:orphan: .. _privacy_policy: Privacy Policy ============== General Scope ------------- This policy covers personally identifiable information collected or stored by the Mantid project on its servers in relation to the Project and its community. Consistent with the UK Data Protection Policy, the project collects and retains the least amount of personally identifiable information needed to fulfil the Projects operational needs. The Public and Collaborative Nature of the Projects --------------------------------------------------- The Mantid project requires users to register an account in order to contribute within the Mantid Project, either to the project Wiki or to the project code. By editing documents in the wiki, users 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 the Project, 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 Mantid Collaboration Projects ------------------------------------------- In general, this Policy only applies to private information stored or held by the Mantid project which is not publicly available. Interactions with the Mantid 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 mantid hosted email lists, and corresponding with collaborators via the projects 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 the collaboration. Users may also interact with one another outside of Mantid project site, 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. Purpose of the Collection of Private Information ------------------------------------------------ The Mantid project limits the collection of personally identifiable user data to purposes which serve the well-being of the project, including but not limited to the following: - To enhance the public accountability of the project. The project 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. In this case the Administrators of the site may remove access to those users or block specified IP addresses. - To provide site statistics. The project 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 ------------------------- .. _usage_data_recorded_in_mantid: Usage Data Recorded in Mantid ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ .. image:: /_static/images/workbench_startup_window.png :alt: Image of first-time startup screen in Workbench :align: right :scale: 30 % Mantid records a limited number of metrics that are used to help direct the future direction of the project and allow the resources of the development team to focus on the more commonly used areas of functionality. All of this usage recording is optional, and can be opted out of in the "Welcome to Mantid" first use screen, and can be revisited at any time using the Help->First Time Setup menu option. The information recorded is stored in an off site server, the sections below detail what information is stored. Startup Usage ############# Mantid reports when it is started, and again once per day, to allow us to monitor its daily usage. The startup reports record the following: - A user ID - A computer ID - The operating system name and version of the computer - The Paraview version (if any) on the computer - The version of Mantid - The application name using Mantid - The data and time of Mantid starting - The nearest city that can be identified for the location of the computer The User and Computer ids are unique but not identifiable. They are transmitted and stored using an MD5 checksum so the computer or user account cannot be identified. The IP address from which the usage report is sent is briefly processed to geolocate the nearest city, but neither the more detailed location or ip address is stored. All of this data is visible through our publicly available usage reporting service at https://reports.mantidproject.org. Feature Usage ############# Mantid also records some summary information about the features that are used within Mantid, this information is accumulated within the application and set out every 5 minutes (by default). We only record how many times a feature is used within a version of Mantid, no identifiable information is stored. We store: - The type of feature used (e.g. Algorithm, Interface, or feature within an interface) - The name of the feature used - Whether that feature was used directly by a user, or as part of some internal process - The version of Mantid it was used in - The number of times this feature has been used Error Report Data Recorded in Mantid #################################### After encountering serious errors, Mantid collects a limited number of metrics. This collection is important for helping us to identify those parts of the code that require attention and it helps us to provide a more stable package over all. All of this reporting is optional. If usage reporting is disabled (see :ref:`usage_data_recorded_in_mantid`), then nothing will be collected. If usage data is being recorded, then upon error detection a pop-up window will ask for permission to collect additional information. There are two options given to the user by this window: Yes, share information ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ In this case, we will collect all the information we need relevant to the error, including that which allows us to identify who has had the error; we may contact you directly to see if we can help with the problem or to inform you that the problem has been solved. We will collect: - The fact that an error occurred - Username (optional) - Email - Exit error code - Operating system - Mantid uptime (how long has the current instance been running) - Default facility - Default instrument - Text in the free text box - User ID - Host ID - A copy of the Mantid recovery files on your machine (These contain the information required to replicate the state of the Mantid session which just crashed as well as any other open Mantid sessions) Don't share any information ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ In this case no report will be sent back to us. Recalling Information --------------------- As these records are potentially identifiable, we will remove any records for a particular user, on request. This can be requested by contacting the Mantid team using ``mantid-help@mantidproject.org``. Expiry of identifiable information ------------------------------------ Identifiable information such as a user's name or email will be deleted one year after collection. Disclaimer ---------- The Mantid project 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 collaboration, represents a committed effort to safeguard the security of the limited user information that is collected and retained on our servers. Nevertheless, the project 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 project can make no guarantee against unauthorized access to information provided in the course of participating in the Mantid project.