Your Privacy Rights/The Met Privacy Policy for Offline Use
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is strongly committed to protecting the privacy of its online guests, customers, Members, donors, and friends. We do not collect personally identifiable information about individuals—such as their names and postal and/or email addresses—except when it is knowingly provided by such individuals. We believe that maintaining privacy on the Web is very important and we hope you will read this privacy policy carefully so that you will clearly understand both our commitment to you and your privacy and our method of collecting and using information. This privacy policy only applies to transactions made, and data gathered, on the metmuseum.org Web site and does not apply to any other Web site. The terms of this privacy policy shall govern all interactions with the Museum through either the Museum's Web site or email. A link to the privacy policy can be found on the Museum's home page and on every page on the Museum's Web site. By using the Museum's Web site or communicating with the Museum by email, you agree to the terms of this privacy policy.
You may use the Metropolitan Museum's Web site without registering or submitting any personally identifiable information. However, in order to have access to certain features, such as "My Met Gallery," "My Met Calendar," and the Museum's email newsletters, you must register in My Met Museum so we can personalize the site to better meet your needs.
If you decide to register with us online, you will be asked to provide personally identifiable information that may include a user name and password, your name, email address, postal address, telephone number, and your Membership status. We store this information, along with your other preferences, on our secured server so that you need not reenter it when you return to the site. If you select the "Remember My Log-in" feature when registering, the site will display your information on the order form in Check Out when you shop in The Met Store, purchase or renew a Membership, make a donation, purchase tickets to a benefit event, or return to My Met Museum.
You may review, correct, update, or change your My Met Museum profile information, including any personally identifiable information contained in your profile, at any time. Simply log on to your online profile, review your information, and/or edit it with the options provided. See My Met Museum to access your profile.
If you opted to receive newsletters, other emails, or communications from the Museum at the time you registered in My Met Museum, but have subsequently changed your mind, you may opt out by editing your My Met Museum profile. If you previously opted not to receive such communications, you may later opt in by returning to your My Met Museum profile and making the appropriate change.
The Museum will ask you to provide personally identifiable information necessary to fulfill your order or catalogue request that can include your name, billing and shipping postal addresses, telephone number, Membership number, and credit card number. This is the same information requested when you place an order by telephone or through the mail. When you make a purchase online in The Met Store, your credit card information will be temporarily stored on a secured server (see Data Security). We will retain the personally identifiable information you provided with your order for our records, to facilitate customer service, and to inform you of our products and promotional offers. The Museum may combine the information you provide with other personally identifiable information to which the Museum has access, such as purchase history and demographic information (see How the Museum Uses Information Provided by Visitors).
For online orders or when you request a catalogue online, we also require your email address so you can receive order and shipping confirmation emails and so we can communicate with you if we have difficulty processing your order or catalogue request (see Emails and Newsletters).
As part of our commitment to your privacy, The Met Store supports and adheres to the guidelines and practices outlined in The Direct Marketing Association Privacy Promise.
The Museum will ask you to provide personally identifiable information necessary to process and service your Membership and/or donation that may include your name, billing and shipping postal addresses, telephone number, email address, and credit card number. When you make a donation or purchase a Membership online, your credit card information will be temporarily stored on a secured server (see Data Security). We will retain the personally identifiable information you provided for our records and to facilitate customer service (see How the Museum Uses Information Provided by Visitors). You may also be asked for additional information required to complete and service your request, such as the names of your children when joining The Met Family Circle. For our policy concerning children under thirteen years of age who use this site, please see Children Under Thirteen Years of Age.
The Museum occasionally posts surveys on its Web site or through email. Your participation in these surveys is on a completely voluntary and anonymous basis unless we inform you otherwise. We use the information in the responses to the survey to understand our visitors better and to determine how best to serve them. Personally identifiable information collected in our surveys is never sold, rented, or shared with third parties for their marketing purposes (see Third-Party Service Providers).
The Metropolitan Museum uses the information you provide to personalize the site so that we can better meet your needs (see When You Register in My Met Museum), fulfill your online order, facilitate customer service in The Met Store or in the Membership section, and inform you of our products and promotional offers (see When You Shop Online in The Met Store and When You Make a Donation or Purchase a Membership Online).
The Museum never shares with third parties any personally identifiable information you provide when purchasing a Membership or making a donation online, through the mail, in person, or on the telephone except as required by law. Member and Donor names are deleted from The Met Store catalogue mailing list when it is shared with other companies.
