Privacy Policy

The Science Explorer website, Facebook page, applications and any services linked by this Privacy Policy are owned and operated by LabX Media Group Canada, Inc. Because we gather certain types of information from our users, we feel you should understand our policy and the terms and conditions surrounding the capture, use, and sharing of that information. This privacy policy discloses what information The Science Explorer gathers at this site and how we use it.

INFORMATION THE SCIENCE EXPLORER GATHERS AND TRACKS

The Science Explorer gathers two types of information about users:

  • Information that users provide through voluntary submissions, such as to receive electronic newsletters, access topic-specific gateways, participate in our message boards or forums, and participate in polls and surveys.

  • Information The Science Explorer gathers through aggregated tracking information derived mainly by tallying page views throughout our sites. This information allows us to better tailor our content to readers’ needs and to help our advertisers and sponsors better understand the demographics of our audience.

The Science Explorer gathers user information through the following processes:

Voluntary Information

We offer the following free services, which require some type of voluntary submission of personal information by users:

1. Electronic newsletters policy

We may offer free electronic newsletters to users. The Science Explorer gathers the email addresses of users who voluntarily subscribe. Users may remove themselves from this mailing list by following the link provided in every newsletter that points users to the subscription management page. Users can also subscribe to the newsletters at the time of registration.

2. Gateways policy

We may offer topic specific gateways as a resource to users. Each gateway has been developed in collaboration with a sponsoring partner. Users must register to access the information in these gateways, and this includes providing a password, which the user is responsible for safeguarding. Users are required to provide their name, email address, and password and may submit optional demographic information about their area of work. This information is shared with the gateway sponsor, which may use the information for marketing purposes. Gateway users may also subscribe to the sponsoring partner’s electronic newsletters via a link to the sponsor’s website newsletter registration process. The Science Explorer will send registration confirmation emails to gateway registrants and will store the registration information to authenticate users returning to gateways. Gateway registrants also may be provided with an opportunity to opt-in to receive information from The Science Explorer.

3. Message boards/comments posts policy

Users of the site may post messages and comments in response to articles and blog topics. Although registration is not required to contribute comments to articles or blogs, we do ask for your name and e-mail address. Although your email address will not be visible to users of the site, members of The Science Explorer staff may use it to contact you to clarify any points of your post.

4. Polling

We may offer interactive polls to users so they can easily share their opinions with other users and see what our audience thinks about important issues. Opinions or other responses to polls are aggregated and are not identifiable with respect to any particular user. The Science Explorer may use a system to “tag” users after they have voted, so they can vote only once on a particular question. This tag is not correlated with information about individual users.

5. Surveys

The Science Explorer may occasionally conduct user surveys to better target our content to our audience. We sometimes share the aggregated demographic information in these surveys with our sponsors, advertisers and partners. In our surveys, we also offer an “opt-in” area to receive communications from participating vendors of that topic survey; in this case you will be granting permission to share the information you specifically indicate but only if you choose to “opt-in.”

Usage tracking
The Science Explorer tracks user traffic patterns throughout all of our sites. We may correlate this information with data about individual users only for the purpose of displaying topic relevant content and products of interest to your demographic type. The Science Explorer does break down overall usage statistics according to a user’s domain name, browser type, and MIME type by reading this information from the HTTP request (information sent from every user’s browser).

The Science Explorer sometimes tracks and catalogs the search terms that users enter in our Search function. We use tracking information to determine which areas of our sites users like and don’t like based on traffic to those areas. We may track what individual users read which enables us to provide more relevant and “related” content and products. This helps us continue to build a better service for you that is targeted to your specific interests.

Cookies
The Science Explorer may place a text file called a “cookie” in the browser files of your computer. The only personal information a cookie can capture is information you supply yourself. A cookie can’t read data off your hard disk or read cookie files created by other sites. The Science Explorer uses cookies to track user traffic patterns (as described above). Our advertising system delivers a one-time cookie to better track ad impressions and click rates.

You can refuse cookies by turning them off in your browser. If you’ve set your browser to warn you before accepting cookies, you will receive the warning message with each cookie. You do not need to have cookies turned on to use this site. However, you do need cookies to participate actively in message boards, forums, gateways, polling and surveys.

USE AND SHARING OF INFORMATION

The Science Explorer uses any information voluntarily given by our users to enhance their experience in our network of sites, whether to provide interactive or personalized elements on the sites or to better prepare future content based on the interests of our users.

Information collected about subscribers and users may be used by us, our publications, and our affiliates and partnering third-party companies to provide subscribers and users with the features of the site, to enable us to provide the products information you requested, to personalize content and advertising, to inform advertisers as to how many users have seen or "clicked" their advertising banners, to send you e-mail notifications about our services and products, to perform statistical analysis of subscriber and user behavior to develop new features and offers for our publication and website.

From time to time, we may make individual subscriber or user information available to carefully selected third parties relevant to the topics of our publication to send you information through e-mail or postal mail about their products or services. If you prefer not to have your personal information disclosed to third parties for direct marketing purposes, please send an e-mail stating this preference and including your full name and e-mail address to termsandprivacy@thescienceexplorer.com. Subscribers can opt out of future contact at any time by unsubscribing to any future correspondence. We retain the right to contact subscribers and users regarding subscriptions, account status, orders for products or services, changes to their registration or to enforce our subscription agreement.

We reserve the right to disclose information about individual users in order to comply with applicable law or valid legal process, and to protect the personal safety of our users or the public.

The Science Explorer uses the above-described information to tailor our content to suit your needs and help our advertisers, sponsors and partners better understand our audience’s demographics. This allows us to maintain a high quality level of service at little or no cost to our subscribers and users.

SECURITY

The Science Explorer operates secure data networks protected by firewall and password protection systems. Our security and privacy policies are periodically reviewed and enhanced as necessary, and only authorized individuals have access to the information provided by our site users.

OPT-OUT POLICY

We give users options wherever necessary and practical. Such choices include:

  • Opting not to register to receive our electronic newsletters.

  • Opting not to participate in certain interactive areas, which alleviate the need to gather personally identifiable information from our users.

If you have any questions about our privacy, site usage, or opt-out policies, you can contact us at termsandprivacy@thescienceexplorer.com.

YOUR CONSENT

By using this site, you agree to the terms of the privacy policy and consent to the collection, use and sharing of information that you provide via this site. If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post those changes on this page so that you are always aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances we disclose it.

This privacy policy was last updated on September 1, 2015.