FISE:Privacy policy

From FISE

General Scope

This policy covers personally identifiable information collected or stored by FISE for International Space Education (FISE) on its servers in relation to the United Space School and the general public. Consistent with its Data Retention Policy, FISE collects and retains the least amount of personally identifiable information needed to fulfill FISE's operational needs.

User accounts and authorship

FISE does not require the public to register in order to get access to basic content. Registered users will be created by the FISE BOD with an account password emailed to them. Users will use their account authentication email to setup their own personal and confidential password.

A user account will be created for FISE BOD Members, Volunteers, and staff as well as students, parents of students, and host families. Each account will have access to the appropriate sections of the site which will be controlled by the site administrators with approval from the FISE BOD.

Except insofar as it may be required by law, no person should disclose, or knowingly expose, either user passwords and/or cookies generated to identify a user. Once created, user accounts will remain active until the user requests to have their account removed. It may be possible for a username to be changed, depending on the circumstances. However, FISE does not guarantee that a username will be changed on request to maintain consistency and integrity of the site.

Purpose of the collection of private information

FISE limits the collection of personally identifiable user data to purposes which serve the well-being of its projects, including but not limited to the following:

To enhance the public accountability of the projects. FISE recognizes that any system that is open enough to allow the greatest possible participation of the general public will also be vulnerable to certain kinds of abuse and counterproductive behavior. FISE and the project communities have established a number of mechanisms to prevent or remedy abusive activities. For example, when investigating abuse on a project, including the suspected use of malicious “sockpuppets” (duplicate accounts), vandalism, harassment of other users, or disruptive behavior, the IP addresses of users (derived either from those logs or from records in the database) may be used to identify the source(s) of the abusive behavior. This information may be shared by users with administrative authority who are charged by their communities with protecting the projects.

To provide site statistics. FISE statistically samples raw log data from users' visits. These logs are used to produce the site statistics pages; the raw log data is not made public.

To solve technical problems. Log data may be examined by developers in the course of solving technical problems and in tracking down badly-behaved web spiders that overwhelm the site.

Details of data retention

General expectations

IP and other technical information

When a visitor requests or reads a page, or sends email to our server, no more information is collected than is typically collected by web sites. FISE may keep raw logs of such transactions, but these will not be published or used to track legitimate users.

When a page is edited by a logged-in editor, the server confidentially stores related IP information for a limited period of time. This information is automatically deleted after a set period. For editors who do not log in, the IP address used is publicly and permanently credited as the author of the edit. It may be possible for a third party to identify the author from this IP address in conjunction with other information available. Logging in with a registered username allows for better preservation of privacy.

Cookies

The sites set a temporary session cookie on a visitor's computer whenever a Project page is visited. Readers who do not intend to log in or edit may deny this cookie; it will be deleted at the end of the browser's session. More cookies may be set when one logs in to maintain logged-in status. If one saves a user name or password in one's browser, that information will be saved for up to 30 days, and this information will be resent to the server on every visit to the same Project. Contributors using a public machine who do not wish to show their username to future users of the machine should clear these cookies after use.

User contribution

User contributions are also aggregated and privately available. User contributions are aggregated according to their registration and login status. Data on user contributions, such as the times at which users edited and the number of edits they have made, are publicly available via user contributions lists, and in aggregated forms published by other users.

Reading projects

No more information on users and other visitors reading pages is collected than is typically collected in server logs by web sites. Aside from the above raw log data collected for general purposes, page visits do not expose a visitor's identity publicly. Sampled raw log data may include the IP address of any user, but it is not reproduced publicly.

Discussions

On discussion pages:

Any editable page can theoretically be the location of a discussion. In general, discussions on Foundation projects occur on user talk pages (associated with particular users), on article talk pages (associated with particular articles) or in pages specially designated to function as forums. Privacy expectations apply to discussion pages in the same way as they do elsewhere.

Via email:

Users are required to list an email address when registered. Users who provide a valid email address can enable other logged-in users to send email to them through the website. When receiving an email from other users through this system, one's email address is not revealed to them. When choosing to send an email to other users, one's email is displayed as the sender.

The email address put into one's user preferences may be used by FISE for communication. Users whose accounts do not have a valid email address will not be able to reset their password if it is lost. In such a situation, however, users may be able to contact one of the FISE server administrators to enter a new e-mail address. A user can remove the account's email address from his preferences at any time to prevent it from being used. Private correspondence between users may be saved at those users' discretion and is not subject to FISE policy.

On mailing lists:

The email addresses used to subscribe and post to Project mailing lists are exposed to other subscribers. The list archives of most such mailing lists are public, and searches of public archives may be performed on the Web. Subscribers' addresses may also be quoted in other users' messages. These email addresses and any messages sent to a mailing list may be archived and may remain available to the public permanently.

Release of personally identifiable information

It is the policy of FISE that personally identifiable data collected in the server logs, or through records in the database via the CheckUser feature, or through other non-publicly-available methods, may be released by FISE volunteers or staff, in any of the following situations:

1. In response to a valid subpoena or other compulsory request from law enforcement,
2. With permission of the affected user,
3. When necessary for investigation of abuse complaints,
4. Where the information pertains to page views generated by a spider or bot and its dissemination is necessary to illustrate or resolve technical issues,
5. Where the user has been vandalizing pages or persistently behaving in a disruptive way, data may be released to a service provider, carrier, or other third-party entity to assist in the targeting of IP blocks, or to assist in the formulation of a complaint to relevant Internet Service Providers,
6. Where it is reasonably necessary to protect the rights, property or safety of FISE, its users or the public.

Except as described above, FISE policy does not permit distribution of personally identifiable information under any circumstances.

Third-party access and notifying registered users when receiving legal process:

As a general principle, the access to, and retention of, personally identifiable data in all projects should be minimal and should be used only internally to serve the well-being of the projects. Occasionally, however, FISE may receive a subpoena or other compulsory request from a law-enforcement agency or a court or equivalent government body that requests the disclosure of information about a registered user, and may be compelled by law to comply with the request. In the event of such a legally compulsory request, FISE will attempt to notify the affected user within three business days after the arrival of such subpoena by sending a notice by email to the email address (if any) that the affected user has listed in his or her user preferences.

FISE cannot advise a user receiving such a notification regarding the law or an appropriate response to a subpoena. FISE does note, however, that such users may have the legal right to resist or limit that information in court by filing a motion to quash the subpoena. Users who wish to oppose a subpoena or other compulsory request should seek legal advice concerning applicable rights and procedures that may be available.

If FISE receives a court-filed motion to quash or otherwise limit the subpoena as a result of action by a user or their lawyer, FISE will not disclose the requested information until FISE receives an order from the court to do so.

Registered users are not required to provide an email address. However, when an affected registered user does not provide an email address, FISE will not be able to notify the affected user in private email messages when it receives requests from law enforcement to disclose personally identifiable information about the user.

Disclaimer

FISE believes that maintaining and preserving the privacy of user data is an important value. This Privacy Policy, together with other policies, resolutions, and actions by FISE, represents a committed effort to safeguard the security of the limited user information that is collected and retained on our servers. Nevertheless, FISE cannot guarantee that user information will remain private. We acknowledge that, in spite of our committed effort to protect private user information, determined individuals may still develop data-mining and other methods to uncover such information and disclose it. For this reason, FISE can make no guarantee against unauthorized access to information provided in the course of visiting our websites.