LinuxTVWiki:Privacy policy

Note:
For now, this is a draft for a Privacy Policy, based on Wikipedia privacy policy, as seen at https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Privacy_policy.
It has been written to be compliant with a new EU regulation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Data_Protection_Regulation).

This Policy explains how we collect, use, and share your personal information.

• We collect very little personal information about you.
• We do not rent or sell your information to third parties.

By using LinuxTV, you consent to this Policy.

Introduction

This Privacy Policy explains how LinuxTV.org collects, uses, and shares information we receive from you. It is essential to understand that, by using LinuxTV.org, 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 do not sell or rent your nonpublic information, nor do we give it to others to sell you anything. We use this information to make the LinuxTV.org better for you.

Definitions

Because everyone (not just lawyers) should be able to easily understand how and why their information is collected and used, we use common language instead of more formal terms throughout this Policy. To help ensure your understanding of some particular key terms, here is a table of translations:

What This Privacy Policy Does & Doesn't Cover

Except as explained below, this Privacy Policy applies to our collection and handling of information about you that we receive as a result of your use of LinuxTV.org. It doesn't cover any external sites pointed by a link. To understand more about what this Privacy Policy covers, please see below.

Your Public Contributions to Wiki pages

The Wiki pages were primarily created to help you share your knowledge with the world, and we share your contributions because you have asked us to do so.

When you make a contribution to any Wiki page, 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 and/or your IP address. 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 Wiki is used.

Unless this Policy says otherwise, you should assume that information that you actively contribute to the Wiki pages, including personal information, is publicly visible and can be found by search engines. Like most things on the Internet, anything you share may be copied and redistributed throughout the Internet by other people. Please do not contribute any information that you are uncomfortable making permanently public, like revealing your real name or location in your contributions.

You should be aware that specific data made public by you or aggregated data that is made public by us can be used by anyone for analysis and to infer information about users, such as which country a user is from, political affiliation, and gender.

Account Information & Registration

You do not need to create an account to use any Wiki pages.

If you want to contribute to the Wiki pages, you need to create an account. For that, we require only a username, a password and an e-mail. Your username will be publicly visible, so please be careful about using your real name as your username. Your password is only used to verify that the account is yours. Your IP address is also automatically submitted to us, and we record it temporarily to help prevent abuse. No other personal information is required: no name, no date of birth, no credit card information. The e-mail is used only for the purposes of contacting you with regards to your Wiki account.

Once created, user accounts cannot be removed entirely (although you can usually hide the information on your user page if you choose to). This is because your public contributions must be associated with their author (you!). So make sure you pick a name that you will be comfortable with for years to come.

Information Related to Your Use of the LinuxTV.org

We may use common technologies to collect information about how you use LinuxTV.org website.

We use this information to enhance your user experience and to develop new features.

We want to make the LinuxTV site better for you by learning more about how you use them. Examples of this might include how often you visit the LinuxTV.org, what you like, what you find helpful, how you get to the LinuxTV.org, 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 sites confidential, except as provided in this Policy.

Information We Receive Automatically

Like other websites, we receive some information about you automatically when you visit the LinuxTV.org. This information helps us administer the web sites and enhance your user experience.

Because of how browsers work and similar to other major websites, we receive some information automatically when you visit ou sites. 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 our Sites, which pages you request and visit, and the date and time of each request you make to the our sites.

Put simply, we use this information to enhance your experience with LinuxTV.org. For example, we use this information to administer the sites, provide greater security, and fight vandalism; customize content and set language preferences, test features to see what works, and improve performance; understand how users interact with LinuxTV.org.

Information We Collect

We use a variety of commonly-used technologies, like cookies, to understand how you use linuxtv.org, make our services safer and easier to use, and to help create a better and more personalized 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 sites (like your username or the time of your visit).

We use this information to make your experience with the LinuxTV safer and better, to gain a greater understanding of user preferences and their interaction with our sites, 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 [1].

Locally stored data, JavaScript, and tracking pixels help us do things like:

• Provide you with a personalized experience, such as using cookies to know your language preference, to remember the user preferences you set so we can provide you with the customized look and feel that you want.
• Deliver more relevant content to you faster. For example, we may use local storage to store your most recently read articles directly on your device, so they can be retrieved quickly. Also, we may use cookies to learn about the topics searched so that we can optimize the search results we deliver to you.
• Understand how you use the sites, so that we know what works and what is useful.
• Make the sites more convenient to use, such as by using cookies to maintain your session when you log in or to remember your username in the login field.

We believe this data collection helps improve your user experience, but you may remove or disable some or all locally stored data through your browser settings, depending on your browser. While locally stored data may not be necessary to use our sites, some features may not function properly if you disable locally stored data.

While the examples above concerning information about you collected through the use of data collection tools are kept confidential in accordance with this Policy, please note that some information about the actions taken by your username is made publicly available through public logs alongside actions taken by other users. For example, a public log may include the date your account was created on a Wiki page along with the dates that other accounts were created on a site. Information available through public logs will not include personal information about you.

Emails

If you choose to provide your email address, we will keep it confidential, except as provided in this Policy.

We may occasionally send you emails about important information.

You have the option of providing an email address for our mail list servers. If you do so, your email address will be visible when you post e-mails to a discussion list. At any time, you can opt-out from a discussion list.

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 such an email, please let us know by sending it to [2], so we can investigate the source of the email.

IP Addresses

When you visit any Site, we automatically receive the P 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. We use IP addresses for research and analytics; to better personalize content, notices, and settings for you; to fight spam, identity theft, malware, and other kinds of abuse.

Sharing

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 may access, preserve, 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.

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 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 community-based policies. We may also need to access and share information to investigate and defend ourselves against legal threats or actions.

LinuxTV 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 sites. These various user-selected administrative groups have their own privacy and confidentiality guidelines,. These user-selected administrative groups are accountable to other users through checks and balances: users are selected through a community-driven process and overseen by their peers through a logged history of their actions. However, the legal names of these users are not known to LinuxTV.

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 us, our 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.

Because You Made It Public

Any information you post publicly on the Wiki or send via e-mail to a discussion list 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).

How Long Do We Keep Your Data?

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 LinuxTV Sites, and our obligations under applicable laws. Non-personal information may be retained indefinitely.

Please remember that certain information is retained and displayed indefinitely.

Important info

If you do not agree with this Privacy Policy, you may not use LinuxTV.org.

Our Response to Do Not Track (DNT) signals

We are strongly committed to not sharing nonpublic 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 information with any third parties for marketing purposes.

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.