Privacy Policy

We take privacy seriously. This Privacy Policy is incorporated into our Terms Agreement and therefore is part of that which governs your use of the FactoryoftheFuture.org website (“Site”). By using this Site, you are agreeing to comply with and be bound by the following Privacy Policy, which together with our Term Agreement and Community Guidelines, governs the relationship between you and Factory of the Future, LLC, owner and provider of the Site. The terms “Provider” or “us” or “we” or “our” refer to the owner of the Site. The terms “you” or “your” refers to any user or viewer of the Site. This Privacy Policy describes the policies and procedures of FactoryoftheFuture.org on the collection, use and disclosure of your information when you use the FactoryoftheFuture.org Service, (hereafter referred to as “Service”.)

Care and Respect:

FactoryoftheFuture.org cares about you, whether you are a member or just a visitor, we value and respect you. To show you our care and respect, we strive to have straight-forward policies, written in plain English.

What We Do:

FactoryoftheFuture.org is a collaboration platform for people interested in manufacturing.

Please read this Privacy Policy carefully.

Your use will constitute your agreement to this policy. If you do not agree with this policy, or our Terms Agreement, Community Guidelines, you are not permitted to use our Service.

Overview:

We do not sell, trade, or otherwise transfer to outside parties your personally identifiable information, with the following exceptions. We may allow access to personally identifiable information by:

1) Third party contractors who assist us in providing customer service, operating our website, or conducting our business. Those parties must all agree and sign a Confidentiality and Non-disclosure agreement that states that they will keep information confidential. (You can read more on this below in the “How We Use Information” section.)

2) We may also release your information when we believe release is appropriate to comply with the law, enforce our site policies, or protect ours or other’s rights, property, or safety.

3) We may, at some point in the future, sell or transfer the business, in part or in whole to new owners. In that case, we will continue to make our user’s privacy a top priority in the sale or transfer. (You can read more about this in the “Changes in our Business” section below.)

Also, anonymous, aggregated, non-personally identifiable information that cannot be linked back to an individual user may be made available to third parties. (You can read more on this below the section: “Other Information We Collect”.)

Personal Information We Collect:

We collect and store the information you provide to us on the website forms you submit, such as when you become a user of our site, place an order, subscribe to our newsletter, respond to a survey or fill out a form. We understand that by giving us your personal information, you trust us to protect it and it is our priority to do so.  If you would like to update your Member Profile, please visit Edit Member Profile and Account Settings page.  If you would like us to delete the Personal Information we have collected, you may opt out at any time by telling us via the Contact Us form.

Other Information We Collect:

Anonymous, aggregated information that cannot be linked back to an individual user may be made available to third parties. As with most websites, we can see the IP address of your computer or mobile device; we can see what URL you came from and where you go after you leave our site. Also, advertisers receive the URL of the page that you are on when you click on an ad. We may also receive location data passed to us from third-party services or GPS-enabled devices. You can turn off real-time location sharing in the device’s settings, provided your device allows you to do this. We can also collect attributes such as the operating system, hardware version, and the type of mobile device you are using, etc. To continuously improve our offerings, we collect browsing information, such as the types of content you view or engage with or the frequency and duration of your activities.

We may use Flash technologies, and other similar technologies, to deliver or communicate with cookies and track your use of the Service. We also may include clear GIFs in HTML-based emails sent to our users to determine whether the message has been opened. As we adopt additional technology, we may also gather additional information through other methods.

How We Use Information:

If you choose to use our invitation service to invite a friend to the Service, we will ask you for that person’s email address and automatically send an email invitation. You may also use a contact importer tool to help you upload your friends’ email addresses to invite friends to the Service.

Vendors, service providers and other partners. We may allow vendors, service providers, and other partners who globally support our business, such as providing technical infrastructure services, analyzing how our Services are used, measuring the effectiveness of ads and services, providing customer service, facilitating payments, to access and use your information to provide a service to us. These providers must adhere to strict confidentiality obligations in a way that is consistent with this Privacy Policy and the agreements we enter into with them.

