Terms of Service

In joining Xpressions or renewing your membership, you acknowledge, agree to and accept that:

• Xpressions is a volunteer run and membership run organization.
• Xpressions and its Board Members are committed to, and take every reasonable precaution to deliver a safe and secure environment for its members. All membership information is kept strictly confidential and all reasonable efforts are made to protect your information and ensure that the Xpressions website is safe and secure.
• The only mandatory information we require is your ‘preferred name’ and a valid email address. You will never be asked to provide your legal name, address or phone number unless you’re comfortable doing so. You may wish to provide additional information as per the membership application form but this isn’t mandatory. However, the more information you are able to provide, the better we can tailor your needs to suit you.
• Any information submitted by you is used EXCLUSIVELY for the purposes of managing the organization, and where permission is given, contacting you about Xpressions events. No information is shared or distributed to any other parties or without your express written permission.
• You agree to hold harmless the Xpressions Board Members for any inferred breach of confidentiality that may occur as a result of information shared either on the Xpressions website, in your membership area or in the course of managing and running the organization.
• You accept and hold harmless the Xpressions Board of Directors and all writers of any website article(s) that may be accessible to both the public and private areas of our web site. These mediums are used, in part, to inform and report on Xpressions events, and in doing so, Xpressions publishes photographs and “preferred” names of members.
• No photographs are to be taken of any member without first obtaining prior permission from that person. This also includes publishing of photos on the website or in any other media. Members are instructed to remain respectful at all times if a person does not wish to have their photograph taken.
• Despite strongly advocating seeking of permission from a person prior to taking their photograph, be aware that in the course of participating in Xpressions public sponsored events, general photography is permitted and you acknowledge and accept that the possibility that an image or likeness of yourself may appear in one of these mediums. Inclusion of photographs for any reason by the site administrators and authors will use the utmost discretion in the selection and publication of any image. If you find there is an image of you that you want removed, just let us know and we will endeavour to remove it promptly.
• In renewing your membership, you acknowledge and accept your likeness or image may appear in any medium. However, if you do see an image of yourself and wish to have it removed, please contact us through the site contact form or in the members area with the moderator.

Privacy Policy

Web published text and media

Our website address is: https://xpressions.org. Content published elsewhere will be credited appropriately, but we will not publish any content, members or the organizations’ editors, on other platforms or sites.

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. While we strive to keep all content only on this site, please be aware that we can not prevent the theft of images  by determined people or hackers. Post only what you are comfortable having public.

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

Suggested text: 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.

Who we share your data with

If you request a password reset, your IP address will be included in the reset email.

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.

Where your data is sent

Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service. We use captcha technology to prevent spam, and we use our own server mail system to allow emails.