Privacy Policy

World Society of Sustainable Energy Technologies (WSSET)
Last updated: September 2026

At WSSET, we take our responsibility to handle your personal data with fairness, transparency and care. This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use and protect your information when you interact with our website and membership services. By using wsset.org and its associated services, you agree to the terms of this Privacy Policy.

For any data-related queries, contact us at secretary@wsset.org.

What personal data we collect

When you join WSSET, we collect:

Alongside what you give us, the Society keeps its own record of your membership: your membership number, the date you were admitted, and whether your membership is currently in good standing. Members who joined before this website existed also have a record of the gender they gave the Society at the time, which was carried across with the rest of their details and which you may ask us to remove.

When you use wsset.org without signing in, we may collect anonymised data about your use of the website, including pages viewed, browser and device type, and time and date of access. This data cannot be used to identify you personally.

How we store your data

Your data is held on one server, operated by OVHcloud at its datacentre in Erith, in the United Kingdom. It is not copied onto any other system.

Backups are encrypted on that server, before they leave it, and are then stored by Backblaze in Amsterdam, in the Netherlands. The key that would unlock them is not given to Backblaze, so what Backblaze holds cannot be read by Backblaze.

We take appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect your personal data against unauthorised access, loss or misuse. In the unlikely event of a data breach, we will notify affected users within 72 hours.

How long we keep it

Your membership record, meaning your name, your membership number and the date you were admitted, is kept permanently. It is the roll of the Society, and your certificate has to stay verifiable for as long as you may want to show it to somebody.

Everything else we hold about you, including your email address, your affiliation and what you have told us about your work, is deleted within 30 days of your asking us to remove it. Messages sent through the contact form on this website are deleted automatically after twelve months.

How we use your data

We use your personal data solely to:

We do not sell your personal data, and we do not share it with anybody except the companies named below, each of which we need in order to run the Society's services.

Who else sees your data

Stripe takes your payment. Stripe receives your name and email address and handles your card details directly: WSSET never sees or stores a card number. Stripe processes this data under its own privacy policy.

Google carries the Society's email. Messages we send you, such as your receipt, your renewal reminder or a password reset, pass through Google Workspace, which the Society uses for its own mail.

OVHcloud hosts the server, in the United Kingdom. It is the company whose building the Society's data physically sits in. It does not use that data and has no reason to look at it.

Backblaze holds the backups, in the Netherlands. They are encrypted before they are sent and Backblaze does not have the key.

Nobody else receives your data. This website loads nothing from any other company: no analytics, no advertising, no fonts or scripts from anybody else's servers.

Verifying a certificate

Your membership certificate carries an identifier, printed at the foot of it. Anybody you show the certificate to can enter that identifier at wsset.org/verify to confirm that the certificate is genuine.

They will see your name, your membership number, the month you were admitted, and whether your membership is currently in good standing. They will see nothing else about you, and the identifier cannot be guessed: it is not possible to browse the membership this way. This is the point of the certificate: it is worth having because it can be checked. It does mean that anybody holding one of your certificates can confirm those four facts.

Special Interest Groups

Special Interest Groups are part of this website. Every group is open to every member of the Society: you join one by ticking it in your account, it takes effect at once, and there is nothing to approve. Leaving works the same way and is immediate.

The convenor of a group and WSSET administrators can see who is in it. Nobody else can. A group's public page says how many members it has and never who they are, and the details you would need in order to attend a meeting, meaning the joining link, the room and the agenda, are shown only to members of that group.

This used to work differently. Until September 2026 the groups were private groups on LinkedIn, everybody joining the Society was asked for their LinkedIn profile address, and each new member was invited by hand. Nothing asks for a LinkedIn address any more and the Society does not hold one.

The members' directory

Each Special Interest Group has a list of the people in it, and only members of that group can see it. It is not public, it is not indexed by search engines, and it is not shown to anybody who is not a member of the Society.

Your entry shows your title and name, your institution, your country and what you work on, taken from your own account. It never shows your email address. Nothing else about you appears, and nothing about your membership, your payments or your certificate is on it.

Whether you appear is a setting in your account, "Show me in the members' directory", and you can change it at any time. Untick it and your entry goes at once. Members who joined the Society before 15 September 2026 are not listed unless they ask to be; members who have joined since are listed by default, and are told so when they join.

Being listed is also what lets other members of your groups write to you. The message reaches you through the site and your address is never given to the sender, so nothing is disclosed until you choose to reply. A second setting turns those messages off without taking you out of the list.

Affiliated Journals and Conference Proceedings

WSSET does not operate its own journal platform. Our affiliated journals are hosted by independent publishers who operate under their own privacy policies. If you submit a paper to an affiliated journal or our SET conference proceedings, your data will be handled in accordance with that publisher's privacy policy.

If your work is published, your name, affiliation and email address will form part of the permanent published record.

Newsletter

Newsletters and society updates are sent from wsset.org through the Society's own mail system. Your address is not passed to a mailing-list company. You can switch these off at any time from your account, or by writing to secretary@wsset.org.

Two kinds of message cannot be switched off, because they are about your membership rather than about news: a reminder before your membership runs out, and a receipt when you pay.

Cookies

This website sets two cookies, and both are necessary for it to work: one keeps you signed in, and one protects forms against misuse. There is no analytics, no advertising and no tracking of any kind, and nothing on any page is loaded from another company's servers.

Because both cookies are strictly necessary, this site does not ask you to consent to cookies and does not show a cookie banner. If you block them in your browser you will not be able to sign in.

Your rights

You have the right to:

To exercise any of these rights, contact us at secretary@wsset.org. If you are not satisfied with how we have handled your data, you may complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk.

Changes to this policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. The latest version will always be available at wsset.org. Continued use of our services following any update constitutes acceptance of the revised policy.

Contact

World Society of Sustainable Energy Technologies
Hill Side, Clifton Lane, Ruddington, Nottingham, NG11 6AA, United Kingdom
secretary@wsset.org
A company limited by guarantee, registered in England and Wales, number 07358404.