Transactions that are handled by third-parties, such as credit card processing, are between the User and the third-party, and we are not responsible and do not warrantee such transactions. The User should refer to the third-party’s privacy policy and terms should he or she have any questions.

We may allow third parties to serve advertisements on the Service and on third-party services and use other third parties to help us collect and analyze information about your use of the Service, generate aggregate site usage statistics and provide content sharing services to support the Service. These third parties may also use cookies and similar technologies to collect similar non-personal information about your use of the Service. We do not control the third parties’ use of such technologies and their use is governed by those parties’ privacy policies.

We do not respond to “do not track” signals, and we do not control whether third parties do. For more information about third-party ad networks that use cookies and the other technologies discussed above, and to opt-out of their tailoring of ads on third-party sites based on this information, see http://www.networkadvertising.org/managing/opt_out.asp and http://www.aboutads.info/consumers.

You Agree to be Careful with Your Own Information:

You understand that by submitting anything to the website, we and others may be able to identify you, even if you are just a visitor commenting on an article. Posts and comments you make are not private. Nearly everything on the Internet can be tracked, if someone really wants to track it, so by using this website, you agree to be careful with your own information and what you submit. Your questions, answers, and other contributions on the Site, and metadata about them (such as when you posted them), are publicly viewable on the Site, along with your name (unless the Site permits you to post anonymously). This information may be searched by search engines and be republished elsewhere on the Web. You should not share trade secrets or confidential information. We are not responsible for the information you choose to submit.

When you 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.

Uploading 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.

Member’s Only Section:

Our Member section is in a secure section of our website. The Member directory is only available to be seen by other Members.

Member Profile:

When you set up your Member profile, we offer options of what information you would like to be seen by other Members. You can change these settings at any time.

Security:

We use safeguards designed to protect your personal information including commercially reasonable physical, managerial, and technical safeguards to preserve the integrity and security of your personal information. We cannot, however, ensure or warrant the security of any information you transmit to us or guarantee that your information on the Service may not be accessed, disclosed, altered, or destroyed by breach of any of our physical, technical, or managerial safeguards.

Access to your data is password-protected, and data such as credit card information, is processed through a third-party payment provider and is not kept by us. After a transaction, your credit card information will NOT be stored on our servers. All supplied sensitive/credit information is transmitted via Secure Socket Layer (SSL) technology and then encrypted into our Payment gateway provider’s database.

FactoryoftheFuture.org is hosted on GreenGeeks Web Hosting and is PCI compliant. For more information on GreenGeeks security information can be seen at https://www.greengeeks.com/platform/

Please note, the Internet is not a 100% secure environment, so we cannot guarantee the security of any information. Emails, instant messaging, and similar means of communication are not encrypted, and we strongly advise you not to communicate any confidential information through these means. It is your responsibility to protect your login information and use a strong password.

What do we use your information for?

Any of the information we collect from you may be used in one of the following ways:

To improve customer service. Your information helps us to more effectively respond to your customer service requests and support needs. Our Customers Service Team may need to access your Membership account information to assist you. All our service providers are asked to sign a legally binding Confidentiality and Non-disclosure Agreement, and will only be able to see the information needed to assist you with the particular issue you contact us about.

Making our Service better. We continually strive to improve our website based on the information and feedback we receive from you. When you are on FactoryoftheFuture.org, we collect Non-Personally Identifiable Information, such as: when you click on an ad, participate in surveys, share articles, etc. We do not share information that personally identifies you (personally identifiable information is information like name or email address that can by itself be used to contact you or identifies who you are.)

Advertising. We may also share aggregated Non-Personally Identifiable Information with Advertisers, only after the advertiser has agreed to abide by our advertiser guidelines.

Analytics:

We use a tool called Google Analytics to help us understand how users interact with our website. It tells us aggregate usage and traffic information, such as how the site was accessed, how long visitors stayed, and the number of first-time visitors to the site. By knowing how people use the site, we can make it better. To learn more about Google Analytics and how it uses your data, please visit http://www.google.com/analytics/learn/privacy.html.

