WikiLectures:Privacy Policy

Your access to WikiLectures is routinely stored in web server log. Everything you contribute to WikiLectures is published at this project. If you write something, assume that it will be saved here forever. This applies to articles, user and discussion pages. Some exceptions are discussed below.

Public information

If you visit a website, a log record is saved to website log file. From this log, however, it is very difficult to determine your identity. If you edit a WikiLectures page, you publish your work and your authorship is marked in the history of the article.

Author identification

When editing a page you can be logged in or not. If you are logged in, your edits will be signed by your nickname. If you are not logged in, your IP address will be recorded and written in the history of the article. Through IP address it is possible to get your real identity, even if it is very toilsome. We recommend to use a user account and edit articles while logged in.

Cookies

During your visit at this website WikiLectures send you a temporary cookie (PHPSESSID). If you want to log in, some other cookies will be sent to you so you do not need to enter your username and password everytime you visit a WikiLectures page. These are stored within the browser 30 days and then deleted. Also, when you log out or clear your browser cache, these cookies are deleted.

Passwords

Your password should stay secret. If you are working on a public computer, don't forget to log out when leaving WikiLectures and close all browser windows. This will keep your password secret.

Protected logs

Every time you visit a webpage you send a large amount of information. Most servers keep these information to get some statistics about favourite pages, reference pages, etc.

WikiLectures as MediaWiki software use these information only for statistics and usually delete them after two weeks. Here is an example of such log:

64.164.82.142 - - [21/Oct/2003:02:03:19 +0000]
"GET /wiki/draft_privacy_policy HTTP/1.1" 200 18084
"http://www.wikilectures.eu/index.php/Main Page"
"Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/85.7 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/85.5"

Only technical support administrators can see these logs and only for purpose to solve some technical problem about software. In order to maintain safety of WikiLectures, administrators may also use logs to check out e.g. a vandalism, abuse of "Sock puppetry" (creating multiple accounts to avoid sanctions, disrupt discussions etc.) or violating WikiLectures policy. There is possibly no way, how could common user without direct access to the server display this log.

Publishing personal information from logs

Administrators can release information from server logs or collected via the CheckUser feature in following special situations:

1. In response to a valid subpoena or other compulsory request from law enforcement,
2. With permission of the affected user,
3. When necessary for investigation of abuse complaints,
4. Where the information pertains to page views generated by a spider or bot and its dissemination is necessary to illustrate or resolve technical issues,
5. Where the user has been vandalizing articles or persistently behaving in a disruptive way, data may be released to a service provider, carrier, or other third-party entity to assist in the targeting of IP blocks, or to assist in the formulation of a complaint to relevant Internet Service Providers,
6. Where it is reasonably necessary to protect the rights, property or safety of WikiLectures, its editorial board, employees and students of medical faculties or the public.

Sharing personal information

All text published in WikiLectures are free to be copied and shared if not stated differently.

Personal information (such as e-mail addresses) will be not shared if not allowed by the affected user or requested by law.

Information security

WikiLectures cannot provide any guarantees, that an unauthorized person will access information stored on WikiLectures servers.

E-mail

You are free to set your e-mail address in "My preferences" section. Logged in users can use this e-mail to send you a message, however, your address will be not revealed unless you answer or the message couldn't be delivered. Editorial board of WikiLectures may use this e-mail address in communication with the users of WikiLectures.

If you don't set your e-mail address, you won't be available to restore your forgotten password.

User logs

Information about users, such as number of editations and their time, are fully available in public logs.

Deleting an account

Existing user account can never be deleted. User name can be changed in special occasions by administrators.

Deleting texts

An article deleted in edit window remains available in "History". If an article has been deleted by the use of "delete" feature, head-editors and administrators can display original text. Permanent remove is possible only through accessing WikiLectures database.