The North Carolina Conference of The United Methodist Church, Southeastern Jurisdiction (“The Conference”) manages constituent databases, operates several websites including nccumc.org and nccumc.net, and manages email lists and user accounts. It is The Conference’s policy to protect your privacy regarding any information we collect.
Protection of Certain Personally-Identifying Information
The Conference discloses potentially personally-identifying and personally-identifying information only to those of its employees, contractors and affiliated organizations that (i) need to know that information in order to process it on The Conference’s behalf or to provide services available at The Conference’s websites, and (ii) that have agreed not to disclose it to others. Some of those employees, contractors and affiliated organizations may be located outside of your home country; by using The Conference’s websites, you consent to the transfer of such information to them. The Conference will not rent or sell potentially personally-identifying and personally-identifying information to anyone. Other than to its employees, contractors and affiliated organizations, as described above, The Conference discloses potentially personally-identifying and personally-identifying information only in response to a subpoena, court order or other governmental request, or when The Conference believes in good faith that disclosure is reasonably necessary to protect the property or rights of The Conference, third parties or the public at large. If you are a registered user of one or more of The Conference’s website(s) and have supplied your email address, The Conference may occasionally send you an email to tell you about new features, solicit your feedback, or just keep you up to date with what’s going on with The Conference and our various ministries and initiatives. If you send us a request (for example via a support email or one of our feedback mechanisms), we reserve the right to publish it to help us clarify or respond to your request or to help us support other users. The Conference takes all measures reasonably necessary to protect against the unauthorized access, use, alteration or destruction of potentially personally-identifying and personally-identifying information.
Email/User Accounts
When you sign up for an Email/User Account, or The Conference creates/assigns you an account, you are responsible for all content associated with the account. This account will be added to our constituent database.
Using this database, The Conference may occasionally send you an email to tell you about new features, solicit your feedback, or keep you up to date with what’s going on with The Conference and our various ministries and initiatives. The database may be divided into lists as appropriate, i.e., parish pastors may be separated from retired pastors.
Appropriate uses of the database will be deemed appropriate by the Communications Office, who shall compile the list and make necessary updates and additions. The Conference does not disclose personally-identifying information other than as described in this document.
Website Visitors
Like most website operators, The Conference collects non-personally-identifying information of the sort that web browsers and servers typically make available, such as the browser type, language preference, referring site, and the date and time of each visitor request. The Conference’s purpose in collecting non-personally identifying information is to understand better how The Conference’s visitors use its website(s).
The Conference also collects potentially personally-identifying information like Internet Protocol (IP) addresses for logged in users and for users leaving comments on nccumc.org and nccumc.net sites. The Conference only discloses logged in user and commenter IP addresses under the same circumstances that it uses and discloses personally-identifying information as described in this document, except that site commenter IP addresses are visible and disclosed to the administrators of the site where the comment was left.
Gathering of Personally-Identifying Information
Certain visitors to The Conference’s websites choose to interact with The Conference in ways that require The Conference to gather personally-identifying information. The amount and type of information that The Conference gathers depends on the nature of the interaction. For example, we ask visitors who sign up for a site at nccumc.net to provide a username and email address. Those who engage in transactions with The Conference – by making an online donation, for example – are asked to provide additional information, including as necessary the personal and financial information required to process those transactions. In each case, The Conference collects such information only insofar as is necessary or appropriate to fulfill the purpose of the visitor’s interaction with The Conference. The Conference does not disclose personally-identifying information other than as described in this document. And visitors can always refuse to supply personally-identifying information, with the caveat that it may prevent them from engaging in certain website-related activities.
Aggregated Statistics
The Conference may collect statistics about the behavior of visitors to its websites. For instance, The Conference may monitor the most popular sites on nccumc.org or advertise websites hosted on the nccumc.net Ramus system. The Conference may display this information publicly or provide it to others. However, The Conference does not disclose personally-identifying information other than as described in this document.
Cookies
A cookie is a string of information that a website stores on a visitor’s computer, and that the visitor’s browser provides to the website each time the visitor returns. The Conference uses cookies to help The Conference identify and track visitors, their usage of The Conference website(s), and their website access preferences. The Conference visitors who do not wish to have cookies placed on their computers should set their browsers to refuse cookies before using The Conference’s websites, with the drawback that certain features of The Conference’s websites may not function properly without the aid of cookies.
Privacy Policy Changes
Although most changes are likely to be minor, The Conference may change its Privacy Policy from time to time, and in The Conference’s sole discretion. The Conference encourages visitors to frequently check this page for any changes to its Privacy Policy. If you have an nccumc.org or nccumc.net account, you should also check your site’s dashboard for alerts to these changes. Your continued use of this site after any change in this Privacy Policy will constitute your acceptance of such change.