HCI INTERNATIONAL 2021 CONFERENCE PRIVACY POLICY

Last Updated 9 July 2021

 

This Privacy Policy (hereinafter referred to as "Policy") of the HCI International 2021 Conference (hereinafter referred to as "Conference") explains the practices regarding the collection of personal information when you use the Conference website and services. This Policy also explains practices regarding personal information obtained from sources other than the Conference website, such as written, verbal and email communications.

Please read this Policy carefully before submitting any personal information to the Conference. Also, please note that this Policy does not apply to our processing of personal information on behalf of, and subject to the instructions of, third parties such as the Conference venue, appointed hotels, Conference Proceedings Publishers and other service providers, including those used for the physical / virtual / hybrid hosting of the event, partners involved in the promotion of the conference, or authors and conference participants.

Click on one of the links below to visit a specific section:

 

Collection of Personal Information

 

At every author or conference participant interaction, the Conference may collect personal information. In addition to any other information you may choose to provide to us, collected personal information may include your title, name, affiliation and contact address(es), date of arrival and departure, and details about hotel and airline itineraries you book. We may also record details on joint travelers, including their names and ages.

In addition, we collect other personal information when you interact with the Conference in various ways, such as:

When you register for an Account at the Conference Management System (hereinafter referred to as "CMS"), we also ask you to provide your email address (in lieu of a user name) and a password (stored encrypted). If you choose to submit a proposal for a meeting or an event (e.g., tutorial presentation), we record meeting and event specifications, the date of the event, and, for corporate events, information on your organization (name, billing details).

If you choose to participate to the Conference Exhibition, we record booth specifications and, for corporate participations, information on your organization (name, billing details).

If you are invited to organize an event in the context of the Conference (e.g. invited paper session), a website feature allows you to send an electronic invitation to other participants. If you choose to do so, we will ask you for the recipient's name and email address. By using this feature, you should be aware that the data you enter for these invitations are personal information which will be treated according to this Policy.

If you choose to attend the virtual HCII2021 Conference you will be asked to also provide your name and email address and in some cases a password (stored encrypted).

 

How the Conference Uses Your Collected Personal Information

 

We use your personal information to provide Conference services such as: paper, poster and tutorial proposals submission, proposals' review and notification of the outcome, collection of the camera ready versions and publication of the accepted proposals, registration for the Conference, participation in a tutorial, participation in the Exhibition of the Conference, publication of the Conference program, access to the virtual Conference and other transactions. We also use the personal information to provide you with information about meeting and event planning and access to specific account information for administrative purposes. In addition, we may use the information to improve the Conference services, as well as the performance and usability of the Conference website. We also use details to send to you newsletters about the Conference, promotions of Conference events and featured specials, and to conduct online surveys about the Conference, and other promotional operations for this event or future events, via email, or postal mail. Any photos we may collect will only be used for the improvement of our services, including the announcement of award winners, and will not be shared with third parties, unless you explicitly provide your consent. For video and audio recordings as well as web streaming services please see below. In any case, we will use your personal data only to the extent that is necessary to provide our services, including those related to the virtual Conference.

 

How the Conference Shares Personal Information

 

The Conference in order to provide all the required services may share your personal information with other service providers that may be located in countries outside of your own. Although the data protection laws of these various countries may not be as comprehensive as those in your own country, the Conference will take appropriate steps to ensure that your personal information is handled as described in this Policy. The Conference does not sell nor rent your personal information.

Hotel / Convention venue: We may share personal information with Washington Hilton Hotel, 1919 Connecticut Ave NW, Washington, DC 20009, USA. The Hotel / Convention venue is the party responsible for the management of the jointly used personal information.

Special Events or Meetings: If during the Conference you participate in a special event or meeting, information collected for meeting and event planning may be shared with the organizers of those meetings and events, and, where appropriate, conference participants who organize or participate in the meeting or event.

Service Providers: We rely on service providers to provide certain products and services, such as credit card billing, registration services, hosting the virtual Conference, and administering some of the operations of the Conference, providing services in connection with the Conference website, including communicating transactional materials via email and direct mail, and processing credit card transactions. The Conference will disclose the necessary personal information to service providers. If you register for the Conference, billing information will be shared with the credit card provider and if you use a corporate credit card, possibly, your employer.

Conference Proceedings: All papers and posters submitted and accepted for presentation during the Conference, will be also published by Springer. All required information necessary for the publication of the papers and posters will be shared with the publisher.

