Version 1.0, Oct.2, 2011
Accepted:  Oct.2, 2011

Compliance with Legislation

IPAC-CO2 and CMC-NCE (collectively the "Carbon Commons") is compliant with the federally legislated Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) and other privacy legislation that may be relevant from time-to-time, such as the Alberta Personal Information Protection Act (PIPA) which have been designed to protect you and your Personal Information. Due to the provincial trans-border flow of information, we have based our privacy policy on the privacy principles included in PIPEDA.

The Carbon Commons’ Privacy Policy covers:

• Information collected by the Carbon Commons.
• How Carbon Commons uses your information.
• Your information choices.
• Your obligations as a member (“Member” or “User”).
• Security.
• How to contact us.

OUR COMMITMENT TO YOUR PRIVACY

The Carbon Commons is committed to protecting your privacy. We adhere to the following principles to protect your privacy:

• We do not rent, sell, or otherwise provide your personally identifiable information to third parties without your consent, except as described in this policy or as required by law.
• We do not share any information you have not chosen to display on your profile to other parties, unless compelled by law, or as necessary to enforce our Terms of Use, or protect the rights, property, or personal safety of the Carbon Commons, its members, and the public.
• All information that you provide will be protected with industry standard protocols and technology.

Updates to Policy

We may change the policy from time to time by updating this page.  You  are advised to check it each time you use the Website in order to ensure that you are aware of any changes and that they are acceptable to you.  Continued use of our Websites will signify that you agree to any such changes.  Please see the top of this policy for the date the policy was last updated.  This policy applies if you access the Websites through your mobile phone, through your personal computer, or through any other route.  As always, if you object to any of the changes to our terms, and you no longer wish to use the Commons you may close your account.

Summary of Privacy Principles

Accountability

Carbon Commons has a designated Privacy Officer to respond to any complaints or inquiries with regards to how we use your Personal Information. The Privacy Offer is responsible for overseeing our compliance with PIPEDA. You may contact our Privacy officer by sending an email to privacy.officer@carboncommons.ca

Indentifying Purpose

The Carbon Commons respects your right to personal privacy.  The Privacy Policy is meant to inform visitors and users of websites within the carboncommons.ca domain (Collectively the "Website" or "Websites") of our policy with regards to how we collect, use or disclose your personal information.

The aim of the Carbon Commons includes the development of collaborative environments which will encourage innovation and creativity.  The Carbon Commons web portal provides a common, shared site in which the industrial and academic communities can recognize and develop common practices, share data and applications, and create new solutions to global carbon emissions and storage problems.

Being part of the Carbon Commons means sharing information about yourself with other professionals and communicating with them, as well as working privately on your own. By default, your account is set up to share, but the amount and type of information you decide to share, and with whom you share it, is up to you.  

Here are the two main types of information on the Carbon Commons:

Information about yourself that you share. This is the profile that your contacts and other members of the commons see about you. You have control over what you share, and you can update information at any time.

Communication. We help and encourage you to communicate with contacts and other members through messaging, blogs, files, pages, discussions, applications and other methods. Some of this is one-to-one, some of it is in groups, and some of it is public discussion. You decide how much or how little you wish to communicate to individuals or groups.

Consent

When using our Websites you are providing implied consent for us to collect personal information like your name, phone number and certain contact information.

We will obtain your express consent prior to using or disclosing your Personal Information for a purpose that is not described within this policy, or that we did not identify to you at the time of collection.

When dealing with certain legal, medical, or security issues, we may be required by law to disclose your Personal Information without seeking or obtaining your consent.

You may also withdraw your consent with respect to the use of your Personal Information for the purposes described in this policy at any time, subject to legal or contractual restrictions and reasonable notice, by e-mailing us at support@carboncommons.ca, and providing us sufficient personal identifiers so we can act effectively on your request.

Collection of Information

 

Personal Information

"Personal information" (or similar terms such as "personally identifiable information") is information about an indentifiable individual.  It includes such things as name, age, gender, educational background and performance, occupation, contact information, financial information and other information which can be linked to an individual's identity.  It does not apply to the information of non-individuals, such as corporations and business entities and, generally speaking, to business contact information of individuals.

In order for you to properly user our Websites you may be required to provide certain Personal Information to us pertaining to yourself and/or your institution or business.  In doing so we may collect the following information:  first and last name, email address, telephone number, mailing adress, interests, skills, location, institution or business and icon (photograph).

