ICANNWiki:Privacy policy

This is a summary of the Privacy Policy. To read the full terms, scroll down or click here.

Disclaimer: This summary is not a part of the Privacy Policy and is not a legal document. It is simply a handy reference for understanding the full Privacy Policy. Think of it as the user-friendly interface to our Privacy Policy.

Because we want to understand how ICANNWiki is used so we can make them better for you, we collect some information when you:

Make public contributions.
Register an account or update your user page.
Use the ICANNWiki Sites.
Send us emails or participate in a survey or give feedback.

We 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 ICANNWiki's website, 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 ICANNWiki's website, and our obligations under law.

Be aware:

Any content you add or any change that you make to ICANNWiki will be publicly and and permanently available.
If you add content or make a change to ICANNWiki, that content or change will be publicly and permanently attributed to your username

For the protection of ICANNWiki and other users, if you do not agree with this Privacy Policy, you may not use the ICANNWiki Websites.

Introduction

Welcome

ICANNWiki is a nonprofit organization that operates the collaborative, free knowledge websites for the ICANN community and the wider Internet governance community.

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 ICANNWiki's website, you consent to this Policy.

ICANNWiki is founded on a simple, but powerful belief: Everyone should have a voice in the future of the Internet. We promote this belief by providing a collaborative service that harnesses the energy of the ICANN community to create a robust body of knowledge that makes ICANN and Internet governance more transparent and accessible. We are more effective in achieving this when we work together as a community.

We cannot work collectively without gathering, sharing, and analyzing limited information about our users as we seek new ways to make ICANNWiki more usable, safer, and more beneficial.

We believe that the purpose and use of information-gathering should go hand-in-hand with transparency. This Privacy Policy explains how ICANNWiki collects, uses, and shares information we receive from you through your use of our website. It is essential to understand that, by using ICANNWiki, 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 Personal Information, nor do we give it to others to sell you anything. We use it to figure out how to make the ICANNWiki more engaging and accessible, to see which ideas work, and to make learning and contributing more fun. Put simply: we use this information to make the ICANNWiki websites better for you.

After all, it's people like you, the champions of free knowledge, who make it possible for ICANNWiki to not only exist, but also grow and thrive.

Definitions

We recognize that only a minority of you are familiar with technical terms like “tracking pixels” and “cookies” used in the Privacy Policy. 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:

When we say...	... we mean:
"ICANNWiki" / "we" / "us" / "our"	ICANNWiki, the non-profit organization that operates the ICANNWiki Websites.
"ICANNWiki Sites" / "our services"	ICANNWiki websites and services (regardless of language), including our main project, including ICANNWiki's website in all of its different languages sites, as well as mobile applications, APIs, emails, and notifications; excluding, however, sites and services listed in the "What This Privacy Policy Doesn't Cover" section below.
"you" / "your" / "me"	You, regardless of whether you are an individual, group, or organization, and regardless of whether you are using ICANNWiki's websites or our services on behalf of yourself or someone else.
"this Policy" / "this Privacy Policy"	This document, entitled the "ICANNWiki Privacy Policy".
"contributions"	Content you add or changes you make to any ICANNWiki Website.
"personal information"	Information you provide us or information we collect from you that could be used to personally identify you. To be clear, while we do not collect all of the following types of information, we consider at least the following to be “personal information” if it is otherwise nonpublic and can be used to identify you: (a) your real name, address, phone number, email address, password, identification number on government-issued ID, IP address, user-agent information, credit card number; (b) when associated with one of the items in subsection (a), any sensitive data such as date of birth, gender, sexual orientation, racial or ethnic origins, marital or familial status, medical conditions or disabilities, political affiliation, and religion; and (c) any of the items in subsections (a) or (b) when associated with your user account.
"third party" / "third parties"	Individuals, entities, websites, services, products, and applications that are not controlled, managed, or operated by the ICANNWiki. This includes other ICANNWiki users and independent organizations or groups who help promote ICANNWiki such as volunteers, employees, directors, officers, and contractors of those organizations or groups.

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 any of the ICANNWiki websites. This Policy also applies to information that we receive from our partners or other third parties. To understand more about what this Privacy Policy covers, please see below.

For the sake of clarity, this Privacy Policy covers, regardless of language:

All of our major projects, including ICANNWiki user pages, discussion pages, and noticeboards.
Our blogs and APIs (unless we have provided a separate policy for those services).
Emails, SMS, and notifications from us or sent to us from you.

Collection & Use of Info

Types of Information We Receive From You & How We Get It

Your Public Contributions

Whatever you post on ICANNWiki can be seen and used by everyone.
When you make a contribution to ICANNWiki, 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. 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 ICANNWiki is used.

Unless this Policy says otherwise, you should assume that information that you actively contribute to ICANNWiki Websites, 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 further information, such as which country a user is from, political affiliation and gender.

Account Information & Registration

You are not required to create an account to read ICANNWiki.

In most cases we only ask for a username, password, email address, real name (optional) and a short biography in the account creation process. Of these fields, only the username and biography are publicly visible.

