W S-L:Privacy policy
Introduction
Welcome
This Privacy Policy explains how Wiki-Shangri-La collects, uses, and shares information we receive from you through your use of the Site. It is essential to understand that, by using the Site, you consent to the collection, transfer, processing, storage, disclosure, and use of your information as described in this Privacy Policy. That means that reading this Policy carefully is important.
We believe that you shouldn't have to provide nonpublic personal information to participate. You do not have to provide things like your real name, address, or date of birth to sign up for a standard account or contribute content to the Site. We do not sell or rent your Personal Information, nor do we give it to others to sell you anything. We use it to figure out how to make the Site more engaging and accessible, to see which ideas work, and to make learning and contributing more fun. Put simply: we use this information to make the Site better for you.
This Privacy Policy applies to our collection and handling of information about you that we receive as a result of your use of the Site.
This Privacy Policy, however, does not cover some situations where we may gather or process information. For example, some uses may be covered by separate privacy policies or sites or services run by third parties.
Collection & Use of Info
Types of Information We Receive From You & How We Get It
Your Public Contributions
Whatever you post on Wiki Shangri-La (the Site) can be seen and used by everyone. When you make a contribution, including on user or discussion pages, you are creating a permanent, public record of every piece of content added, removed, or altered by you. The page history will show when your contribution or deletion was made, as well as your username (if you are signed in) or your IP address (if you are not signed in). We may use your public contributions, either aggregated with the public contributions of others or individually, to create new features or data-related products for you or to learn more about how the Sites are used.
Account Information & Registration
You do not need to create an account to use the Site. If you do create an account, you do not need to give us your name or email address. If you do not create an account, your contributions will be publicly attributed to your IP address. Want to create an account? Great! Don't want to create an account? No problem!
You are not required to create an account to read or contribute to the Site, except under rare circumstances. However, if you contribute without signing in, your contribution will be publicly attributed to the IP address associated with your device.
If you want to create a standard account, in most cases we require only a username and a password.
To gain a better understanding of the demographics of our users, to localize our services and to learn how we can improve our services, we may ask you for more demographic information, such as gender or age, about yourself. We will tell you if such information is intended to be public or private, so that you can make an informed decision about whether you want to provide us with that information. Providing such information is always completely optional. If you don't want to, you don't have to—it's as simple as that.
Location Information
GPS & Other Location Technologies
Some features we offer work better if we know what area you are in. If you consent, we can use GPS (and other technologies commonly used to determine location) to show you more relevant content. We keep information obtained by these technologies confidential, except as provided in this Policy.
Metadata
Sometimes, we automatically receive location data from your device. For example, if you want to upload a photo on the Site, we may receive metadata, such as the place and time you took the photo, automatically from your device. Please be aware that, unlike location information collected using GPS signals described above, the default setting on your mobile device typically includes the metadata in your photo or video upload to the Site. If you do not want metadata sent to us and made public at the time of your upload, please change your settings on your device.
IP Addresses
Finally, when you visit the Site, we automatically receive the IP address of the device (or your proxy server) you are using to access the Internet, which could be used to infer your geographical location.
Information Related to Your Use of the Site
We use certain technologies to collect information about how you use the Site. Like other websites, we receive some information about you automatically when you visit the Site. We also use a variety of commonly-used technologies, like cookies, to collect information regarding how you use the Site, make our services safer and easier to use, and to help create a better and more customizable experience for you. We want to make the Site better for you by learning more about how you use them. Examples of this might include how often you visit the Site, what you like, what you find helpful, how you get to the Site, and whether you would use a helpful feature more if we explained it differently. We also want this Policy and our practices to reflect our community's values. For this reason, we keep information related to your use of the Site confidential, except as provided in this Policy.
Information We Receive Automatically
Because of how browsers work, we receive some information automatically when you visit the Site. This information includes the type of device you are using (possibly including unique device identification numbers, for some beta versions of our mobile applications), the type and version of your browser, your browser's language preference, the type and version of your device's operating system, in some cases the name of your internet service provider or mobile carrier, the website that referred you to the Site, which pages you request and visit, and the date and time of each request you make to the Site.
Put simply, we use this information to enhance your experience with the Site. For example, we use this information to administer the site, provide greater security, and fight vandalism; optimize mobile applications, customize content and set language preferences, test features to see what works, and improve performance; understand how users interact with the Site, track and study use of various features, gain understanding about the demographics of the Site, and analyze trends.
