Audio Engineering Society Inc.
Privacy Policy
This policy was last updated on 8 January 2019
Welcome to the Audio Engineering Society’s privacy policy. We are committed to maintaining the security and privacy of your data.
This policy outlines the way in which we manage any personal data obtained through www.aes.org (the “Website”) or otherwise provided by or about individuals (“you”, “your”) in the course of you joining or receiving the services under our membership program, attending our events, purchasing our products or signing up to our website mailing list or AES events (our “Services”). It explains:
• what personal data we collect about you in the course of your engagement with our services, why we collect it, who it goes to and how long we keep it
• how we use your personal data
• how we protect your personal data
• your legal rights in respect of your personal data, including how to access and update the information we hold about you.
Please note that some of the provisions here will only apply if you are based in the EU.
You can navigate to the relevant sections of the policy by clicking the links below:
· About us
· What information do we collect about you?
· Why do we collect your personal information and on what grounds?
· Who do we share your information with?
· Will my data be sent abroad?
· How long do you keep my personal data?
· Your rights in respect of your personal data
· Cookies and other technologies
· Third party links on the Website
By continuing to use the Website and our Services, you agree to our use of your personal data on the terms outlined in this policy.
For the purposes of applicable data protection laws, Audio Engineering Society, Inc, a company incorporated in New York with its registered address at 551 Fifth Avenue, Suite 1225, New York, NY 10176, USA (“AES”, “we”, “us” or “our”) is the controller of your data. This means that we are the primary entity who decides the purposes and means for dealing with your personal data.
IMPORTANT: WORKING GROUPS AND SECTIONS
Although we are headquartered in the US, AES is a global membership organisation operated through various working groups, including Committees and local Sections. Both groups are run by AES members who are elected or nominated volunteers, meaning some of your personal data may be shared with the elected or nominated volunteers who act in their own capacity and are not employees or representatives of AES.
In particular, Sections have been approved by the AES Board and are subject to certain rules, but operate as independent organisations with their own rules and sometimes their own policies regarding personal data. If you sign up to become a member of an AES Section, Section Officers will receive certain personal data about you from the AES membership database (including your name, email address and membership expiry date) in order to communicate with section members about local events and/or collect membership payments. Local Sections will only have access to data regarding members within their own Sections.
However, these Sections will be data controllers of their own accord and may be subject to their own supplementary privacy policies which will apply in addition to this Privacy Policy. This means the Sections may use your data for other purposes, including maintenance of separate mailing lists for Section participants who are not AES members. Please carefully review the web page or contact the officer of each Section before you submit any personal data to AES in connection with the services of these Sections or through the websites for these Sections. AES does not have any control or visibility on any individual Sections’ privacy policies, or control over the collection and use of non-AES or section-member data which may supplement this Privacy Policy.
Please contact your relevant Section for details of any supplementary privacy policies and further information regarding their dealings with your personal data. Unless you have been informed otherwise, the relevant AES Section will be governed by this Privacy Policy alone.
When you access or receive our Services, we may collect a variety of personal information about you, including:
Personal information we collect directly from you
● Information required to subscribe to our newsletters, i.e. name, email, job description, login ID (for AES News)
● Information required to sign up for and administer membership, e.g. name, contact details, membership status, affiliated sections, AES ID, login ID, payment details, joined committees, personal website details
● Information required to sign up to and administer events, e.g. name, contact details, login ID, profile photo, proof of student or professional status, country of residence, date of birth, gender, name of attended/registered event, your registration status (such as sponsor, delegate or student member), payment details, access or dietary requirements
● Information required to purchase items through the Website online store, e.g. name, contact details, payment details
● Information required to submit a job posting to the AES Job Board, e.g. your name, contact details and company
● If you are a student, your school name and advisor name and contact details (to verify your student status)
● Personal information provided to us if you contact us or make an enquiry, such as your contact details in our records of that correspondenceor submitting a membership research request form to locate a missing AES ID or login ID (including your name, contact details, company name, login IDs, birthday, date of membership)
● Personal information provided to us if you choose to complete any surveys or questionnaires for us, enter a competition or promotion of ours or participate in forums, discussion boards or other social media functions on our Website
● Personal information if you post or transmit information via the Website to other users, e.g. discussion forums
● Records of which of our Services you are interested in and which Services you purchase.
Information received from other sources
● Your applicable AES Section
● Technical information regarding your visits to the Website including, but not limited to, traffic data, location data, weblogs and other communication data
● Any parties you have authorised to register for an event or make a booking on your behalf
● Information about events you have attended from our 3rdparty event management platforms such as Eventbrite
● Publicly available details, such as contact details on your personal website or LinkedIn
● Any relevant personal information that you may have submitted to our third party service providers in the course of them providing the Services on our behalf, including for example, business partners, sub-contractors in technical, payment and delivery services, advertising networks, analytics providers, search information providers.
