Privacy Policy

1. Information we collect

When you register for a workshop: your name and personal email address, phone number, title, institution, and whether you will attend in person or virtually. You may also give us a secondary institution, your country of origin, your research focus areas, an assistant’s email address, a profile photo, and whether you would like a visa invitation letter or a certificate of attendance. We also record that you acknowledged our Participant Guidelines, and when.

Our staff may also add your mailing address (it appears on invitation letters and certificates) and notes about your registration.

When you request lodging: the property and room you would like, a second choice, your check-in and check-out dates, any special requests, and whether you are sharing a room. If you book a shared room, we collect the names and email addresses of the roommates you list and, if you divide the cost, how much each person will pay. If you are joining someone else’s room, we collect the roommate code you enter.

If you request lodging without attending a workshop (for example, as a partner or family member traveling with a participant): your name, email address and phone number, and optionally your title, institution and who you are traveling with.

Payments: card payments are processed by Stripe. Your card details go directly to Stripe; we never receive or store your full card number. Stripe tells us whether a payment succeeded, the amount, the card brand and last four digits (which appear on your receipt), and reference numbers. If you pay by check or wire, we record the amount and the date it arrived.

Information about other people: if you give us someone else’s details, such as a roommate or your assistant, please make sure they are happy for you to do so. We use their details only to contact them about the registration or room they are part of.

Lodging partners and staff: the names and work email addresses of property staff who use our partner portal and of our own staff, and what they enter (for example rates, confirmation numbers and notes).

Collected automatically: our servers record technical information such as IP addresses, browser type and the pages requested, to keep the site running and secure. To stop abuse, we briefly keep counters linked to IP addresses and email addresses, and delete them within about a day.

2. How we use it

• to register you for workshops, take payments, and send receipts;
• to request, arrange and confirm lodging with our partner properties;
• to send you messages about your registration, lodging and payments, such as confirmations, payment instructions, reminders, receipts and roommate codes;
• to prepare invitation letters, certificates of attendance and name badges;
• to plan and run our workshops, including attendance and logistics;
• to keep accounting, tax and legal records;
• to protect the site, our participants and ourselves from fraud and abuse; and
• to answer your questions and requests.

We do not sell personal information, and we do not use it for advertising. This site does not use advertising or analytics trackers, and it sends only messages about your registration, lodging and payments.

3. Who we share it with

Lodging properties. When you request lodging, the property you asked for (and, if it cannot take your request, the property it is passed to) receives your name, email address and phone number, your dates, room and special requests, whether the room is shared and your roommates’ names (not their email addresses), and the reservation’s status. Properties see this in their secure portal and in emails from us.

Your roommates. If you book a shared room, the roommates you list receive an email with your name, the property, room and dates, and the room’s roommate code. Anyone who has the code can see your name, the property, room and dates. If you divide the cost, each person paying a share sees the room’s total and their own share. The person who booked the room sees every share and whether it has been paid.

Other participants and the public. A workshop’s page can show a list of participants’ names and institutions, behind a simple check that keeps automated programs out. A workshop’s organizers may be named on its page with their institutions and email addresses. Profile photos are never shown publicly.

Your assistant. If you give us an assistant’s email address, we copy them on your registration and lodging emails.

Service providers who work for us: Stripe (card payments); Google (we send email through Google Workspace, our staff sign in with Google, and workshop pages show a Google map); Fly.io (hosting and backup copies, in the United States); Backblaze (backup copies, in the United States); and Aplos (our accounting system, which receives amounts and internal reference numbers, not names). They may use personal information only to provide their services to us.

When required. We may disclose information if the law requires it, to protect the rights, property or safety of Telluride Science, our participants or others, or as part of a reorganization or transfer of our activities.

4. Cookies and browser storage

We do not set cookies for participants. While you fill in the registration form, your browser keeps a draft of it for that tab, so you don’t lose your answers. After you register, your browser keeps a private link that lets you return and change your registration from the same device for up to 14 days. It also remembers whether you prefer the list or grid view of workshops. You can clear this storage in your browser settings at any time.

Staff and lodging partners who sign in get a sign-in cookie that lasts up to 7 days, and staff signing in with Google also get a short-lived security cookie.

Workshop pages can show a Google map, which loads only if you click “Show map”. When it loads, Google may set cookies or collect information under its own privacy policy. Our fonts are served from our own site.

5. Profile photos

Uploading a photo is optional. It helps our staff recognize participants, and only Telluride Science staff can see it. We do not put photos on badges or on the public site. We delete photos of people who don’t complete a paid registration automatically, and you can ask us to remove your photo at any time. Backup copies are deleted on our regular backup schedule.

6. How long we keep it

We keep registration, lodging and payment records for as long as we need them to run our workshops and to meet our accounting, tax and legal obligations. Abuse-prevention counters are deleted within about a day, payment-processor event records after a limited time, and unpaid photos as described above. If an email to you fails to send, we keep a copy so our staff can send it again. Backup copies of our database are kept for a limited time and are regularly replaced or deleted. Copies stored with Backblaze, photos included, are deleted after about 30 days.

We delete the copy of an email that failed to send 90 days after our staff have dealt with it.

7. How we protect it

The site is served only over encrypted connections. Our staff sign in with Telluride Science Google accounts, and lodging partners sign in with single-use links that expire after 15 minutes. Card details are handled by Stripe. We limit access to personal information to our staff and to the properties handling your stay, keep personal details out of our server logs wherever we can, and limit automated abuse. No system is completely secure, but we work to protect your information and to fix problems quickly.

8. Your choices and rights

You can ask us for a copy of the personal information we hold about you, or ask us to correct it, update it, or delete it, by emailing sara@telluridescience.org. You can also ask us to send the information you gave us, in a common machine-readable format, to you or to another organization. For your security, the public registration form will not change details we already have on file. Please email us instead. We will respond within 30 days. We may need to keep some information, such as payment records, to meet legal, tax or accounting obligations, and we will tell you if so.

If you would rather your name not appear on a workshop’s participant list, email us and we will remove it.

If you are in the European Union, the United Kingdom or another place with similar laws, we use your information to perform our agreement with you (your registration and lodging), for our legitimate interests in running our workshops and keeping the site secure, to meet legal obligations, and, for optional information such as a photo, with your consent, which you may withdraw at any time. You may also object to or ask us to restrict certain uses, and you may complain to your local data protection authority. We store and process information in the United States.

9. Children

This site is not intended for children under 18, and we do not knowingly collect their personal information. If you believe a child has given us personal information, please contact us and we will delete it.

10. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time. We will post the new version here with a new effective date and, if the changes are significant, tell participants by email.

11. Contact us

Telluride Science, PO Box 2429, Telluride, CO 81435. Email: sara@telluridescience.org. See also our Terms of Service and Participant Guidelines.