Information We Collect
We use a variety of commonly-used technologies, like cookies, to understand how you use the Site, make our services safer and easier to use, and to help create a better and more customizable experience for you. We actively collect some types of information with a variety of commonly-used technologies. These generally include tracking pixels, JavaScript, and a variety of "locally stored data" technologies, such as cookies and local storage. We realize that some of these technologies do not have the best reputation in town and can be used for less-than-noble purposes. So we want to be as clear as we can about why we use these methods and the type of information we collect with them.
Depending on which technology we use, locally stored data can be anything from text, pictures, and whole articles (as we explain further below) to Personal Information (like your IP address) and information about your use of the Site (like your username or the time of your visit).
We use this information to make your experience with the Site safer and better, to gain a greater understanding of user preferences and their interaction with the Site, and to generally improve our services. We will never use third-party cookies, unless we get your permission to do so. If you ever come across a third-party data collection tool that has not been authorized by you (such as one that may have been mistakenly placed by another user or administrator), please report it to us at [email protected].
How We Use Information We Receive From You
We and our service providers use your information for the legitimate purpose of pursuing our mission, including:
- Operating the Site, sharing your contributions and administering our Services.
- Providing customized Services.
- Sending emails with news updates, surveys and communications about items we believe may be of interest to you.
- Sending optional surveys and requesting feedback.
- Improving the Site and making your user experience safer and better.
Other
Location Information
GPS & Other Location Technologies
As stated above, we can use commonly-used location technologies to show you more relevant content. For example, our mobile apps can identify articles from the site about points of interest near your location. As a reminder, you can deactivate our access to these location technologies at any time, and still use the Site .
Metadata
As stated above, we may automatically receive location data from your device. For example, if you upload a photo using the mobile app, please be aware that the default setting on your mobile device typically results in the metadata associated with your photo being included in the upload. As a reminder, if you do not want metadata sent to us and made public at the time of your upload, please change your settings on your device.
IP Addresses
When you visit the Site, we automatically receive the IP address of the device (or your proxy server) you are using to access the Internet, which could be used to infer your geographical location. We keep IP addresses confidential, except as provided in this Policy. If you are visiting the Site with your mobile device, we may use your IP address to provide anonymized or aggregated information to service providers regarding the volume of usage in certain areas.
We use this location information to make your experience with the Site safer and better, to gain a greater understanding of user preferences and their interaction with the Site, and to generally improve our services. For example, we use this information to provide greater security, optimize mobile applications, and learn how to expand and better support communities. We also use Personal Information in the manner described in the sections of this Policy titled "For Legal Reasons" and "To Protect You, Ourselves & Others."
Sharing
With Your Permission
We may share your information when you give us specific permission to do so, for legal reasons, and in the other circumstances described below. We share your information for a particular purpose, if you agree.
For Legal Reasons
We will disclose your information in response to an official legal process only if we believe it to be legally valid. We will notify you of such requests when possible. We will access, use, preserve, and/or disclose your Personal Information if we reasonably believe it necessary to satisfy a valid and legally enforceable warrant, subpoena, court order, law or regulation, or other judicial or administrative order. However, if we believe that a particular request for disclosure of a user's information is legally invalid or an abuse of the legal system and the affected user does not intend to oppose the disclosure themselves, we will try our best to fight it. We are committed to notifying you via email at least ten (10) calendar days, when possible, before we disclose your Personal Information in response to a legal demand. However, we may only provide notice if we are not legally restrained from contacting you, there is no credible threat to life or limb that is created or increased by disclosing the request, and you have provided us with an email address.
Nothing in this Privacy Policy is intended to limit any legal objections or defenses you may have to a third party's request (whether it be civil, criminal, or governmental) to disclose your information. We recommend seeking the advice of legal counsel immediately if such a request is made involving you.
To Protect You, Ourselves & Others
We, or users with certain administrative rights, may disclose information that is reasonably necessary to:
- enforce or investigate potential violations of the community-based policies;
- protect our organization, infrastructure, or the public;
- or prevent imminent or serious bodily harm or death to a person.
We, or particular users with certain administrative rights as described below, may need to share your Personal Information if it is reasonably believed to be necessary to enforce or investigate potential violations of :
- our Terms of Use,
- this Privacy Policy,
- or any user community-based policies.
We may also need to access and share information to investigate and defend ourselves against legal threats or actions.