Conference Program: About six months before the Conference an Advance Program will be published on the website, freely available, and may also appear as a printed version, which will contain all papers selected for presentation during the Conference, together with author and co-author(s) names, followed by organization name and country. About one month before the Conference the final program will be published both on the website, freely available, and in a printed version including papers, posters and tutorials together with satellite events, also containing author and co-author names, tutorial presenters’ names, and Exhibitors’ names, all followed by organization names and countries.

Other: In addition, the Conference may disclose personal information, with or without prior notice to you, in order to: (i) comply with applicable laws; (ii) respond to governmental inquiries or requests from public authorities; (iii) comply with legal processes; (iv) protect the rights, privacy, safety or property of the Conference, website visitors, authors, conference participants, employees or the public; (v) pursue available remedies or limit the damages that the Conference may sustain; (vi) enforce our Terms and Conditions; and (vii) respond to an emergency.

 

PROCESSING OF PERSONAL INFORMATION FOR THE PHYSICAL / VIRTUAL / HYBRID HOSTING OF HCII2021 CONFERENCE

 

Due to the unprecedented circumstances arising from the coronavirus pandemic, you will be able to attend the HCII 2021 Conference only virtually. By entering the CMS to attend the HCI International 2021 virtual conference, you are granting HCII 2021 permission for the recording of your presence and your presentation, i.e. your image, voice, comments, questions and answers, content of any form, etc. during sessions.

Paper presentattions
In particular, the presentation of submitted papers will be audio and video recorded and/or live broadcasted through a third-party platform (Webex by Cisco) during sessions.
If you do not wish to be recorded, you can mute your microphone, turn-off your webcam or choose not to contribute. Your are strongly advised to remove all content on your screen that is not required.
The live operation of the sessions, the recordings and the later viewing will be made via a third-party platform (Webex by Cisco) and will be available to all registered conference participants after their login to the CMS and the subsequent redirection to that platform.

Poster presentattions
The presentation of accepted posters, with poster images and prerecorded video (optional), will be broadcast through CMS and will be available to all registered conference participants after their login to the CMS.

Tutorials
Registered Tutorial participants, after their login to the CMS, will be redirected to a third-party platform (Webex by Cisco), for a live presentation (there will be no recording). Tutors may also request Tutorial participants to use additional software tools in support of their presentation.

General
Please note that only information, which is relevant for your presentation, should be displayed on your screen.
HCII 2021 disclaims any responsibility or liability related to user content and the behavior of the participants. It is important to respect the intellectual-property rights of the presenters by refraining from making recordings from your device or taking screen shots. If you are interested in the content, feel free to reach out directly to the contributor. Any type of infringement of intellectual property rights is prohibited (please refer to Terms and Conditions).

For more information regarding the protection of personal data by the Webex platform please read the Cisco Privacy Statement.

 

Personal Information from Children

 

We do not knowingly collect personal information from individuals under 16 years of age. As a parent or legal guardian, please do not to allow your children to submit personal information without your permission.

 

Sensitive Information

 

The term "sensitive information" refers to information related to your racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religion or other beliefs, health, sexual orientation, criminal background or trade union membership. We do not generally collect sensitive information unless you provide your explicit consent. We may use health data provided by you exclusively to serve you better, protect your vital interests and meet your particular needs.

 

Collection of Non-Personal Information

 

When you visit and interact with the Conference website and services, including those related to the virtual attendance of the Conference, the Conference and third parties with whom the Conference has contracted to provide services to the Conference, may collect non-personal information (for example, a catalog of the website pages you visit).

As with many other sites, our website uses "cookies" or other technologies for a number of purposes, such as to allow our websites and services to function correctly and to help us deliver content specific to your interests (please refer to the section “How we use our cookies”). Cookies, by themselves, cannot be used to disclose your individual identity. This information identifies your browser, but not you, to our servers when you visit our website.

Because non-personal information does not personally identify you, we may use or disclose such information for any purpose related to the provision of Conference services, including those related to the virtual Conference. In some instances, we may combine non-personal information with personal information (such as embedding email addresses in cookies). If we do combine any non-personal information with personal information, the combined information will be treated by us as personal information in accordance with this Policy.

 

HOW WE USE OUR COOKIES

 

Cookies are actually a small data file sent from a server to your web browser or mobile device that is stored on your browser cache or mobile device. There are ways you can control your cookies preferences and set whether you want to accept or reject cookies (see what your options are below).
We use these tracking technologies for a few general purposes like:

  • To allow our website and services to function correctly.
  • To understand how our website and services are functioning and to inform any improvements in performance and our services.
  • To enhance your experience on our sites and provide functionality that means for example you don’t have to re-enter your details each time you engage with our site or to record what purchases you’ve made on our site.
  • To help us deliver content specific to your interests.
  • To process your requests.

