the future, as well as any information necessary for MIT archival purposes. We may also need to retain some financial information for legal purposes, including US IRS compliance. In the event of an actual or threatened legal claim, we may retain your information for purposes of establishing, defending against or exercising our rights with respect to such claim.

By providing information directly to MIT, you consent to the transfer of your personal information outside of the European Economic Area to the United States. You understand that the current laws and regulations of the United States may not provide the same level of protection as the data and privacy laws and regulations of the EEA.

You are under no statutory or contractual obligation to provide any personal data to us.

Additional Information

We may change this Privacy Statement from time to time. If we make any significant changes in the way we treat your personal information we will make this clear on our website or by contacting you directly.

The controller for your personal information is MIT Climate. We can be contacted at climate@mit.edu. This policy was made effective May 25, 2018.