C#-Online.NET:Privacy policy
Microsoft .NET Framework, ASP.NET, Visual C# (CSharp, C Sharp, C-Sharp) Developer Training, Visual Studio
This policy is subject to change. The current policy went into effect July 24, 2006.
Contents |
Summary
If you only read the C# Online.NET Web sites, only the information typically collected in server logs by Web sites in general is collected, e.g. IP address, browser type.
If you contribute to C# Online.NET projects, you are publishing every word you post publicly. If you write something, you should assume that it will be retained forever. This includes articles, talk pages, and user pages. Some limited exceptions are described below.
Publishing on the wiki and public data
Simply visiting a Web site does not expose your identity publicly—but, see private logging below.
When you edit any page in the wiki, you are publishing a document. This is a public act; and, you are identified publicly with that edit as its author.
Identification of an author
When you publish a page in the wiki, you must be logged in. Since you are logged in, you will be identified by your user name—the user name you selected when you created your account. This may be your real name if you so choose; or, you may choose to publish under a pseudonym.
When you have not logged in, you will be identified by your network IP address—a series of four numbers which identifies the Internet address from which you are contacting the wiki. Depending on your connection, this number may be traceable only to a large Internet Service Provider (ISP) or, specifically, to your home, school, or place of business. It may be possible that the origin of this IP address could be used in conjunction with any interests you express explicitly or implicitly or by editing articles to identify you even by private individuals.
It may be either difficult or easy for a motivated individual to connect your network IP address with your real life identity. Therefore, if you are very concerned about privacy, you may wish to log in and publish under a pseudonym.
When using a pseudonym, your IP address will not be available to the public except in cases of abuse, including vandalism of a wiki page by you or by another user with the same IP address. In all cases, your IP address will be stored on the wiki servers and can be seen by C# Online.NET's server administrators and by users who have been granted "CheckUser" access. Your IP address, and its connection to any usernames that share it may be released under certain circumstances (see below).
If you use a company mail server from home or telecommute and use a DSL or cable Internet connection, it is likely to be very easy for your employer to identify your IP address and find all of your IP based C# Online.NET project contributions. Using a user name is a better way of preserving your privacy in this situation. However, remember to log out or disconnect yourself after each session using a pseudonym on a shared computer, to avoid allowing others to use your identity.
Cookies
The wiki will set a temporary session cookie (PHPSESSID) whenever you visit the site. If you do not intend to ever log in, you may deny this cookie, but you cannot log in without it. It will be deleted when you close your browser session.
More cookies may be set when you log in, to avoid typing in your user name (or optionally password) on your next visit. These last up to 30 days. You may clear these cookies after use if you are using a public machine and do not wish to expose your username to future users of the machine. (If so, clear the browser cache as well.)
Passwords
Many aspects of the C# Online.NET projects' community interactions depend on the reputation and respect that is built up through a history of valued contributions. User passwords are the only guarantee of the integrity of a user's edit history. All users are encouraged to select strong passwords and to never share them. No one shall knowingly expose the password of another user to public release either directly or indirectly.
Private logging
Every time you visit a Web page, you send a lot of information to the Web server. Most Web servers routinely maintain access logs with a portion of this information, which can be used to get an overall picture of what pages are popular, what other sites link to this one, and what Web browsers people are using. It is not the intention of the C# Online.NET projects to use this information to keep track of legitimate users.
These logs are used to produce the site statistics pages; the raw log data is not made public, and is normally discarded after about two months.
The following is an example of what may be logged per page view:
71.184.51.129 - - [29/Feb/2006:01:02:03 +0000]
"GET /Privacy policy HTTP/1.1" 200 15902
"http://en.csharp-online.net/index.php?title=C%23_Online.NET:Privacy_policy"
"Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/85.7 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/85.5"
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. IP addresses of users, derived either from those logs or from records in the database are frequently used to correlate usernames and network addresses of edits in investigating abuse of the wiki, including the suspected use of malicious "sockpuppets" (duplicate accounts), vandalism, harassment of other users, or disruption of the wiki.
Policy on release of data derived from page logs
It is the policy of C# Online.NET that personally identifiable data collected in the server logs, or through records in the database via the CheckUser feature, may be released by the system administrators or users with CheckUser access, in the following situations:
- In response to a valid subpoena or other compulsory request from law enforcement;
- With permission of the affected user;
- To the chair of C# Online.NET, his legal counsel, or his designee, when necessary for investigation of abuse complaints;
- Where the information pertains to page views generated by a spider or bot and its dissemination is necessary to illustrate or resolve technical issues;
- Where the user has been vandalising articles or persistently behaving in a disruptive way, data may be released to assist in the targeting of IP blocks, or to assist in the formulation of a complaint to relevant Internet Service Providers;
- Where it is reasonably necessary to protect the rights, property or safety of the C# Online.NET, its users or the public.
C# Online.NET policy does not permit public distribution of such information under any circumstances, except as described above.
Sharing information with third parties
Read the Copyright Notice.
C# Online.NET will not sell or share private personal information—including e-mail addresses—with third parties unless you agree to release this information or the law requires the release of information.
Security of information
C# Online.NET makes no guarantee against unauthorized access to any information you provide. At a minumum, this information is available to anyone with access to the servers at our host facility. And, as we all know, computers can be "hacked" into and information compromised or stolen.
e-Mail, IRC, and mailing lists
You must provide a valid e-mail address in order to register.
You may provide your e-mail address in your Preferences and enable other logged-in users to send e-mail to you through the wiki. Your address will not be revealed to them unless you respond or, possibly, if the e-mail bounces. The e-mail address may be used by C# Online.NET to communicate with users on a wider scale.
If you do not provide an e-mail address, you will not be able to reset your password should you forget it. However, you may contact one of the C# Online.NET Editors who may be able to enter a new mail address in your preferences for you.
You can remove your e-mail address from your preferences at any time to prevent it being used.
IRC
Internet Relay Chat (IRC) channels are not officially part of C# Online.NET proper. By participating in an IRC channel, your IP address may be exposed to other participants. Different channels have different policies on whether logs may be published.
Mailing lists
If you subscribe to a C# Online.NET mailing list, your address will be exposed to other list members. The list archives of many C# Online.NET' mailing lists are public; and, your address may be quoted in list messages. The list archives may, also, be archived by other services. e-mails are usually not deleted or modified; but, it is possible only in extreme cases.
User data
Some data on users and user activity is publicly available—via "user contributions" lists and in aggregated forms published by other users—, such as the times at which edits occured and the number of edits made.
Removal of user accounts
Once created, user accounts will not be removed. C# Online.NET does not change names on request. Whether specific user information is deleted is dependent on the deletion policies of the project containing the information. But, even deleted information may be recoverable.
Deletion of content
Removing the text from a C# Online.NET article does not permanently delete it. In normal articles, anyone can inspect previous versions of an article. If an article is "deleted", any user with "administrator" access to the wiki—which can be anyone trusted not to abuse the deletion capability—can view deleted versions. Information can be—permanently—deleted by those people with access to the servers; but, there is no guarantee this will happen except in response to legal action.
Software vulnerabilities
The C# Online.NET wiki runs on a LAMP stack—Linux, Apache, PHP, and MediaWiki. All are free and open source. Each has its own vulnerabilties. It is possible that data might be compromised, deleted, or stolen by hackers for fun or profit through a software vulnerability.
