Privacy statement

Effective January 6, 2018

This Online Privacy Statement describes how we treat user data collected during your visit to the Jamaica Plain Historical Society (JPHS) site. The JPHS site is jphs.org, and includes all web pages whose domain name contains jphs.org. It is not the online privacy statement for other websites (e.g. blogs or social networking sites) where JPHS has a presence, such as JPHS pages on Facebook.

The JPHS takes many steps to protect your privacy when you visit the JPHS website. In order to advance our educational and outreach programs, and to provide you with a better experience while you are on the JPHS Site, we do allow some tracking to take place. How and when we do so is explained below. 

Like most websites, we may automatically receive and record information in our server logs from your browser when you visit jphs.org. The information that we collect with these automated methods may include your IP address, cookie information, browser type, system type, and the referring URL.

We use this type of information to measure and improve the performance of our site.  On occasion we also access this type of information to investigate or maintain the stability and security of our site.

Voluntarily Submitted Data
Certain pages on the JPHS site may invite you to share personally identifying information, such as your name, address, email address, or telephone number.  Sharing that information will allow you to make a donation, join our email list, or participate in similar online activities. We may use that voluntarily submitted data to contact you about other JPHS activities or news, or about opportunities to support the JPHS.

Sharing Your Information With Other Organizations
We will not share your data with third parties.

Our Email List
If you sign up for our email list, we may collect data by using an embedded image to track whether you open our email and by using a URL that enables us to identify that you have taken an action, such as clicking a link in an email. This allows us to build a more effective outreach program, and to inform you about the JPHS issues you care most about.

How We Work With Third-Party Vendors
We work with a variety of vendors who help us process data, facilitate the operation of the JPHS site and deliver messages to you on other platforms.  For example, outside vendors may help us analyze traffic on our site and process credit card transactions. To the extent that any vendor has access to personally identifiable data about you, by virtue of the fact that it participates in the operation of the JPHS site, we require that vendor to promise that it will keep that data confidential and use it only for the purpose of carrying out the functions we have engaged it to perform. That is true both as to passively collected data and as to voluntarily submitted data, and also as to data from any cookie or other tracking device.

Our Use of Cookies
We use cookies to improve website performance and to collect analytic data. By “cookies” we mean small text files placed on to your computer by websites you visit. “Cookies” may also refer to local storage, which is a mechanism similar to cookies where the information is stored within your web browser. We use cookies as follows: We use analytics tools that place cookies, in order to give us a better understanding of how people engage with our website.  That in turn allows us to gauge the current performance of website features, and to develop better content. Analytics cookies provide us with information including:

·       How many individual visitors we have
·       How many visitors are new or returning
·       How often visitors come to the website
·       What content they’ve visited
·       How visitors interact with particular pages or content

We have taken physical, electronic, and managerial measures to safeguard the information we collect. We work to ensure data accuracy and protect against unauthorized access to, and improper use of, information we collect online.

Information that can be readily linked to you personally, such as your name and address, is stored on secure servers and is not publicly accessible. Additionally, all data transmitted to and from our website, including credit card numbers, are encrypted using industry standard measures to provide an additional level of security.

Procedure When We Update This Statement
Our privacy statement may change from time to time. We will post privacy statement changes on this page and, if the changes are significant, we will provide a more prominent notice on our website.  Revisions to date: None  

Procedure for Updating Your Personal Information or Preferences
If you wish to withdraw or change personal information you shared with us previously or adjust personal preferences — such as your preferences regarding email lists — you may contact us to update our records. You have the following options to do this: click on the link in the footer of any email you receive from the JPHS, send an email to info@jphs.org, or write to us at  Jamaica Plain Historical Society,  Box 302924, Jamaica Plain, MA  02130-0053.

To send us any other feedback, please visit: https://www.jphs.org/contact