The Museum may share the information you provide when you purchase an item online in The Met Store or request a catalogue (such as your name and your postal address) with other carefully screened reputable organizations or companies whose products and services might interest you but whose privacy policies may differ from the Metropolitan Museum's.
If you prefer not to have your personally identifiable information shared in this way, you may check the "Please do not make my name and postal address available" box on the order form when you check out in The Met Store. You may also send us an email at customer.service@metmuseum.org requesting that we not share your personally identifiable information with third parties for marketing purposes (see Customer Service online in The Met Store).
This Web site automatically collects some non-personally identifiable information about you when you request pages through your browser. We place cookies on Web site visitors' computers to collect aggregate information for site traffic analysis, such as the number of visitors and the number of pages viewed. (Cookies are small files that reside in a visitor's browser.) The aggregate information we collect through cookies helps the Metropolitan Museum monitor how you and other visitors use the site, allowing us to provide an optimal experience and better service; this information is never used to identify you personally. However, the Museum's Web site has been designed to provide nearly full functionality without the use of cookies. You can set your Web browser to reject cookies, but you will lose the ability to register in My Met Museum or place an item in your shopping basket online in The Met Store (see Cookies for Registered Users and Cookies for Met Store Customers).
The Museum's Web site requires the use of cookies to register or sign in. Cookies for registered users allow you immediate access to the Web site's "My Met Gallery" and "My Met Calendar" features.
Cookies allow you to maintain the contents of your shopping basket as you navigate other areas of our site outside The Met Store. When you return to The Met Store, your shopping basket will retain the items you previously selected. If you reject the cookies and you leave The Met Store before making a purchase, you will lose the information in your shopping basket.
We do not knowingly collect personally identifiable information from children under thirteen years of age.
The Metropolitan Museum regularly sends email newsletters to our registered visitors. Registered visitors may subscribe or unsubscribe to an email newsletter at any time by changing their email preferences in My Met Museum. On occasion, the Museum may send emails to individuals such as registrants and Members who have provided us with their email address, informing them of Museum events or promotions we think might be of interest to them. The Met Store also sends promotional emails to customers and those individuals who have requested a catalogue or email. Email recipients may always opt out of any email category at any time by following the unsubscribe instructions included in the email message.
If you use the Museum's "Email a Friend" feature (in the online calendar) or "Email This Event To a Friend" feature (in Special Exhibitions), your friend's email address will not be retained on our Web site or used in any way by the Museum.
The Museum tries to respond to email messages requiring a response within seven business days. We try to respond to customer service inquiries related to a purchase in The Met Store within forty-eight hours (see Customer Service online in The Met Store). If you email the Museum, your message and email address will be forwarded to the appropriate department within the Museum. The Museum may choose to save this information. The Museum is pleased to hear from you. However, any message, material, business information, ideas, concepts, or other information sent to the Museum by email will be treated as non-confidential and non-proprietary.
The Metropolitan Museum makes every reasonable effort to ensure that all of the transactions that occur on our Web site are secure. All credit card numbers submitted to the site are encrypted using "Secure Socket Layer" (SSL) encryption. SSL technology is an industry standard for protecting sensitive information as it is transmitted over the Internet.
To prevent unauthorized access, maintain data accuracy, and ensure the correct use of information, we have put in place appropriate physical, electronic, and administrative procedures to safeguard and secure the information we collect online.
The Metropolitan Museum may engage reputable third-party vendors in order to help us manage our Web site and allow us to better service our visitors and customers. These may include third-party vendors engaged to analyze, for marketing purposes, the information collected on our Web site. The Museum requires its vendors by contract to maintain the confidentiality and security of Museum information to which they are provided access and restricts the vendors from using the information in any way not expressly authorized by the Museum.
The Museum's site may contain links to other Web sites such as our third-party vendors. Once you leave the Museum's Web site, this privacy policy will not apply.
If you have any questions regarding this privacy policy, please contact:
The Metropolitan Museum of ArtEmail: privacypolicy@metmuseum.org
Telephone: 212-396-5280
Fax: 212-396-5151
The Metropolitan Museum of Art may revise its privacy policy at any time. We encourage you to visit this page periodically to review our current policy so that you will always know what information we gather and how we may use that information.
Update effective December 23, 2004.
