Privacy Policy

Last updated: 06.05.2024

In this policy, we lay out: what data we collect and why; how your data is handled; and your rights with respect to your data. We never sell your data.

This policy is split into sections. For your convenience, links to each of those sections is as follows:

This policy applies to all services maintained by the Orient-Institut Istanbul. If you are applying for a job at Orient-Institut Istanbul, please review our Recruitment Privacy Policy.

This policy applies to our handling of information about site visitors, prospective subscribers, and authorized users (in relation to their procurement of the services and management of their relationship with Orient-Institut Istanbul). We refer collectively to these categories of individuals as “you” throughout this policy.

What we collect and why

Our guiding principle is to collect only what we need. Here’s what that means in practice:

Identity and access

When you sign up for a Orient-Institut Istanbul product, we ask for identifying information such as your name, email address, and affiliated Organization. That’s so you can personalize your new account, and we can send you product updates and other essential information. We may also send you optional surveys from time to time to help us understand how you use our products and to make improvements. With your consent, we will send you our newsletter and other updates. We sometimes also give you the option to add a profile picture that displays in our products.

We’ll never sell your personal information to third parties, and we won’t use your name or Organization in marketing statements without your permission either.

Product interactions

We store on our servers the content that you upload or receive or maintain in your Orient-Institut Istanbul product accounts. We keep this content as long as your account is active. If you delete your account, we’ll delete the content within 30 days.

General Geolocation data

For most of our products, we log the full IP address used to sign up a product account and retain that for use in mitigating future spammy signups. We also log all account access by full IP address for security and fraud prevention purposes, and we keep this login data for as long as your product account is active.

Website interactions

We collect information about your browsing activity for analytics and statistical purposes such as conversion rate testing and experimenting with new product designs. This includes, for example, your browser and operating system versions, your IP address, which web pages you visited and how long they took to load, and which website referred you to us. If you have an account and are signed in, these web analytics data are tied to your IP address and user account until your account is no longer active. The web analytics we use are described further in the Advertising and Cookies section.

Anti-bot assessments

We use CAPTCHA across our applications to mitigate brute force logins and as a means of spam protection. We have a legitimate interest in protecting our product and the broader Internet community from credential stuffing attacks and spam. When you log into your Orient-Institut Istanbul accounts and when you fill in certain forms the CAPTCHA service evaluates various information (e.g., IP address, how long the visitor has been on the app, mouse movements) to try to detect if the activity is from an automated program instead of a human. The CAPTCHA service then provides Orient-Institut Istanbul with the spam score results; we do not have access to the evaluated information.

Advertising and Cookies

We use persistent first-party cookies and some third-party cookies to store certain preferences, make it easier for you to use our services, and perform A/B testing as well as support some analytics.

A cookie is a piece of text stored by your browser. It may help remember login information and site preferences. It might also collect information such as your browser type, operating system, web pages visited, duration of visit, content viewed, and other click-stream data. You can adjust cookie retention settings and accept or block individual cookies in your browser settings, although our apps won’t work and other aspects of our service may not function properly if you turn cookies off.

Voluntary correspondence

When you email Orient-Institut Istanbul with a question or to ask for help, we keep that correspondence, including your email address, so that we have a history of past correspondence to reference if you reach out in the future.

We also store information you may volunteer, for example, written responses to surveys. If you agree to an interview, we may ask for your permission to record the conversation for future reference or use. We will only do so with your express consent.

When we access or disclose your information

To provide products or services you’ve requested. We use some third-party subprocessors to help run our applications and provide the Services to you. You can view the third-party subprocessors we use. We also use third-party processors for other organizaiton functions such as managing newsletter subscriptions, sending customer surveys, and providing our Organization storefront. You can view the list at Organization Processors.

We may disclose your information at your direction if you integrate a third-party service into your use of our products.

No Orient-Institut Istanbul human looks at your content except for limited purposes with your express permission, for example, if an error occurs that stops an automated process from working and requires manual intervention to fix. These are rare cases, and when they happen, we look for root cause solutions as much as possible to avoid them recurring. We may also access your data if required in order to respond to legal process (see “When required under applicable law” below).

To help you troubleshoot or squash a software bug, with your permission. If at any point we need to access your content to help you with a support case, we will ask for your consent before proceeding.

To investigate, prevent, or take action regarding restricted uses. Accessing a user’s account when investigating potential abuse is a measure of last resort. We want to protect the privacy and safety of both our users and the people reporting issues to us, and we do our best to balance those responsibilities throughout the process. If we discover you are using our products for a restricted purpose, we will take action as necessary, including notifying appropriate authorities where warranted.

Aggregated and de-identified data. We may aggregate and/or de-identify information collected through the services. We may use de-identified or aggregated data for any purpose, including marketing or analytics.

In compliance with applicable EU legislation. As an organization based in the EU with our primary data infrastructure located within the EU, we manage customer data strictly in accordance with the GDPR. We will only process or disclose customer data under the following circumstances:

Legal Requirements: We may preserve or share customer data when required by EU or member state law. This may include compliance with orders from courts or legal authorities within the jurisdiction of the EU.
International Requests: If approached by a non-EU authority for data access, our standard policy is to refuse such requests unless they are backed by an international agreement, such as a Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT), to which the EU is a party and which is recognized under EU law.
Emergency Requests: In rare cases of legitimate emergency requests, data may be shared in accordance with EU regulations and our stringent internal policies designed to protect personal data.

