Terms and Conditions

General Disclaimer

Material displayed on our website is intended for reference use only. It is not legal advice and may not represent the official opinion of the Gulf Downstream Association(GDA). Our website links to other organizations’ websites when there is a business reason to do so. The links are not endorsements of the content of the websites, or of their policies or products.

Security

To maintain the security of our website, and to ensure that it remains available to you, we use software programs to monitor network traffic. The programs identify unauthorized attempts to upload or change information, deny service, or otherwise cause damage or access non-public information. Unauthorized attempts to upload or change information are strictly prohibited and may be punishable under the Bahrain penal code We may provide information about possible violations of the law to law enforcement officials.

We reserve the right to block IP addresses that fail to honor our website’ files or submit requests at a rate that negatively impacts service delivery to patrons. Current guidelines recommend that software programs submit a total of no more than 10 requests per minute to our applications, regardless of the number of machines used to submit requests. We also reserve the right to terminate programs that require more than 24 hours to complete.

About Copyright

This site respects the Bahrain Protection and Copyright Act No 22 of 2006 (“Copyright Law”). Whenever possible, we provide information that we have about copyright owners and related matters in the materials or other accompanying texts. However, the information we have may not be accurate or complete. You should determine for yourself whether or not an item is protected by copyright or in the public domain, and then satisfy any copyright or use restrictions when publishing or distributing materials from Transmission or reproduction of protected items beyond what is allowed by fair use or other exemptions requires written permission from the copyright holder.

We do request that anyone linking to our website presents the link in a manner that does not imply that we are making an express or implied endorsement of any good or service provided, and that the link clearly indicates that the user is leaving one site and going to another.

If you have more information about material on our website, or if you are the copyright holder and believe our website has not properly attributed your work or has used it without permission, please contact it@gda.org.bh with your contact information and a link to the relevant content.

Privacy and Publicity Rights

If you use material from our websites, then you are responsible for determining whether there are privacy and publicity rights considerations. Factors to consider include the type of material and its intended use.

Privacy Policy

Protecting our patrons’ personal information is important. We collect, use, and share information obtained from online visitors only in the following ways:

• Personal information is used only when you voluntarily provide it directly to the GDA or when you grant third parties permission to allow the GDA’s uses of your personal information
• Personal information is used only for its intended purpose
• We have safeguards to protect all information collected

Automatically Collected Information

We strive to provide the best experience for you. We automatically collect and store the following non-personally identifiable information:

• The name of the domain from which you accessed the internet
• The internet protocol address of your Internet providers’ gateways, or in some cases, your computer
• The date and time you accessed our website
• The URL of the pages visited and files downloaded
• The internet address of the website that brought you directly to our website
• Characteristics of your computer system and
• Search terms used to come to the website and while on the website (in aggregate only)

This information allows us to improve website design, presentation and system performance. We collect this information from anyone who reads, browses, or downloads information from our website.

Information Collected for Measurement and Customization (Cookies)

To help provide website visitors with the best experience possible, we use commercial software to report and analyze aggregated web metrics data. The data is generally retained indefinitely to help improve website performance.

Our site uses three types of tools: Session cookies, Persistent cookies and Customization tools “Cookies” are small files that websites transfer to visitors’ computers to allow the site to remember specific information. If you do not want cookies transferred to your computer, you may opt out by changing your browser options. Without cookies, most of our website will continue to display normally, but certain features may not work as well or may be unavailable.

Session cookies do not contain personal information and disappear once the browser window is closed. We use session cookies for technical purposes such as to enable you to more easily navigate throughout the website. Session cookies only collect non-personally identifiable data.

Persistent cookies store information on your computers for longer periods of time and across multiple visits. We do not use persistent cookies to collect personal identifiable information about visitors. However, we do use persistent cookies to improve web metrics by distinguishing between new and returning visitors, to anonymously aggregate data on how visitors use our websites, and to remember your voluntarily-provided preferences to create a smoother browsing experience.

Customization tools allow you to voluntarily provide information to personalize and improve your online experience. Information from customization tools is saved on our servers.

Personal Information

Personal information may be required to use certain features of our website, such as making a payment, submitting a request to the Ask the Expert service, responding to a feedback form, or participating in blog discussions. We always inform you what information is required, and only use that information for its stated purpose. If you provide the information requested, then you consent to our using the information for the stated purpose. If you do not provide the information, then some website features may be unavailable.

Occasionally, we work with third party applications that are not exclusively operated or controlled by the GDA, to provide a better web presentation or user experience, such as for fulfilling online payment, emailing updates or collecting voluntarily-provided feedback. These third-party sites and applications will either follow our privacy policy, or prominently display their own. The GDA does not have access to any information collected by third–party cookies or similar technologies on its sites. Other than these exceptions, and for authorized government law enforcement activities, we do not provide personal information to outside organizations without first obtaining your consent.