Next Generation City - Privacy Statement

Effective date: March 7th, 2019

Next Generation City Consultancy ("us", "we", or "our") operates the https://www.nextgeneration.city website of Next Generation City ("NGC" or the "Service").

Next Generation City Consultancy
V.O.C.-plein 7
3024 SV Rotterdam
The Netherlands
registered at the Chamber of Commerce with number 72339381

Questions regarding our Privacy Statement or information practices should be directed by email to privacy@nextgeneration.city.

Thanks for entrusting us with your personal information. Holding onto your private information is a serious responsibility, and we want you to know how we are handling it. This page informs you of our policies regarding the collection, use, and disclosure of personal data when you use our Service and the choices you have associated with that data.

The short version

We only collect the information you choose to give us, and we process it with your consent, or on another legal basis; we only require the minimum amount of personal information that is necessary to fulfill the purpose of your interaction with us; we do not sell it to third parties; and we only use it as this Privacy Statement describes. We are compliant with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). No matter where you are, where you live, or what your citizenship is, we provide the same standard of privacy protection to all our users around the world, regardless of their country of origin or location.

Of course, the short version doesn't tell you everything, so please read on for more details!

1. What information we collect and why

1.1. Information from website browsers

If you're just browsing the website, we collect the same basic information that most websites collect. We use common internet technologies, such as cookies and web server logs. This is information we collect from everybody, whether they have an account or not.

The information we collect about all visitors to our website includes the visitor’s browser type, language preference, referring site, additional websites requested, and the date and time of each visitor request. We also collect potentially personally-identifying information like Internet Protocol (IP) addresses.

1.1.1. Why we collect this information

We collect this information to better understand how our website visitors use our Service, and to monitor and protect the security of the website.

1.2. Information from users with accounts

If you create an account, we require some basic information at the time of account creation. You will create your own user name and password, and we will ask you to enter your full name and a valid email address. You also have the option to give us more information if you want to, and this may include "User Personal Information."

"User Personal Information" is any information about one of our users which could, alone or together with other information, personally identify him or her. Information such as a user name and password, an email address, a real name, and a photograph are examples of “User Personal Information.” User Personal Information includes Personal Data as defined in the General Data Protection Regulation.

User Personal Information does not include aggregated, non-personally identifying information. We may use aggregated, non-personally identifying information to operate, improve, and optimize our website and service.

1.2.1. Why we collect this information
  • We need your User Personal Information to create your account, and to provide the services you request, or to respond to support requests.
  • We use your User Personal Information, specifically your user name, to identify you on NGC.
  • We use it to fill out your profile and share that profile with other users if you ask us to.
  • We will use your email address to communicate with you, if you've said that's okay, and only for the reasons you’ve said that’s okay. Please see our section on email communication for more information.
  • We use User Personal Information and other data to make recommendations for you, such as to suggest content you may want to follow or contribute to. For example, when you fill out an interest survey, we learn from it — as well as from your public behavior on NGC, such as the content you star — to determine your interests, and we recommend similar content. These recommendations are automated decisions, but they have no legal impact on your rights.
  • We use your User Personal Information for internal purposes, such as to maintain logs for security reasons, for training purposes, and for legal documentation.
  • We limit our use of your User Personal Information to the purposes listed in this Privacy Statement. If we need to use your User Personal Information for other purposes, we will ask your permission first. You can always see what information we have, how we're using it, and what permissions you have given us in your user profile.
1.2.2. Our legal basis for processing information

Under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), we are required to notify you about the legal basis on which we process User Personal Information. We process User Personal Information on the following legal bases:

  • When you create an account, you provide your user name, full name and an email address. We require those data elements for you to enter into the Terms of Service agreement with us, and we process those elements on the basis of performing that contract.
  • When you fill out the information in your user profile, you have the option to provide User Personal Information such as an avatar which may include a photograph, your biography, your location, your company, and a URL to a third party website. You have the option of setting a publicly visible email address here. We process this information on the basis of consent. All of this information is entirely optional, and you have the ability to access, modify, and delete it at any time (while you are not able to delete your email address entirely, you can make it private).
  • Generally, the remainder of the processing of personal information we perform is necessary for the purposes of our legitimate interests. For example, for security and legal purposes, we must keep logs of IP addresses that access our Service.
  • If you would like to request erasure of data we process on the basis of consent or object to our processing of personal information, please contact us using the contact information below.

