Privacy Philosophy

Disclaimer: This "Privacy Philsophy" is not a part of the Privacy Policy and is not a part of the legal document. It is simply a reference for understanding the LibertyLion®'s attitude toward privacy and how we try to think differently from most websites about your private information.

We believe your personal information should really be private. Unlike the myriad of websites you have probably already signed up for, LibertyLion® will not collect and mine your data. Your privacy really does matter. We will never track what you do or use the information you post or contribute, the friends you have, or the content of your messages and emails to analyze your behavior or figure out how to market to you. We will never provide any information about you individually to anyone else except as required by law.

If you have taken the time to read the fine print in the terms of use and privacy policies for virtually all websites at which you register, you are no doubt appalled (if you can understand them) by the extent of the invasion of your privacy they expect you to allow while offering supposed privacy controls that you can’t find and that can change the next time they publish their privacy policy which you automatically approve by continuing your use of the site, even though you don’t know anything has changed. In some you are actually signing up to make your personal computer a part of their “virtual” network, meaning they will be routing other people’s traffic through your computer and internet connection. Don’t put up with such invasion of your privacy. Your information is private.

Privacy Policy

General Scope

This policy covers personally identifiable information collected or stored by the LibertyLion® on its servers in relation to the Project. Consistent with its Data Retention Policy, LibertyLion® collects and retains the least amount of personally identifiable information needed to fulfill the Projects' operational needs.

For more information on why this is important, see "Privacy Matters."

The public and collaborative nature of the projects

LibertyLion® content is collaboratively developed by its users using the LibertyLion® website. Anyone with Internet access may view the publicly distributed content, registered users may comment on the content, and members may edit the content. By doing this, contributors create a document of every word added, subtracted, or changed that can be accessed by Editors. All contributions made to the content, and all information about those contributions, are irrevocably licensed and may be freely copied, quoted, reused and adapted for non-commercial use by third parties with few restrictions.

Activities on LibertyLion® websites

In general, this Policy only applies to private information stored or held by the LibertyLion® which is not publicly available.

User accounts and authorship

LibertyLion® requires editors to register Registered 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. It may be possible for a username to be changed. LibertyLion® does not guarantee that a username will be changed on request.

Purpose of the collection of private information

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

• To enhance the public accountability of the project. 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 with protecting the project.
• To provide site statistics. LibertyLion® 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 a LibertyLion® server, no more information is collected than is typically collected by web sites. LibertyLion® may keep raw logs of such transactions, but these will not be published or used to track legitimate users.

Cookies

This site uses a temporary session cookie on a visitor's computer whenever a LibertyLion® 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. 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 a LibertyLion® pages, blogs, forums, etc. are generally retained forever. Removing text from a project does not permanently delete it. Editors can look at a previous version of an article and see what was there and roll back the changes. 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 Managers, but aside from the rare circumstance when the site 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. LibertyLion® records user’s IP addresses but they are only visible to site administrators.

Editing projects

Edits of content pages are identified with the username of the editor, and editing history is aggregated by author in a contribution list. Such information will be available permanently.

• Logged in users do not expose their IP address to the. A user's IP address is stored on the wiki servers for a period of time, during which it can be seen by server.
• IP address information, and its connection to any usernames that share it, may be released under certain circumstances (see below).
• Editors using a company mail server from home or telecommuting over a DSL or cable Internet connection, are likely to be easy to identify by their IP address; in which case it may be easy to cross-identify all contributions to various Projects made by that IP. Using a username is a better way of preserving privacy in this situation.

Logged in registered users:

Discussions

• Users are required to list an email address when registering. This is required to receive notifications from the LibertyLion™ site (such as page updates, notifications, and account resets. Users can control their message settings and optionally make their email address (and name) visible to other site visitors by modifying their user preferences. By default, users’ email address and names are not visible to others.

Any editable page can theoretically be the location of a discussion. In general, discussions occur on comment pages and forums. Privacy expectations apply to discussion pages in the same way as they do elsewhere.

Via email:

Access to and release of personally identifiable information

Access:
Projects are primarily run by volunteer contributors. Some dedicated users are given privileged access. For example, Editors (who are volunteers) have access to page editing histories.

Other users who may have access to private identifiable information include, but are not limited to, Managers (who are volunteers) and LibertyLion® Administrators and employees as well as developers, IT personnel and others with high levels of server access.

Access to and publication of this information is governed by the ===Access to nonpublic data policy=== (cache), (NEED TO CHECK THIS POLICY ALSO) Sharing information with other privileged users is not considered "distribution."

Release: Policy on Release of Data
It is the policy of LibertyLion®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 LibertyLion® 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 LibertyLion®, its users or the public.

Except as described above, LibertyLion® 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, LibertyLion® 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, LibertyLion® 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.

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

Third-party Applications and Widgets

The LibertyLion® website makes use of third-party applications and widgets. These applications (and their respective privacy policy) are listed here:

• AddThis: Social network sharing widget
  http://www.addthis.com/privacy
• Piwik: Website analytics
  http://piwik.org/privacy/

Disclaimer

LibertyLion® 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 LibertyLion®, 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 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, the Foundation can make no guarantee against unauthorized access to information provided in the course of participating in the LibertyLion® Project or communities.

Attribution

This “Privacy Policy” statement is a derivative work of the Wikipedia Privacy Policy (cache). Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License (cache); additional terms may apply. See Terms of Use for details.