Data protection
Privacy notice
What this meeting collects, why, how long it is kept, and the rights you can exercise at any time. The field list is generated from the registration form itself, so it can never drift from what is actually collected.
Data controller
- Controller
- ICRANet — International Center for Relativistic Astrophysics Network
- Role
- Data controller (self-hosted deployment, also the processor)
- Contact
- mg18@icranet.org
- Scope
- The Eighteenth Marcel Grossmann Meeting · evt_06G396WCRDRCXEKH7QT6CCXQTG
Why we process your data
Every processing operation needs a purpose and a legal basis; the table pairs them up. The basis determines which rights apply: data collected on consent can be withdrawn at any time, whereas records we must keep by law — invoices, for instance — cannot be deleted on request until that period expires.
| Purpose | Legal basis | Data involved |
|---|---|---|
| Processing your registration, confirming attendance, on-site check-in | Performance of a contract (GDPR Art. 6(1)(b)) | Name, email, affiliation, country/region, ticket type |
| Abstract review, programme scheduling and session assignment | Performance of a contract (Art. 6(1)(b)) | Title, abstract text, authors and affiliations, session preference |
| Publishing the programme and the abstracts of accepted contributions | Performance of a contract (Art. 6(1)(b)): you submitted a contribution in order to present it at a public meeting; publishing it is part of that | Title, abstract text, author names and affiliations |
| Publishing the list of participants (the record of a past meeting) | Legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f)). This list was compiled from the registration records of the meeting as it was held; there was no separate “list me publicly” tick at the time, and we do not pretend that there was. You may ask to be taken off it at any time, and we will not ask why. | Name, affiliation, country/region. The list has never contained email addresses or other contact details. |
| Catering and accessibility arrangements | Your explicit consent (Art. 9(2)(a)) — these may reveal religious belief or health, and are special-category data | Dietary requirements, accessibility needs |
| Issuing visa invitation letters | Steps taken at your request prior to entering into a contract (Art. 6(1)(b)) | Passport name and number, nationality, expiry date, consulate — hard-deleted 30 days after the meeting, not kept for two years with the rest of your registration |
| Collecting fees, issuing invoices, meeting tax and accounting obligations | Legal obligation (Art. 6(1)(c)) | Invoice name, tax/VAT number, billing address, payment records |
| Contacting speakers, committee members and session chairs about arrangements | Legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f)): a meeting cannot be run without the organisers being able to reach the people on the programme | Email, phone number and internal notes held against the name — visible only to organisers with backend access, never on a public page |
| Sending operational messages about this meeting | Performance of a contract (Art. 6(1)(b)). These are not marketing emails; we do not use them to promote other events. | Email address, delivery status |
| Keeping the site secure, diagnosing faults, preventing abuse | Legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f)) | IP address and user agent in access logs, kept for 90 days |
Who sees your data
What is publicly visible
The participant list and programme of an academic meeting are themselves public scholarly record. For this meeting, that currently means:
- The participant list (60 people): name, affiliation and country/region only. The organisers separately hold an email address and phone number so they can reach speakers, but the public list never shows them — the query that builds it does not read those columns at all.
- Invited speakers (12) and committee members (42): name, affiliation, country/region.
- The abstract archive (90 entries): title, author names and affiliations, and the abstract text. It is searchable and may be indexed by search engines.
- The programme: time, room, title, and the speaker’s name and affiliation.
- Everything else you enter on the registration form — email, career stage, dietary and accessibility needs, passport and invoice details — is never public and never appears on the pages above.
- To be taken off the public list: write to us. No reason required, and it affects neither your attendance nor your talk. Old copies already cached by search engines are outside our control, but we remove you from the page first.
Who else receives it
| Recipient | What they receive |
|---|---|
| The organising and programme committees, and session chairs | Registration and abstract data, to the extent needed for review and scheduling |
| The venue and catering providers | Headcounts and catering/accessibility arrangements in aggregate; names only where genuinely required, such as place cards |
| The payment provider | The minimum needed to take payment. Card numbers never reach this site and are not stored here — we keep only a payment session reference for reconciliation. |
| The email delivery provider | Recipient address and delivery status |
| Immigration authorities | Only if you request a visa invitation letter, the information the letter must carry |
| The proceedings publisher | Only if your contribution is included: author names, affiliations and the manuscript |
What we never do
- We do not sell, rent or trade your personal data in any form.
- We do not hand the participant list to sponsors or exhibitors. A business card you give at a booth is your own choice and has nothing to do with this site.
