Privacy Policy

1. Introduction and Scope.
   This Privacy Policy describes how Pacific Science Center (“PacSci,” “we,” “our,” or “us”) collects, uses, discloses, and otherwise processes information about you. This Privacy Policy applies to information we collect when you access or use our website, ticketing portals, and digital platforms (collectively, our “Services”), and when you otherwise interact with us in person, such as at our Seattle campus, at PacSci-sponsored offsite events, through our summer camps and youth educational programming, via campus interactive kiosks, or through our official social media channels.
   
   We may provide different or additional privacy notices for specific programs or distinct regional offerings. In those instances, the program-specific notice will explicitly supplement or replace the disclosures contained in this baseline policy.
2. Collection of Information.
   a. Information You Voluntarily Provide to Us. We collect information that you share directly with us. This includes, but is not limited to, through interactions such as creating an online profile, purchasing a membership or general admission, IMAX®, or planetarium tickets, enrolling a child in a PacSci summer camp, making a donation, participating in surveys, or requesting customer service support. Depending on your engagement, the types of information we collect may include:

• Contact Information: Full name, email address, physical mailing address, and telephone number.
  Membership & Philanthropic History: Membership tier, unique member number, corporate matching data, gift designations, and historical donation milestones.
• Demographic Profile Data: Age or age ranges, date of birth, gender expression, and any optional demographic identifiers you choose to share for grant-reporting or equity tracking.
• Participant Care and Accommodation Data: When registering for youth camps or specialized educational programs, we collect parent/guardian contacts, authorized pick-up identities, and critical health or safety details (e.g., emergency contacts, medications, food allergies, or medical accommodation requests) strictly to ensure participant safety and compliance.

b. Information Collected Automatically. When you navigate our online services or visit our physical campus, we utilize automated tracking and security mechanisms to capture interaction data:

• Transactional Logs: We record details of financial exchanges, including purchase dates, ticket types, camp choices, order values, and fulfillment timelines.
• Device and Network Telemetry: We collect system data from devices accessing our services. This includes IP addresses, hardware models, browser classifications, operating system versions, unique device identifiers, referral URLs, pages viewed, time spent on digital assets, and shopping cart abandoned sequences.
• Campus Security Footprint (Visual): For physical safety and security purposes, PacSci operates closed-circuit cameras throughout public and secure areas of our campus. Additionally, we occasionally capture promotional photography or video footage of public activities on our floor; if you or your children are participating in a designated marketing capture zone, physical signage will be displayed.
• Cookies and Digital Tracking Technologies: We utilize first- and third-party cookies, web pixels, and tracking scripts to optimize platform functionality, maintain active ticketing queues, analyze traffic behavior, and deliver relevant programmatic advertisements.

c. Information Derived or Sourced Alternately. We may obtain data from trusted public or administrative sources, such as educational partners managing school field trips, group tour coordinators, or secure matching gift verification platforms. We may also derive operational inferences about your scientific interests or cinematic preferences based on your historical ticket and attendance patterns to curate future recommendations.

3. Use of Information.
   PacSci processes your information strictly to advance our educational mission, fulfill programmatic offerings, and maintain organizational sustainability. Specifically, we use your data to:

• Process, manage, and verify memberships, ticket purchases, and youth camp registrations;
• Distribute tax-compliant charitable donation receipts and administer donor stewardship cycles;
• Send critical transactional or relationship updates, including safety notices, registration confirmations, and technical account alerts;
• Distribute marketing, newsletter, and promotional materials concerning upcoming science exhibits, films, and events (subject to your opt-out preferences);
• Detect, prevent, and mitigate fraud, security incidents, unauthorized access, or property damage on our campus and digital assets;
• Analyze visitor trends and geographic distributions to improve exhibit design, optimize campus flow, and fulfill statutory reporting requirements tied to public funding or state grants; and
• Comply with applicable legal, financial, and regulatory obligations under Washington State law.

