Westarctica:Privacy policy
We at Encyclopedia Westarctica are committed to:
- Describing how your information may be used or shared in this Privacy Policy.
- Using reasonable measures to keep your information secure.
- Never selling your information or sharing it with third parties for marketing purposes.
- Only sharing your information in limited circumstances, such as to improve the Wikimedia Sites, to comply with the law, or to protect you and others.
- Retaining your data for the shortest possible time that is consistent with maintaining, understanding, and improving the Wikimedia Sites, and our obligations under law.
Be aware:
- Any content you add or any change that you make to a Wikimedia Site will be publicly and permanently available.
- If you add content or make a change to a Wikimedia Site without logging in, that content or change will be publicly and permanently attributed to the IP address used at the time rather than a username.
- Our community of volunteer editors and contributors is a self-policing body. Certain administrators of the Wikimedia Sites, who are chosen by the community, use tools that grant them limited access to nonpublic information about recent contributions so they may protect the Wikimedia Sites and enforce policies.
- As part of our commitment to education and research around the world, we occasionally release public information and aggregated or non-personal information to the general public through data dumps and data sets.
- For the protection of the Wikimedia Foundation and other users, if you do not agree with this Privacy Policy, you may not use the Wikimedia Sites.
Detailed Privacy Policy
Your Public Contributions
The Wikimedia Sites 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 Wikimedia Site, 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 Wikimedia Sites are used.
Unless this Policy says otherwise, you should assume that information that you actively contribute to the Wikimedia Sites, 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.
Information retrieved automatically
Because of how browsers work and similar to other major websites, we receive some information automatically when you visit the Wikimedia 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 the Wikimedia Sites, which pages you request and visit, and the date and time of each request you make to the Wikimedia Sites.
Put simply, we use this information to enhance your experience with Wikimedia Sites. For example, we use this information to administer the sites, 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 Wikimedia Sites, track and study use of various features, gain understanding about the demographics of the different Wikimedia Sites, and analyze trends.
You have the option of providing an email address at the time of registration or in later interactions with the Wikimedia Sites. If you do so, your email address is kept confidential, except as provided in this Policy. We do not sell, rent, or use your email address to advertise third-party products or services to you.
Metadata
Sometimes, we may automatically receive location data from your device. For example, if you want to upload a photo on the Wikimedia Commons mobile app, 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 Wikimedia Sites. 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 any Wikimedia 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. For example, if you make a contribution without signing into your account, your IP address used at the time will be publicly and permanently recorded. If you are visiting Wikimedia Sites 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 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; and to provide better mobile and other applications.
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).