Privacy Policy

At the Middle East Democracy Center (MEDC), your privacy both offline and online is very important to us. Because we gather certain types of information from our users, we want to make clear our policy and the terms and conditions surrounding the capture and use of that information. This privacy statement discloses what information we gather and how we use it, all of which comply with common web standards.

MEDC may work with selected third parties to provide certain features on our site such as social sharing functions. This privacy policy does not govern any information you choose to provide directly to such third parties. Such third parties have their own privacy policies that govern how they may collect, use, and disclose the information that you provide.

Who we are

The Middle East Democracy Center (MEDC) is a U.S.-based nonprofit and nonpartisan advocacy organization that works with the people of the Middle East and North Africa to challenge authoritarian systems, free the unjustly detained, and advocate for U.S. policies that protect human rights and advance a bold vision for democracy. Click here to find out more about our activities.

Information we gather and track

MEDC gathers two types of information about users:

• Information that users provide through optional, voluntary submissions. These include voluntary submissions to receive our electronic newsletters, to attend our events, to email a friend, and from participation in surveys.
• Information MEDC gathers through aggregated tracking information derived mainly by tallying page views throughout our sites. This information allows us to better tailor our content to readers’ needs and to help us better understand the demographics of our audience. Under no circumstances does MEDC divulge any information about an individual user to a third party.

MEDC gathers user information in the following processes:

Optional Voluntary Information

We offer the following services, which require some type of voluntary submission of personal information by users:

1. Emails
   Our email outreach is permission based. If you received a mailing from us, our records indicate that (a) you have expressly shared this address for the purpose of receiving information in the future (“opt-in”), or (b) you have registered or otherwise have an existing relationship with us. We respect your time and attention by controlling the frequency of our mailings.
   
   We may periodically send promotional email about new publication releases or events which we think you may find interesting using the email address which you have provided.
   
   Each email sent contains an easy way for you to cease receiving email from us. If you wish to do this, simply navigate to the bottom of any email and either click on the manage preferences link to update which emails newsletters you receive, click the unsubscribe link to stop receiving emails entirely, or contact media@mideastdc.org with your request.
   
   Our site users can choose to electronically forward a page to someone else by clicking “e-mail this to a friend”. The user must provide their email address, as well as that of the recipient. This information is used only in the case of transmission errors and, of course, to let the recipient know who sent the email. The information is not used for any other purpose.

    

2. Events
   Site users who register to view or attend MEDC events may be asked to include their name, email address, and affiliation as part of the event registration process. For events that MEDC co-hosts with another organization, a list of event registrants may be shared with the co-hosting organization. At times, questions from the audience are solicited and collected through social media, email, and video platforms (e.g., Zoom), in which case user identifying information may be shared with event organizers and panel members.

    

3. Surveys
   MEDC may occasionally conduct user surveys to better target our content to our audience. We may sometimes share the aggregated demographic information in these surveys with our board of directors. We never share any of this information about specific individuals with any third party.

    

4. Job Applications
   If you apply for a job through our website or a third party platform, you will be asked for personal information including your name, contact information, and educational and work history.

    

5. Donations
   If you choose to make a donation through the website, we request certain personal information from you, including your name, contact information, and payment information. We may contact you to discuss the terms of your donation or any problems that arise regarding your donation, and/or to invite you to donate again to MEDC.

Children

We will never knowingly request personally identifiable information from anyone under the age of 13.

Usage tracking

MEDC tracks user traffic patterns throughout all of our sites. However, we do not correlate this information with data about individual users. MEDC sometimes tracks and catalogs the search terms that users enter in our Search function, but this tracking is never associated with individual users. We use tracking information to determine which areas of our sites users like and don’t like based on traffic to those areas. The goal of our tracking is to see how well each page performs overall. This helps us continue to build a better service for you.

Cookies

We may place a text file called a “cookie” in the browser files of your computer. The cookie will only contain personal information that you specifically and knowingly supply yourself. A cookie cannot read data off your hard disk or read cookie files created by other sites. MEDC uses cookies to track user traffic patterns (as described above). You can refuse cookies by turning them off in your browser. If you’ve set your browser to warn you before accepting cookies, you will receive the warning message with each cookie. You do not need to have cookies turned on to use this site. However, you do need cookies to participate actively in surveys.

Web Beacons

When we send you emails, we may include a web beacon to allow us to determine the number of people who open our emails. When you click on a link in an email, we may record this individual response to allow us to customize our offerings to you. Web beacons collect only limited information, such as a cookie identifier, time and date of a page being viewed, and a description of the page on which the web beacon resides (the URL). Web beacons can be refused when delivered via email. If you do not wish to receive web beacons via email, you will need to disable HTML images or refuse HTML (select text only) emails via your email software.

Third-Party Service Providers

We may employ other companies and individuals to perform functions on our behalf. They have access to personal information needed to perform their functions, but may not use it for other purposes.

Use of Information

MEDC uses any information voluntarily given by our users to enhance their experience in our network of sites or to better prepare future content based on the interests of our users.

As stated above, we use information that users voluntarily provide in order to send out electronic newsletters and to enable users to participate in surveys and events. We send out newsletters to subscribers on a regular schedule (depending on the newsletter), and occasionally send out special editions, event-related emails, and announcements when we think subscribers might be particularly interested in something we are doing. 

When we use tracking information to determine which areas of our sites users like and don’t like based on traffic to those areas, we analyze in aggregate to help us pinpoint how to build a better service for users. We track search terms entered in the search function as one of many measures of what interests our users. But we don’t track which terms a particular user enters.

Sharing of the Information

MEDC uses the above-described information to tailor our content to suit your needs and help us better understand the demographics of our audience. As such, the data processing of your personal information is legally based on our legitimate interests, taking into consideration our reasonable mutual expectations in the achievement of our purpose.

We will not sell or share information about individual users with any third party, except to comply with applicable law or valid legal process or to protect the personal safety of our users or the public. 

Links to Other Sites

This website contains links to other sites that are not owned or controlled by MEDC. We are not responsible for the privacy practices or the content of these other sites.

Security

MEDC operates secure data networks protected by industry standard firewall and password protection systems. Our security and privacy policies are periodically reviewed and enhanced as necessary and only authorized individuals at MEDC or acting on MEDC’s behalf have access to the information provided by our users.

Opt-out policy

We give users options wherever necessary and practical. Such choices include:

• Opting not to register to receive our electronic newsletters
• Opting not to participate in certain interactive areas, which completely alleviates the need to gather any personally identifiable information from our users

Your consent

By using this site, you consent to the collection and use of this information by the Middle East Democracy Center. If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post those changes on this page so that you are always aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances we disclose it.