2. What information we do not collect

We do not intentionally collect sensitive personal information, such as social security numbers, genetic data, health information, or religious information. Although NGC does not request or intentionally collect any sensitive personal information, we realize that you might store this kind of information in your account or in your public profile. If you store any sensitive personal information on our servers, you are responsible for complying with any regulatory controls regarding that data.

If you are a child under the age of 16, you may not use our Service without obtaining your parents' or legal guardians' consent. NGC does not knowingly collect information from or direct any of our content specifically to children under 16.

3. How we share the information we collect

We do share User Personal Information only with your explicit permission.

We do not share, sell, rent, or trade User Personal Information with third parties for their commercial purposes, except where you have specifically told us to.

We do not host advertising on NGC. We may occasionally embed content from third party sites, and that content may include ads. While we try to minimize the amount of ads our embedded content contains, we can't always control what third parties show. Any advertisements on NGC are not sponsored by, or tracked by, NGC.

We do not disclose User Personal Information outside NGC, except in the situations listed in this section.

We do share certain aggregated, non-personally identifying information with others about how our users, collectively, use NGC, or how our users respond to our services. However, we do not sell this information to advertisers or marketers.

We do share User Personal Information with a limited number of third party vendors who process it on our behalf to provide or improve our service, and who have agreed to privacy restrictions similar to our own Privacy Statement by signing data protection agreements. Our vendors perform services such as payment processing, customer support ticketing, network data transmission, and other similar services. When we transfer your data to our vendors, we remain responsible for it. If you would like to know who our third party vendors are, please see our page on Subprocessors.

We do share aggregated, non-personally identifying information with third parties. For example, we share the number of stars on conent, or in the event of a security incident, we may share the number of times a particular file was accessed.

We may share User Personal Information if we are involved in a merger, sale, or acquisition. If any such change of ownership happens, we will ensure that it is under terms that preserve the confidentiality of User Personal Information, and we will notify you on our website or by email before any transfer of your User Personal Information. The organization receiving any User Personal Information will have to honor any promises we have made in our Privacy Statement or in our Terms of Service.

4. Public information on NGC

Much of NGC is public-facing. If your content is public-facing, third parties may access and use it in compliance with our Terms of Service, such as by viewing your profile or content.

Your Personal Information, associated with your content, could be gathered by third parties in these compilations of data. If you do not want your Personal Information to appear in third parties’ compilations of data, please do not make your Personal Information publicly available and be sure to configure your email address to be private in your user profile.

If you would like to compile NGC data, you must comply with our Terms of Service regarding scraping and privacy, and you may only use any public-facing Personal Information you gather for the purpose for which our user has authorized it. For example, where a NGC user has made an email address public-facing for the purpose of identification and attribution, do not use that email address for commercial advertising. We expect you to reasonably secure any Personal Information you have gathered from NGC, and to respond promptly to complaints, removal requests, and "do not contact" requests from NGC or its users.

If you have a complaint about any Personal Information on NGC, please see our section on resolving complaints.

5. How you can access and control the information we collect

If you're already a NGC user, you may access, update, alter, or delete your basic user profile information by editing your user profile or by contacting us using the information below. You can control the information we collect about you by limiting what information is in your profile, by updating out of date information, or by contacting us using the information below.

5.1. Data portability

As a User of our Service, you can always take your data with you. You can use our Data Portability tools to download all of the data we have about you.

5.2. Data retention and deletion of data

Generally, NGC will retain User Personal Information for as long as your account is active or as needed to provide you services.