You can change your web browser's settings to reflect your cookie preferences. Use these links to find out more information about cookie settings for these common browsers:

  1. Chrome
  2. Firefox
  3. Internet Explorer
  4. Safari

Just keep in mind that if you disable cookies there might be some functionality that will not work or not operate correctly on our websites and services.

 

Links to Third-Party Websites

 

Our website may contain links to third parties' websites. Please note that we are not responsible for the collection, use, maintenance, sharing, or disclosure of data and information by such third parties. If you provide information on third party websites, the privacy policy and terms of service on those sites are applicable. We encourage you to read the privacy policies of websites that you visit before submitting personal information. The same applies for the Third Party Platform used for the virtual hosting of the Conference.

 

HOW TO ACCESS, CHANGE OR ERASE YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION

 

If you have registered for a CMS Account, the information you provided to us at the time of registration may be accessed, reviewed and updated at any time by signing in using your Username and Password and clicking on your name on the top right corner. Please also note that a CMS account can also be created following an invitation for a special event or paper session.

To the extent required by applicable law, you have the right to ask for a copy of the information that we maintain about you and, where appropriate, request that we update, correct, and/or suppress personal information about you that we maintain in our active database. We may not provide you with a copy of your personal information if this concerns other individuals or we have another lawful reason to withhold that information.

In certain circumstances, you may ask for your personal information to be removed from CMS. Unless there is a reason that the law allows us to use your personal information for longer, we will make all reasonable efforts to comply with your request.

In the above situations, we may only process your personal information, whilst its processing is restricted, if we have your consent or are legally permitted to do so, for example for storage purposes, to protect the rights of another individual or company or in connection with legal proceedings.

We will make all required updates, changes and deletions within the time specified by the applicable law. Such requests must be submitted by email to: privacy@hcii2021.org or in writing to the following postal address: World Conference Services Inc, 37-14 Astoria Blvd, Astoria, NY 11103, USA. To protect your confidentiality, we can only respond to such requests to the email address that you have registered or otherwise provided to us. Please remember that if you make such a request, we may not be able to provide you with the same quality and variety of services to which you are accustomed.

In addition, in some circumstances and based on applicable law, you may request that we cease sharing personal information about you with our business partners or that the Conference ceases the use of personal information about you, by sending an email to: privacy@hcii2021.org or in writing to the following postal address:

World Conference Services Inc, 37-14 Astoria Blvd, Astoria, NY 11103, USA. We will seek to honor those requests consistently with applicable law.

 

Protecting Personal Information

 

The Conference will take appropriate measures to: (i) protect personal information collected against unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration or destruction, and (ii) keep personal information accurate and up-to-date, consistent with applicable law.

We also seek to require our partners and service providers to exercise reasonable efforts to maintain the confidentiality of personal information about you. For online transactions, we use technology to protect the personal information that you transmit to us via our website. Unfortunately, however, no security system or system of transmitting data over the Internet can be guaranteed to be entirely secure. In case that we notice any breach of security, concerning your personal data, we will notify you as soon as reasonably feasible.

For your own privacy protection, we encourage you not to include sensitive personal information in any emails that you may send to us. Please do not send credit card numbers or any sensitive personal information to us via email.

 

Retaining Personal Information

 

We retain personal information about you for the period necessary to fulfill the purposes outlined in this Policy, which cannot exceed 5 years, unless a longer retention period is required or permitted by applicable law.

 

Opt Out Option

 

If you have given us your contact information (postal address, fax number, email address or phone number), we may want to inform you about our services or invite you to events typically by email, or very rarely by telephone or post.

If you prefer not to receive Conference promotional materials from us, you may change your preferences at any time by: (i) sending us an email to: privacy@hcii2021.org or (ii) using the unsubscribe procedure in the email you receive from us.

We will update your preferences as soon as reasonably practical.

Please note, however, that if you "opt out" as described above, we will not be able to remove your personal information from the databases of business partners with which we have already shared your personal information (i.e., to which we have already provided your personal information as of the date of your opt-out request).

 

Policy Modifications

 

We may modify this Policy from time to time. When we make material changes to this policy we will post the revised policy on the homepage of our website. You can tell when this Policy was last updated by looking at the date at the top of the Policy. Any changes to our Policy will become effective upon posting of the revised Policy on the website. Use of the website following such changes constitutes your acceptance of the revised Policy then in effect.

 

Additional Information

 

If you have any questions or you need additional information about this Policy or how the HCI International 2021 Conference processes your personal information, please contact us by email to: privacy@hcii2021.org