Carbon Commons makes features and functionality available through our website, including our mobile and other applications, developer platform, and other information.  By joining the Commons, you voluntarily and willingly provide the Carbon Commons with certain information, including personally identifiable information, which we collect in order to provide the Services. If you have any hesitation about providing information to us and/or having your information displayed on the Commons website or otherwise used in any manner permitted in this Privacy Policy and the Terms of Use, you should not become a member of the Commons community; and, if you are already a member, you should close your account.

We collect your personal information in the following ways:

1. Registration  In order to become a User, you must provide us the following information to create an account: name, email address, password. Without this minimal amount of information, you cannot create a Commons account. Like other passwords, you should choose one that is known only by you. The Commons requests other information from you during the registration process, (e.g.,affiliation, location, etc.). You acknowledge that this information is personal to you, and by creating an account on the Commons, you allow others, including the Carbon Commons, to identify you and to allow them to use your information in accordance with our Terms of Use.

2. Profile Information  Once you become a Member, you may provide additional information to your profile.  Providing additional information about yourself beyond what is minimally required at registration is entirely up to you, but providing additional information enables you to derive more benefit from Commons and your professional contact by helping you build your professional identity and facilitating your search for professional resources, information. Any information you provide at registration or in the Profile section may be used by the Commons as described in this Privacy Policy, including for the purpose of allowing other professionals to find you.

3. Contacts Information  In order to connect with others you may use the Services to send invitations either to their Commons profile or email addresses of people you know if they have not registered. The names and email addresses of people whom you invite will be used to send your invitations and reminders,  Please note that when you send an invitation to connect to another member, that member will have access to your email address because it is displayed in the invitation. Your contacts will also have access to your email address. You may not invite anyone you do not know and trust to connect with you.

4. Usage Information We receive information when you interact with and use the website and applications.  For example, we know when you join groups, share pages and other resources, create a blog, etc.

5. Cookies A "cookie" is a small piece of information/text that resides on your computer, mobile phone or other device sent by a web server to be stored on a user's web browser so it can later be read back from that browser on subsequent visits to the website.  Like most websites, we use cookies and web log files to track site usage and trends and to track interactions.   Cookies allow us to recognize you as a member when you return to the website using the same computer and web browser. You can remove or block cookies using the settings in your browser, but in some cases doing so may impact your ability to use the commons. In the course of serving advertisements or optimizing the Services to our Users, we may allow authorized third parties to place or recognize a unique cookie on your browser. Any information provided to third parties through cookies will not be personally identifiable but may provide general segment information (e.g., your industry or geography, career field, or information about your professional or educational background) for the enhancement of your user experience by providing more relevant advertising. Most browsers are initially set up to accept cookies, but you can reset your browser to refuse all cookies or to indicate when a cookie is being sent. The Carbon Commons does not store unencrypted personally identifiable information in the cookies.  Since each browser is different clients and visitors should check the "help" menu of their browsers to learn how to change cookie preferences.

6. Log Files, IP Addresses and Information about your Computer and mobile device  An IP address is a number that is automatically assigned to your computer whenever you are surfing the internet. Web servers (computers that “serve up” web pages) automatically identify your computer by its IP address. When clients or visitors request pages from our Websites, our servers typically log their IP addresses. Your IP address may personally identify you depending, in part, on the naming standards followed by your internet service provider. However, we do not use or disclose this information other than for system administration, statistical purposes, to report non-personal aggregate information to others, and to track the use of our Website. Still, you may wish to ask your internet service provider about their policies and practices regarding naming standards.

We reserve the right to use IP addresses to identify a visitor when we believe it is necessary to enforce compliance with the following: (a) to fulfill a government request; (b) to conform with the requirements of the law or legal process; (c) to protect or defend our legal rights or property, our Website, or other users; or (d) in an emergency to protect the health and safety of our Website’s users or the general public.

Due to the communications standards on the internet, when you visit the Website we automatically receive the URL of the site from which you came and the site to which you are going when you leave the Website. Carbon Commons also receives the internet protocol (“IP”) address of your computer (or the proxy server you use to access the World Wide Web), your computer operating system and type of web browser you are using, email patterns, your mobile device (including your UDID) and mobile operating system (if you are accessing the Website using a mobile device), as well as the name of your ISP or your mobile carrier. This information collected can include, among other things:   

• The internet domain and IP address from which a member or visitor accesses our website
• The type of browser used (e.g., Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, etc.)
• The third party website, if any, from which the visit originated.
• The operating system that the client or visitor is using (e.g., Windows 7, Vista, Windows XP, Macintosh OS, etc.)
• The domain name of the client or visitor's Internet Service Provider.
• The search items that a member or visitor  uses on our website.
• The specific web pages and/or content visited on our websites.
• The date, time and duration of visits.