We may retain certain User Personal Information indefinitely, unless you delete it or request its deletion. For example, we don’t automatically delete inactive user accounts, so unless you choose to delete your account, we will retain your account information indefinitely.

If you would like to cancel your account or delete your User Personal Information, you may do so in your user profile. We will retain and use your information as necessary to comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes, and enforce our agreements, but barring legal requirements, we will delete your full profile (within reason) within 90 days. You may contact us to request the erasure of the data we process on the basis of consent within 30 days.

After an account has been deleted, certain data, such as contributions to others' content, will remain. However, we will delete or deidentify your personal information, including your user name and email address, from the author field of content by associating them with an anonymous user.

6. Our use of cookies and tracking

6.1. Cookies

NGC uses cookies to make interactions with our service easy and meaningful. We use cookies (and similar technologies, like HTML5) to keep you logged in, remember your preferences, and provide information for future development of NGC. We also use cookies to identify a device, for security reasons. By using our website, you agree that we can place these types of cookies on your computer or device. If you disable your browser or device’s ability to accept cookies, you may not be able to log in or use our Services.

We provide a web page on cookies and tracking that describes the cookies we set, the needs we have for those cookies, and the types of cookies they are (temporary or permanent).

6.2. Tracking and analytics

We use a number of third party analytics and service providers to help us evaluate our users' use of NGC; compile statistical reports on activity; and improve our content and website performance. We only use these third party analytics providers on certain areas of our website, and all of them have signed data protection agreements with us that limit the type of personal information they can collect and the purpose for which they can process the information. In addition, we use our own internal analytics software to provide features and improve our content and performance.

We do not currently respond to your browser's Do Not Track signal, and we do not permit third parties other than our analytics and service providers to track our users' activity over time on NGC. We do not track your online browsing activity outside of our Service (for example on other online services) over time.

7. How we, and others, communicate with you

We will use your email address to communicate with you, if you've said that's okay, and only for the reasons you’ve said that’s okay. For example, if you contact our team with a request, we will respond to you via email. You have a lot of control over how your email address is used and shared on and through NGC. You may manage your communication preferences in your user profile.

Depending on your email settings, we may occasionally send notification emails about changes, new features, requests for feedback, important policy changes, or offer customer support. We also send marketing emails, but only with your consent, if you opt in to our list. There's an unsubscribe link located at the bottom of each of the marketing emails we send you. Please note that you can not opt out of receiving important communications from us, such as mails from our Support team or system emails, but you can configure your notifications settings in your profile.

Our emails might contain a pixel tag, which is a small, clear image that can tell us whether or not you have opened an email and what your IP address is. We use this pixel tag to make our email more effective for you and to make sure we are not sending you unwanted email.

8. Resolving complaints

If you have concerns about the way we are handling your User Personal Information, please let us know immediately. We want to help. You may contact us directly at privacy@nextgeneration.city. We will respond promptly — within 30 days at the latest. In the unlikely event that a dispute arises between the User and NGC regarding our handling of your User Personal Information, we will do our best to resolve it. Additionally, you (as a User) have the right to file a complaint with your local supervisory authority or with the Dutch Authority: De Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens.

9. Changes to our Privacy Statement

We will provide notification to Users of material changes to this Privacy Statement through our Website at least 30 days prior to the change taking effect by posting a notice on our home page or sending email to the email address specified in your account.

Although most changes are likely to be minor, we may change our Privacy Statement from time to time so that they accurately reflect our Service and policies. Unless otherwise required by law, we will notify you (through our Service and by sending an email to the email address specified in your account) at least 30 days before we make changes to these Terms. This gives you an opportunity to review them before they go into effect. Then, if you continue to use the Service, you will be bound by the updated Terms. If you do not want to agree to these or any updated Terms, you can delete your account.

10. Contacting us

Questions regarding our Privacy Statement or information practices should be directed by email to privacy@nextgeneration.city.