The Site is collaborative, with users writing most of the policies and selecting from amongst themselves people to hold certain administrative rights. These rights may include access to limited amounts of otherwise nonpublic information about recent contributions and activity by other users. They use this access to help protect against vandalism and abuse, fight harassment of other users, and generally try to minimize disruptive behavior on the Site. However, the legal names of these users are not known to the Site . We hope that this never comes up, but we may disclose your Personal Information if we believe that it's reasonably necessary to prevent imminent and serious bodily harm or death to a person, or to protect our organization, users, or the public. We may also disclose your Personal Information if we reasonably believe it necessary to detect, prevent, or otherwise assess and address potential spam, malware, fraud, abuse, unlawful activity, and security or technical concerns.
To Our Service Providers
We may disclose personal information to our third party service providers or contractors to help run or improve the Site and provide services in support of our mission. As hard as we may try, we can't do it all. So sometimes we use third-party service providers or contractors who help run or improve the Site for you and other users. We give access to your Personal Information to these providers or contractors as needed to perform their services for us or to use their tools and services. We put requirements, such as confidentiality agreements, in place to help ensure that these service providers treat your information consistently with, and no less protective of your privacy than, the principles of this Policy.
If you are visiting the Site with your mobile device, we use your IP address to provide anonymized or aggregated information to service providers regarding the volume of usage in certain areas.
Astral Internet Web Hosting
Our site is hosted by Astral Internet (registered company in Canada). Astral Internet logs all requests in order determine the causes of reported faults and to detect and block suspicious traffic. The log records the time of the request, your IP address, the requested resource, the referring site (if specified by your browser), and your browser’s user agent string (which will usually include the name and version of your browser and operating system). Log files are deleted after a period of about ninety days.
Cloudflare Content Delivery Network Service
Our site is served through Cloudflare. Cloudflare helps our site load faster by storing copies of our content in data centres around the world, and defends our site from attacks by logging requests to detect and block suspicious traffic.
For more information on how Cloudflare handles the data it collects, see Cloudflare’s privacy policy :
https://www.cloudflare.com/privacypolicy/
AddThis
What is AddThis ?
AddThis is a social sharing tool that appears on a lot of websites. It is often displayed as a "share" button that expands to show a vast array of sharing options.
What information does AddThis track ?
AddThis collects personal information in the form of an email address when you request the service to share via email. AddThis uses the email address provided, but it is not stored. The person with whom you share the site will see your email address but otherwise it is not shared with third parties and not merged with any non-personal information.
It also collects non-personal information in the form of web analytics, which they share in aggregated form. Cookies and web beacons collect information but do not track the individual user. AddThis says its servers log: - your internet protocol (IP) address. - browser type. - browser language. - the date and time you visited that web page. - if you came to a web page where an AddThis Button is enabled via a search - engine such as Google, the web search that landed you on that web page.
The servers also collect information on how often you share content with others using the AddThis platform. In particular, AddThis logs the share options and the subsequent numbers of clicks a shared link gets. The information collected in this way is anonymous and aggregated
This is aggregated and analysed so that users are categorised into various audience types. Publishers are provided with information on the type of audience that accesses their sites and advertisers can use this information to choose where to advertise. The cookie gives each browser on a user's computer its audience label so that the right sharing tools and targeted ads will appear on the sites with the AddThis plugin installed.
Is the data sold to third parties ?
AddThis shares only non-personally identifiable information with the website publishers who have the AddThis Button enabled on their websites for the purpose of analytics. It provides statistics on sharing trends, and the top content segments shared so that publishers can understand how users share their content and advertisers can better target their ads.
It may share any information with third parties if it has "a good faith belief that disclosure of such information is reasonably necessary" to:
- satisfy applicable law, regulation, legal process or an enforceable governmental request.
- enforce the applicable terms of service, including investigation of potential violations thereof.
- detect, prevent, or otherwise address fraud, security or technical issues.
- protect against harm to the rights, property or safety of Clearspring, its end - users or the public as required or permitted by law.
It shares non-personally identifiable aggregated information with third parties without restriction.
Is the data ever matched to personally identifiable information ?
The personal and non-personal information are never matched, says AddThis.
How long is the data stored by AddThis ?
This information is stored for between 0 and 14 days depending on how often cookies are flushed from the browser. It is then aggregated and analysed into 'audiences' and these categories are made available to the publishers and advertisers.
Additional information:
AddThis has variants to the information collected and terms of sharing depending on whether you log in to its site directly or use its toolbar.
It has an opt-out option, which drops a cookie so you would have to disable cookie blockers and not delete your cookies to permanently have this option enabled. http://www.addthis.com/privacy/opt-out
Radfar says "cookies are the ultimate anonymous experience" whereas "logging in and filling in your personal details "is far more revealing on a very personal level."
