Privacy Policy

Introduction

By accessing the For Empowering Women (FEW) in Japan (“us”, “we”, “FEW”) website, signing up for FEW news/events, and/or signing up as a FEW member (the “service” or “services”) you are agreeing to FEW’s Privacy Policy and Terms of Use. Please read both policies.

In particular, please take note of what information is gathered, why and how we use it, and ensure you understand and agree before utilizing any of the services that the FEW community offers or providing any of your personal information to FEW.

Our Pledge

We never sell, rent or share your personally identifiable information behind your back. We would only make an exception to this pledge if we were required to do so by law. It is also strictly forbidden for any FEW member to use the contact information of other members for private business purposes or for sending unsolicited information or to share data of another member with anyone who is not a member.

Information We Share

Your privacy is important to FEW. We do not share your personal information (such as your name, address, payment information, etc.), regardless of whether or not you are a user (as defined below), with companies, organizations, or individuals outside of FEW unless one of the following circumstances apply:

To Implement our Services

In order to implement any of the services (each a “service” and collectively our “services”) that we offer on our website or information for on our website that we implement offline, we may need to share your personal information with third parties. In such situations, we may share only such personal information as is necessary to complete the requested service. For example, if you request to attend an event, we will share your applicable personal information with the venue and event curators so that they may contact you and personalize the event for you.

With our Sponsors

FEW is a volunteer organization, supported in part by a select group of Sponsors. A list of these Sponsors can be found online on our website. We will not provide the membership directory to any Sponsor and no member will be contacted by email either by the Sponsors or other third parties.

Sponsors who are also female members and do receive the membership directory are specifically reminded that they are receiving this directory as part of their membership benefits and not as part of their Sponsorship benefits, and are requested to act accordingly. Likewise, if any Sponsor is found to be in violation of this policy, it will negatively affect their contract up to and including possible cancellation.

Our member solicitation outlets are our newsletters, our Sponsors’ information table at monthly meetings, and if requested, on a limited basis, a notice can be placed through the FEW membership email list, if the announcement is sent to the Sponsorship Director and receives approval.

With Your Explicit Consent

We may share your personal information that you provide on the website to certain third parties if you instruct us to share your information, or if you consent to the sharing of your personal information via opt-in.

For External Processing

We may provide your personal information to our affiliates or other trusted businesses or persons to process certain services, such as signing you in to events or through our third party service providers.

FEW has no control over, nor is responsible for, the privacy policies and practices of these third parties. Neither FEW nor third parties will be liable for failure or delay in performance to the extent caused by circumstances beyond its reasonable control. In the course of ordinary FEW activities, your contact data may be used on third party websites such as:

In all such situations, the provision of information is necessary for processing a service that you request and appropriate confidentiality and security measures are in place to protect your information.

For Legal Reasons

We’ll share your personal information with companies, organizations or individuals outside of FEW if we believe doing so is necessary to:

  • Meet any applicable law, regulation, legal process/proceedings or enforceable governmental request.
  • Establish, exercise, or defend our legal rights (including providing information to others for the purposes of fraud prevention, reducing credit or security risk, or technical issues).

For Aggregate, Anonymous, or Reflective Data

We may share aggregated, non-personally identifiable information publicly and with our partners (“Aggregate Data”). For example, we may share information publicly to show our member statistics.

We may share anonymized data (“Anonymous Data”) with certain partners or sponsors to facilitate delivering personalized experiences throughout your time on our website or using our services. For example, we may share information with third party intermediaries who can create an event centered around a need or want that you shared with the FEW community.

Any user who does not want FEW to use their personal information in either Aggregate Data, Anonymous Data, or Reflective Data sets, whether such data sets are shared publicly or not, may email info@fewjapan.com.

If Your Information is Publicly Available

We may provide your personally identifiable information to other parties if your information is or becomes publicly available from a source other than FEW.

Information We Collect

We collect certain information from all visitors to our website, regardless of whether they sign up for an FEW Member user account, browse the website, or purchase one of our services. Beyond this baseline level of collected information, we collect and store additional information from visitors who sign up for an FEW Member user account or pay for a service through the website (“users”). We also collect certain information about you from our Sponsors (“Sponsor-provided information”).

