Privacy Policy

What information does Windycon collect and how is it used?

If you are just browsing the Windycon website, no personally identifiable information is collected. Yes, each page you visit is logged by IP address, but that is it.

When you purchase a membership for Windycon, whether online or in person, we collect information including your legal name, mailing address, and email address. We use this information generate your badge and verify your identity when you collect your badge at registration. We are required to maintain a list of all attendees for each Windycon for a certain period of time in the event it is required by the authorities.

If you apply to be an artist, vendor, or vendor's agent, we collect a variety of personal and business information. The information is used internally by the Winydcon Staff. Some may be listed on our webiste, such as Vendor information and merchandise sold. Some may be provided as require by law to various government agencies.

Finally, if you ask to host a party, request a fan table, or have a special room request, we will collect the necessary information and provide it to the appropriate department.

Does Windycon share my information with anyone?

The information we collect is for our use. We use it to facilitate your attendance at Windycon. That said, there are occasions where some of your information may be shared.

• We will cooperate with criminal investigations and civil complaints in compliance with legal advice. We will not volunteer your information.
• When you provide an email address as part of your registration, we will provide that address to sched so that an invitation will be sent to your email address. You may decline that invitation.
• Vendors may have their name(s) along with the name of their business advertised on Windycon's website and social media outlets.
• If Windycon collects Illinois Sales Tax on your behalf, as is the case for Artists, we pass the money on to the State of Illinois, but not any of your personal information.

How is my information secured?

Windycon follows all best practices when collecting and storing your data. Our website provides a secure connection, which we encourage everyone to use. We limit access to collected data to only those departments and staff that have a need to access the data. Online data is located in a secured storage location requring multi-factor authentication. And we constantly review our policies and practices to ensure your data remains safe.

What are my rights concerning all of this?

You always have certain rights concerning your data that we collect, including but not limited to

• The right to be informed about what personal data we collect
• The right to access any and all of your personal data that we've collected
• The right to rectification (you can tell us to fix any inaccuracies in your data)
• The right to to be forgotten. This one can be tricky in that there are situations where we by law have to retain certain data in the event it is demanded by the courts or other authorities. If that is the case, we will tell you.

What about the dreaded Cookies?

When you first came to this site, you may have have noticed an absence of a pop-up telling you about cookies and asking you to accept or decline, etc. That is because this website only uses Session Cookies. Also known as a transient cookie or a temporary cookie, a session cookie is only active during each browsing session and is automatically deleted at the end of each browsing session when the user exits the web browser. We use these cookies to hold the personally identifying information collected for registrations. That's all. We do not save information. We do not leave breadcrumbs for other websites to track or leverage.

A note about third-party links.

Our website includes links to other websites. Windycon is not responsible for their privacy practices and we encourage you to review their policies.

What happens when this policy changes?

Whenever this or any published Windycon policy changes, we will update the date at the top of the page and publish a notification of the changes via our social media accounts.

Can you explain the boring legal stuff?

First, when we say "Windycon", we are referring to the legal entity with the full name "Illinois Science Fiction in Chicago doing business as Windycon".

There is no comprehensive national privacy law in the United States. We are compliant with the Illinois Personal Information Protection Act (PIPA) and we apply those protections to everyone visiting this site. Likewise, for our friends from abroad, we adhere to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and apply those protections as well.