7. Rights to Access, Correct and Eliminate Information About You You have a right to access, modify, correct and eliminate the data you supplied. If you update any of your information, we may keep a copy of the information that you originally provided to us in our archives for uses documented in this policy. You may request deletion of your information at any by contacting Carbon Commons.  We will respond to your request within 30 days. Please note, however that information you have shared with others, or that other members have copied, may also remain visible even if you request its deletion.

8. Data Retention  The commons will retain your information for so long as your account is active or as needed to provide you services.  We will retain and use your information as necessary to comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes, and enforce this Agreement.

Uses of personal information

1. Consent to the Commons Processing and Analyzing Information About You  The information you provide may reveal, or allow others to identify, your nationality, ethnic origin, gender, age, and other aspects of your life. By providing information to us for the purposes of creating your member account or adding any additional details to your profile, you are expressly and voluntarily accepting the terms and conditions of this Privacy Policy that allow the Commons to process information about you. Supplying information, including any information deemed “sensitive” by applicable law, is entirely voluntary on your part. You have the right to withdraw your consent to the Common's collection and processing of your information at any time, in accordance with the terms of this Privacy Policy by changing your settings or by closing your account.   But please note that your withdrawal of consent will not be retroactive.

2. Communications  We will communicate with you through email, notices posted on the website, messages to your inbox, or through other means available through the service. We may send you a series of emails that help inform members about the services and features, and we will also send you service messages relating to the functioning of the services.  You can change your e-mail and contact preferences at any time by logging into your account and changing your settings related to your email notification choices. 

Please be aware that you cannot opt-out of receiving service messages. Also, if we send communications to you via the carrier service with which you have a mobile communications subscription or otherwise have access, you understand you will pay any service fees associated with your receipt of messages on your mobile device (including text messaging charges).

3. Member Communications  Many communications you initiate through the commons (e.g., an invitation sent to a non-User) will list your primary email address and name in the header of the message. Messages you initiate may also provide aggregate information about your profile and contacts (for instance how many people are in your contacts list), but will not list the people to whom you’re directly connected. Other communications that you initiate through the Commons website, like a request for an introduction, will list your name as the initiator but will not include your personal email address contact information. Your contact information will only be shared with another member if both of you have indicated that you would like to establish contact with each other.

By joining a group you implicitly give consent to receiving group communications, which may include email and messages to your inbox.  By default you agree to receive such communications.  However your personal settings allow you to control the kinds of notifications and messages you receive from a group.

4. Customized Content We use information you provide to us to customize your experience on our website. For example we will display the names of new Users who have recently joined your network, or recent status updates from your connections.

5. Sharing Information with Third Parties The Carbon Commons takes the privacy of our Users very seriously, and we do not sell, rent, or otherwise provide your personally identifiable information to third parties, except as described in this policy. We will also not share other personal information not published to your profile or generated through engagement with other services (Groups, blogs, pages, etc.) without your explicit consent or to carry out your instructions unless disclosure is reasonably necessary in our opinion to: (1) comply with legal process, including, but not limited to, civil and criminal subpoenas, court orders or other compulsory disclosures; (2) enforce this Agreement; (3) respond to claims of a violation of the rights of third parties, whether or not the third party is a member, individual, or government agency; (4) respond to customer service inquiries; or (5) protect the rights, property, or personal safety of Carbon Commons, our members or the public.

While we will ensure agreements are in place to require third parties to comply with our Privacy Policy when your personal information is shared, we cannot guarantee that they will comply.

All resources, and in particular member information can be made public by the creator of the information.  This allows members to publish portions of their profile and other contributions to the public internet. This public profile will be crawled by and displayed through search engines when someone searches for your name or related search terms. You may remove such public access from your resource by editing resource settings.   However, Carbon Commons does not control how often third-party search engines will update their caches, which may contain old public profile information.

Content distributed through the Commons sharing funtions may result in displaying some of your information publically. For example, when you post content to a Group that is open for public discussion, your content, including your name as the contributor, may be displayed in search engine results.

Also the Commons may from time-to-time feature public content on the publically accessible news or display pages.

6. Carbon Commons External Developers  We collaborate with and allow third parties to develop applications and functionality in conjunction with and outside of the Commons. These third parties are either partners with whom we have negotiated an agreement to provide services  or developers who have agreed to our developer terms in order to build applications. Both the negotiated agreements and our Application Programming Interface (API) terms and conditions contain restrictions on access, storage and use of your information.

