WiserEarth.org
Privacy Policy

The effective date of this policy is March 15, 2007.

WiserEarth.org ("WiserEarth" or the "Website"), established and administered by the Natural Capital Institute ("NCI" or "us"), is a community-driven, editable, networking and informational website dedicated to serving, connecting and empowering the people and organizations throughout the globe who are part of the sustainable civil society community. WiserEarth includes an extensive international directory of over 100,000 organizations based in 243 countries, sovereign islands, and territories, and includes contact details, maps, areas of focus, and other information to be repurposed in innovative and useful ways.

By using WiserEarth, you permit the collection and use of your personal information as outlined below in our Privacy Policy. You should visit this page periodically to review any changes to the Privacy Policy.

I. Information We Collect

NCI collects certain personal information from you when you register for a WiserEarth account, including a username and your email address, as well as location information such as the country you reside in. You can also choose to add additional personal information in your user profile, including one or more profile photos.

We collect information about your use of WiserEarth that you do not explicitly submit. For example, we log your browser-type related information, IP address, requested URL, referring URL, and timestamp. If you create an account on WiserEarth certain information relating to your activity on the Website, such as the date and time at which you register and the text of the comments and contributions you make on WiserEarth, and the time that you make them, is displayed in your profile and can be viewed by other users, whether or not they are logged into an account. Internal messages you send to other users are not public.

II. Use of Your Information

In order to create or edit certain content on WiserEarth, you must register with WiserEarth and login to your account. Personal information such as your username and an optional profile photo may be visible to users in conjunction with messages or other postings that you contribute to WiserEarth. Users may also view your profile, and any personally identifiable information you have included in your profile, by clicking on your username when you post on WiserEarth. You are required to provide an email address when you register with WiserEarth. This email address will not be visible to users who view your profile. If you are concerned with the privacy of your personal information, we recommend that you do not register with WiserEarth.

We may send emails to the email address you provide in your profile or send personal messages to your WiserEarth account in order to provide you with notifications related to your use of WiserEarth or updates or news regarding WiserEarth.

Every time you visit a web page, you send a lot of information to the web server. Most web servers routinely maintain access logs with a portion of this information, including browser-type related information, IP address, requested URL, referring URL and timestamp data, which can be used to get an overall picture of what pages are popular, what other websites link to WiserEarth, and what web browsers people are using. We use this information to diagnose and resolve technical problems, administer WiserEarth and otherwise provide the highest possible level of service to you. In addition, we use this information to perform statistical analyses of user behavior and characteristics in order to measure interest in and use of the various areas of the Website. In very rare instances, we may use this information to correlate usernames and IP addresses of edits in investigating abuse of WiserEarth.

Regardless of whether you are registered with WiserEarth or logged into your account, anytime you visit WiserEarth you can be identified by your IP address. This is a series of numbers which identifies the Internet address from which you are contacting WiserEarth. Depending on your connection, this number may be traceable only to a large Internet service provider, or more specifically to your school, place of business or home.

III. Transfer of Information

Except where otherwise specified, all text and certain other content found on WiserEarth is available for reuse under the terms of the Creative Commons Non-commerical ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Please see the WiserEarth.org Terms and Conditions of Use for more information about such rights.

NCI will not make private information, such as your email address, available to third parties, unless you agree to release this information or unless one of the situations described in this paragraph occurs. NCI may preserve or disclose the content you post on WiserEarth, as well as other information about you and your use of WiserEarth, such as your email address, IP address and timestamp data, if required to do so by law or in the good faith belief that such preservation or disclosure is reasonably necessary to comply with a subpoena, a court order or another legal process. Further, NCI may preserve or disclose such information in order to investigate, prevent, or take action regarding illegal activities or suspected fraud; to protect the rights, property or personal safety of WiserEarth, its users or the general public or to enforce or apply the terms and conditions of this Privacy Policy and/or the WiserEarth.org Terms and Conditions of Use (which can be found at http://www.wiserearth.org/about/termsofuse.html), as the same may be amended from time to time.

NCI will notify you when information about you may be provided to third parties in ways other than explained above, and you will have the option to prevent such information sharing.

IV. Links to Other Websites

WiserEarth contains links to third party websites to which NCI has no affiliation. NCI does not share your personal information with those websites and is not responsible for their privacy practices. Should you decide to visit one of these third party websites, we suggest that you read its privacy policy.

V. Use of Cookies

Like most websites, WiserEarth requires cookies to function properly. Cookies are small text files that reside on a user's computer and identify you as a unique user. We use cookies to refine our site and simplify the user experience. For example, the use of cookies allows registered users to enter our site without explicitly typing in their username and password every time.

If you do not want information collected through the use of cookies, there is a simple procedure in most browsers that allows you to deny or accept the cookie feature; however, you should note that cookies may be necessary to provide you with certain features (e.g., customized delivery of information) available on WiserEarth.

