Terms of Use

If you have any questions about these Terms of Use or Privacy Policy, please contact us or write to us at:

Baltimore Metropolitan Council

ATTN: General Counsel

1500 Whetstone Way, Suite 300

Baltimore, MD 21230

BMC wants to assure you that it respects your privacy and the confidentiality of your personal information. That is why we collect only the information that is needed to serve you and administer our programs. BMC follows the principles outlined below.

This Policy is intended to cover personally identifiable information (“PII”). PII includes information such as your first or last name, your home or e-mail address, and your telephone number.

BMC collects PII order to deliver the products, information, and services you request easily and efficiently and to administer BMC’s programs. The privacy of your PII is a serious matter. BMC will not sell or distribute your personal information except as required to provide these services (see “Use of Information” below).

Consent

When you provide personally identifiable information to BMC, you are implicitly giving us consent to use this data to perform the services you requested. You are also giving us consent to create and maintain summary statistics (see below) to plan future services.

Visitors to our Website

If you chose to engage in certain activities on BMC's website https://www.baltometro.org, such as ordering publications or products, registering for services, registering for meetings and events, entering contests, or sending comments, BMC may ask you to provide PII by filling out and submitting an online form. These activities, are completely optional for you to engage in, however, BMC may ask that you provide information, such as your first and last name, home or business mailing address (including ZIP code), e-mail address, employer name, job title and department, telephone and facsimile numbers, as well as some other personal information that may be used for verification (i.e. birth-place, eye color, etc). Some of the information that BMC asks you to provide is identified as mandatory and some as voluntary. If you choose to not provide the mandatory information with respect to a particular activity, you will not be able to engage in that activity. BMC may also log the IP address and time of the visit.

BMC uses a third party service, Google Analytics, to collect standard internet log information and details of visitor behavior patterns. We do this to find out things such as the number of visitors to the various parts of the site. When you visit www.baltometro.org, Google sends one or more “cookies” (a small file containing a string of characters) to your computer that uniquely identifies your browser. We use cookies to improve the quality of our service by storing user preferences and tracking user trends, such as how people search. This information is only processed in a way which does not identify anyone. We do not make, and do not allow Google to make, any attempt to find out the identities of those visiting our website. If we do want to collect personally identifiable information through our website, we will be up front about this. We will make it clear when we collect personal information and will explain what we intend to do with it.

Most browsers are initially set up to accept cookies, but you can reset your browser to delete individual cookies, refuse all cookies, or to indicate when a cookie is being sent. However, some BMC features and services may not function properly if your cookies are disabled.

Other Means of Collection

Some of BMC’s planning activities depend on the collection of personal data by means other than its website. For example, you may fill out a paper attendance form at a meeting, or participate in a survey at a public event. BMC will treat all personally identifiable information, whether collected through the website or otherwise, by the terms of this policy.

BMC may be required to, or may obligate itself to, abide by more stringent restrictions on the use of detailed personally identifiable information for some programs. Threre are no "implied" additional restrictions: If additional privacy restrictions apply, a description will be made available to you on the form that you fill out. However, this policy will always apply as a minimum standard.

Third Party Use of Information

BMC’s website uses Google Analytics to track website traffic. Google may use personal information for auditing, research and analysis to operate and improve their technologies and services.

We may use personal information to provide the services you've requested, including services that display customized content.

We may share aggregated information with third parties, including Google, BMC’s partner agencies, and companies that we have contracted with to help provide services.

When we use third parties to assist us in processing your personal information, we require that they comply with our Privacy Policy and any other appropriate confidentiality and security measures.

We may also share information with third parties in limited circumstances, including when complying with legal process, preventing fraud or imminent harm, and ensuring the security of our network and services.

Summary Statistics

BMC reserves the right to create and retain summary statistics based upon PII it collects. The statistics will be created in such a way as to remove any information that identifies a specific individual. We use the summary statistics to help us make our site more useful to visitors, such as assessing what information is of most interest to visitors, as well as for other purposes such as improving website usability.

In addition, BMC may use summary statistics from event registrations to help plan future events. For example, each person who registers for “Bike to Work Day” must specify a “pitstop” and “t-shirt size” in the registration form. In this example, BMC might summarize information from the registration forms to estimate the number of t-shirts to be delivered to each pitstop in a future Bike to Work Day.

Your Choices

We offer you choices when we ask for personal information, whenever reasonably possible.

You may decline to provide personal information to us and/or refuse cookies in your browser, although some of our features or services may not function properly as a result.

We make good faith efforts to provide you access to your personal information upon request and to let you correct such data if it is inaccurate and delete it, when reasonably possible.

Security

BMC uses secure sockets layers (SSL) encryption to protect the transmission of the information you submit, through secure online forms.

If you send BMC an e-mail, you should know that e-mail is not necessarily secure against interception. So if your communication includes sensitive information and you would prefer not to use one of our online forms, contact us by postal mail or telephone rather than e-mail.

Notice of Changes to this Policy

If BMC decides to change its privacy policy, those changes will be posted here so that you will always know what information BMC gathers, how it might be used, and whether BMC will disclose it to anyone. Your use of this site will be subject to the most current version of the Privacy Policy at the time of such use.

Notice to Parents

Parents or guardians: BMC wants to assist you in guarding your children’s privacy. BMC encourages you to discuss safe and responsible use of personal information while using the Internet. You can find more information on this subject here.

Furthermore, under the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, no Web site operator can require, as a condition of participation in an activity, that a child under the age of 13 disclose more information than is reasonably necessary. BMC abides by this requirement.