We may provide aggregated anonymous data about the usage of the Services to third parties for purposes that we deem, in our sole discretion, to be appropriate, including to commercial and government funders of the Commons.

Also, despite our agreements and technical steps taken to restrict access to and avoid possible misuse of information, we may not screen or audit all services and applications. We also cannot guarantee that any Commons Developer will abide by our agreement. You agree that your use of our services is on an “as is” basis and without any warranty.

7. Polls and Surveys  If you use any Commons application or service, the Developer may access and share certain information about you, such as non-public profile information and information visible only to your groups or contacts.  We make contractual and technical efforts to restrict this information to the minimum necessary to successfully develop and test such applications, but again we cannot guarantee that any Commons Developer will abide by our agreement. You agree that your use of our services is on an “as is” basis and without any warranty.

Polls and Surveys may be conducted by the Commons, Commons members or third parties. As a member, you may be invited to participate in polls and surveys from the website. Your selection may be random, or it may be based on your non-personally identifiable information, such as job title, geography, company size and/or industry. Whether or not you decide to participate in a poll or survey is completely up to you.

We will not disclose any personally identifiable information to any third parties in connection with the conduct of any polls or surveys. Your consent to use any personally identifiable information for the purposes set forth in the poll or survey will be explicitly requested by the party conducting it.

8. Search We offer search services to help find information and learn more about other members and resources.  We use information from User profiles and contributions to Groups, Pages, and Answers to inform and refine our search service.

9. Blogs, Discussion Posts and other Services  If you post to any blog or discussion group you should be aware that any personally identifiable information you choose to provide there can be read, collected, or used by other members if you give them access permission, as well as developers and other third parties, and could be used to send you unsolicited messages. The commons is not responsible for the information you choose to submit. Also, some content in Groups may be public and searchable on the internet if the Group owner has opened the group for public discussions. You can delete your posts at any time. However, please note that ideas you post and information you share may be seen and used by other members, and we cannot guarantee that other members have not made copies of or use the ideas and information that you have shared.

10. Links to Third Party Websites  The Websites may contain links to other sites.  Carbon Commons is not responsible for the privacy policies and/or practices of other websites.  Members and visitors should read the privacy policy stated on any website being accessed in order to help protect their privacy.  The Carbon Commons Privacy Policy only governs the privacy policies and practices of our Websites.  Members must also comply with the Terms of Use with respect to linking to other websites.

Disclosure of Personal Information

The Carbon Commons will not disclose any Personal Information which relates to you without your consent, except

• Where it is necessary to enable any of our staff, employees, agents, contractors, suppliers or commercial partners to provide a service to us or to perform a function on our behalf;
• Where we are under a duty to disclose your Personal Information in order to comply with any applicable legal obligation or order or request of a government institution, investigative body, or judicial authority of competent jurisdicton to make the order or request.
• to the purchaser or potential purchaser of our rights and obligations relating to the Websites (in which case Personal Information held by us about our clients and visitors will be a transferred asset of any purchase).

Disclosures to Others as the Result of a Change in Control or Sale of Carbon Commons

We may also disclose your personal information and other information you provide to another third party as the result of a change in control of the company. Any third party to which Carbon Commons transfers or sells assets will have the right to continue to use the personal and other information that you provide to us.

Compliance with Legal Process

It is possible that we may need to disclose personal information, profile information and/or information about your activities as a Member when required by legal process, or if the Carbon Commons has a good faith belief that disclosure is necessary to (a) investigate, prevent or take action regarding suspected or actual illegal activities or to assist government enforcement agencies; (b) to enforce the User Agreement, to investigate and defend ourselves against any third party claims or allegations, or to protect the security or integrity of our site;  and/or (c) to exercise or protect the rights, property or personal safety of Carbon Commons, our members, employees, or others.

Retention

The Carbon Commons will retain your information for so long as your account is active or as needed to provide you services.  We will retain and use your information as necessary to comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes, and enforce this Agreement.

Accuracy

Keeping in mind the purpose of its use, Carbon Commons will make every reasonable effort to keep your Personal Information as accurate and complete as possible.

Safeguarding Personal Information

Your Personal Information is kept in strict confidence. Carbon Commons utilizes appropriate security safeguards to keep your information confidential and secure. Only authorized personnel have access to your Personal Information and we do not release your Personal Information to third parties other than those third parties that are necessary to satisfy the Purposes (as defined above) for which the Personal Information was collected, including third party service providers, or in accordance with privacy legislation. We require third party service providers to safeguard your Personal Information by implementing privacy policies and procedures equivalent to or greater than our own.

