Privacy Policy

Astronomical Society of the Pacific (referred to here as "Mercury") knows that you care how information about you is used and shared, and we appreciate your trust that we will do so carefully and sensibly. This Privacy Policy describes our privacy policy with respect to the information collected on this Site. By visiting mercury-messenger.org, you are accepting the practices described in this Privacy Policy.

What Information Do We Collect and How Do We Collect It?

The information we gather on this Site falls into two categories: (1) personal information you supply, and (2) tracking information collected as you navigate through our Site.


Personally Identifiable Information

We will collect personally identifiable information whenever you create a payment processing account at the Site, or update your account information. To apply for a log-in account to access the Site, we ask you to provide personally identifiable information, including but not limited to, your name, address, phone number, and email address.


Please note you also may be asked to provide credit card information to the extent you are paying the online subscription fee. Credit card information is processed by Mercury's third party vendor. Mercury itself does not collect or store any User's credit card information, and Mercury is not responsible for maintaining the security or privacy of any information that you provide, including credit card information, in connection with purchasing products the Site.

Aggregate Information

When you use this Site, we may collect tracking information such as your browser type, the type of operating system you use, the domain name of your Internet service provider, and the pages you visited on the Site. None of this information identifies you personally; we collect it for aggregate reporting on site activity. For example, we may want to know how long the average user spends on this Site, or which pages or features get the most attention. We use this information to make the Site more useful.

  1. Web Beacons. We may use "Web Beacon" (also known as "clear GIF", "pixel tag", "data tag" or "image tag") technology to collect anonymous, non-personal information about how this Site is used. We will use this information to make improvements to this Site and to help us plan for technical improvements. This information will not identify you or any other user of this Site as an individual.
  2. E-Mail. We use clear gifs in our HTML- based emails that tell us whether or not you can accept HTML images and, if you can accept HTML, whether or not you viewed the e-mail. We use this information to help us make our e-mails more useful. This process does not leave any information on your computer, nor does it collect information from your computer. We do not share or sell this information to others, and we only use it to improve our e-mail communications with you.
  3. Cookies. A cookie is a block of text placed in a file on your hard drive by a website you've visited. We use cookies to understand how visitors to this Site click to it and what pages they view during their visit. We do not store any personal information in any cookie at any time.

We may also use third party service providers for research purposes, including helping us to measure and analyze how visitors click to and use the Site. To do this, we may use cookies or web beacons provided by these third parties to track the types of non-personal information described above. Such aggregated information is used within Mercury's internal organization and is only shared with third parties on an aggregated and non-personally identifiable basis.

The "help" function on most browsers contains information on how to set your browser to notify you before accepting cookies or to disable cookies entirely. However, if you don't accept cookies, you may not be able to take advantage of various features on this Site that are available to other visitors.

Does Mercury Share the Information It Receives?

Although information about those who visit our web site is important to us, we are not in the business of selling that information to others.

We may provide aggregate information that does not identify particular individuals, such as the number or percentage of visitors who fall within certain category or categories, to a third party.

We may also share your information with third parties in the following circumstances:

Service Providers: We employ third party service providers to perform functions on our behalf, including, for example, the processing of online subscriptions. They have access to personal information needed to perform their functions, but may not use it for other purposes. Examples include fulfilling orders, sending mail, analyzing data, and processing credit card payments.

Legal Obligations: From time to time, we may be required to share personal information in response to a valid court order, subpoena, government investigation, or as otherwise required by law. We also reserve the right to report to law enforcement agencies any activities that we, in good faith, believe to be unlawful.

Protection of Mercury and Others: We will release the names of account holders and other personal information when we believe release is appropriate to comply with the law; enforce or apply the Terms of Use for this Site and other agreements; or protect the rights, property, or safety of mercury-messenger.org, our users, or others. However, this does not include selling, sharing, or otherwise disclosing personally identifiable information from customers for commercial purposes in violation of the commitments set forth in this Privacy Policy.

How Secure is the Information that Mercury Messenger Collects?
We strive to keep information such as your name and email address safe, and employ stringent security measures to make sure that your information is not unintentionally shared with others. Despite our efforts, no method of transmission over the internet, or method of electronic storage, is 100% secure. Therefore, while we strive to use commercially acceptable means to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee its absolute security.

Children's Policy

We understand and share your concerns regarding your children's access to the internet and the internet's access to your children. Consistent with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, we do not knowingly request or accept information submitted to this Site by any visitor under 13 years of age.
If we become aware that an individual under 13 has provided information to us through this Site, we will not use or disclose that individual's information for any purpose unless required to do so by law.

Third party links

The site may also contain links to advertisers or other third party sites that are not under our control. These sites have their own policies regarding privacy, and you should review these policies before providing information to these sites. Mercury has no responsibility for linked websites and provides these links solely for the convenience and information of our visitors. Mercury also maintains a strict "no-spam" policy and fully complies with CAN-SPAM Act regulations.

Terms of Use, Notices, and Revisions

If you choose to visit mercury-messenger.org, your visit and any dispute over privacy is subject to this Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use, including limitations on damages, application of the law of the State of California and resolution of any disputes in California. If you have any concern about privacy at mercury-messenger.org, please contact us with a thorough description, and we will try to resolve it.

The mercury-messenger.org website is updated frequently, and the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use for this Site may change also. We may e-mail periodic reminders of our notices and conditions, but you should check this Site frequently to see recent changes. Unless stated otherwise, our current Privacy Policy applies to all information that we have collected from you through this Site. We stand behind the promises we make, however, and will never materially change our policies and practices to make them less protective of information collected in the past without notifying affected members, either by communicating directly with them or by posting the changes on this Site.

Privacy Support
If you have an inquiry or concern about our privacy policy, please contact: mercury@astrosociety.org