Privacy

The Members’ Area

KARSAA members can sign in to a private members’ area. This section explains what it holds about you.

What We Collect

• Your account: your email address, name, membership category, class year, anything you write when you ask to join, and your membership status.
• Profile details KARSAA asks every member for: branch or service status, where they live (CONUS or OCONUS, with a city and a state or country), and employer and industry. For cadets, the service and employer are filled in as “Cadet, United States Military Academy”.
• Profile details only if you add them: a maiden name (shown to members after your name, and searchable in the directory), LinkedIn address, phone, military unit and exact location.
• A profile photo, only if you add one: your browser crops it to a square and saves it as a small photo (400 × 400). Location, camera and date details are removed before it’s saved, and checked again by our server.
• A membership request you haven’t sent yet: what you’ve typed into Request Membership, saved so you can finish later. It’s deleted when you send your request, or after 30 days.
• Event sign-ups: which events you sign up for, and any note you leave for the organizers.
• Giving history from Zeffy: this covers gifts made from your sign-in email, or from another email you’ve confirmed on your profile. We copy the date, the tax-deductible amount, the campaign name, and whether the gift was refunded. Zeffy’s emailed receipt remains your official tax receipt.
• Gifts we can’t match to a member: we keep the donor’s name, email, amount, date and campaign, so officers can match the gift. We delete it within 12 months.
• Sign-in records:
  • A cookie that keeps you signed in. It isn’t used for tracking or advertising.
  • A small note in your browser that a member signed in on it, with no name or email. It lets the public pages show “Members’ Home” instead of “Member Sign In”.
  • Two yes-or-no notes in your browser for the “Get Started” box on Members’ Home: whether you hid it, and whether you’ve searched the directory for your classmates. Signing out clears them.
  • The devices you’re signed in on, with their internet address and browser.
  • Short-lived counts of recent attempts, so we can block misuse.
  • Sign-in codes, stored only in scrambled form. They expire after 10 minutes.
  • If you sign in with Google, Google tells us your name, your email address, that it has checked that address, and the web address of your Google profile picture (which we don’t show). We don’t receive your Google password or anything else from your Google account.
  • If you change the email you sign in with (on My Profile), we send a code to the new address and a notice to the old one. The officer log records that you changed it, without either address.
  • While you sign in, that browser tab remembers the email you entered for up to 10 minutes. This lets you come back to the code box. It’s cleared when you sign in or close the tab.
• Officer records: a log of officer actions, such as approving a membership, with who did it and when. It also records when members change their own name (the old and new name). This helps officers spot anyone using someone else’s name.

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Who Can See It

• You can see and change your own profile at any time.
• Officers can see all of your details, so they can run KARSAA.
• Alumni and Cadet Members can use the alumni directory:
  • It always shows your name, class year and membership category.
  • Other details appear only if you choose “Members” for them on your profile.
  • Email and phone are hidden unless you choose to share them. Even then, they’re shown one person at a time, never as a list.
  • Associate Members can’t open the directory.
• Event attendee lists (names, class years, categories and notes) are seen by officers only.
• Your profile photo, if you add one, is seen by signed-in members, unless you choose “Officers only (hidden)”. Members see it in the alumni directory and in Messages. Your photo is never shown on public pages, in emails, in link previews or in downloaded lists. Any member who can see it can use Report Photo to ask officers to look at it. Officers can remove a photo, and each removal is recorded in the officer log.
• We don’t sell or rent your information. We don’t share it with anyone outside KARSAA except the service providers below.

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Messages Between Members

• Alumni and Cadet Members (and officers) can send a message request, with a short note, to anyone listed in the alumni directory. The note is the first message.
• The person who receives it chooses Accept, Decline or Block. Only after they accept can either of you send more messages. If they decline or block, no new request can be sent.
• Only the two of you can read the conversation. Officers can’t browse it. If either of you uses Report a Problem, officers can read it up to the moment of the report, and every time they open it is recorded in the officer log.
• Requests, answers and blocks aren’t shown to officers, unless someone uses Report a Problem.
• Emails about requests and messages never include names or message text. You can turn them off on My Profile, or for one conversation from its “…” menu.
• We keep the conversation, who asked, and whether the request was accepted, declined or blocked. Download My Data includes your conversations and the messages you wrote. Deleting your account deletes them at once.
• The Messages page remembers, in your browser tab only, which conversations you had open and anything you typed but didn’t send. Signing out clears it. The optional new-message sound is a choice kept in your browser only.

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Service Providers

• Cloudflare hosts the website and stores the members’ area information. It also runs a check that visitors are people, not automated programs. That check may look at information about your browser.
• Resend sends our emails: sign-in and confirmation codes, whether your membership request was approved, and short notices about messages. It receives your email address, first name and the message. When you ask to join, it also sends KARSAA’s officers a short notice. The notice has your name, membership category and class year.
• Google confirms who you are, only if you choose “Sign In with Google”.
• Zeffy processes donations; we read gift records from Zeffy to show your giving history.

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Keeping and Deleting Your Information

• On your My Profile page you can download your data as a file, or delete your account.
• Deleting your account erases:
  • your account, profile, profile photo, privacy choices and event sign-ups
  • the other emails you added, and KARSAA’s copy of your giving history
  • your conversations in Messages (the whole conversation, for both people)
  The officer log keeps its entries, but shows “Deleted member” instead of your name.
• Gifts that don’t match a member’s email are kept on a list only officers can see (donor name, email, amount, date and campaign), so they can be linked to the right member. They’re deleted after 12 months.
• Our hosting provider keeps automatic backups for up to 30 days, after which deleted information is gone from them too.
• Your profile photo is deleted as soon as you choose Remove Photo, or when you delete your account.
• Download My Data (on My Profile) includes your profile photo and the messages you wrote.
• You can also ask us to delete your information by emailing [email protected].

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