Information We Collect from Sponsors

Sponsor-provided information may include your first and last name, email address, certain dates related to your service with the Sponsor (such as the date of the event).

Information We Collect from All Visitors

We collect from all visitors of the website certain information about the type of computer, operating system, and Internet browser that the visitor is using to access our website as well as the visitors’ IP address (or that of their Internet service provider).

Cookies

We use cookies on our website. A cookie is a file containing an identifier (a string of letters and numbers) that is sent by a web server to a web browser and is stored by the browser. The identifier is then sent back to the server each time the browser requests a page from the server.

Cookies may be either “persistent” cookies or “session” cookies. A persistent cookie will be stored by a web browser and will remain valid until its set expiry date, unless deleted by the user before the expiry date; a session cookie, on the other hand, will expire at the end of the user session, when the web browser is closed.

Cookies do not typically contain any information that personally identifies a user, but personal information that we store about you may be linked to the information stored in and obtained from cookies.

We use session cookies to understand a visitor’s behavior to make their experience on our website better and persistent cookies to gauge engagement behavior.

If you do not wish to have cookies stored on your machine, you can turn off cookies in your browser. Blocking all cookies will have a negative impact upon the usability of many websites. If you block cookies, you will not be able to use all the features on our website.

Information We Collect from Users

The information that we collect from users includes, at minimum, their email address and their password.

In addition, if a user fills out any of the forms on the website while they’re signed in to their account (or if a visitor to the website fills out any such forms and during that same session becomes a user for payment purposes), then we’ll link the information contained in such forms to the user’s account in our database. This information may include the user’s first and last name, their home addresses or area in Tokyo where they live, their phone number, nationality, their preferred payment method, profession, areas of interest in terms of FEW services, and other information.

The user information may also consist of information that you post to our website with the intention of publishing it on the internet, which includes:

  • your username, profile pictures, and the content of your posts;
  • information contained in any communications that you send to us by email or through our website, including its communication content and metadata;
  • any other personal information that you send to us.

Please note, before you disclose to us the personal information of another person, you must obtain that person’s written consent to both the disclosure and the processing of that personal information in accordance with this policy.

If a user orders or purchases a service that requires payment or identity verification, then we may require the user to input additional information. For example, this information may include a (i) credit card number and credit card expiration date or (ii), if the User selects to use a direct bank transfer, then we’ll collect the banking details for that process to move forward and connect with the FEW bank account.

Please note how we store this information in the Retaining Personal Information section below.

Using Your Personal Information

Personal information submitted to us through our website will be used for the purposes specified in this policy or on the relevant pages of the website. We may use your personal information for the following:

  • administering our website;
  • personalizing our website for you;
  • enabling your use of the services available on our website;
  • supplying services purchased through our website;
  • sending reminders to you about upcoming events;
  • sending you communications;
  • sending you email notifications that you have specifically requested;
  • sending you our email newsletter, if you have requested it (you can inform us at any time if you no longer require the newsletter);
  • sending you marketing communications relating to our website or the carefully-selected third parties which we think may be of interest to you e.g. Sponsors, by post or, where you have specifically agreed to this, by email or similar technology (you can inform us at any time if you no longer require marketing communications);
  • providing third parties with statistical information about our users (but those third parties will not be able to identify any individual user from that information);
  • dealing with inquiries and complaints made by or about you relating to our website;
  • keeping our website secure and prevent fraud;
  • verifying compliance with the terms and conditions governing the use of our website;
  • and other uses.

If you submit personal information for publication on our website, we will publish and otherwise use that information in accordance with the license that you grant to us through our Terms of Use policy.

Your privacy settings can be used to limit the publication of your information on our website and can be adjusted using privacy controls on the website.

We will not, without your express consent, supply your personal information to any third party for their or any other third parties direct marketing, except in the cases already explicitly defined herein.

Your Rights

You may instruct us to provide you with any personal information we hold about you; provision of such information will be subject to the following:

  • The supply of appropriate evidence of your identity: we will usually accept a photocopy of your passport, driver’s license or Japan residence card plus an original copy of a utility bill showing your current address.
  • Alternatively, if in person at a FEW event, you may show us your passport, Japan residence card or driver’s license.