4. Third-Party Payment Safeguards.
   All financial transactions conducted through our Services are processed via secure, PCI-DSS compliant third-party payment gateways. PacSci does not directly store, process, or view raw credit card numbers or primary account numbers (PANs) on our internal servers. When executing a payment, your financial details are captured directly by the independent processor and remain subject to that specific provider’s privacy policy and system rather than this policy.
5. Targeted Advertising and Data Analytics.
   We partner with digital analytics providers and trusted advertising platforms to review traffic trends and serve relevant informational notices across the web. These platforms utilize cookies and digital identifiers to monitor your interaction with our Services.
   
   In certain configurations, we may utilize secure cryptographic hashing (converting identifiers like email addresses into anonymized alphanumeric strings) to allow advertising platforms to display relevant PacSci programming to you on third-party websites without sharing your plain-text personal identity. We do not sell user profiles or behavioral data to third-party brokers for external commercial gain.
6. Disclosure of Personal Information.
   We do not sell, rent, or lease your personal information. We disclose personal data only in the following controlled, operational circumstances:

• Authorized Service Providers: We share personal data with vetted vendors, contractors, and consultants executing operational tasks on our behalf. These include ticketing system managers, email distribution systems, summer camp database hosts, web developers, and professional audit or financial advisors. All such parties are bound by strict contractual confidentiality mandates.
• Peer Organizations: We may disclose personal information to other local nonprofit educational or cultural organizations to use for their own marketing and advertising purposes. You can opt out of these disclosures by contacting our membership team.
• Legal Mandates and Safety Obligations: We may disclose personal information if required by applicable local, state, or federal law, or in response to a valid legal subpoena, law enforcement request, or regulatory inquiry.
• Rights and Asset Protection: We will disclose data if we believe it is necessary to investigate or address violations of our user agreements, or to protect the safety, physical property, and legal rights of PacSci, our staff, visitors, or the general public.
• Organizational Restructuring: We may transfer personal data in connection with, or during active negotiations of, any merger, integration of nonprofit structures, joint venture, or transfer of organizational assets to an aligned nonprofit entity.

7. Your Privacy Choices and Control.

a. Digital Account Profiles. You can review, correct, or request the deletion of your contact details and communication preferences at any time by logging directly into your secure portal on our website or by contacting our team directly.

b. Cookie and Telemetry Restrictions. Most modern web browsers are configured to accept cookies by default. You can modify your individual browser settings to reject or purge cookies. Please note that disabling tracking cookies may degrade certain interactive functionalities, such as active ticketing queues or member login.

c. Communication Opt-Outs. You may opt out of receiving promotional emails, camp information, or text notices from PacSci at any time by executing the “Unsubscribe” hyperlink embedded within those communications, or by routing a formal request to our Marketing team. If you opt out of promotional streams, we will continue to transmit non-promotional relationship communications, including active membership confirmations, ticket barcodes, and camp emergency updates.

8. Specialized Statutory Protections.

a. Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) Compliance. PacSci’s public digital services are designed for general audiences and are not directed toward children under the age of 13. While we offer extensive educational summer camps and interactive programming for children, online registration must be executed exclusively by a parent or legal guardian. We do not knowingly collect personal information online directly from individuals under 13. If we discover that an unverified minor under 13 has transmitted personal data through our website, we will execute immediate purge protocols to delete that data completely from our storage frameworks.

b. Washington State My Health My Data Act (MHMD) Compliance. To the extent that PacSci collects, tracks, or stores any health-related participant data—specifically limited to medical accommodation notices, camp health & safety profiles, emergency health contacts, or accessible floor accommodations—PacSci does so strictly under an explicit consent model to ensure physical safety during camp and other programs. This data is never utilized for marketing profiles, is never disclosed to commercial networks, and is stored within partitioned, secure electronic environments subject to strict retention lifecycles.

c. Data Retention Frameworks. PacSci retains personal data for the minimum time necessary to fulfill operational programs, maintain robust financial tracking, resolve disputes, and satisfy statutory record-keeping mandates. For programs or facilities developed using state capital grants or public appropriations, programmatic, billing, and contract verification data are maintained in accordance with state-mandated records retention schedules (up to ten years following project closeout) before destruction.