Use and Conduct Restrictions

Your permission to use the Site is conditioned upon the following Use Restrictions and Conduct Restrictions: You agree that you will not under any circumstances:

• Post any comment that is abusive, threatening, obscene, defamatory, libelous, or racially, sexually, religiously, or otherwise
• objectionable and offensive;
• Post any comment that advertises and/or promotes a business, product, or service;
• Use the Service for any unlawful purpose or for the promotion of illegal activities;
• Attempt to, or harass, abuse or harm another person or group;
• Use another user’s account without permission;
• Provide false or inaccurate information when registering an account;
• Interfere or attempt to interfere with the proper functioning of the Service;make any automated use of the Service, or take any action that we deem to impose or to potentially impose an unreasonable or disproportionately large load on our servers or network infrastructure;
• Bypass any robot exclusion headers or other measures we take to restrict access to the Service or use any software, technology, or device to scrape, spider or crawl the Service, or harvest or manipulate data; or
• Publish or link to malicious content intended to damage or disrupt another user’s browser or computer.

Violation of Use Restrictions

If any visitor, employee, contractor, or user violates the use restrictions for BMC’s website, BMC reserves the right to block use and/or seek damages and other remedies to the full extent of the law.

Links to Other Web Sites and/or Materials

The Service may contain links to third party websites or services that are not owned or controlled by BMC.

BMC has no control over, and assumes no responsibility for, the content, privacy policies, or practices of any third party web sites or services. All users of the Site acknowledge and agree that BMC shall not be responsible or liable, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with use of or reliance on any such content, goods or services available on or through any such web sites or services.

Modification of Terms of Use

We can amend these Terms of Use at any time and will update these Terms of Use in the event of any such amendments. It is your sole responsibility to check the Site to view any such changes to the Terms of Use. If you continue to use the Site, you signify your agreement to our revisions to these Terms of Use. However, we will notify you of material changes to the terms by posting a notice on our homepage and/or sending an email to the email address you provided to us upon registration. What constitutes a material change will be determined at our sole discretion. By continuing to access or use our Service after those revisions become effective, you agree to be bound by the revised terms.

Governing Law

These Terms of Use and your use of the Site are governed by the federal laws of the United States of America and the laws of Maryland, without regard to conflict of law provisions.

Severability

If any part of the Terms of Use is held invalid or unenforceable, that portion of the Terms of Use will be construed consistent with applicable law. The remaining portions will remain in full force and effect. Any failure on BMC’s part to enforce any provision of this Agreement will not be considered a waiver of our right to enforce such provision.

Assignment

BMC may assign or delegate these Terms of Use and or its Privacy Policy, in whole or in part, to any person or entity at any time with or without your consent. You may not assign or delegate any rights or obligations under the Terms of Use or Privacy Policy without BMC’s prior written consent, and any unauthorized assignment and delegation by you is void.

Termination

BMC may terminate or suspend access to our Service immediately without prior notice or liability for any reason whatsoever, including without limitation if you breach the Terms of Use.

All the provisions of the Terms of Use which by their nature should survive termination shall survive termination, including without limitation, ownership provisions, warranty disclaimers, indemnity and limitations of liability.

Intellectual Property

The Service and all of its original content on the web site are the sole property of BMC and are, as such, fully protected by the appropriate national and international copyright and other intellectual property rights laws.

Indemnification

By using this Site, you agree to indemnify to the fullest extent possible BMC from and against any and all liabilities, costs, demands, causes of action, damages and expenses (including reasonable attorney’s fees) arising out of or in any way related to your breach of any of the provisions of these Terms of Use.

WARRANTY DISCLAIMER

THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED “AS IS.” WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND. WITHOUT LIMITING THE FOREGOING, BMC EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, WHETHER EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY, REGARDING THE SERVICE INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION ANY WARRANTY OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE, SECURITY, ACCURACY, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT. WITHOUT LIMITING THE FOREGOING, BMC MAKES NO WARRANTY OR REPRESENTATION THAT ACCESS TO OR OPERATION OF THE SERVICE WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED OR ERROR FREE. YOU ASSUME FULL RESPONSIBILITY AND RISK OF LOSS RESULTING FROM YOUR OWN DOWNLOADING AND/OR USE OF FILES, INFORMATION, CONTENT, OR OTHER MATERIAL OBTAINED FROM THE SERVICE. SOME JURISDICTIONS LIMIT OR DO NOT PERMIT DISCLAIMERS OF WARRANTY, SO THIS PROVISION MAY NOT APPLY TO YOU.

LIMITATION OF DAMAGES; RELEASE

TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, IN NO EVENT SHALL BMC, ITS AFFILIATES, DIRECTORS OR EMPLOYEES, OR ITS LICENSORS OR PARTNERS, BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR ANY LOSS OF PROFITS, USE OR DATA, OR FOR ANY INCIDENTAL, INDIRECT, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, OR EXEMPLARY DAMAGES, HOWEVER ARISING, THAT RESULT FROM (A) THE USE, DISCLOSURE, OR DISPLAY OF YOUR USER CONTENT; (B) YOUR USE OR INABILITY TO USE THE SERVICE; (C) THE SERVICE GENERALLY OR THE SOFTWARE OR SYSTEMS THAT MAKE THE SERVICE AVAILABLE; OR (D) ANY OTHER INTERACTIONS WITH BMC OR ANY OTHER USER OF THE SERVICE, WHETHER BASED ON WARRANTY, CONTRACT, TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE) OR ANY OTHER LEGAL THEORY, AND WHETHER OR NOT BMC HAS BEEN INFORMED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE AND EVEN IF A REMEDY SET FORTH HEREIN IS FOUND TO HAVE FAILED OF ITS ESSENTIAL PURPOSE. SOME JURISDICTIONS LIMIT OR DO NOT PERMIT DISCLAIMERS OF LIABILITY, SO THIS PROVISION MAY NOT APPLY TO YOU.