We will let you know at the point of collecting your information whether this is optional, or whether it is necessary for you to provide this information to meet certain statutory or contractual requirements. If the latter and you do not wish to provide us with this information, this may limit the services we are able to provide you.
If the data we hold about you is inaccurate in any way, please contact us to have your personal information corrected.
We will only use your personal data if we have a permitted lawful basis to do so. Generally we collect your personal data because is it necessary for:
● performing our contract for the Services with you;
● the pursuit of our legitimate interests (as set out below); or
● complying with our legal obligations.
We may also rely on your consent to use your personal data for:
● Keeping you informed of AES events, products and offers, e.g. through our regular newsletters and printed journals (see “Marketing Communications” below);
● Administering competitions or promotions
● Using your profile or images in promotional materials or creating content for membership services (e.g. featuring you in AES Live videos or event flyers)
● Publishing your details on the AES membership directory
You have the right to withdraw your consent to these activities at any time, which will mean (unless another lawful basis applies to your data) that we will cease to process the affected data after consent is withdrawn. However, please note this may result in us being unable to provide you with certain features of the Website and/or Services.
The primary purpose for which we collect information about you is to provide you with Services you have requested from us (i.e. to perform our contract with you). We also collect information about you for the following purposes:
To perform our contract with you
· To provide members with their membership benefits, e.g. access to the AES e-library
· To process your communications, your membership of and subscription to the Website and to enable your use of the Website and the Services (including through our membership referral programme)
· For selling and supplying Services to you
· To provide customer care services. For the avoidance of doubt, we will only store limited Credit Card or Debit Card information for the purpose of assisting with customer care enquiries
· To open and run your account
· For continuity of service, (e.g. to restore your membership if you are coming back after a long break). This will be in accordance with our data retention practices (see “How long do you keep my data?” below)
· To provide you with information, products or services that you request from us
· For handling customer contacts, queries, complaints or disputes.
For our legitimate interests
· For market research and analytical purposes, e.g. to improve our understanding of membership and event attendance trends and profiles
· For improving existing services and developing new products and services
· For promoting, marketing and advertising our services
· Protecting AES and our members/users by taking appropriate legal action against third parties who have committed criminal acts or are in breach of legal obligations to AES
· To effectively handle any legal claims or regulatory enforcement actions taken against AES
· To generally run the Website and for internal operations, in order to provide you with an up to date, efficient and reliable Service
· Making important communications about your membership
· Maintaining our membership database
To comply with our legal obligations
● To help prevent fraudulent activity, including on your account (for example, if we collect your card details we will check these details with credit agencies and reserve the right to refuse to make available the Website and/or our Services if, for example, the card details provided are reported to be fraudulent or credit agencies report the activities as being fraudulent)
● To monitor and record telephone calls for training purposes and to improve the Service to you
● To comply with our legal and regulatory obligations (including under applicable data protection laws)
● For preventing, investigating and detecting crime, fraud or anti-social behaviour and prosecuting offenders, including working with law enforcement agencies
● To fulfil our duties to our customers, colleagues and other stakeholders.
Where you have opted into marketing communications, you agree that we may use your information to contact you by your chosen method of electronic mail (e.g. by email) about tailored offers, events, competitions, items or related activities that you may find useful, as well as other similar products and services offered by us or any of our related entities from time to time. We do not sell, trade or rent your personal information to any third parties.
You may receive marketing communications from Audio Engineering Society, Inc or the AES Sections you have opted to receive communications from (see “About us” above) unless you withdraw your consent from receiving such marketing communications. You can do this at any time by changing your communication preferences on your Member Portal or clicking the "unsubscribe" option in any marketing communications you get from us.
We may also share your information with the following third parties:
• Local AES Section officers (acting as their own controllers)
• Fellow AES members who are elected officers, nominated volunteers or members of Committees
• Our suppliers and contractors where necessary to provide the Services, including MemberSuite (our provider of data hosting services) and our providers of payment, marketing , IT, software and event management services
• The public, if you have consented to your profile being added to the member directory
• Any potential or actual third party buyer of our business and/or assets in the event that we sell, trade or licence ownership of any part of the AES business or assets (including management of the Website)
• Third parties we may be required to disclose such personal data to in order to comply with our legal obligations or enforce our legal rights, e.g. any relevant authority or enforcement body and fraud protection and credit risk reduction agencies.
• Yes. As our contacts database is based and hosted in the US, any personal data you submit to us will be held here. Additionally, AES members are based in over 90 different countries and may be affiliated with multiple, cross-border Sections.
