At Conference Solutions, we’re committed to protecting and respecting your privacy.

 
This policy explains when and why we collect personal information about you, how we use it, the conditions under which we may disclose it to others, how we keep it safe and secure and your rights and choices in relation to your information.
 
Any questions regarding this policy and our privacy practices should be sent by email to privacy@conferencesolutionsinc.com.
 

Who are we?

We’re Conference Solutions, a conference management company. This privacy policy applies to information collected for us and on behalf of any of our clients. 
 

How do we collect information from you?

We obtain information about you in the following ways:
 

Information you give us directly

For example, we may obtain information about you when you sign up for a conference mailing list or contact us directly through our website or email. 
 

Information you give us indirectly

Your information may be shared with us by third parties, which might include:
  • Registering for a conference (or being registered by a colleague)
  • Submitting a proposal or abstract
You should check any privacy policy provided to you where you give your data to a third party.
 

When you visit this website

We, like many companies, automatically collect the following information:
  • technical information, including the type of device you’re using, the IP address, browser and operating system being used to connect your computer to the internet. This information may be used to improve the services we offer.
  • information about your visit to this website, for example we collect information about pages you visit and how you navigate the website, i.e. length of visits to certain pages, referral sources (e.g. how you arrived at our website).

What type of information is collected from you?

The personal information we collect, store and use might include:
  • your name and contact details (including postal address, email address and telephone number);
  • gender, nationality, citizenship, ethnicity (for grant-reporting purposes);
  • information about your activities on our website and about the device used to access it, for instance your IP address and geographical location;
  • your bank or credit card details. If you pay by credit card or make a purchase, your card information is not held by us, it is collected by our third party payment processors, who specialize in the secure online capture and processing of credit/debit card transactions;
  • any other personal information shared with us.
Data protection laws recognize certain categories of personal information as sensitive and therefore requiring greater protection, for example information about your health, ethnicity and religion.
 
We do not usually collect sensitive data about you unless there is a clear and valid reason for doing so and data protection laws allow us to, for example, we may ask you to note any special accommodations you require to facilitate your participation at a conference. 
 
Where appropriate, we will make why we are collecting this type of information and what it will be used for clear.
 

How and why is your information used?

We may use your information for a number of different purposes, which may include:
  • sending registration and submission confirmations; 
  • providing you with the services, products or information you asked for;
  • processing orders that you have submitted;
  • keeping a record of your relationship with us;
  • conducting analysis and market research so we can understand how we can improve our services, products or information;
  • checking for updated contact details against third party sources so we can stay in touch if you move;
  • notifying you of changes to our services;
  • sending you communications which you have requested and that may be of interest to you. These may include information about registration rate increases or programming updates.

How long is your information kept?

We keep your information for no longer than is necessary for the purposes it was collected for, The length of time we retain your personal information for is determined by operational and legal considerations. We review our retention periods on a regular basis.
 

Who has access to your information?

We do not sell or rent your information to third parties, nor do we share your information with third parties for marketing purposes.
 
However, we may disclose your information to third parties in order to achieve the other purposes set out in this policy. These third parties may include:
 
  • Our Clients: While Conference Solutions collects and uses your data for conference-related marketing and logistics, we do provide all attendee data (except those that request it to be deleted) to our clients upon their request or at the conclusion of our contract with them. 
  • Third parties working on our behalf: We may pass your information to our third party service providers, suppliers, agents, subcontractors and other associated organizations for the purposes of completing tasks and providing services to you on our behalf (for example to send you mailings). However, when we use these third parties, we disclose only the personal information that is necessary to deliver the services and we have a contract in place that requires them to keep your information secure and prevents them from using it for their own direct marketing purposes. Please be reassured that we will not release your information to third parties for them to use for their own direct marketing purposes, unless you have requested us to do so, or we are required to do so by law, for example, by a court order or for the purposes of prevention of fraud or other crime.
We undertake regular reviews of who has access to information that we hold to ensure that your info is only accessible by appropriately trained staff, volunteers and contractors.
 

Lawful Processing

Data protection law requires us to rely on one or more lawful grounds to process your personal information. We consider the following grounds to be relevant:
 

Specific Consent

Where you have provided specific consent to us using your personal information in a certain way, such as to send you email, text and/or telephone marketing.
 

Performance of a contract

Where we are entering into a contract with you or performing our obligations under it like when you register for a conference. 
 

Legal obligation

Where necessary so that we can comply with a legal or regulatory obligation to which we are subject.
 

Vital interests

Where it is necessary to protect life or health (for example in the case of medical emergency suffered by an individual at one of our events) or a safeguarding issue which requires us to share you information with the emergency services.
 

Legitimate interests

Where it is reasonably necessary to achieve our or others’ legitimate interests (as long as what the information is used for is fair and does not duly impact your rights).
 
We consider our legitimate interests to include:
  • send postal communications which we think will be of interest to you;
  • conduct research to better understand who our attendees are
  • monitor who we deal with to protect the organization against fraud, money laundering and other risks;
  • enhance, modify, personalize or otherwise improve our services /communications for the benefit of our customers; and
  • understand better how people interact with our website.
When we legitimately process your personal information in this way, we consider and balance any potential impact on you (both positive and negative), and your rights under data protection laws. We will not use your personal information where our interests are overridden by the impact on you, for example, where use would be excessively intrusive (unless, for instance, we are otherwise required or permitted to by law).
 
