Privacy Policy

Hellenic Initiative, Inc. Privacy Policy

Last updated: January 2021

Introduction

Hellenic Initiative, Inc. (“The Hellenic Initiative”, “we”, “our”, “us”) takes your privacy and the security of your Personal Information seriously. Please take a moment to read this Privacy Policy so that you understand your rights in relation to your Personal Information, and how we may collect, use and process your Personal Information.

This Privacy Policy sets out the basis in which we  may process or use the Personal Information we collect from you, or that you provide to us, in connection with your use of our website www.thehellenicinitiative.org (the “Site”), or when you connect with us by email or telephone, make a donation, participate in our events, buy items from us or otherwise interact with us. If you do not agree with this Privacy Policy in whole or in part, you should not access the Site or otherwise send us your Personal Information.

Who We Are

The Hellenic Initiative is a company established in the United States with its principal place of business located at 135 E. 57th Street, Floor 14, New York, NY, US.

We also have an office in Greece at 4 Vasilissis Sofias Ave · 106 72 Athens and, for the purpose of, and in accordance with, the General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”), this office acts as our data controller in relation to the Personal Information processed by this office. If you have any questions regarding this Privacy Policy, please email [email protected].

What Type Of Personal Information We Collect and How We Use It

The Personal Information that we may collect from you includes:

  • Information you provide: first and last name; home/business address; telephone number; email address; age; name of employer; occupation; donation amount; purchases made; and The Hellenic Initiative events you attend or are sign up for.
  • Technical Usage Information: When you visit our Site, we may also collect the information sent to us by your computer, mobile phone or other access device. This information includes your IP address; device information such as the identifier, name, and type of operating system; mobile network information; and standard web information, such as browser type and the pages you access on our Site.

We use Personal Information to:

  • identify you as a member; administer and provide services and customer support; personalize our services and Site to improve your experience; process donations; respond to your requests and inquiries; provide customer support and otherwise administer our activities. We do this because it is in our legitimate interest to be responsive to you and to ensure the proper functioning of our organization and events.
  • provide you with information and communicate with you about our products, services and activities; send you promotional and other marketing communications; sign you up for our newsletters and mailing list; contact you via telephone or email and communicate with you about, and administer your participation in, sweepstakes, surveys, events, programs, contests, promotions and other offers. We do this if you consent or have opted into these communications.
  • enforce our website terms and conditions; operate, evaluate, develop, manage and improve our business, including by operating, administering, analyzing and improving our Site, products and services and researching and developing new products and services; managing and evaluating the effectiveness of our communications; performing accounting, auditing, billing, reconciliation and collection activities and other internal functions; perform analytics (including market research, trend analysis, financial analysis, and anonymization of personal information); optimize our Site to ensure content from the Site is presented in the most effective manner for you and your device; monitor and analyze trends, usage and activity in connection with our Site and services to improve the Site; administer the Site, and for internal operations, in order to conduct troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, research, statistical and survey analysis; keep the Site safe and secure and protect against, identify and prevent safety and security issues, fraud and other criminal activity, claims and other liabilities; conduct investigations and comply with and enforce applicable legal requirements, relevant industry standards, and our policies and terms and measure and understand the effectiveness of the content we serve to you and others. We do this because it is in our legitimate interest to be responsive to you and to ensure the proper functioning and success of our organization.

Cookies

We use cookies to collect information about your browsing activities over time and across different websites following your use of our services. Cookies are text files that contain small amounts of information that we may store on your device when you use our Site. Cookies enable us to monitor website traffic and estimate our audience size and usage pattern as well as allowing us to store information about your preferences to allow us to customize our Site according to those preferences. They also help us improve our Site and deliver a more personalized service. Cookies may either be permanent (i.e., remaining on your device until you delete them) or temporary (i.e., remaining only until you close your browser). Most browsers permit you to reject or delete cookies.

If you choose to block cookies, you may not be able to use certain features on our Site and/or may be required to re-enter information more frequently to use certain services on the Site.

Certain web browsers allow you to instruct your browser to send Do Not Track (“DNT”) signals to websites you visit, informing those websites that you do not want your online activities to be tracked. At this time, our Site is not designed to respond to DNT signals or similar mechanisms from browsers.

You can find more information about cookies and how to manage them at http://www.allaboutcookies.org/.

We use Google Analytics, which is a web analytics tool that helps us understand how users engage with the Site. Like many services, Google Analytics uses first-party cookies to track user interactions, as in our case, where they are used to collect information about how users use our Site. This information is used to compile reports and to help us improve our Site. The reports disclose website trends without identifying individual visitors. You can opt out of Google Analytics without affecting how you visit our site – for more information on opting out of being tracked by Google Analytics across all websites you use, visit this Google page: https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.

Sharing your Personal Information

We do not sell, rent or lease your Personal Information to others except as described in this Privacy Policy and in a manner consistent with The Hellenic Initiative Vision and Mission Statement. We may share your Personal Information with certain Selected Recipients. These categories of Selected Recipients include:

  • affiliates, such as our other offices;
  • service providers, including, without limitation, data center providers, mailing providers, email and storage providers, document sharing and word processing providers, and event ticketing providers, located in the United States;
  • provided you have consented, marketing agencies located in the United States that require the information to select and serve relevant advertisements to you and others; and
  • analytics and search engine providers located in the United States that assist us in the improvement and optimization of our Site.

