Queen's College Astronomers' Club 皇仁書院天文學會
16 July 2021
What do we mean by "personal information?"
For us, "personal information" means information which either directly identifies you (like your name, email address, or phone number) or can be reasonably linked or combined to identify you (like student number or IP address). We'll always tell you what personal information we’re collecting from you. See each form’s Privacy Notice or Privacy Statement for specific details.
Any information that falls outside this is "non-personal information."
If we store your personal information with information that is non-personal, we will consider the combination as personal information. If we remove all personal information from a set of data then the remaining is non-personal information.
How do we learn information about you?
We learn information about you when:
- you give it to us directly (e.g., when you sign up for membership);
- we collect it automatically through our products and services (e.g., when you email, instant-message or call us);
- someone else tells us information about you (e.g., when other entities refers you to us); or
- when we try to understand more about you based on information you've given to us (e.g., when we use your IP address and user behaviour to optimise our website experience).
What do we do with your information once we have it?
When you give us information, we will use it in the ways for which you've given us permission. Generally, we use your information to help us provide and improve our products and services for you.
For users in the EU, EEA, Switzerland, and California: see here for more information. There are apparently way more of you visiting this site than we expect, despite us being based in Hong Kong and the majority of us have yet to leave.
These regions have data protection laws that require us to specify the following:
Our Privacy Policy and product/activity specific privacy notices describe the purposes for which we process information about you and the categories of information we process. Queen's College Astronomers' Club does not sell personal data.
Our lawful bases for collecting and processing personal information under the European General Data Protection Regulation ("GDPR") include:
- Performing our contract with you: Registration for membership or application for joining our work team requires your agreement to the terms given by our executive committee. To provide the services described, such as getting in touch with you, we need to receive your name, class and class number, phone number, and email address, and sometimes additional information as well.
- Legitimate interests: We receive technical and interaction data of users, which may include IP addresses, to improve the experience, security and reliability of our services and prevent abuse, and to understand where people learn about the Club.
- Consent: Where we ask for your consent to process your information, you can always withdraw this consent. For minors under the age of 13, guardians of Queen's College students have consented to their dependent providing said dependent's personal information, and the use of their dependent's personal information by affiliate organisations of Queen's College according to the school's own privacy protection policies.
The following rights are granted under the GDPR and California Consumer Privacy Act ("CCPA"). Queen's College Astronomers' Club applies these rights to all users of our products/services, regardless of your location:
- The right to know what personal data is collected
- The right to know if personal data is being shared, and to whom
- The right to access your personal data
- The right to exercise your privacy rights without being discriminated against
If you have a question or concern, please contact us and we hope to resolve it for you.
When do we share your information with others?
- When we have asked and received your permission to share it.
- For processing or providing products and services to you, but only if those entities receiving your information are obligated to handle the data in ways that are approved by the Club.
- When we are fulfilling our mission of promoting astronomy and building bonds among brothers, directly or incidentally, we sometimes release information to make our products or services better. But when we do so, we will remove your personal information and try to disclose it in a way that minimizes the risk of you being re-identified.
- When the law requires it. We follow the law whenever we receive requests about you from a government or related to a lawsuit. We'll notify you when we're asked to hand over your personal information in this way unless we're legally prohibited from doing so. When we receive requests like this, we'll only release your personal information if we have a good faith belief that the law requires us to do so. Nothing in this policy is intended to limit any legal defenses or objections that you may have to a third party's request to disclose your information.
- When we believe it is necessary to prevent harm to you or someone else. We will only share your information in this way if we have a good faith belief that it is reasonably necessary to protect the rights, property or safety of you, our other users, Queen's College Astronomers' Club or the public.
- If our organizational structure or status changes (if we undergo a restructuring) we may pass your information to a successor or affiliate.
How do we store and protect your personal information?
We are committed to protecting your personal information once we have it. We implement physical, business and technical security measures. Despite our efforts, if we learn of a security breach, we'll notify you so that you can take appropriate protective steps.
We also don't want your personal information for any longer than we need it, so we only keep it long enough to do what we collected it for. Once we don't need it, we take steps to destroy it unless we are required by law to keep it longer.
What if we change this privacy policy or any of our privacy notices?
We may need to change this policy and our notices. The updates will be posted online. If the changes are substantive, we will announce the update through the Club's usual channels for such announcements such as social media posts or emails. Your continued use of the product or service after the effective date of such changes constitutes your acceptance of such changes. To make your review more convenient, we will post an effective date at the top of the page.
