User:Nathan/PPdraft

(draft version of the privacy policy as edited by Avruch, please do not edit this page)

Privacy Policy

The Wikimedia Foundation projects are multiuser collaborations whose purpose is to encourage the development of educational and informational resources that may be created, used, and reused free of charge by the entire human community. These projects are primarily organized and maintained by volunteer communities of users who share a core set of values; freedom, accessibility and quality, independence, openness and diversity, transparency, and community itself are among these values. This policy reflects an ongoing effort by the Wikimedia Foundation, in collaboration with the communities of users that create and develop our projects, to strike the right balances among the values these projects represent.

General Scope

This policy primarily covers certain personally identifiable information collected or stored by the Foundation on its servers in relation to its projects and their communities. Consistent with the Data Retention Policy, the Wikimedia Foundation collects and retains the least amount of personally identifiable information needed to fulfill the operational needs of the various projects.

The public and collaborative nature of the projects

All projects of the Wikimedia Foundation are collaboratively developed by its users using the MediaWiki software. Anyone with Internet access (and not otherwise restricted from doing so) may edit the publicly editable pages of these sites with or without logging in as a registered user. By doing this, you are in effect creating a published document, and a public record of every word you add, subtract, or change. This is a public act, and (to the extent any identifying information exists) you are identified publicly with that edit as its author. All contributions made to a Wikimedia Foundation project and all publicly available information about those contributions are irrevocably licensed and may be freely copied, freely quoted and freely reused and adapted by third parties with few restrictions.

Activities on Foundation projects

A variety of means exist by which members of the public may interact with each other, the various projects and with the Foundation on systems whose infrastructure is provided by the Foundation. These include, but are not limited to, browsing and editing pages, use of the wiki "email user" function, subscribing and posting to Foundation hosted email lists, and corresponding with volunteers via the Foundation's ticketing system ("OTRS"). Many of these interactions may reveal your IP address (and possibly other personal information) indiscriminately. In general, this policy only applies to private information stored or held by the Foundation.

Users may also interact by other means which do not involve storage or holding of personally identifying information by the Foundation, including (but not limited to) privately sent emails, posts on other websites and social networking sites, instant messenger and text chat (including chatting via Internet Relay Chat, or "IRC" (note that IRC channels are not the formal responsibility of the Foundation nor does the Foundation host these or regulate their usage or data retention), voice communication and telephone, or in-person dialog. Users wishing to use private methods of communication should assess the information provided, their understanding of the risks, and their own need for privacy, before using these or other methods of communication.

User accounts and authorship

The Foundation does not require you to register with a project to be able to edit it. If you choose to register, you may still edit without logging in with your username. Users' passwords are confidential and used to verify the integrity of your account. No person should disclose, or knowingly expose, user passwords. Once created, user accounts will not be removed. It may be possible for a username to be changed, depending on the policies of the project to which you contribute. The Wikimedia Foundation does not guarantee that a username will be changed on request. When a registered user logs in to edit a project these edits will be identified by that users' username. Edits made by an unregistered user or an unlogged-in registered user will be identified by network IP address.

Purpose of the collection of private information

Consistent with its long standing commitment to minimizing user data retention, the Foundation limits the collection of personally identifiable user data to those purposes which serve the well being if its projects - including but not limited to the following:

• To enhance the public accountability of the projects. The Foundation 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. The Foundation 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. The Foundation 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

Every time you visit a web page or send an email, you automatically send technical information to the recipient's web server. This commonly includes request headers, the IP address which the request is sent from, and (for email and some page requests) routing information. Most servers routinely maintain access logs with a portion of this information for operational purposes (as described below), and when you request or read a page, or send an email to a Wikimedia server, no more information is collected than is typically collected by web sites in general. The Wikimedia Foundation may keep the raw logs, but these will not be published or used to track legitimate users.

When you edit (either logged in or not), the server confidentially stores this information for a limited period of time. This information is automatically deleted after a set period. When you edit without logging 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 you from this IP address in conjunction with any other information available. Logging in with a registered username allows you to better preserve your privacy in this situation.

Cookies

The sites will set a temporary session cookie on your computer when you visit the site. If you do not intend to log in or edit, you may deny this cookie. It will be deleted when you close your browser session. More cookies may be set when you log in to maintain your logged-in status. If you choose to save your user name and password on your terminal, that information will be saved for up to 30 days on your terminal, and this information will be resent to the server every time you visit the same wiki. If you are using a public machine and do not wish to expose your username to future users of the machine, you may clear these cookies after use.

Page history

It's best to assume that any edits or other contributions to a project on its articles, user pages and Talk pages will be retained forever. Removing text from a project does not permanently delete it. Normally, in projects, anyone can look at a previous version of an article and see what was there. Even if an article is "deleted", a user who is entrusted with higher level of access may still see what was removed from public view. Information can be permanently deleted by those individuals with access to Wikimedia servers, but aside from the rare circumstance when the Foundation is required to delete editing-history material in response to a court order or equivalent legal process, there is no guarantee any permanent deletion will happen.

User contribution

User contributions are also aggregated and publicly 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

If you only read the projects web sites, no more information is collected than is typically collected in server logs by web sites in general. Aside from the above raw log data that are collected for general purposes, simply visiting the web site does not expose your identity publicly. The above sampled raw log data may happen to record the IP address of any user, but it is not reproduced publicly.

• Editing projects

When editing a page on Wikipedia projects, your edits will be identified with your username or your network IP address, and your editing history will be aggregated in a contribution list. You should consider that such information will be available permanently on the projects. The kind of information that is available will normally depend on whether you are a logged-in registered user or not (that is, either a registered user who did logged in, or an unregistered user).

