Who we are
We are a collective of volunteers, organized by the Center for Artistic Activism and Universities Allied for Essential Medicines. Our website address is: https://freethevaccine.org.
What personal data we collect and why we collect it
Comments and Forms
When visitors leave comments on the site we collect the data shown in the comments form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection.
An anonymized string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.
Media
If you upload images to the website, you should avoid uploading images with embedded location data (EXIF GPS) included. Visitors to the website can download and extract any location data from images on the website.
Cookies
If you leave a comment on our site you may opt-in to saving your name, email address and website in cookies. These are for your convenience so that you do not have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment. These cookies will last for one year.
If you visit our login page, we will set a temporary cookie to determine if your browser accepts cookies. This cookie contains no personal data and is discarded when you close your browser.
When you log in, we will also set up several cookies to save your login information and your screen display choices. Login cookies last for two days, and screen options cookies last for a year. If you select “Remember Me”, your login will persist for two weeks. If you log out of your account, the login cookies will be removed.
If you edit or publish an article, an additional cookie will be saved in your browser. This cookie includes no personal data and simply indicates the post ID of the article you just edited. It expires after 1 day.
Embedded content from other websites
Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.
These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.
Analytics
We collect data from visitors in order to understand how people use the site (i.e. how many people visit via a mobile device, what countries they visit from) and make improvements. To collect and process this data, we use an installation of Matomo, a secure web analytics platform that we run on our own, private servers.
Usage data – When you visit our site, we will store: the website from which you visited us from, the parts of our site you visit, the date and duration of your visit, your anonymized IP address, information from the device (device type, operating system, screen resolution, language, country you are located in, and web browser type) you used during your visit, and more.
We process this usage data in Matomo Analytics for statistical purposes, to improve our site and to recognize and stop any misuse.
Who we share your data with
Applicant submissions are shared with Center for Artistic Activism and Universities Allied for Essential Medicines staff. We may add your address to our newsletter to keep you informed of progress. You can unsubscribe at any time.
How long we retain your data
If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognize and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.
For users that register on our website (if any), we also store the personal information they provide in their user profile. All users can see, edit, or delete their personal information at any time (except they cannot change their username). Website administrators can also see and edit that information.
For applicants, we’ll keep your data in our records in order to reach out to you, and to check demographic shifts with past and future participants. See below…
What rights you have over your data
If you have an account on this site, or have left comments, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.
For applicants, if you prefer us to delete your personal information (name, email address, etc.) please ask via our contact form.
Where we send your data
Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service.
For those who sign on in support of the Open COVID Pledge, your information is sent to the Universities Allied for Essential Medicines’ site.
We occasionally update data with our mailing list provider, Mailchimp.
Your contact information
Additional information
How we protect your data
The Center for Artistic Activism has chosen to be a member of the May First Movement Technology co-op and our website data are stored securely on their servers. Data kept on Center for Artistic Activism web servers is accessible only over secure, https connections. We restrict access to user data the Free the Vaccine for COVID-19 site to Center for Artistic Activism staff, Universities Allied for Essential Medicines staff, and select Free the Vaccine for COVID-19 collective members.
What data breach procedures we have in place
In addition to our data protection policies, Center for Artistic Activism has a password audit policy for staff to periodically check their accounts against known data breaches and change passwords if their accounts are included in a breach.
In the case of a potential data breach, all staff persons are encouraged to report any discovery or possibility of a breach. Once verified, our policy is to notify those affected within ten days.
What third parties we receive data from
We don’t receive data on users from third parties, such as advertisers.