PRIVACY POLICY
Revised March 28, 2024

The Society for Industrial Microbiology and Biotechnology, hereafter referred to as “SIM”, provides this site or app as a Service to its members, attendees, and others. Any Personal Information that we collect through this Service is used for providing and improving the Service. We will not use or share your information with anyone except as described in this Privacy Policy. If you choose to use our Service, then you agree to the collection and use of information in relation to this policy.  SIM employs third-party companies to design, operate, and maintain elements of this service on our behalf; and those third parties are required to respect and enforce this Privacy Policy.

What happens to personal information deliberately entered through this service?
We store that information so it is available to SIM staff and to selected volunteers who are helping to plan SIM's conferences.  Later, we will display or disclose some of that information to conference attendees and others as described below.  In addition to the information you enter about yourself, other people - including SIM staff, session organizers, and others - may enter your name and email address and other requested information in an effort to include you in a conference or other SIM activity. SIM may use any of this information to inform you of upcoming conferences and other SIM events and services that it believes might be of interest to you.

If you signed into this site with your SIM credentials...
we may link that information to other information that you entered when joining or creating an account with SIM or when registering for SIM's conferences.

Otherwise, when you visit this site...
we store your IP address, the pages you visited, the date and time of that visit, and other information about your device.  We may use this data for forensic purposes and to improve the performance of the system.  We may also aggregate that data for internal planning purposes.

Credit Card Account Information
If you make a credit card payment through this service, we immediately submit that information to the appropriate clearinghouse. We store in our system just the name and address of the card holder, and a small amount of information summarizing the transaction(s).  That transaction summary information is not disclosed to anyone outside of SIM.

Other financially or commercially sensitive information
Please do not submit any financially or commercially sensitive information through this service unless the data entry form clearly identifies it as sensitive information that will be encrypted at rest and that will only be disclosed to the appropriate parties at the right time.

Disclosures of conference attendees and other validated users of this service
To protect the privacy of SIM's conference participants and other users of this site, we no longer post email addresses, phone numbers, or street addresses; nor do we share such information with third parties except as described below. 

SIM does want to encourage collaboration among its members, conference attendees, and other users of this service. Therefore, if an attendee or other validated user of this site would like to contact you, this site may at times give them a way to do so.  In general, by using this system, that person will reveal their own email address (and, perhaps, other contact information as well) to you. They will generally not be shown your email address or other information unless you explicitly authorize them to see it.

Disclosures to exhibitors and other suppliers or marketers
If you explicitly said "yes" through this service to a question about sharing information with exhibitors or other third parties, SIM may make your name, job title, organization name, city, state, country, and email address available to exhibitors and other legitimate suppliers or marketers to our industry.  If you change your mind and no longer wish to have your information shared in this way, you can opt out by contacting SIM.

Does this service use cookies?
Cookies are files that contain information created by a web server that can be stored on a User's computer for use either during a particular session ("per-session" cookie) or for future use ("persistent" cookie). We use cookies and similar local storage methods to control access to much of this service, and to review navigation patterns. Cookies are not used to disseminate significant information about Users over the Internet or to analyze any information that Users have knowingly or unknowingly provided.  If you disable the use of cookies by this service, you might find that some of the expected functions of the service either do not work or do not work well.

What privacy issues arise with links to other sites?
This service might contain links to other web sites. We have no control over and are therefore not responsible for the privacy policies or content of such sites.

Children’s Privacy
This Services is not intended for use by anyone under the age of 13, and we do not knowingly collect personally identifiable information from or about children under 13. If such information is discovered in the system, we immediately delete it from the Service to the extent possible.  If you are a parent or guardian, and you discover such information through this service, please contact us so that we can take the necessary actions. 

What means of redress are available?
If you have any concerns about the way your personal information is managed by this service, please contact us as described above, or call (+1) 401-334-0220 and ask for the SIM Data Protection Officer.