Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy was last updated on April 11, 2019 and is effective from April 11, 2019.

HomeGrid Forum (“HomeGrid Forum”, “we”, “us”, “our”) respects your privacy and is committed to protecting your personal information.

This privacy policy will inform visitors to our website (“website visitors”, “you”, “your”) about what data we collect when you visit our website (regardless of where you visit it from), and what we do with that data. This privacy policy does not include policies related to administrators of this website.

ABOUT US

Although HomeGrid Forum is headquartered in the US, HomeGrid Forum is a global membership organization driven by the collaboration and cooperation of its members, including our promoters, contributors, adopters and liaisons (“Members”).

Purpose of this privacy policy

This privacy policy aims to give you information on how HomeGrid Forum collects and processes personal information we get through this website (accessible through www.homegridforum.org or homegridforum.org).

HomeGrid Forum maintains a separate site (https://members.homegridforum.org/) for use by member representatives to access and contribute documents, calendar and mailing list information, and to join and leave committee groups and mail lists. That site has a separate Privacy Policy.

HomeGrid Forum collects information about our Member companies and their representatives through various means. Our policies related to this information can be found in our Member Data Collection and Privacy Policy.

Anyone logging in to this website as an administrator should contact the data privacy manager to understand what data is collected from logged in administrators and how it is used and retained. This website does use cookies for people who log in as website administrators.

This website is not intended for children and we do not knowingly collect information relating to children.

It is important that you read this privacy policy. Member representatives who log in to the member site should also read that privacy policy. We have no privacy policies other than this one, the member site policy, and the Member Data Collection and Privacy Policy.

Controller

HomeGrid Forum is the controller and responsible for personal information that we have collected through this website.

We have appointed a data privacy manager who is responsible for overseeing questions in relation to this privacy policy. If you have any questions about this privacy policy, including any requests to exercise your legal rights, please contact the data privacy manager using the details set out below.

Contact details

Our full details are:

Full name of legal entity: HomeGrid Forum
Contact person: Data Privacy Manager
Email address: privacy@homegridforum.org
Postal address: 3855 SW 153rd Drive, Beaverton, Oregon 97003 USA
Telephone number: +1 503-619-0679

Third-party links

This website includes links to third-party websites, plug-ins and applications not owned or operated by HomeGrid Forum. Clicking on those links or enabling those connections may allow third parties to collect or share information about you. We do not control these third-party websites and are not responsible for their privacy statements. When you leave our website, we encourage you to read the privacy policy of every website you visit.

Personal information collected through means other than this website

People representing HomeGrid Forum sometimes attend trade shows and receive contact information from people they talk to. HomeGrid Forum does not make such information available through this website.

We may receive personal information about you from various third parties and public sources as set out below:

  • User Contribution Data from Member representatives.
  • Contact and Identity Data from social media channels, including Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn if you connect with us on these channels.
  • Contact and Identity Data from our affiliate partners and sites, including Vital Technical Marketing, Inc., who power the Causeway membership platform.

INFORMATION WE COLLECT ABOUT YOU AND HOW IT IS COLLECTED

Information collected through means other than this website is described in the section above.

We have a Contact form which you can use to contact us and get more information. If you fill out that Contact form, we will collect the information you provide us through that form.

We maintain a log of IP addresses that visit our website and specific website pages. We make no attempt to match an IP address with any other personal identifying information. Our firewall plugin (that tracks IP addresses) does tell us the countries those IP addresses are associated with.

We do not collect any other information on website visitors.

Specifically:

  • We do not use cookies (except for logged in administrators of the website). We have checked (using various browsers) to make sure there are no cookies being reported by any browser.
  • We do not use any form of pixel tracking.
  • We do not use Google Analytics or any other means to analyze visits to our website.
  • We did not use a Facebook Software Development Kit to create any aspect of this website.

Following is specific information related to our website. This is provided because we are not expert enough to understand everything that may be in the WordPress Content Management System (CMS) software or any of the associated plugins we are using.

