The Meta-Center | Chicago as well as the worldwide internet audience gears up to be GDPR compliant, please read on below for how we handle your data.  Please note that this is a addendum to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Service (ToS) for our E.U. customer & client base.  Regardless of this we have initiated these practices for all of our customers regardless of location.

Active date: May 24th, 2018 at 10:00am C.S.T.

Who we are

Our website address is: https://metacenterchicago.com

What personal data we collect and why we collect it

Comments

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.

Contact forms

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 have an account and you log in to this site, 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 tracing your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.

Analytics

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.

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.

To have you data deleted that is not held do to the aforementioned reasons (administrative, legal, security, etc.) please click HERE.

Where we send your data

Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service. Which services may be provide via a third party.

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What is GDPR?

Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service. Which services may be provide via a third party.

Based in the EU, active worldwide

The GDPR is a landmark piece of legislation in the EU that enshrines stronger data protection and digital privacy laws for EU citizens. Replacing the 1995 Data Protection Directive, the GDPR is an attempt to give internet users more of a say in how their data is used and mandates companies to adhere to strict guidelines on how it is collected, stored, and leveraged. Slated to come into law on May 25 2018, it stands to make a dramatic impact on a variety of international companies and services.

While all of this may seem a little complicated at first glance, the GDPR’s main purpose is to update international data protection laws for the 21st century. As it stands, countries are bound by laws created in the 1990s with individual EU countries all having their own privacy laws and mandates. Where the 1995 Data Protection Directive allowed for such nuance in different countries, the GDPR is a regulation, which means it is a hard law, not a minimum requirement. The GDPR will attempt to unify Europe’s digital data regulations under one banner to make operating within those countries as a data collector or processor more uniform.

Protections for the individual

Although the GDPR is likely to have the biggest day-to-day impact on the operations of corporations and online businesses, its main purpose is to protect internet users themselves. As part of the GDPR’s implementation, EU citizens will have a number of new powerful rights when it comes to their online information. That data can be as public as their name, or as personal as their medical information. If a company or other online entity collects it or processed that information in any capacity, they are bound to protect it and offer a number of services to the person that data is about.