For the primary purpose of spam prevention, we require users to create an account with a verified email address prior to adding or editing content on ICANNWiki. The email address is used exclusively to communicate with users about matters directly related to the use of icannwiki.org.

Your username will be publicly visible, so while we encourage users to use their real name, if you are uncomfortable with your real name please be careful about selecting a 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.

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!). In some circumstances, ICANNWiki can assist users with removing additional information related to their account from the projects.

To gain a better understanding of the demographics of our users, to localize our services and to learn how we can improve our services, we may ask you for more demographic information, such as gender or age, about yourself. We will tell you if such information is intended to be public or private, so that you can make an informed decision about whether you want to provide us with that information. Providing such information is always completely optional. If you don't want to, you don't have to—it's as simple as that.

Location Information

Metadata

Sometimes, we automatically receive location data from your device. For example, if you want to upload a photo on ICANNWiki, we may receive metadata, such as the place and time you took the photo, automatically from your device. Please be aware that the default setting on your mobile device typically includes the metadata in your photo or video upload to the ICANNWiki Websites. 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

Finally, when you visit any ICANNWiki Website, 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.

Information Related to Your Use of the ICANNWiki Websites

We use certain technologies to collect information about how you use ICANNWiki.

Like other websites, we receive some information about you automatically when you visit the ICANNWiki Websites.

We also use a variety of commonly-used technologies, like cookies, to collect information regarding how you use the ICANNWiki Websites, make our services safer and easier to use, and to help create a better and more customizable experience for you.

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

Information We Receive Automatically

Because of how browsers work, we receive some information automatically when you visit ICANNWiki websites. This information can include 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 ICANNWiki websites, which pages you request and visit, and the date and time of each request you make to the ICANNWiki websites.

Put simply, we use this information to enhance your experience with ICANNWiki Websites. For example, we use this information to administer the sites, provide greater security, and fight vandalism; optimize the mobile experience, customize content and set language preferences, test features to see what works, and improve performance; understand how users interact with ICANNWiki websites, track and study use of various features, gain understanding about the demographics of the different ICANNWiki Websites, and analyze trends.

Information We Collect

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

We use this information to make your experience with the ICANNWiki websites safer and better, to gain a greater understanding of user preferences and their interaction with the ICANNWiki websites, and to generally improve our services.

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

Provide you with a customizable 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, and to tell you about interesting ICANNWiki issues and events in your area.
Deliver more relevant content to you faster. For example, we use local storage to store your most recently read articles directly on your device, so they can be retrieved quickly. Also, we 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 ICANNWiki Websites, so that we know what works and what is useful. For example, we might use cookies to learn about the list of articles you are following on your watchlist so that we can recommend similar articles that you may be interested in.
Understand how you use the ICANNWiki websites across different devices, so that we can make our varied ICANNWiki websites more efficient and effective for you.
Make the ICANNWiki Websites 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.

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 ICANNWiki website along with the dates that other accounts were created on a ICANNWiki website.

How We Use Information We Receive From You

We and our service providers use your information for the legitimate purpose of pursuing our charitable mission, including:

Operating the ICANNWiki websites, sharing your contributions and administering our Services

To help you share your knowledge with the world and add new features to our Services.
To arrange access to your account and provide you with related service.
To send administrative information to you, such as changes to our policies.
To allow you to send messages to another person if you choose to do so. Direct communications between users (such as messages sent through the "Email this user" feature), to the extent such communications are nonpublic and stored in or in transit through ICANNWiki systems, are kept confidential by us, except as provided in this Policy.

We engage in these activities to manage our relationship with you, because we have a legitimate interest and/or to comply with our legal obligations.

Providing customized Services.

To provide to you custom content, notices and settings and to enhance your experience with the ICANNWiki websites.

We will customize the Services, in some instances, at your direction; in all instances, in keeping with our legitimate charitable purpose of pursuing our mission.

Sending emails with news updates, surveys and communications about items we believe may be of interest to you.

To let you know about things that are happening with the ICANNWiki, the ICANNWiki Websites or the ICANNWiki movement.
To alert you when there has been a change to an article that you have decided to follow.

We will send these types of emails to you only with your consent. We do not sell, rent, or use your email address to advertise third-party products or services to you. You can manage what kinds of notifications you receive and how often you receive them by going to your Notifications Preferences.

Sending optional surveys and requesting feedback.

We will always tell you, at the time we give you an opportunity to share your thoughts, how we plan on using your answers and any personal information you provide.

Your responses to our surveys and feedback requests are always optional. We will email these types of requests to you only with your consent. You can manage what kinds of notifications you receive and how often you receive them by going to your Notifications Preferences.

Improving the ICANNWiki websites and making your user experience safer and better.

To 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 ICANNWiki websites are used.
For research and analytics.
To fight spam, identity theft, malware and other kinds of abuse.
To optimize mobile and other applications.
To test features to see what works, understand how users interact with the ICANNWiki websites, track and study use of various features, gain understanding about the demographics of the different ICANNWiki websites and analyze trends.

We engage in these activities to further our legitimate charitable purpose and/or to comply with our legal obligations.