VI. Controlling Your Personal Information

You should be aware that when you voluntarily disclose personally identifiable information (e.g., your real name or email address) through messages, forums, postings, or in other areas of WiserEarth, that information, along with any substantive information disclosed in your communication, can be collected and used by third parties and may result in your receipt of unsolicited messages from other posters or third parties. Such activities are beyond the control of NCI. We strongly encourage you not to use your real name as your username on WiserEarth. Please do not post any personal information on WiserEarth that you expect to keep private.

As a registered WiserEarth user, you can modify some of the personal information you have included in your profile by logging in and accessing your account. You cannot, however, change your username once you have registered. Upon your request, NCI will use commercially reasonable efforts to delete your WiserEarth account and the personal information in your profile; however, it may be impossible to remove your account without some residual information being retained by NCI. Registered users who wish to close their account should contact info [at] wiserearth.org .

VII. Security

NCI tries very hard to protect our users' information. WiserEarth user accounts are password-protected. NCI takes industry standard security measures to protect against unauthorized access to or unauthorized alteration, disclosure or destruction of data. These include internal reviews of our data collection, storage and processing practices and security measures, as well as physical security measures to guard against unauthorized access to systems where we store personal data. We limit access to your personal information to NCI employees, contractors and agents who need to know that information in order to operate, develop or improve our services. These individuals are bound by confidentiality obligations and may be subject to discipline, including termination and criminal prosecution, if they fail to meet these obligations.

If you have any questions about the security of WiserEarth, please contact us at info [at] wiserearth.org . Although we aim to take sufficient measures to safeguard against unauthorized disclosures of information, we cannot assure you that personally identifiable information that we collect will never be disclosed in a manner that is inconsistent with this Privacy Policy.

VIII. Editing of Content

Registered users are able to add, modify and delete certain text and other content found on WiserEarth. Some areas of WiserEarth contain editing history functionality which records and stores every change made to a webpage. All such changes are viewable by both registered and unregistered users, regardless of whether the changes there are additions, modifications or deletions of content and whether they are made by a registered user or a representative of NCI. Thus, content that has been added to a webpage within WiserEarth may permanently be accessible for viewing by our users who look at the editing history of that webpage, even if such content had been deleted after being posted on WiserEarth. Only a NCI administrator can permanently delete information from WiserEarth and there is no guarantee that this will happen. Content that has been deleted can also be reinstated on a WiserEarth webpage if a registered user or NCI representative chooses to revert to such content in the editing history. Please keep all of this in mind when posting and editing information on WiserEarth.

IX. Messaging

WiserEarth offers personal messaging functionality, enabling its registered users to quickly communicate with each other while on WiserEarth. At this time, registered users cannot opt-out of personal messages initiated by other WiserEarth users. Accordingly, if you are concerned about receiving possible unsolicited personal messages from NCI or other users, we recommend that you do not register with WiserEarth.

Personal messages sent among WiserEarth users are private and can only be viewed by the recipient and the sender of the message.

X. Mailing Lists

WiserEarth may create mailing lists to which users can subscribe. If you subscribe to one of these lists we will use commercially reasonable efforts to ensure that your email address is not exposed to other subscribers.

XI. Use by Children

The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) severely restricts what information can be collected from children under the age of 13. Accordingly, children under the age of 13 in the United States are prohibited from registering for a WiserEarth account, posting or editing any content on WiserEarth or providing any of their personal information to NCI or to any WiserEarth user, but are otherwise permitted to access and view the information provided on WiserEarth with the permission and supervision of a parent or guardian. NCI does not knowingly solicit information from any child under the age of 13. Should a child whom we know to be under 13 in the United States send personal information to us, we will use that information only to respond directly to that child (or a parent or guardian) to inform him or her that he or she cannot use the Service.

XII.Enforcement

NCI regularly reviews its compliance with this Privacy Policy. If you have any questions or concerns regarding NCI's treatment of personal information or this Privacy Policy if you want to exercise any of the rights that you are granted under this Privacy Policy, you can contact:

info [at] wiserearth.org

or

WiserEarth Privacy Matters
c/o Natural Capital Institute
3 Five Gate Road
Sausalito, CA 94965


When we receive formal written complaints, it is NCI's policy to contact the complaining user regarding his or her concerns. We will cooperate with the appropriate regulatory authorities, including local data protection authorities, to resolve any complaints regarding the transfer of personal data that cannot be resolved between NCI and an individual.

XIII. Terms and Modifications to this Privacy Policy

By using WiserEarth, you signify your agreement to the terms of this Privacy Policy. If you do not agree with these terms, you should not use WiserEarth. NCI may modify this Privacy Policy at any time. If a material change is made to this Privacy Policy and/or the way we use our users' personally identifiable information, then we will post a prominent notice of the nature of such change at the top of this Privacy Policy and also on our home page. You are responsible for reviewing this Privacy Policy periodically to ensure that you are aware of any changes to it. Your continued use of the site indicates your assent to any changes to this Privacy Policy.