Privacy
We at San Diego Mensa ("SDM") respect your privacy:
Our Website
When You Visit Our Website
Data bases? Cookies? Web beacons? Personally Identifiable Information? Not
with the SDM website! We at San Diego Mensa collect no information whatsoever about
your visit to our website, and we put nothing whatsoever onto your
computer. Of course, American Mensa hosts
our website, so you might want to check them out, too.
Yes, there are privacy considerations. More importantly, though, we're:
- lazy; and
- not really the übergeeks that everyone thinks we are.
What We Put On Our Website
Check out the Website Privacy
portion of our Standing Rules. In summary, our website has split areas:
- a password-protected area (available only to members of San
Diego Mensa); and
- an open area (available to anyone with Internet access);
and we operate a split privacy policy accordingly.
What We Put On Our Website: Events
Suppose that you are sponsoring an event, and that you tell us something
about yourself:
- your name;
- your e-mail address,
- a private home's street address (yours or anyone else's) where the event
is to take place;
- your work and/or home telephone number;
- your website (including a sub-site dedicated to the event);
- etc.
We assume that you want every member of San Diego Mensa to know all of
this information. We accordingly feel free to include all of it in the
password-protected area of the SDM website.
In the open area of our website, however, we will include only
your name and telephone number.
- An openly-accessible e-mail address attracts spam. We exclude
it from the open area of our website unless you tell us otherwise (presumably
because you have a good spam filter, and/or a high tolerance for spam).
- Junk-phone-callers generally hit the phone book instead of the Internet.
Please let us know if your phone number is unlisted, or if you
otherwise prefer that we not put your phone number onto the open area of our
website.
- Consider creating (and giving us the URL for) a website for the event, either free-standing or as a part of your
individual website, which you would like us to put in the open area of our
website. The
Webmaster will quite likely link to it, especially if you notify him in
addition to notifying the
Calendar Editor. The event's website can then provide as much or as little
information as you deem to be appropriate.
- If the event is in a public place (restaurant, park, etc.),
then (especially if you provide it to us!) we will quite likely also include,
in the open area of our website,
the street address of the event and any other available public information
(restaurant's phone number, map of how to get there, etc.).
The above is only the default rule for events. If you request
that either more or less information be provided about your event, whether in
the password-protected area or in the open area, then we will comply with your
request.
What We Put On Our Website: Directory
We do not publish directory-type information about our members on-line. We do
publish an annual (usually in August) off-line (paper) directory, delivered by
the US Postal Service to all members.
American Mensa does have an On-Line
Membership Directory (updated every night) of all members, including
members of San Diego Mensa. To access this directory, you'll need your Mensa member number and your American Mensa Password.
Our local officers are always available.
You
give up a little privacy when you run for office.
Some of our members (and friends who have been vouched for by a
member) have asked that we list their personal e-mail addresses and/or websites. If you want
your personal e-mail address and/or website to be openly published, then this is a good way
to do it. Have a good anti-spam filter! If you want your other
directory-type information to be openly published, then:
- put that "other
directory-type information" onto your personal website; and
- ask that we list your personal website on
our members/friends list.
It's easy to set up a personal website if you don't already have one:
- Your Internet Service Provider ("ISP") probably offers you a small
website for free (less than a megabyte, but plenty big enough for your
purposes).
- If your ISP doesn't offer one, then Tripod, GeoCities, and a bazillion other
organizations (check your favorite search engine) will give you a small website for free.
Well, you have to let them
post ads on it.
If you are a member (or a vouched-for friend) of San Diego Mensa, then your website
is welcome on our
website list, whether or not it includes "other directory-type
information".
What We Print In Our Newsletter
Our award-winning newsletter, the San Diego
MENSAN, is published in three editions.
- The Full edition contains everything. It is
delivered on-line only, for free, to all local members. An off-line
print/paper/USPS-mailed edition is also
available to local members for the (rather steep) cost of production.
- The Gazette edition contains the minimum required by
American Mensa regulations, and sometimes a little bit more. It is available off-line (print, paper,
USPS-mailed) for free to all local members who request it (and on-line to all
local members, even without request).
- The Public Gazette edition is the same as the Gazette
edition, except that it excludes information which has privacy concerns, such
as the street address of a member who is holding an event at his home.
Members-Only (Full and Gazette) Editions
The Full and Gazette editions are made available,
on a limited basis, to:
- all 650-to-850 members of San Diego Mensa;
- all roughly-a-hundred corporate subscribers, i.e., the newsletter exchange
with:
- other local groups of American Mensa;
- American Mensa itself; and
- Mensa International; and
- the less-than-a-dozen individual subscribers—Mensa members who are not
members of San Diego Mensa (perhaps of Orange County Mensa), but who are
interested in San Diego Mensa and who have paid a small fee to receive our
newsletter.
Information which is suitable for the password-protected area
of the website is also subject to inclusion into the Full and Gazette editions
of the newsletter. After all, the Full and Gazette editions of the newsletter are
also themselves published in the password-protected area of the website.
Public Gazette Edition
The Public Gazette edition is
made available, on an unlimited basis, to everyone.
It is:
- included in the open portion of our website;
- distributed by our Development Officer to libraries, universities, and any
other place he can think of which might harbor potential new members; and
- mailed to members at locations
where it is known that it will be read by non-members, so as to protect the
privacy of the members whose contact information appears in the other editions
of the MENSAN.
Only the information which is suitable for inclusion in the open
area of the website is subject to inclusion in the Public Gazette edition of the
newsletter.
E-mail Lists
San Diego Mensa sponsors several e-mail lists
with Yahoo!Groups.
- We don't sell or otherwise reveal your name or e-mail address to third
parties without your consent. Yahoo!Groups, however, has its own
privacy policy, complete
with opt-in and opt-out choices. Understand and accept its policy (and ours,
too, for that matter) before you join one of our lists.
- We consider an unsolicited invitation to join any of our e-mail lists to
be spam, and we don't do it.
- Yahoo!Groups makes it fairly easy for you to leave, or to limit your
participation in, any of our e-mail lists. We don't restrict such leaving or
limiting.
- As a service to the membership, we provide links to several
non-sponsored lists, on Yahoo!Groups and
elsewhere. You're on your own with regard to these non-sponsored lists, both
with respect to privacy and with respect to everything else. Some of them
(caveat emptor) have surprisingly reasonable policies.
Mistakes
Even our Christian members will tell you, "Only one Man is perfect, and
He was never an officer of San Diego Mensa."
If you think that this website includes
too much (or too little) information about you, then please send an e-mail to our Webmaster; except that:
- if you think that the on-line calendar
of recurring events includes too much (or too little) information
about you, then please send an e-mail to our On-Line Recurring-Events-Calendar
Editor, Dave
Bowles; and
- if you think that the on-line edition of our
newsletter includes too much (or too little) information about
you, then please send an e-mail to our Editor.
Exceptions
All of our privacy policies are off if:
- you appear to us to be doing something illegal; or
- we get hit with a subpoena or similar order:
- think "visit from the FBI"—but, seriously, how likely is that?
- yes, we'll notify you if both:
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