In accordance with, and as may be required by applicable law, before we share your Personal Information with a Selected Recipient, we enter into a legally binding agreement with such Selected Recipient that contains limitations on how such Selected Recipient may use, process, store or disclose your Personal Information.

In accordance with applicable law, we may disclose your Personal Information:

  • if we are required to do so by law or legal process (such as a court order or subpoena);
  • in response to requests by government agencies, such as law enforcement authorities;
  • to establish, exercise or defend our legal rights, including to enforce any agreements we may have with you;
  • when we believe disclosure is necessary or appropriate to prevent physical or other harm or financial loss;
  • in connection with an investigation of suspected or actual illegal activity; or
  • otherwise with your consent.

We may disclose your Personal Information to third parties in our legitimate business interests in the event that we:

  • sell, buy, transfer, merge, consolidate or re-organize any part(s) of our business, or merge with, acquire, or are acquired by, or form a joint venture or partner with, any other business, in which case we may disclose your Personal Information to any prospective buyer, new owner, or other third party involved in such change to our business; or
  • sell, buy or transfer any business or assets (whether as a result of divestiture, dissolution, liquidation, bankruptcy or otherwise), in which case we will disclose your Personal Information to the prospective seller or buyer of such business or assets.

Data Transfers and Storage

We may transfer, process and/or store your Personal Information to our affiliates, subsidiaries and other recipients in countries other than the country in which such Personal Information was originally collected in order to provide our services to you. Those countries may not have the same data protection laws as the country in which you initially provided your Personal Information but we will take all steps reasonably necessary to ensure that such Personal Information is treated securely and in accordance with this Privacy Policy.

Security of your Personal Information

The Hellenic Initiative uses secure systems and implements appropriate technical and organizational measures to safeguard your Personal Information and protect it against unauthorized or unlawful processing, accidental loss, destruction, or damage. While we take reasonable measures to protect your Personal Information, we cannot guarantee the security of your Personal Information transmitted on our Site or over email. You submit your Personal Information to us at your own risk and responsibility.

We may, from time to time, host links on our Site to and from the websites of our affiliates or third parties. If you follow a link to any of these websites, these websites will have their own privacy policies and we do not accept any responsibility or liability for these policies. Please check these policies before you submit any information to those websites. TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, THE HELLENIC INITIATIVE IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR THE INFORMATION PRACTICES OF ANY THIRD PARTIES THAT ARE NOT OWNED OR CONTROLLED BY US.

Retention of Personal Information

We will keep your Personal Information as follows:

  • Personal Information, including Technical Usage Information, collected through email communications will be retained for seven years;
  • Technical Usage Information will be retained for seven years;
  • location data will be retained seven years;
  • Personal Information collected in connection with your use of our Site will be retained seven years;
  • Personal Information collected in connection with your attendance at any of our events will be retained for seven years;
  • any credit card details which you may have provided in order to purchase a product or make a donation will be retained for two months after date on which the transaction has been processed; and
  • after you have terminated your use of our Site, we will store your Personal Information in an aggregated and anonymized format.

Your Rights

If your Personal Information is processed by our Greek office, in certain circumstances, you have the right:

  • to request access to your Personal Information that we possess;
  • to correct your Personal Information to the extent it is incomplete or inaccurate ;
  • to delete your Personal Information, for instance where you believe there is no reason for us to continue processing it;
  • to restrict the processing of your Personal Information;
  • to transfer your Personal Information, for instance where we process your Personal Information on the basis of your consent or on the basis that it is necessary for the performance of a contract, you will have the right to transfer such Personal Information that we possess for your own purposes in a structured, machine readable format;
  • to object certain data processing of your Personal Information, for instance, where we are processing your Personal Information for our own legitimate interests, or for the legitimate interests of a third party, you have the right to object to the way we use your Personal Information;
  • to object to any automated decision-making and profiling of Personal Information, for instance, you have a right not to be subject to automated decision-making in any way that adversely affects your legal rights (however we do not engage in these activities); and
  • to withdraw your consent to the data processing of your Personal Information, to the extent that our ability to conduct such data processing relies on your consent (g., marketing communications or advertisements, for which you have the ability to opt-out of receiving such communications). Withdrawing your consent means that we will stop processing your Personal Information, for which you had previously given us consent to use.

These rights may be limited, for example if fulfilling your request would reveal Personal Information about another person, or if you ask us to delete Personal Information which we are required by law to retain. These rights do not apply to processing by our New York office.

To exercise any of the rights in this section, please contact [email protected].

Children’s Personal Information

Our Site is intended for adults and is not directed to children. We do not knowingly collect Personal Information from children under the age of 13 or such other age as may be directed by applicable law. If we become aware that we have collected Personal Information from a child, we will promptly delete such Personal Information from our records.

Updates

This Privacy Policy may be updated periodically, in our discretion, to reflect changes in our privacy practices. The date referenced at the top of the Privacy Policy reflects that date on which this Privacy Policy was most recently updated. We encourage you to review this Privacy Policy periodically to ensure you are happy with our current privacy practices.

Privileges and Immunities

Nothing in or relating to this Privacy Policy or our Site shall be deemed a waiver of any of the privileges and immunities of The Hellenic Initiative.

Questions or Complaints

In the event that you wish to make a complaint about how we process your Personal Information, please contact us in the first instance by contacting [email protected]. and we will endeavor to deal with your request as soon as possible. This is without prejudice to your right to launch a claim with the data protection regulator in your country.