Other

Metadata

As stated above, we may automatically receive location data from your device. For example, if you upload a photo to ICANNWiki, please be aware that the default setting on your mobile device typically results in the metadata associated with your photo being included in the upload. As a reminder, 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 ICANNWiki Website, 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. If you are visiting ICANNWiki Websites 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 this location information to make your experience with the ICANNWiki Websites safer and better, to gain a greater understanding of user preferences and their interaction with the ICANNWiki Website, and to generally improve our services. For example, we use this information to provide greater security, optimize mobile applications, and learn how to expand and better support ICANNWiki communities. We also use Personal Information in the manner described in the sections of this Policy titled "For Legal Reasons" and "To Protect You, Ourselves & Others."

Sharing

When May We Share Your Information?

We may share your information when you give us specific permission to do so, for legal reasons, and in the other circumstances described below.

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 will access, use, preserve, and/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. However, if we believe that a particular request for disclosure of a user's information is legally invalid or an abuse of the legal system and the affected user does not intend to oppose the disclosure themselves, we will try our best to fight it. We are committed to notifying you via email at least ten (10) calendar days, when possible, before we disclose your Personal Information in response to a legal demand. However, we may only provide notice if we are not legally restrained from contacting you, there is no credible threat to life or limb that is created or increased by disclosing the request, and you have provided us with an email address.

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.

If the Organization is Transferred

In the unlikely event that the ownership of ICANNWiki changes, we will provide you 30 days’ notice before any personal information is transferred to the new owners or becomes subject to a different privacy policy.

In the extremely unlikely event that ownership of all or substantially all of ICANNWiki changes, or we go through a reorganization (such as a merger, consolidation, or acquisition), we will continue to keep your Personal Information confidential, except as provided in this Policy, and provide notice to you via the ICANNWiki Website.

To Protect You, Ourselves & Others

We, or users with certain administrative rights, may disclose information that is reasonably necessary to:

enforce or investigate potential violations of the ICANNWiki policies;
protect our organization, infrastructure, employees, contractors, or the public; or
prevent imminent or serious bodily harm or death to a person.

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

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 our organization, employees, contractors, 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.

To Our Service Providers

We may disclose personal information to our third party service providers or contractors to help run or improve the ICANNWiki websites and provide services in support of our mission.

As hard as we may try, we can't do it all. So sometimes we use third-party service providers or contractors who help run or improve ICANNWiki Websites for you and other users. We give access to your Personal Information to these providers or contractors as needed to perform their services for us or to use their tools and services.

Because You Made It Public

Information that you post is public and can been seen and used by everyone.

Any information you post publicly on the ICANNWiki Websites 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 use a variety of physical and technical measures, policies, and procedures to help protect your information from unauthorized access, use, or disclosure.

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).

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 an email that requests your password, please let us know by sending it to staff@icannwiki.org, so we can investigate the source of the email.

How Long Do We Keep Your Data?

Except as otherwise stated in this policy, we only keep your Personal Information as long as necessary to maintain, understand and improve the ICANNWiki Websites or to comply with U.S. law.

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 ICANNWiki Websites, and our obligations under applicable U.S. law. Non-personal information may be retained indefinitely.

Please remember that certain information, such as your username and any public contributions to the ICANNWiki websites, is archived and displayed indefinitely by design; the transparency of the projects’ contribution and revision histories is critical to their efficacy and trustworthiness. For further information about how you may request access to or deletion of your Personal Information, or other rights you may have with respect to your Personal Information, please see our FAQs or contact us at staff@icannwiki.com.

Important info

For the protection of ICANNWiki and other users, if you do not agree with this Privacy Policy, you may not use ICANNWiki websites.

Where is ICANNWiki located & What Does That Mean for Me?

ICANNWiki is a non-profit organization based in Portland, Oregon, with servers and data centers located in the U.S. If you decide to use ICANNWiki websites, whether from inside or outside of the U.S., you understand that your Personal Information will be collected, transferred, stored, processed, disclosed and otherwise used in the U.S. as described in this Privacy Policy. You also understand that your information may be transferred by us from the U.S. to other countries, which may have different or less stringent data protection laws than your country, in connection with providing services to you.

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. We ask that you please review the most up-to-date version of our Privacy Policy. Your continued use of the ICANNWiki websites after this Privacy Policy becomes effective constitutes acceptance of this Privacy Policy on your part. Your continued use of the ICANNWiki Websites after any subsequent version of this Privacy Policy becomes effective, following notice, constitutes acceptance of that version of the Privacy Policy on your part.

Contact Us

If you have questions or suggestions about this Privacy Policy, or the information collected under this Privacy Policy, please email us at staff@icannwiki.org.

Depending on your jurisdiction, you also may have the right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority competent for your country or region.

Thank You!

Thank you for reading our Privacy Policy. We hope you enjoy using the ICANNWiki websites and appreciate your participation in creating, maintaining, and constantly working to improve the largest repository of free knowledge in the world.

Please note that in the event of any differences in meaning or interpretation between the original English version of this Privacy Policy and a translation, the original English version takes precedence.