Logged in registered users:

When you log in with your username, your IP address will not be available to the public except in cases of abuse, including vandalism of a wiki page by you or by another user with the same IP address. In all cases, your IP address will be stored on the wiki servers for a period of time and during that time can be seen by Wikimedia's server administrators and by users who have been granted CheckUser access.

Your IP address, and its connection to any usernames that share it may be released under certain circumstances (see below).

If you use a company mail server from home or telecommute and use a DSL or cable Internet connection, it is likely to be very easy for your employer to identify your IP address and find all of your IP-based Wikimedia project contributions. Using a username is a better way of preserving your privacy in this situation. However, remember to log out or disconnect yourself after each session on a shared computer, to avoid allowing others to use your identity.

Unlogged-in registered users and unregistered users:

If you have not logged in, you may be identified by your network IP address. Depending on your connection the IP address may be traceable only to a large Internet service provider or specifically to your school, place of business or home. It may be possible that the origin of this IP address could be used in conjunction with any information you communicate implicitly or explicitly - including by editing articles in a way that allows you to be identified by a third party. It may be either difficult or easy for a motivated individual to connect your network IP address with your real-life identity.

• Discussions

On wiki discussion pages:

Because Foundation projects are designed to promote collaboration any editable page can theoretically be the location of a discussion. In general discussions on Foundation projects occur on the User talk pages (associated with particular users), on the Article talk pages (associated with particular articles) or in pages specially designated to function as forums (e.g., the Village Pump). Privacy expectations apply to discussion pages in the same way as all other pages. The details of your personally identifiable information that may be recorded through participation on discussion pages are covered in the above sections.

Via email:

You are not required to list any functioning email address when you register as a project user. If you do provide your email address in your User preferences you can enable (or not) other logged-in users to send email to you through the wiki. When you receive an email from other logged-in users your email address will not be revealed to them unless you respond without using the internal system. The email address you put into your User preferences may be used by the Wikimedia Foundation to communicate with you. If you do not provide an email address you will not be able to reset your password if you lose it. In such a situation, however, you may be able to contact one of the Wikimedia server administrators to enter a new e-mail address in your preferences. You can remove your email address from your 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 Wikimedia Foundation policy.

Mailing lists:

If you subscribe to one of the project mailing lists the email address you use to subscribe and post to that list will be exposed to any other subscriber. The list archives of most of Wikimedia's mailing lists are public - searches of public archives may be performed on the Web. Your address also may find itself quoted in other users' messages. The list archives are also preserved by outside services. You should consider that any email addresses you use, as well as any messages you send to a mailing list, may be archived and may remain available to the public permanently.

Via OTRS:

Some e-mail addresses (such as info-en at wikimedia dot org) forward mail to a team of volunteers trusted by the Foundation to use a ticket system, such as OTRS, to respond. Mail sent to this system is not publicly visible, but volunteers selected by the Foundation will have access to it. The ticket system team may discuss the contents of your mail with other contributors in order to best respond to your message. Mail to private addresses of members of Board of Trustees and the staff of the Foundation may also be forwarded to the OTRS team. Your messages and e-mail address may be saved by members of the OTRS team and any email service they use and may remain available to them.

On IRC:

IRC channels are not officially part of the Wikimedia Foundation and are not operated on Wikimedia controlled servers. By participating in an IRC service, your IP address may be exposed to other participants. Your privacy on each channel can only be protected according to the policies of the respective service and channel, which may differ from one service to another and channel to another. Different channels have different policies on whether logs may be published.

Access to and release of personally identifiable information

• Access:

Projects are primarily run by volunteer contributors. Some dedicated users are chosen by the community to be given privileged access and greater authority to govern these projects. For example, as an English Wikipedia user, access levels to Wikipedia is determined by users' presence in various 'user groups'.

Other users who may have access to private identifiable information include, but are not limited to, users who have access to OTRS, or to the CheckUser and Oversight functions, users elected by project communities to serve as stewards or Arbitrators, Wikimedia Foundation employees, trustees, appointees, and contractors and agents employed by the Foundation, and developers and others with high levels of server access.

Access to and publication of this information is governed by the Access to nonpublic data policy, as well as specific policies covering some of the functions in question. Sharing information with other privileged users is not considered "distribution."

• Release: Policy on Release of Data.

It is the policy of Wikimedia 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 Wikimedia 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 articles 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 the Wikimedia Foundation, its users or the public.

Except as described above, Wikimedia 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, the Foundation 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, the Foundation 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.

If you receive such notification, the Foundation cannot advise you regarding the law or an appropriate response to a subpoena. The Foundation does note, however, that you may have the legal right to resist or limit that information in court by filing a motion to quash the subpoena. Should you wish to oppose a subpoena or other compulsory requests, you should seek legal advice concerning applicable rights and procedures that may be available. If the Foundation receives a court-filed motion to quash or otherwise limit the subpoena as a result of action by you or your lawyer, the Foundation will not disclose the requested information until Wikimedia 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, the Foundation will not be able to notify the affected user in private email messages when it receives request from law enforcement to disclose personally identifiable information about the user.

Disclaimer

The Wikimedia Foundation 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 the Foundation, represents a committed effort to safeguard the security of the limited user information that is collected and retained on our servers. Nevertheless, the Foundation cannot guarantee that your user information will necessarily remain private. We acknowledge that, in spite of our committed effort to protect private user information, determined individuals may still develop various data-mining and other methods to uncover such information and disclose it. For this reason, the Foundation can make no guarantee against unauthorized access to any information you may provide in the course of participating in Wikimedia Foundation projects or related communities.