Privacy Policy

This online Privacy Statement tells you about the use of the information BMS collects through the services available on our Website, www.sciencebuff.org and how you can opt out of certain uses of information we may collect.

By using our services and accessing our Site, you are consenting to the information collection and use practices described in this Privacy Statement, and the general Terms of Use of the Site as modified from time to time by us. If we decide to change our Privacy Statement, we will post a new statement on our Site and change the date at the top of the Statement. Therefore, we encourage you to check the date of our Privacy Statement whenever you visit this Site for any updates or changes. Please see our Terms of Use for a more detailed legal explanation of our general online policies and your rights regarding your use of this Site.

If you have any questions about our Privacy Statement or our use of your information you can e-mail us at [email protected].

Images Collected:

We collect several types of information on our Site. We collect “Personal Information,” which generally speaking is information that can be used to identify you individually, such as your name and address. Personal Information is collected when visitors engage in online activities including but not limited to donations to the Museum; purchases of memberships and tickets to programs and events; and registration for classes. Visitors are asked to provide only the information necessary to process the donation, order or registration.

We may also collect “Non-Personal Information,” which is information about you that does not itself identify you individually. Examples of Non-Personal Information include age range and gender. We also collect “Aggregate Information,” which is information about use of our site, such as pages visited on our Site. The information we collect depends on what services you use on our Site. The following is a more detailed explanation of these types of information as well as when and how we collect and use it.

Surveys:

We will occasionally post surveys on our Site. The surveys may request demographic information (such as age range, gender, areas of interest, and familiarity with BMS programs, exhibits, membership and events) and guest feedback. Participation in these requests is completely voluntary and with each request you will have the choice of whether or not to disclose information to us.

Guest Service Correspondence:

We may collect information that identifies you personally when you submit comments, questions or suggestions to our information desk.

Resumes:

If you are interested in applying for a job with BMS, we may collect your resume; they will not be used for marketing purposes.

Use of Your Personal and Non-Personal Information:

Except as disclosed in this Privacy Statement, we do not sell or disclose information that identifies our guests personally or makes it possible for other parties to contact them directly without our guests’ consent. We may use, sell, disclose or otherwise dispose of Personal Information and Non-Personal Information we collect in the following circumstances:

Internal Analysis and Promotions We may use information about you for our own internal statistical, design, operational purposes such as to estimate our audience size; measure aggregate traffic patterns; and understand demographic, guest interest, purchasing and other trends among our guests. We may also use your Personal Information for the marketing and/or promotion of our products or services. We may outsource all of these tasks to third parties on a confidential basis.

Co-Branded Service Offerings We may share your information with certain businesses with whom BMS has formed a strategic alliance. You may be able to identify these businesses because BMS has authorized them to display co-branded Web pages or links to BMS. These strategic partners are requested to clearly state their own privacy policies on their own Web sites or promotional materials.

Transaction Processing We may use your Personal Information to create a convenient and easy-to-use shopping process that includes an online “shopping cart” that allows you to track selected products and proceed through purchase. Also we may share transactional information with third parties as is necessary to process credit card payments or other purchasing or delivery systems.

Legal Requirements We May Disclose Personal Information:

(a) to conform with the law, respond to claims or comply with legal process served on the Buffalo Society of Natural Sciences (e.g., a lawful subpoena, warrant or court order);

1. b) to enforce or apply our policies or agreements (including to initiate, render, bill, and collect for amounts owed to us);

(c) to protect and defend our or our user’s rights or property, the Site, our employees, guests or the public, including fraudulent, abusive, or unlawful use of, our Site; or

(d) if we reasonably believe that an emergency involving immediate danger of death or serious physical injury to any person requires disclosure of communications or justifies disclosure of records without delay.

If you do not wish to have your Personal Information or Non-Personal Information collected or handled in the manner described in this Privacy Statement you should cease the use of the Site or decline to provide requested information through the Site. You may contact us in this regard at [email protected].

Aggregate Information:

We collect Aggregate Information about you and your use of our Site whenever you visit us online. For instance, we may collect various forms of “click stream” information such as entry and exit points for our Site (i.e., referring URLs or domains), site traffic statistics, page views, impressions, and operating system and browser type. In addition, when users request pages on our Site, our servers automatically log their IP addresses. An IP address is a number that is automatically assigned to your computer whenever you are online.

This Aggregate Information generally will not personally identify you or be correlated to you individually for external purposes. We may collect, compile, store, publish, promote, report, sell, or otherwise disclose or use any and all Aggregate Information, provided that, such information does not personally identify you. When we share such information with other companies, it is not traceable to any particular user, and will not be used to contact you. If we do correlate any Aggregate Information to you, such information will be treated like any other Personal Information under this statement.

Cookies:

We may make use of “cookies” on our Site. Cookies are small text files that are stored on a user’s computer by a Web server based on the permissions set in a user’s browser software. A cookie itself is not designed or intended to read any information from a user’s computer (other than the contents of the cookie); rather, it is an identifier used by the Web site that originally placed it on your hard drive. The actual contents of the cookie information can be retrieved by the same server to identify the computer and subsequently to customize, monitor, or regulate the use of a site based on information stored on the host server. Therefore, cookies only identify the user’s computer to the Web site which may correlate other information, including personally identifying information, with the cookie.

You may adjust your Web browsers to either alert you of the use of cookies or refuse to accept cookies entirely. Be aware that if you elect not to accept cookies, the Site may not function properly or permit access.

Links to Other Sites:

Please be aware that we may provide links to third-party websites as a service to our guests, and that we are not responsible for the operation or the content or information collection practices of those sites. Please note that these Web sites’ privacy policies may differ from those of BMS. We encourage you to review and understand their privacy practices before providing them with information.

Children:

Our Site is a general audience site that is not designed nor intended to collect Personal Information from children under the age of 13. To respect the privacy of children and to comply with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, children under the age of 13 should not provide any Personal Information on this Site. We ask that parents supervise their children while online.

Security:

We use commercially reasonable efforts to store and maintain Personal Information to protect it from loss, misuse, alternation or destruction by any unauthorized party.

This Privacy Statement and its terms constitute a part of the Terms of Use of this Site and should be read together with those Terms of Use in order to understand your rights as a user of this Site.