• If you are based in the EU, this means your personal data may be transferred outside of the European Economic Area to a jurisdiction. Where this is the case and we are responsible for making such transfer, we will ensure that these are made subject to appropriate safeguards as required by applicable data protection laws, to ensure that a similar degree of protection is afforded to your personal data. These will include the use of EU Commission approved standard contractual clauses or transfers to countries deemed to provide an adequate level of protection for personal data by the European Commission. You can obtain further information about the safeguards in place for your international transfers of personal data by contacting us.
We keep your data for as long as it’s necessary to meet the relevant purposes for which we’ve collected your data, including for the purpose of satisfying any legal, accounting or reporting requirements.
To determine the appropriate length of time for holding your data, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm, from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data, the purpose for which we process your data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, along with the applicable legal requirements.
In general AES will retain your data for as long as you continue to renew your membership or attend AES events or participate in AES forums/discussions or remain participants of any AES Standards or Technical Committees.
In particular, if your AES membership lapses we will retain minimum data such as original Join date, membership category, number of member payments, last known email address, to allow us to reconnect your AES membership account and reinstate your previous membership privileges should you return to AES membership at a future date. If you would like us to delete your personal information completely once your membership lapses, please contact us.
The following section applies only if you are based in the EU.
In certain circumstances you have rights under data protection laws in relation to the personal data we hold about you. You can request to:
● Access information held about you.
● rectify any incorrect or incomplete data we hold about you. It is both in our interest and yours that any personal information we hold about you is accurate, complete and current. If the data we hold about you is inaccurate in any way, please contact us to have your personal information corrected. You can update any incorrect contact information yourself by accessing the Member Update or Committee Update system in the Member Portal of the Website.
● delete, restrict or remove the data we hold about you.
● transfer the data we hold about you to another party.
● object to any further processing of your data.
You can make all such requests via email to [email protected].
We will endeavour to respond to your requests within one month and free of charge. Please note that in respect of all these rights, we reserve the right to:
· refuse your request based on the exemptions set out in the applicable data protection laws.
· request for proof of your ID to process the request or request further information
· charge you a reasonable administrative fee for any repetitive, manifestly unfounded or excessive requests
If we refuse your request to exercise these rights, we will give reasons for our refusal and allow you to challenge our decision.
If you have any concerns about how we handle your data, please contact us. If you are not satisfied after we’ve tried to resolve your issue, you’ll be entitled to lodge a complaint with the data protection regulator for your country of residence.
Security of your data
We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. In addition, we limit access to your personal data to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to know. They will only process your personal data on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality.
We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected personal data breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach where we are legally required to do so.
In common with many websites, we use “cookies” to help us gather and store information about visitors to our websites. A cookie is a small data file that our server sends to your browser when you visit the site. The use of cookies helps us to distinguish you from other users of the Website and assist your use of certain aspects of the site. You can delete cookies at any time or you can set your browser to reject or disable cookies, however if you do this you may not be able to access all or parts of our site. You can obtain information about how to manage cookies by clicking “help” on your browser’s menu or visiting www.aboutcookies.org.
We primarily use information from cookies for the following purposes:
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Cookie name(s) |
Purpose |
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CFID CFTOKEN _GA _GAT _GID |
Traffic monitoring, e.g., the IP address from which you access the site, the type of browser and operating system used to access the site, the date and time of your access to the site, the pages you visit, and the Internet address of the website from which you accessed the site. |
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MSLOGINID LOGINID COOKIEID INSTUSERNAME INSTLOGINID |
To register you in programs and to recognize your website preferences. |
We also use clear gifs (also known as web bugs or web beacons), which are tiny graphics embedded in web pages and email messages that we use in connection with cookies to collect non-personal information from users to analyze site usage, manage content on the site, track visits to other related sites, and track the performance of online advertising.
Please note that third parties (including, for example, advertising networks and providers of external services like web traffic analysis services) may also use cookies, over which we have no control. These cookies are likely to be analytical/performance cookies or targeting cookies.
Except for essential cookies, all cookies will expire after 30 years.
Our site may, from time to time, contain links to and from the websites of our partners, organisational sustaining members, sponsors, job advertisers, social media pages and affiliates. If you follow a link to any of these websites, please note that websites have their own privacy policies and that we are not in control of, and do not accept any responsibility or liability for these policies or any third party website linked to the Website. Please check these policies before you submit any personal information through these websites.
We may from time to time review and amend this Privacy Policy to take into account changes in law, technology and our operations. We will post any changes to this Privacy Policy on the Website from time to time and, where appropriate, notify you by e-mail. Please periodically review this Privacy Policy before using the Website as continued use of the Website shall indicate your acceptance of any changes. All personal information held by us will be governed by the most recent Privacy Policy posted on the Website.
If you have any queries relating to this privacy notice (including any requests to exercise your legal rights in respect of your data), you can contact us at [email protected] or by writing to us at Audio Engineering Society, Inc, 551 Fifth Avenue, Suite 1225, New York, NY 10176, USA.
