Notice on the Collection, Processing and Use of Personal Data

1. Purpose of collection: reviewing applications and managing membership status; correspondence about the Society's affairs and its events; fees and receipts; member services; and the discharge of the Society's statutory obligations.

2. Categories of personal data collected: identifiers (name, national identification number, date of birth); characteristics (sex); contact details (telephone, email, postal address); education and occupation (qualifications, career history, employer, job title, field of expertise); and any other information you choose to provide.

3. Period of use: from the date of admission until you resign or the Society is dissolved, or for the retention period required by law, whichever is longer.

4. Territory of use: within the Republic of China (Taiwan). Where international exchange work would involve a transfer abroad, we will seek your consent separately.

5. Who may use the data: the Society's secretariat and authorised staff; and contractors engaged where the Society's work requires it (payment service providers and mailing houses, for example), for whom the Society bears supervisory responsibility under Article 4 of the Personal Data Protection Act. The data is not passed to any third party except as required by law or with your consent.

6. Manner of use: collected, processed and used in electronic or paper form, within the purposes stated above. Highly sensitive fields such as the national identification number are stored encrypted, with access restricted and a record kept of every retrieval.

7. Your rights: under Article 3 of the Personal Data Protection Act you may ask the Society to enquire about, review or supply a copy of your personal data; to supplement or correct it; to stop collecting, processing or using it; or to delete it. To exercise these rights, write to or telephone the secretariat.

8. If you do not provide the data: name, national identification number, date of birth, contact details and postal address are needed to assess eligibility and to send member documents, and without them an application cannot be completed. The remaining fields are optional and do not affect your application.

9. Browser storage (cookies): this site uses only what is necessary to keep its basic functions working. Nothing is used for advertising or behavioural tracking, and no third-party cookie is set.

(a) tiss-member: the token that identifies you after signing in. It holds only your membership number and an expiry time, and no personal data. It is set HttpOnly and SameSite=Lax, expires after eight hours, and is deleted when you sign out.

(b) tiss-in: records only the fact that you are signed in. Its value is always 1; it holds no membership number and no personal data. The site header uses it to show "Member area" instead of "Sign in". It is not a credential — identity is always determined from tiss-member. It is created, expires and is deleted together with tiss-member.

(c) payload-token: used when the Society's staff sign in to the administration area. Ordinary visitors never receive it.

(d) tiss-cookie-d: held in the browser's local storage rather than in a cookie, to record that you have read this notice. It is never sent to the server.

You can clear or block any of these in your browser settings at any time. If you clear them you will need to sign in again; nothing else about browsing the site changes.