Your rights with respect to your information

At Orient-Institut Istanbul, we strive to apply the same data rights to all customers, regardless of their location. Some of these rights include:

Right to Know. You have the right to know what personal information is collected, used, shared or sold. We outline both the categories and specific bits of data we collect, as well as how they are used, in this privacy policy.
Right of Access. This includes your right to access the personal information we gather about you, and your right to obtain information about the sharing, storage, security and processing of that information.
Right to Correction. You have the right to request correction of your personal information.
Right to Erasure / “To Be Forgotten”. This is your right to request, subject to certain limitations under applicable law, that your personal information be erased from our possession and, by extension, from all of our service providers. Fulfillment of some data deletion requests may prevent you from using Orient-Institut Istanbul services. In such cases, a data deletion request may result in closing your account.
Right to Complain. You have the right to make a complaint regarding our handling of your personal information with the appropriate supervisory authority.
Right to Restrict Processing. This is your right to request restriction of how and why your personal information is used or processed, including opting out of sale of your personal information. (We never have and never will sell your personal data.)
Right to Object. You have the right, in certain situations, to object to how or why your personal information is processed.
Right to Portability. You have the right to receive the personal information we have about you and the right to transmit it to another party.
Right to not Be Subject to Automated Decision-Making. You have the right to object to and prevent any decision that could have a legal or similarly significant effect on you from being made solely based on automated processes. This right is limited if the decision is necessary for performance of any contract between you and us, is allowed by applicable law, or is based on your explicit consent.
Right to Non-Discrimination. We do not give you a lower level of service because you have exercised your data privacy rights. However, the exercise of certain rights may, by virtue of your exercising those rights, prevent you from using our Services.

Many of these rights can be exercised by signing in and updating your account information. Please note that certain information may be exempt from such requests under applicable law. For example, we need to retain certain information in order to provide our services to you.

In some cases, we also need to take reasonable steps to verify your identity before responding to a request, which may include, at a minimum, depending on the sensitivity of the information you are requesting and the type of request you are making, verifying your name and email address. If we are unable to verify you, we may be unable to respond to your requests. If you have questions about exercising these rights or need assistance, please contact us at privacy@oiist.org or at Orient-Institut Istanbul, Galip Dede Cad. No. 65, 34421 Beyoğlu – Istanbul, Turkey. If an authorized agent is corresponding on your behalf, we will need written consent with a signature from the account holder before proceeding.

Depending on applicable law, you may have the right to appeal our decision to deny your request, if applicable. We will provide information about how to exercise that right in our response denying the request. You also have the right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority. If you are in the EU, you can contact your data protection authority to file a complaint or learn more about local privacy laws.

How we secure your data

All data is encrypted via SSL/TLS when transmitted from our servers to your browser. The database backups are also encrypted. In addition, we go to great lengths to secure your data at rest. For more information about how we keep your information secure, please review our Security Overview (coming soon).

Most data are not encrypted while they live in our database (since they need to be ready to send to you when you need them).

What happens when you delete content in through your accounts

Anything you trash (like blog posts) in your service accounts while they are active will be kept in an accessible trash can for about 30 days. The trashed content may remain on our active servers for another 30 days, and copies of the content may be held in backups of our application databases for up to another 30 days after that. Altogether, any content trashed in your product accounts should be purged from all of our systems and logs within 90 days.

If you choose to cancel your account, your content will become immediately inaccessible and should be purged from our systems in full within 60 days. This applies both for cases when an account owner directly cancels and for auto-canceled accounts. Please refer to our Cancellation Policy for more details.

Data retention

We keep your information for the time necessary for the purposes for which it is processed. The length of time for which we retain information depends on the purposes for which we collected and use it and your choices, after which time we may delete and/or aggregate it. We may also retain and use this information as necessary to comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes, and enforce our agreements. Through this policy, we have provided specific retention periods for certain types of information.

Location of site and data

Our services and other web properties are primarily housed in Germany. If you are located elsewhere outside of the EU, please be aware that any information you provide to us will be transferred to and stored in the EU. By using our websites or Services and/or providing us with your personal information, you consent to this transfer.

When transferring personal data from the EU

The European Data Protection Board (EDPB) has issued guidance that personal data transferred out of the EU must be treated with the same level of protection that is granted under EU privacy law. UK law provides similar safeguards for UK user data that is transferred out of the UK. Accordingly, Orient-Institut Istanbul has adopted a data processing addendum with Standard Contractual Clauses to help ensure this protection. Orient-Institut Istanbul’ DPA is available at: http://oiist.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/oii-dpa.pdf.

There are also a few ad hoc cases where EU personal data may be transferred to the U.S. in connection with Orient-Institut Istanbul operations, for instance, if an EU user signs up for our newsletter as our current email marketing platform is located in the U.S. Such transfers are only occasional and data is transferred under the Article 49(1)(b) derogation under GDPR.

Changes and questions

We may update this policy as needed to comply with relevant regulations and reflect any new practices.

Have any questions, comments, or concerns about this privacy policy, your data, or your rights with respect to your information? Please get in touch by emailing us at privacy@oiist.org.

Adapted from the Basecamp open-source policies / CC BY 4.0