  • Website hosting provider: DreamHost (www.dreamhost.com)
  • Content Management System: WordPress (the latest release)
  • WordPress active plugins: Content Views, Disable Comments, Easy Table of Contents, Polylang (all cookies have been disabled and this will not remember language selection), Proxy Cache Purge, Smart Slider 3, TablePress, Very Simple Event List, Wordfence Security (logs IP addresses, sets cookies for logged in administrators), WPForms Lite.

HOW WE USE YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION

Information provided through our Contact form will be used to contact you and answer any questions you may have. You have the right to withdraw consent for us to contact you at any time by contacting us.

The IP address log is used to understand what regions of the world are attracting visitors to our website and to identify where attacks are originating from.

WHO WE SHARE YOUR INFORMATION WITH

Any information provided through the Contact form will be shared with Vital Technical Marketing, Inc. (providers of administrative services to HomeGrid Forum). We do not otherwise share the information we collect, unless you specifically request that we provide your contact information to certain Members or their representatives, or to any of our other suppliers or contractors. Our suppliers and contractors include Vital Technical Marketing, Inc. (providers of administrative services) and ProActive International PR (providers of marketing and PR services).

We require all third parties to respect the security of your personal information and to treat it in accordance with the law. We do not allow our third-party service providers to use your personal information for their own purposes and only permit them to process your personal information for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.

WHERE YOUR INFORMATION IS ACCESSED

Our website and database is based and hosted in the US. Any personal information you submit to us will be held here. Additionally, HomeGrid Forum is a global membership organization. Our Members are based all around the world and the personal information you provide may be accessed by our Members worldwide.

If you are based in the EU, this means your personal information may be transferred outside of the European Economic Area to another jurisdiction. Where this is the case and we are responsible for making such a transfer, we will ensure that these are made subject to appropriate safeguards as required by applicable data protection laws, to ensure that a similar degree of protection is afforded to your personal information. These will include the use of EU Commission approved standard contractual clauses; or transfers to countries deemed to provide an adequate level of protection for personal information by the European Commission; or where we use providers based in the US (such as Mail Chimp), we may transfer data to them if they are part of the Privacy Shield which requires them to provide similar protection to personal information between Europe and the US. You can obtain further information about the safeguards in place for your international transfers of personal information by contacting us.

HOW WE SECURE YOUR INFORMATION

We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal information from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorized way, altered or disclosed. In addition, we limit access to your personal information to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to know. They will only process your personal information on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality.

We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected personal information breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach where we are legally required to do so.

HOW LONG WE KEEP YOUR INFORMATION

We will only retain your personal information for as long as necessary to fulfill the purposes we collected it for.

If you wish for your information to be deleted completely, please contact us.

YOUR LEGAL RIGHTS

In certain circumstances you have rights under data protection laws in relation to the personal information we hold about you. You can request to:

  • access information held about you.
  • rectify any incorrect or incomplete information we hold about you. It is both in our interest and yours that any personal information we hold about you is accurate, complete and current. If the information we hold about you is inaccurate in any way, please contact us to have your personal information corrected.
  • delete, restrict or remove the data we hold about you.
  • transfer the data we hold about you to another party.
  • object to any further processing of your data.

If you wish to exercise any of the rights set out above, please contact us.

We will endeavor to respond to your requests within one month and free of charge. Please note that in respect of all these rights, we reserve the right to:

  • refuse your request based on the exemptions set out in the applicable data protection laws.
  • request for proof of your ID to process the request or request further information.
  • charge you a reasonable administrative fee for any repetitive, manifestly unfounded or excessive requests.

If we refuse your request to exercise these rights, we will give reasons for our refusal and allow you to challenge our decision.

If you have any concerns about how we handle your information, please contact us. If you are not satisfied after we’ve tried to resolve your issue, you’ll be entitled to lodge a complaint with the data protection regulator for your country of residence.