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| ICT Privacy Policy |
We support the right of individuals to protect the privacy of their information online and information pertaining to them. ICT has the potential to collect highly personal information about its users, both through the collection of specific attributes (name, email, biography, etc) and through the collection of discussion posts. Our policy is to let users decide how widely their personal information should be disseminated within the site through clear and easily accessible privacy preferences and by allowing the user to enter as little or as much information as they wish.
We will neither share information gathered through the site with any third party nor use that information outside of the context of this site.
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| Information Collected |
Every user who registers with this site must supply the following information:
user name
password
email address
Additionally, the user may enter other bits of personal information at various points during use of the site, both by system wide settings, message postings and by the request of leaders or staff of this network.
The information requested by leaders and staff is for support purposes only - this may be done via Personal Messages [PM"s] or via Email to prevent disclosure to other members of the community except the intended target(s).
In addition to this, the system stores any posts made by the user during the course of a discussion and these maybe publically viewable.
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| Cookies |
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Cookies:
The ICT board utilizes cookies (small pieces of data stored by your Web browser on your hard drive) to offer you more personal and customised service and to facilitate "auto login" on return to the board. Most Web browsers accept cookies by default and you may opt out of this cookie (and we advise this if access is via public terminals) at login. If you choose not to accept any cookied information no matter what the setting is at login, you can simply change your browser settings to stop this.
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| Email Policy |
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The system may be set to send every user an email after the initial registration which contains a confirmation that allows the user to complete the registration process. The user may request that a new confirmation key be sent via email at any time to reset a lost password. The system also sends emails to alert users to various events relevant to site participation (posts pending responses, responses to the user"s own posts, statuses of project applications, etc.). The system may occasionally send emails alerting users to information about the site itself (feature updates, new project announcements, etc.). Each user has the ability, on the profile management pages, to elect to receive no automatic emails from the site and can also elect not to receive any updates sent by the board Administration staff. In the case that the user elects to receive no automatic emails from the site and/or Administration information, the site will only send emails at the direct request of the user (as when sending a confirmation key to reset the user"s password).
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| Use of Personal Information |
Personal information is all information pertaining to the user that is directly editable through the profile management pages, including, for example, the user"s name, email, and biography.
The user has limited ability to control who can and cannot see some or all of their personal information other than their user name. A user name will always be publicly visible on the site, and the user should choose a user name with this fact in mind. All other information entered will be viewable by other members on the site.
If the user wishes to prevent everyone else on the site from viewing their personal information then do not enter the personal information and choose to keep the registered email address private.
In this case only site leaders will have access to this email address and only under critical situations would this be referenced and used by them.
This fact means that all of the Administration of this system will be able to see the user"s email. If this situation is not acceptable to the user, he should set his email to a valid but non-existent address (for example, bogus@no.where). However, the user should be aware that doing so will prevent him from being able to reset his password if it is lost, may prevent them from posting if validation of the change is required, and will prevent any communication from the site or from project leaders. ICT reserves the right to examine any information submitted to the site if doing so will help in the technical maintenance or development of the site. This restriction means, for example, that we may examine personal information during the process of tracking down a bug in the system.
ICT also reserves the right to generate aggregate statistics about the users of the site without connecting any of this aggregate information to any specific users and without cross referencing any aggregate fields. We may, for example, generate a report about how many users have registered from which countries or regions. We will not, however, generate a report that tells us which specific users are registered from which countries or regions.
ICT may make such aggregate reports publicly available. For example, we may provide statistics on the ICT site about how many users have registered from each time zone or how many users have connected to the site in the past week.
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| Use of Submitted Content |
Submitted content is information submitted to the site that is not directly editable by the user from the profile management pages but is submitted to the site by the user. Forum posts are submitted content, for example, because they are submitted by users but are submitted and edited by the user through the discussion participation pages rather than through the profile management pages.
A user can determine who can view content submitted by him by carefully choosing where and how the information is posted/submitted.
Users should not submit sensitive content to people whom they do not trust or who randomly ask for information. Users should be aware that ICT has no control over the use of submitted content by other users, other than informing all users that content submitted to the site is governed by copyright law.
ICT does not claim copyright over content submitted to the site. ICT assumes that a user grants it perpetual right to display any submitted content within the context of the site and constrained by the permissions set by the leaders of the project to which the content belongs.
ICT reserves the right to edit content that causes technical problems with the operation of the site (content that breaks html, for example). ICT will not edit content on the basis of content except when forced to do so by legal considerations or the content is deemed unsuitable, though it will clearly label any such edits and reasons for editing will be available by the member of staff involved.
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| Applicability of Restrictions |
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All restrictions placed on the behavior of ICT apply only to ICT staff when acting outside of the normal context of the site. For example, this policy states that ICT will not share personal information gathered through the site with third parties. This restriction only applies to the case that a member of the ICT staff uses his special access to the information gathered on the site to share information to which he would not have access as an ordinary user of this site.
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| Children"s Privacy |
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The ICT site requires that all registered users be at least thirteen years old unless specific, written and confirmed parental permission is granted. ICT does not collect information from any user who has not registered with the site other than information directly submitted from the browser, for example, browser type, IP address, geographic location as in browsers country of origin. This information is recorded in server records by default.
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| Commitment to Data Security |
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ICT has put into place appropriate physical, political, and technical safeguards to ensure that personal information collected by the site is secure from access by anyone other than the administrators responsible for running and maintaining the servers upon which the ICT site runs.
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| Removal Procedures |
As all customer information is collected via opt-in methods and we provide facilities to allow members not to receive upates, we believe all information you receive from ICT will be relevant to your needs. However, if at any time, you wish to no longer receive communications from ICT, simply send an email to support@infinitecore.ca and include "Remove" in the subject line.
If at any time, you wish to no longer wish to have an account with ICT, then there is a simple-to-use account cancellation system in the user control panel, or simply send and email to support@infinitecore.ca and include "Remove account" in the subject line but proof of identity will be required to stop malicious deletion of accounts using this method.
If, in an extreme situation, you require site Admins to change and/or update your contact information, you can send an email to
support@infinitecore.ca
with "Update" + your username in the subject line but proof of identity may be needed for certain updates to be carried out to block "account hijacking".
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| Contacting ICT |
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If, after reading this statement, you have any questions about ICT"s privacy policy, please send an email to support@infinitecore.ca and make sure you include "Privacy information" in the subject line.
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| Updates to this Policy |
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ICT reserves the right to update this policy to reflect changes in the functionality of the site. Users may be informed of this change both through an announcement on the site proper and through email, if they have chosen to receive site announcements via email. Continued use of the site will be regarded as the user"s acceptance of any new policies.
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Written and updated 28th July 2003
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