Access to Personal Information

You have a right to access, modify, correct and eliminate the data you supplied, subject to some exceptions set out in the legislation. For example, organizations are required to refuse to provide access to information that would reveal Personal Information about another individual.  If access is refused, in whole or in part, we will provide the reasons for the refusal.  In some cases where exceptions to access apply, we may withhold that information and provide the requesting individual with the remainder of the record. If you update any of your information, we may keep a copy of the information that you originally provided to us in our archives for uses documented in this policy. You may request deletion of your information at any by contacting Carbon Commons.  We will respond to your request within 30 days. Please note, however that information you have shared with others, or that other Members have copied, may also remain visible even if you request its deletion.

Openness

Upon request, we will make readily available to individuals specific information about its policies and practices relating to the management of Personal Information.

Governing Law

This Privacy Policy is governed by the laws of Canada and any Province with jurisdiction over the subject matter.

Unsolicited Emails and Telephone Calls

Please do not share/send Personal Information (and particularly financial/credit card information) in response to any unsolicited e-mail or telephone call that appears to come from Carbon Commons or its affiliated brands. We will not contact you and ask for such information; such information is only submitted when accessing our Websites or when speaking with an authorized representative.

Your Information Choices

1.Accessing and Changing Your Account Information You can review the personal information you provided to us and make any desired changes to the information you publish, or to your settings including your email and contact preferences, at any time by logging in to your. Please be aware that even after your request for a change is processed the Commons may, for a time, retain residual information about you in its backup and/or archival copies of its database.

2. Default Settings Because member may use and interact with Commons in a variety of ways, and because those uses may change over time, we designed our settings to provide our users granular control over the information they share. We encourage our Users to review their account settings and adjust them in accordance with their preferences.

3. Closing Your Account You can close your account by emailing a request to Carbon Commons support (support@carboncommons.ca). If you close your account, we will remove your name and other personally identifiable information from our publicly viewable database. If you close your account, we have no obligation to retain your information, and may delete any or all of your account information without liability. However, we may retain certain data contributed by you if the Commons believes it may be necessary to prevent fraud or future abuse, or for legitimate business purposes, such as analysis of aggregated, non-personally identifiable data, account recovery, or if required by law.  The Commons may also retain and use your information if necessary to provide the Services to other Users. For example, just as an email you may send to another person through an email service provider resides in that person’s inbox even after you delete it from your sent files or close your account, messages you send to other members, as well as your contributions to Groups, may remain visible to others after you have closed your account. Similarly, other information you have shared with others, or that others have copied, may also remain visible. The Commons disclaims any liability in relation to the deletion or retention (subject to the terms herein) of information or any obligation not to delete the information. The Commons does not control when search engines update their cache, which may contain certain public profile information that has since been removed from the Common's publicly viewable data.

4. Memorializing Accounts  If we learn that a User is deceased, we may memorialize the member’s account. In these cases we may restrict profile access, remove messaging functionality, and close an account if we receive a formal request from the member's next of kin or other proper legal request to do so.

Your Obligations

As a members, you have certain obligations to other member. Some of these obligations are imposed by applicable law and regulations, and others have become commonplace in user-friendly communities of like-minded members such as the Carbon Commons:

• You must, at all times, abide by the terms and conditions of the current Privacy Policy and Terms of Use. This includes respecting all intellectual property rights that may belong to third parties (such as copyright, patents, confidential information, trademarks or photographs) and not posting anything without legal authority.  You agree to indemnify Carbon Commons, it's affiliates, partners, employees agents or contractors for any unauthorized use or posting of intellectual property.
• You must not download or otherwise disseminate any information that may be deemed to be injurious, violent, offensive, racist or xenophobic, or which may otherwise violate the purpose and spirit of the Commons and its community of members.
• You must not provide to Common's member information that you believe might be injurious or detrimental to your person or to your professional or social status.
• You must keep your username and password confidential and not share it with others.

Any violation of these guidelines may lead to the restriction, suspension or termination of your account at the sole discretion of Commons.

Questions Regarding Compliance

If you have any questions or concerns about our privacy practices or wish to make a request in respect of your Personal Information please contact our Privacy Officer at privacy.officer@carboncommons.ca, or if you prefer by writing to us at:

Privacy Officer, Carbon Commons
Carbon Management Canada Inc.,
403G EEEL,
2500 University Drive NW
Calgary, Alberta, Canada, T2N 1N4