Social Media Sharing:

We use a social media sharing widget that allows you to share our content on your other social media accounts, including LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+, or Facebook, but we will not connect to the servers of those services, share information with those services, or post on your behalf.

What Information We May Send You:

To serve you better, we may send you: news about new features, service communications, content which you have requested, or promotional offers. Your communications preferences can be noted in your Member Profile. The email address you provide for order processing may be used to send you information and updates pertaining to your order, in addition to receiving occasional company news, updates, related product or service information, etc. Note: If at any time you would like to unsubscribe from receiving future emails, we include detailed unsubscribe instructions at the bottom of each email.

Cookies:

Cookies are small files that a site or its service provider transfers to your computers hard drive through your Web browser (if you allow) that enables the sites or service providers systems to recognize your browser and capture and remember certain information. We use technologies, such as cookies to help your computer remember your log-in information, note which type of device you are using (cell phone vs. laptop, for example,) to improve your experience, increase security, measure use and effectiveness of our Services, and serve advertising. You have control over your cookies settings in your browser, but by disabling Cookies, some features of the Service may not function properly. By using this website, you give us permission to use cookies.

People Under 16 years old:

FactoryoftheFuture.org is not aimed at children, and the United States government has put limits on our ability to accept users under a certain age through the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998. Individuals under the age of 16 may not create an account with us. If you, or any other person or entity, believe someone 16 or younger is using our site without parental consent, please contact us immediately.  Children under 13 are prohibited from creating an account on this website.

External Links and Embedded Content:

We are not responsible for the practices of websites linked to or from FactoryoftheFuture.org, nor the information or content contained therein. Please remember that upon leaving our website, our Privacy Policy is no longer in effect.

Pages 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.

Changes in our Business:

As we develop our business, we may buy or sell assets or business offerings. Customer, email, and visitor information is generally one of the transferred business assets in these types of transactions. We may also transfer or assign such information in the course of corporate divestitures, mergers, etc.  In all these cases, we will continue to make our user’s privacy a top priority in the sale or transfer.

Changing or Removing Your Information:

You have a right to view, modify, correct, or delete your personal information. You are free to end your Membership or opt out of getting our marketing material at any time. After you have notified us of your desire to end your membership, we will endeavor to delete all your personal information from our system within 5 business days. Please note: Information you have shared with others or that others have copied may remain visible after you have closed your account or deleted the information from your own profile. We will retain your data if it is necessary to comply with legal obligations, meet regulatory requirements, resolve disputes, prevent fraud and abuse, or enforce this agreement. If there is a legal request or obligation, governmental investigation, or investigations concerning possible violations of our terms or policies, or to otherwise prevent harm, information about you may be retained for an extended period of time. We may also retain information from accounts disabled for violations of our terms to prevent repeat abuse or other violations of our terms.

International Users:

We are a Connecticut-based, US company. All personal information we collect from our international users is transferred to the United States and processed according to US law.

Compliance with Law Enforcement:

We may disclose your information in certain emergency circumstances. We may also disclose your information when we believe it’s necessary to prevent imminent and serious bodily harm to a person; to address fraud, security, or spam; or to protect our rights or property or as necessary to comply with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and other applicable laws.

Modifications:

We may modify this Privacy Policy. If we make substantial changes, we will, if required by law, notify you using the electronic means you have provided to us. However, even if you do not receive the notice, please note that it is ultimately your responsibility to review this Privacy Policy periodically. If any changes are not to your liking, please feel free to contact us, we take your concerns seriously and will listen. If our policies do not meet with your satisfaction, you have the right to close your account. By continuing to use our Service after we publish or communicate a notice about any changes to this Privacy Policy, you are agreeing to the changes.

Your Consent

By using our site, you consent to our online privacy policy.

If you have any concerns about this or other policies of FactoryoftheFuture.org, please feel free to Contact Us.