When we use sensitive personal information, we require an additional legal basis to do so under data protection laws, so will either do so on the basis of your explicit consent or another route available to us at law.
 

Marketing Communications

We may use your contact details to provide you with information on behalf of our clients if we think it may be of interest to you.
 

Email/Text/Phone

We will only send you marketing and fundraising communications by email, text and telephone if you have explicitly provided your prior consent. You may opt out of our marketing communications at any time by clicking the unsubscribe link at the end of our marketing emails.
 

Direct Mail

We may send you marketing and fundraising communications by mail unless you have told us that you would prefer not to hear from us.
 

Your Choices

You have a choice about whether or not you wish to receive information from us. If you do not want to receive direct marketing communications from us then you can select your choices by ticking the relevant boxes situated on the form used to collect your information.
 
We’re committed to putting you in control of your data so you’re free to change your marketing preferences (including to tell us that you don’t want to be contacted for marketing purposes) at any time by contacting us by email: privacy@conferencesolutionsinc.com.
 
We will not use your personal information for marketing purposes if you have indicated that you do not wish to be contacted and will retain your details on an opt-out list to help ensure that we do not continue to contact you. However, we may still need to contact you for administrative purposes like sending registration or submission confirmation emails and presentation notification letters.  
 

Your Rights

Under data protection laws (which vary by country of residence), you have certain rights over the personal information that we hold about you. Here is a summary of the rights that we think apply:
 

Right of access

You have a right to request access to the personal data that we hold about you. You also have the right to request a copy of the information we hold about you, and we will provide you with this unless legal exceptions apply. If you want to access your information, please send a description of the information you want to see and proof of your identity to privacy@conferencesolutionsinc.com. 
 

Right to have your inaccurate personal information corrected

You have the right to have inaccurate or incomplete information we hold about you corrected. The accuracy of your information is important to us so we’re working on ways to make it easier for you to review and correct the information that we hold about you. In the meantime, if you change email address, or if you believe any of the other information we hold is inaccurate or out of date, please contact us at privacy@conferencesolutionsinc.com.

 

Right to restrict use

You have a right to ask us to restrict the processing of some or all of your personal information if there is a disagreement about its accuracy or we’re not lawfully allowed to use it.
 

Right to delete

You may ask us to delete some or all of your personal information and in certain cases, and subject to certain exceptions; we will do so as far as we are required to. In many cases, we will anonymize that information, rather than delete it.

 

Right for your personal information to be portable

If we are processing your personal information (1) based on your consent, or in order to enter into or carry out a contract with you, and (2) the processing is being done by automated means, you may ask us to provide it to you or another service provider in a machine-readable format.
 

Right to object

You have the right to object to processing where we using your personal information (1) based on legitimate interests, (2) for direct marketing or (3) for statistical/research purposes.
 
If you want to exercise any of the above rights, please email us at privacy@conferencesolutionsinc.com. We will endeavor to respond fully to all requests within one month of receipt of your request, however if we are unable to do so we will contact you with reasons for the delay.
 
Please note that exceptions apply to a number of these rights, and not all rights will be applicable in all circumstances. 
 

Keeping Your Information Safe

When you give us personal information, we take steps to ensure that appropriate technical and organizational controls are in place to protect it.
 
Any sensitive information (such as credit or debit card details) is encrypted and protected with the following software 128 Bit encryption on SSL. When you are on a secure page, a lock icon will appear on the bottom of web browsers such as Microsoft Internet Explorer.
 
Non-sensitive details (your email address etc.) are transmitted normally over the Internet, and this can never be guaranteed to be 100% secure. As a result, while we strive to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee the security of any information you transmit to us, and you do so at your own risk. Once we receive your information, we make our best effort to ensure its security on our systems. 
 

Use of 'Cookies'

Like many other websites, some of our registration websites uses cookies. 'Cookies' are small pieces of information sent by an organization to your computer and stored on your hard drive to allow that website to recognize you when you visit. For example, we use cookies to automatically display your registration when listing our registration website. This helps us to deliver a more personalized service when you browse our website and improve our services.
 
It is possible to switch off cookies by setting your browser preferences. Turning cookies off may result in a loss of functionality when using our website.
 

Links to other websites

Our website may contain links to other websites run by other organizations. This policy applies only to our website and events‚ so we encourage you to read the privacy statements on the other websites you visit. We cannot be responsible for the privacy policies and practices of other websites even if you access them using links from our website.
 
In addition, if you linked to our website from a third party site, we cannot be responsible for the privacy policies and practices of the owners and operators of that third party site and recommend that you check the privacy policy of that third party site.
 

Changes to this policy

Any changes we may make to this policy in the future will be posted on this website so please check this page occasionally to ensure that you’re happy with any changes. If we make any significant changes we’ll make this clear on this website.
 

Review of this Policy

We keep this policy under regular review. This policy was last updated in May 2018.