The Cretan International Community Privacy Policy

This document comprises the CIC privacy policy; it includes details of how we use any personal information we collect from you when you complete a membership form or use the CIC website.  We have a duty to safeguard your personal information and we will take all reasonable steps to protect the information that you provide to us.

What information do we collect?

We collect several kinds of information:

Membership Information

• Membership forms (collected on paper or collected via the website)
• Feedback (collected via the website)
• Other information (submitted by you when you publish Content)
• Website usage information (collected through cookies and log files).

We do not ask for, or hold, any credit or debit card information.  Payments made to the CIC electronically are taken via a secure server system such as PayPal.

What do we do with this information?

Your username and/or real name will appear on the site if you submit Content or post on the Forum. All other membership information, including your email address will be kept private and will never appear on the website (unless you publish it as part of your Content). You may change your personal information at any time via your account on the website.

Unless you ask us not to, we may use your information to write to you or send emails to you about membership renewal, local or CIC  events or any other matters we consider likely to be of interest to our members.

Please note that articles or advertisements published in the CIC Times containing personal information such as email addresses or telephone numbers are considered to be in the public domain and may be reproduced on the website without further permission.  (Any member that wishes to have a CIC email account to protect their personal email address should contact the webmaster at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

The CIC will not make members information available to third parties (including other members) unless we have their explicit permission or under special circumstances, such as when we believe in good faith that the law requires it.

Feedback and polls

We value and welcome your feedback via email.

Normally any feedback we gather will be used in an anonymous way. If we intend to contact you about your responses to a particular survey we will say so when we ask you to take part in it.

Member Content

If the CIC Webmaster permits it, nominated members may post content on the website. Such content must be in accordance with the Articles of the Association. Please remember that if you choose to include personal information in your Member Content you are placing it in the public domain, and we cannot guarantee that other agents using the Internet will not gather and use it. These include legitimate agents such as Google and less desirable agents such as the email harvesters used by spammers.

Site usage information: Cookies

Cookies are small text files that are often created when you visit a website, and which are stored in the cookie directory of your computer. Several cookies may be created when you visit the CIC website. We may use both permanent cookies and temporary cookies (called session cookies). Permanent cookies stay on your computer between visits to the CIC site. Session cookies disappear when you leave the site and close your browser. A cookie cannot read data from your hard disk or read cookie files created by other sites.

Our cookies are used for the following purposes:

• to count the number of times you return to the site and the pages that you visit. This helps us improve our site and identify redundant material

• to store your logged in status. Once you have logged in to the website a cookie will help your computer to automatically log in again in the future, until you explicitly log out

• to store other settings. For example a cookie is needed to let us know you have voted in a poll or taken part in a survey and another is used to store your preference for the page editor you use when you create content.

The information stored in our cookies is kept separate from your member information and will never be used with it.

You also have choices with respect to cookies. By modifying your browser preferences, you have the choice to accept all cookies, to be notified when a cookie is set, or to reject all cookies.  If you want to delete any cookies that are already on your computer, please refer to the instructions for your browser or other file management software to locate the file or directory that stores cookies.

Please note that by deleting cookies or disabling future cookies you may not be able to access certain areas or features of our site.

Site usage information: Log files

Log files record visitors' use of the site. We can collect information about site usage from the data contained in these logs, which we obtain from third parties. Log files do not contain any personal information and they are not used to identify any individual person’s use of the site.

When a visitor requests any web page from our website, our web servers automatically obtain that visitor's domain name and IP address. The domain name and IP address reveal nothing personal about you other than the IP address from which you have accessed our site. We may use this information to examine our traffic in aggregate, to investigate abuse of the website and its users, and/or to cooperate with law enforcement. We do not generally disseminate this information to third parties and then only in aggregate.

What happens when I follow a link to another site?

The CIC website contains links to other websites and to other organisations. This privacy policy applies only to our site, so you should always be aware when you are moving to another site and read the privacy statement of any other site(s), which collect personal information about you.

Access to your information and contacting the CIC

If you wish to see what information we hold about you should contact the CIC Membership Secretary This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it . If you have any further enquiry about your personal data, or if you have a query or complaint about this privacy policy or about the site, you should contact the President at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it or the webmaster at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Changes to this privacy policy

If this privacy policy changes in any way, we will place an updated version on this page.

Issue 1. 24 February 2008