Privacy Policy

General Scope

This policy covers personally identifiable information collected or stored by Distant Shores Media on its servers in relation to the Door43 website and community. Distant Shores Media collects and retains the least amount of personally identifiable information needed to fulfill Door43’s operational needs.

The public and collaborative nature of the projects

Door43 is collaboratively developed by its users using the DokuWiki software. Anyone with Internet access (and not otherwise restricted from doing so) may edit the editable pages of these sites after logging in as a registered user. By doing this, editors create a published document, and a public record of every word added, subtracted, or changed. This is a public act, and editors are identified publicly as the author of such changes. All contributions made to Door43, and all publicly available information about those contributions, are irrevocably licensed and may be freely copied, quoted, reused and adapted by third parties with few restrictions.

Activities on Door43

In general, this Policy only applies to private information stored or held by Distant Shores Media which is not publicly available.

Interactions with Door43 not covered by this Policy include, but are not limited to, aspects of browsing and editing pages, use of the wiki “email user” function, subscribing and posting to Distant Shores Media hosted email lists, and corresponding with volunteers via Distant Shores Media’s ticketing system. These interactions may reveal a contributor’s IP address, and possibly other personal information, indiscriminately to the general public, or to specific groups of volunteers acting independently of Distant Shores Media.

Users may also interact with one another outside of the Door43 website, via email, IRC or other chat, or independent websites, and should assess the risks involved, and their personal need for privacy, before using these methods of communication.

User accounts and authorship

Distant Shores Media requires users to register an account on the Door43 website. Users are identified by their chosen username. Users select a password, which is confidential and used to verify the integrity of their account. 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 not be removed. Usernames are generally unable to be changed. Distant Shores Media does not guarantee that a username will be changed on request.

Purpose of the collection of private information

Distant Shores Media limits the collection of personally identifiable user data to purposes which serve the well-being of the Door43 website, including but not limited to the following:

• To enhance the public accountability of the projects. Distant Shores Media 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. Distant Shores Media and the Door43 community 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 other records) 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. Distant Shores Media 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.

Details of data retention

General expectations

IP and other technical information

• When a visitor requests or reads a page, or sends email to a Distant Shores Media server, no more information is collected than is typically collected by web sites. Distant Shores Media 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.

Cookies

• The Door43 website software sets temporary session cookies on a visitor’s computer whenever a 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 a limited period of time, and this information will be resent to the server on every visit to the Door43 website. 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.

Page history

• Edits or other contributions to Door43 on its articles, user pages and talk pages are generally 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 entrusted with higher level of access may still see what was removed from public view. Information can be permanently deleted by individuals with access to Distant Shores Media servers, but aside from the rare circumstance when Distant Shores Media 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

• 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.

Editing projects

• Edits to Door43 pages are identified with the username of the editor, and editing history may be aggregated by author in a contribution list. Such information will be available permanently on the projects.
• Logged in registered users:
  • Logged in users do not expose their IP address to the public except in cases of abuse, including vandalism of a wiki page by the user or by another user with the same IP address. A user’s IP address is stored on the wiki servers for a period of time, during which it can be seen by server administrators.
  • IP address information, and its connection to any usernames that share it, may be released under certain circumstances (see below).

Discussions

• On wiki 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 (e.g., the Village Pump). 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 registering. Users who provide a valid email address can enable subscriptions to page change notifications sent from the wiki software.
  • The email address put into one’s user preferences may be used by Distant Shores Media 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 Distant Shores Media server administrators to enter a new e-mail address.
• On mailing lists:
  • The email address put into one’s user preferences may be used to send email updates to Door43 users. Every email sent via a mailing list includes clear instructions enabling a user to unsubscribe from the email list.

Access to and release of personally identifiable information

Access:

It is the policy of Distant Shores Media that personally identifiable data collected in the server logs, or through other non-publicly-available methods, may be released by Distant Shores Media 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 Distant Shores Media, Door43 users or the public.

Except as described above, Distant Shores Media 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, Distant Shores Media 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, Distant Shores Media 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 that the affected user has listed in his or her user preferences.

Distant Shores Media cannot advise a user receiving such a notification regarding the law or an appropriate response to a subpoena. Distant Shores Media 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 Distant Shores Media receives a court-filed motion to quash or otherwise limit the subpoena as a result of action by a user or their lawyer, Distant Shores Media will not disclose the requested information until Distant Shores Media receives an order from the court to do so.

Registered users are required to provide an email address. However, when an affected registered user does not provide a valid email address, Distant Shores Media 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

Distant Shores Media 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 Distant Shores Media, represents a committed effort to safeguard the security of the limited user information that is collected and retained on our servers. Nevertheless, Distant Shores Media 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, Distant Shores Media can make no guarantee against unauthorized access to information provided in the course of participating in Door43.