We may withhold personal information that you request to the extent permitted by law.

You may instruct us at any time not to process your personal information for marketing purposes.

Please note that we cannot be held responsible for you not being able to take advantage of FEW membership benefits if you do not have a FEW Member user account and/or have instructed us to withhold your information from marketing communications.

Deleting or Changing Your Personal Information

To request deletion or changes to your personal information used for membership purposes, please contact FEW at membership@fewjapan.com.

You can contact any FEW board member offline to request that your information is deleted, but we do prefer receiving emails so we can track and ensure prompt responses. Offline contacts may result in a delay in processing.

Please note that once we delete your data, you will no longer be able to receive information from nor be contacted by FEW. The data will be deleted from all communication channels of FEW even if you still have time left on your membership. We do not offer refunds in cases where the FEW member has instructed FEW to delete their data, and therefore FEW is unable to provide the benefits of FEW membership to the member.

Retaining Personal Information

Our data retention policy is designed to help ensure that we comply with our legal obligations regarding the retention and deletion of personal information.

Personal information that we process for any purpose or purposes shall not be kept for longer than is necessary for that purpose or those purposes.

Without prejudice to article the above section, we will usually delete personal data falling within the categories set out below at the date/time set out below:

  • When membership is terminated personal data will be deleted within a 3-month period from notification
  • When a payment account has not been used for more than six months, all data will be deleted
  • Notwithstanding the other provisions of this section, we will retain documents (including electronic documents) containing personal data:
    • to the extent that we are required to do so by law;
    • if we believe that the documents may be relevant to any ongoing or prospective legal proceedings; and
    • in order to establish, exercise, or defend our legal rights (including providing information to others for the purposes of fraud prevention and reducing credit risk).

International Data Transfers

Information that we collect may be transferred to the following countries which do not have data protection laws equivalent to those in force in the European Economic Area such as areas like the United States of America, Russia, Japan, China, and India.

Personal information that you publish on our website or submit for publication on our website may be available, via the internet, around the world. We cannot prevent the use or misuse of such information by others.

You expressly agree to the transfers of personal information as described above if need be to maintain the website and provide you with FEW services.

Security

We will take reasonable technical and organizational precautions to prevent the loss, misuse, or alteration of your personal information.

We will store all the personal information you provide on our secure (password- and firewall-protected) servers.

All electronic financial transactions entered into through our website will be protected by encryption technology.

You acknowledge that the transmission of information over the internet is inherently insecure, and we cannot guarantee the security of data sent over the internet.

You are responsible for keeping the password you use for accessing our website confidential; we will not ask you for your password (except when you log in to our website).

Children

This website is not intended or designed to attract children under the age of 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from or about any person under the age of 13. If you are under 13 years old and wish to ask a question or use this website in any way which requires you to submit your personal information, please get your parent or guardian to do so on your behalf.

Events

All members, guests, visitors, attendees, speakers, and participants attending a FEW event are required to acknowledge, understand, and agree to the following event policy. Your refusal of agreement may result in refusal the refusal to allow you to enter or partake in the FEW event.

Filming and Photography

By participating in a FEW event, you acknowledge that you will be in a location (virtual or in person) where photography, audio, and video recording may occur. By entering the location, you consent to:

  • interview, photography, audio recording, video recording and
  • their release, publication, exhibition, or reproduction to be used for news, website articles, advertising, and social media, and any other future usage by FEW

You also acknowledge that images, photos and videos may be used to promote similar FEW events in the future.

You release FEW from any liability connected with the taking, recording, digitizing, or publication and use of interviews, photographs, computer images, video and/or or sound recordings and any other usage that we deem viable.

Amendments

We may update this policy from time to time by publishing a new version on our website. You should check this page occasionally to ensure you understand any changes to this policy. We may notify you of changes to this policy by email or on our website.

Questions

If you have any questions, please also contact FEW through communications@fewjapan.com.

Last updated

This policy was last updated on December 8, 2022.