- We do not use the addresses collected here to promote other meetings or third-party content.
- We do not profile you, and we take no automated decisions that produce legal effects.
- The site uses strictly necessary first-party cookies only (language choice and login session). There are no third-party trackers or advertising pixels.
What we collect
These fields come from this event’s registration form. Fields marked “personal data” are anonymised when the retention period ends; health-related “special category” fields (dietary, accessibility) are hard-deleted 30 days after the event and are excluded from every export template by default.
| Field | Type | Category | Retention |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full namefull_name | short_textRequired | Personal data | 730 daysafter the event ends |
| Affiliationaffiliation | affiliationRequired | Personal data | 730 daysafter the event ends |
| Country / Regioncountry | countryRequired | Personal data | 730 daysafter the event ends |
| Career stagecareer_stage | selectRequired | Non-identifying | 730 daysafter the event ends |
| Parallel sessions of interestsessions_interest | checkbox_groupOptional | Non-identifying | 730 daysafter the event ends |
| I would like to present a talk or postersubmit_abstractTick this to submit an abstract with your registration. You can also submit later. | booleanOptional | Non-identifying | 730 daysafter the event ends |
| Title of your contributionabstract_title | short_textOptional | Non-identifying | 730 daysafter the event ends |
| Presentation typeabstract_type | selectOptional | Non-identifying | 730 daysafter the event ends |
| Preferred parallel sessionabstract_trackThe programme committee may reassign your contribution. | selectOptional | Non-identifying | 730 daysafter the event ends |
| Abstractabstract_bodyUp to 2500 characters. Plain text. | long_textOptional | Non-identifying | 730 daysafter the event ends |
| Conference banquet (5 July)banquetLimited seats — first come, first served | capacity_optionOptional | Non-identifying | 730 daysafter the event ends |
| Dietary requirementsdietary | selectOptional | Special category | 30 daysafter the event ends |
| Accessibility requirementsaccessibilityWheelchair access, sign language, etc. | long_textOptional | Special category | 30 daysafter the event ends |
| I need a visa invitation lettervisa_letterHong Kong entry requirements vary by passport. Check before requesting. | booleanOptional | Identity document | 30 daysafter the event ends |
| Full name as printed in passportvisa_passport_name | short_textOptional | Identity document | 30 daysafter the event ends |
| Passport numbervisa_passport_no | short_textOptional | Identity document | 30 daysafter the event ends |
| Nationality as shown in passportvisa_nationality | countryOptional | Identity document | 30 daysafter the event ends |
| Passport expiry datevisa_passport_expiry | dateOptional | Identity document | 30 daysafter the event ends |
| Consulate or visa office you will apply atvisa_consulateCity and country, e.g. "Rome, Italy". | short_textOptional | Identity document | 30 daysafter the event ends |
| I need an invoice for the registration feeneed_invoice | booleanOptional | Non-identifying | 730 daysafter the event ends |
| Invoice made out toinvoice_type | selectOptional | Non-identifying | 730 daysafter the event ends |
| Name on the invoiceinvoice_titleExact registered name of the organisation, or your full name. | short_textOptional | Personal data | 730 daysafter the event ends |
| Tax / VAT identification numberinvoice_tax_idLeave blank if invoicing an individual. | short_textOptional | Personal data | 730 daysafter the event ends |
| Billing addressinvoice_address | long_textOptional | Personal data | 730 daysafter the event ends |
| Email to send the invoice toinvoice_emailLeave blank to use your registration email. | emailOptional | Personal data | 730 daysafter the event ends |
| I have read and accept the privacy noticeconsent_privacy | booleanRequired | Non-identifying | 730 daysafter the event ends |
Retention periods
Clean-up is an automatic daily job, not a reminder someone has to act on: the worker runs at 04:00 UTC every day against the table below, and every run is written to the audit log.
| Data | Retention period | On expiry |
|---|---|---|
| Registration PII (form answers beyond name and email) | 730 daysafter the event ends | Field-level erasure, anonymous statistics retained |
| Special-category fields (dietary, accessibility) | 30 daysafter the event ends | Hard delete |
| Identity document data (passport number, nationality, expiry) | 30 daysafter the event ends | Hard delete |
| Email delivery metadata | 90 daysafter the record is created | Hard delete |
| Access logs (IP, user agent) | 90 daysafter the record is created | Hard delete |
| Abandoned registration drafts | 30 daysafter the record is created | Hard delete |
| Audit log | 730 daysafter the record is created | Subject pseudonymised, then archived |
- Registration PII for this event is anonymised automatically on 6 July 2029 (730 days after the event ends).