Further reading:
AddThis privacy policy : http://www.addthis.com/privacy
Because You Made It Public
Information that you post is public and can been seen and used by everyone. Any information you post publicly on the Site is just that – public. For example, if you put your mailing address on your talk page, that is public, and not protected by this Policy. And if you edit without registering or logging into your account, your IP address will be seen publicly. Please think carefully about your desired level of anonymity before you disclose Personal Information on your user page or elsewhere.
Protection
How Do We Protect Your Data?
We strive to protect your information from unauthorized access, use, or disclosure. We use a variety of physical and technical measures, policies, and procedures (such as access control procedures, network firewalls, and physical security) designed to protect our systems and your Personal Information. Unfortunately, there's no such thing as completely secure data transmission or storage, so we can't guarantee that our security will not be breached (by technical measures or through violation of our policies and procedures).
We will never ask for your password by email (but may send you a temporary password via email if you have requested a password reset). If you ever receive an email that requests your password, please let us know by sending it to [email protected], so we can investigate the source of the email.
How Long Do We Keep Your Data?
Except as otherwise stated in this policy, we only keep your Personal Information as long as necessary to maintain, understand and improve the Site or to comply with Canada law. Once we receive Personal Information from you, we keep it for the shortest possible time that is consistent with the maintenance, understanding, and improvement of the Site, and our obligations under applicable Canada law. Non-personal information may be retained indefinitely.
Please remember that certain information, such as your IP address (if you edit while not logged in) and any public contributions to the Site, is archived and displayed indefinitely by design; the transparency of the projects’ contribution and revision histories is critical to their efficacy and trustworthiness.
Important info
For the protection of the Site and other users, if you do not agree with this Privacy Policy, you may not use the Site.
Where is the website hosted & What Does That Mean for Me?
The servers and the data centers are located in Canada.
Where ?
Astral Internet
P.O. BOX 242
Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu
Québec, Canada
J3B 6Z4
Téléphone
1-514-667-0932
1-877-667-0932
If you decide to use the Site, whether from inside or outside of Canada, you understand that your Personal Information will be collected, transferred, stored, processed, disclosed and otherwise used in Canada as described in this Privacy Policy. You also understand that your information may be transferred by us from Canada to other countries, which may have different or less stringent data protection laws than your country, in connection with providing services to you.
Our Response to Do Not Track (DNT) signals
We do not allow tracking by third-party websites you have not visited. We do not share your data with third parties for marketing purposes. We are strongly committed to not sharing nonpublic information and Personal Information with third parties. In particular, we do not allow tracking by third-party websites you have not visited (including analytics services, advertising networks, and social platforms), nor do we share your Personal Information with any third parties for marketing purposes. Under this Policy, we may share your information only under particular situations, which you can learn more about in the “When May We Share Your Information” section of this Privacy Policy.
Because we protect all users in this manner, we do not change our behavior in response to a web browser's "do not track" signal.
Changes to This Privacy Policy
Because things naturally change over time and we want to ensure our Privacy Policy accurately reflects our practices and the law, it may be necessary to modify this Privacy Policy from time to time.
We reserve the right to do so in the following manner:
- We ask that you please review the most up-to-date version of our Privacy Policy.
- Your continued use of the Site after this Privacy Policy becomes effective constitutes acceptance of this Privacy Policy on your part.
Contact Us
If you have questions or suggestions about this Privacy Policy, or the information collected under this Privacy Policy, please email us at [email protected].
Depending on your jurisdiction, you also may have the right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority competent for your country or region.
Thank You!
Thank you for reading our Privacy Policy. We hope you enjoy using the Site and appreciate your participation in creating, maintaining, and constantly working to improve the largest repository of free knowledge in the world.
Source Text
- Wikimedia Foundation contributors, Privacy policy, Wikimedia Foundation, , 25 May 2018, 22:13 UTC,
- <https://wikimediafoundation.org/w/index.php?title=Privacy_policy&oldid=115793> [accessed 28 May 2018]
- Blue Spice Mediawiki, Data Protection, Hallo Welt!,
- <https://bluespice.com/data-protection/> [accessed 30 May 2018]
- The Guardian International Edition, AddThis (Clearspring): What is it and what does it do?. Nicola Hughes.Tue 24 Apr 2012 13.40 BST!,
- <https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2012/apr/24/addthis-tracking-trackers-cookies-web-monitoring> [accessed 30 May 2018]