Last updated: December 7, 2021
HR&A Advisors, Inc. (“HR&A”), the operator of the National Broadband Resource Hub (“NBRH”) website, is committed to protecting the privacy and rights of our community members. This Privacy Policy is intended to make clear the ways that broabandhub.org (the “Hub,” “Website,” or “Site”) may collect, store, protect, and/or make use of your information. Your use of the Hub constitutes your acceptance of this Privacy Policy and your consent to the practices it describes. Please be advised that the practices described in this Privacy Policy apply only to information gathered online through the Hub. They do not apply to information that you may submit to us offline or to websites maintained by other companies or organizations to which we may link.
Personally Identifying Information: HR&A does not require users to provide personally identifying information in order to access the Website’s content. However, there are a number of circumstances in which you may provide us with your personal information. The following are the most common ways in which we collect your personal information:
In carrying out any of the above activities, you may provide your name, email, organization, or other personally identifying information. This information is maintained by HR&A in accordance with this privacy policy.
HR&A does not knowingly collect or maintain personal information from minors without the consent of a parent or guardian. If HR&A nevertheless discovers that it has received personally identifiable information from an individual who indicates that they are, or whom we otherwise have reason to believe is, under the age of 13, we will delete such information from its systems. Additionally, a child’s parent or legal guardian may request that the child’s information be corrected or deleted by contacting us at legal@broadbandhub.org.
Browsing Information: By visiting this site, you grant us permission to collect information automatically from your browsing that is not personally identifying. This information may include location, IP address, browser details, and similar non-identifying details that are often used to understand how visitors are using the website. For example, our servers may use “cookies” (a small data file) to track a user’s activity within our site to understand which site features are most popular. Cookies do not gather personal information such as email addresses.
Personally Identifying Information: If you choose to provide us with personally identifying information, we may use that information in connection with the purpose for which you submitted it (for example, to respond to your message) or to otherwise communicate with you about the Hub. We may combine information gathered from the Hub and information that we have received, gathered, or acquired from other sources (offline or from third parties) into a single user record. For example, if you provide your name and organization to us via our “Contact” form, then you create a Community Conversations account which includes your professional title, we may combine those pieces of information into a single record.
Browsing Information: HR&A uses browsing information to allow us to measure user trends (such as which domains refer users to our site), to provide personalized content where available, to help diagnose problems with our servers, to verify or enforce compliance with the policies governing our site and protect against misuse or unauthorized use of our website, to administer this website more effectively, and to gather broad geographic information about where users are accessing our site from. You can set your browser to refuse cookies, but this may limit your access to some features of the site.
Personally Identifying Information: We will not sell users’ personally identifying information to any third party, except that your information may be shared with the entities that we have partnered with to build and maintain the Hub: CTC Technology & Energy, Schmidt Futures, and the Ford Foundation. We will not otherwise share personally identifying information with any third party, except if required 1) to do so by law or in the good-faith belief that such action is necessary to comply with state and federal laws; 2) to respond to a court order, judicial or other government subpoena, or warrant in the manner required by the requesting entity; 3) to take appropriate or necessary action against liability or fraudulent, abusive or unlawful uses; or 4) to protect the integrity of our information technology systems.
We may occasionally engage third-party partners to perform functions such as marketing, analytics, website development, etc., on our behalf. These entities may gain access to data needed to perform their functions; to the extent such data includes personally identifying information, they are contractually obligated to maintain the confidentiality and security of such information and are restricted from using, selling, distributing, or altering the information in any way other than to provide the requested services to HR&A.
User-Generated Content: Please be aware that any information you share in public areas, such as message boards or feedback sections, becomes public, and therefore this privacy policy does not apply to any information you choose to make public. Please do not post any personal information that you expect to keep private.
Keeping your information safe is very important to us. HR&A maintains physical, electronic, and procedural safeguards to help protect personally identifiable information. However, no data transmission over the Internet can be guaranteed to be totally secure. We cannot ensure or warrant the security of any information that you send to us, and you do so at your own risk. We use reasonable precautions to keep your personally identifying information and browsing information secure and to only release browsing information to third parties in accordance with this policy, who we believe share our commitment to privacy. However, we are not responsible for any breach of security or for the actions of these parties.
Our website contains links to content that is hosted on other websites. Once you have used these links to leave our site, please note that we have no responsibility for those external sites. This privacy statement does not govern other sites. The inclusion of that link on this website does not mean that HR&A endorses that website, its content, or the organization to which it belongs.
The Hub is published in the United States and is subject to laws of the United States. If you are located in a country outside of the United States and voluntarily submit personal information to us, you thereby consent to the general use of such information as provided in this privacy policy and to the transfer of that information to, and/or storage of that information in, the United States.
From time to time, we may use customer information for new, unanticipated uses not previously disclosed in this privacy policy. If our information practices change at some time in the future we will post the policy changes to our site to notify you of these changes. If you are concerned about how your information is used, you should check back at our site periodically.
Please feel free to direct any questions or concerns regarding the privacy policy by contacting us at legal@broadbandhub.org. Please note “Privacy Policy” in the subject line of your email.