- Special-category fields such as dietary and accessibility needs are hard-deleted on 6 August 2027.
- “Anonymisation” is a deterministic, field-by-field operation: the email becomes anon-…@invalid, the name becomes a placeholder, every personal-data field is cleared — while counts and non-identifying statistics are kept, so archives stay intact.
- Every export, erasure and retention run is written to an append-only audit log whose hash chain makes later tampering detectable.
- The retention period for registration data (currently 730 days) is set by the organisers. They may shorten it, and may lengthen it where the law requires — lengthening leaves an audit record; it is not a number that can be changed quietly. The 30 days for special-category fields and identity documents are fixed in the system and the organisers cannot extend them.
- Passport number, nationality and expiry date are not kept for two years with the rest of your registration. Once the invitation letter is issued they are of no further use to us, and they are hard-deleted 30 days after the meeting.
Photography and recording
We take photographs during the meeting and may record some sessions. Two different things are involved here, and they do not weigh the same.
- Wide shots of the hall and the audience are taken and kept on the basis of legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f)), for the record of the meeting.
- Photographs in which an individual is recognisable, and any photograph used to promote a future meeting, need that person’s consent. We do not stretch “legitimate interests” to cover these — a picture that identifies you, used to attract other people to register, is not the same as a wide shot of the room.
- If you would rather not be photographed, tell any member of staff or the photographer. No reason needed, no advance request needed. There are “no photography” markers at the registration desk if you find one useful — they are a convenience, not a precondition.
- If a published photograph shows you and you want it down: write to us and we will remove it, without asking why.
- If your talk is to be recorded you will be told before it begins; saying so at the time is enough to stop it.
Where your data is held, and whether it leaves
This is a self-hosted system: the data sits on servers the organisers control, not on a third-party conference platform.
An international meeting necessarily involves cross-border processing: the committees sit in many countries, and the practical arrangements go to providers in Hong Kong, China where the meeting is held. For transfers outside the EEA we rely on an adequacy decision of the European Commission, or on Standard Contractual Clauses, having first assessed the conditions in the receiving country.
The public list, programme and abstracts are, once published, reachable from anywhere. That is what publishing means; it is not a separate transfer.
Your rights
Every right has a self-service entry point — no email, no 30-day wait. Open the tracking link from your confirmation email (/r/…) and choose “My data & privacy”.
| Right | How it works here |
|---|---|
| Information (Art. 13/14) | This page and the inline notes beside each form field, generated from the field definitions. |
| Access (Art. 15) | View everything on the data & privacy page, or export machine-readable JSON in one click. |
| Rectification (Art. 16) | Edit your answers yourself before the registration is confirmed; afterwards, contact the organisers. |
| Erasure (Art. 17) | A two-step confirmation anonymises your personal data immediately. Financial records are kept as the law requires, but masked. |
| Restriction (Art. 18) | Flag your record as restricted: excluded from exports, mailings and statistics. |
| Portability (Art. 20) | The same JSON as the access right; its structure is published with the OpenAPI schema. |
| Objection (Art. 21) | Withdraw from the public attendee list at any time; marketing emails carry a one-click unsubscribe. |
| Automated decisions (Art. 22) | A product constraint: there is no “auto-reject” rule. Automation may approve or escalate to a human — never reject. |
Exercise your rights
Open the tracking link you received (it looks like /r/xxxxx) and choose “My data & privacy” at the bottom. The link is the credential — no account needed.
If you think we have got this wrong
Tell us first if you like — most things are settled the same day. But you are not required to: you may lodge a complaint directly with the data protection authority where you live, where you work, or where you believe the infringement took place.
The list of EU authorities is at edpb.europa.eu; in Hong Kong, China the authority is the Office of the Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data (PCPD).
Changes to this notice
The field list and retention periods on this page are generated from the live system. Change the form or the retention setting and this page changes the same day — the notice cannot drift from what the system actually does.
If the purposes or legal bases change materially, we will email registered participants before the change takes effect, rather than quietly editing this page.
Defaults
- Data minimisation: a new registration form starts with email and name only. Every extra field is a deliberate choice by the organisers.
- Display off by default: the attendee list is not public unless each attendee opts in individually.
- Cookies: strictly necessary first-party session cookies only, with no third-party tracking — which is why this site has no cookie banner.