Policy:Privacy


(this privacy policy is based off of Wikimedia Foundation's Privacy Policy)

Summary

If you only read the BattleTechWiki website, no more information is collected than is typically collected in server logs by web sites in general.

If you contribute to the BattleTechWiki project, you are publishing every word you post publicly. If you write something, assume that it will be retained forever. This includes articles, user pages and talk pages. Some limited exceptions are described below.

Publishing on the wiki and public data

Simply visiting the 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 may be logged in or not.

If you are logged in, you will be identified by your user name. This may be your real name if you so choose, or you may choose to publish under a pseudonym, whatever user name you selected when you created your account.

If you have not logged in, you will be identified by your network IP address. This is 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, or specifically to your school, place of business, or home. It may be possible that the origin of this IP address could be used in conjunction with any interests you express implicitly or explicitly 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 server and can be seen by BattleTechWiki 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 BattleTechWiki 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 BattleTechWiki and other sections of sarna.net set temporary session cookies (e.g. PHPSESSID) whenever you visit the site. If you do not intend to ever log in, you may deny these cookies, but you cannot log in without them. They 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 can last up to 30 days. You may clear these cookies after use if you are using a public machine and don't wish to expose your username to future users of the machine. (If so, clear the browser cache as well.)

BattleTechWiki uses cookies for the following purposes:

  • BattleTechWiki:
    • PHPSESSIONID: Used to ensure operation of the website
    • sarna_wiki_*: Used to ensure operation of the wiki
    • CpPosTime: Used to ensure operation of the wiki
    • w3t_*: Used to ensure operation of the forums
    • cookieconsent_status: For GDPR regions, whether you accept or reject the site's cookies
    • euconsent: For GDPR regions, whether you accept or reject the site's cookies
  • Google Analytics
    • _ga: Used to distinguish users (removed if Cookie Consent is denied)
    • _gid: Used to distinguish users (removed if Cookie Consent is denied)
    • _gat: Used to throttle request rate
  • Advertising
    • __gads: Used by Google AdSense (more information) (removed if Cookie Consent is denied)
  • Akamai mPulse
    • RT: Used for tracking website performance in aggregate (contains no PII)

Passwords

Many aspects of BattleTechWiki's 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 BattleTechWiki administrators to use this information to keep track of legitimate users.

The raw log data is not made public.

Here's a sample of what's logged for one page view:

64.164.82.142 - - [21/Oct/2003:02:03:19 +0000]
"GET /wiki/Privacy_Policy HTTP/1.1" 200 18084
"http://www.sarna.net/wiki/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 the BattleTechWiki that personally identifiable data collected in the server logs, or through records in the database via the CheckUser feature, may be released by the BattleTechWiki administrators or users with CheckUser access, in the following situations:

  1. In response to a valid subpoena or other compulsory request from law enforcement
  2. With permission of the affected user
  3. Where the information pertains to page views generated by a spider or bot and its dissemination is necessary to illustrate or resolve technical issues
  4. Where the user has been vandalizing 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

BattleTechWiki policy does not permit public distribution of such information under any circumstances, except as described above.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a web analytics tool that helps website owners understand how visitors engage their website. Visitors to this website who have JavaScript enabled are anonymously tracked using Google Analytics. We use Google Analytics to help us understand our visitors better, to see what pages they visit, and to look for trends and changes in our website's popularity. No personally identifying information is tracked by Google Analytics.

Google Analytics uses "cookies", which are text files stored on your computer, to collect standard Internet log information and visitor behavior information in an anonymous format. The information generated by the cookie about your use of our website (including Masked IP address) is transmitted to Google.

We will never (and will not allow any third party to) use statistical analytics tools to track or to collect any Personally Identifiable Information (PII) of visitors to our site. Google will not associate your IP address with any other data held by Google. Neither we nor Google will link, or seek to link, an IP address with the identity of a computer user. We will not associate any data gathered from this site with any Personally Identifiable Information from any source, unless you explicitly submit that information via a fill-in form on our website.

All of our activity falls within the bounds of the Google Analytics Terms of Service.

You can opt out of Google's advertising tracking cookie if you prefer.

Advertising

We use third-party advertising companies to serve ads when you visit our website. These companies may use information (not including your name, address, email address, or telephone number) about your visits to this and other websites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services of interest to you. If you would like more information about this practice or to understand your choices about not having this information used by these companies click here.

Below are some of the third-party advertising companies we use and links to their Privacy Policies:

Google AdSense

We publish Google AdSense interest-based advertisements on our website. These are tailored by Google to reflect your interests. To determine your interests, Google will track your behavior on our website and on other websites across the web using cookies.

You can view, delete or add interest categories associated with your browser by visiting: https://adssettings.google.com

You can also opt out of the AdSense partner network cookie using those settings or using the Network Advertising Initiative's multi-cookie opt-out mechanism at: https://optout.networkadvertising.org

However, these opt-out mechanisms themselves use cookies, and if you clear the cookies from your browser your opt-out will not be maintained. To ensure that an opt-out is maintained in respect of a particular browser, you may wish to consider using the Google browser plug-ins available at: https://support.google.com/ads/answer/7395996.

Additional advertising policies from Google AdSense are available here.

Freestar

This site is affiliated with Publisher First, Inc. dba Freestar ("Freestar") for the purposes of placing certain advertising on the site, and Freestar will collect and use certain data for advertising purposes. To learn more about Freestar's data usage, click here.

Akamai mPulse

Akamai mPulse is a web performance analytics tool that helps website owners understand how performance affects the user experience. Visitors to this website who have JavaScript enabled are anonymously measured using Akamai mPulse. No personally identifying information is tracked by Akamai mPulse.

Akamai mPulse uses "cookies", which are text files stored on your computer, to collect standard Internet log information, performance information, and visitor behavior information in an anonymous format. The information generated by the cookie about your use of our website is transmitted to Akamai.

Sharing information with third parties

Except where otherwise specified, all text added to the BattleTechWiki is available for reuse under the terms of the GFDL.

BattleTechWiki will not sell or share private information, such as email addresses, with third parties, unless you agree to release this information, or it is required by law to release the information.

Security of information

BattleTechWiki makes no guarantee against unauthorized access to any information you provide. This information may be available to anyone with access to the servers.

E-mail

You may provide your e-mail address in your Preferences and enable other logged-in users to send email to you through the wiki. Your address will not be revealed to them unless you respond, or possibly if the email bounces. The email address may be used by the BattleTechWiki administrators to communicate with users on a wider scale.

If you do not provide an email address, you will not be able to reset your password if you forget it. However, you may contact one of the BattleTechWiki administrators to enter a new mail address in your preferences.

You can remove your email address from your preferences at any time to prevent it being used.

User data

Data on users, such as the times at which they edited and the number of edits they have made are publicly available via "user contributions" lists, and in aggregated forms published by other users.

Removal of user accounts

Once created, user accounts will not be removed. It may be possible for a username to be changed. The BattleTechWiki does not guarantee that a name will be changed on request.

Deletion of content

Removing text from the BattleTechWiki does not permanently delete it. In normal articles, anyone can look at a previous version and see what was there. If an article is "deleted", any user with "administrator" access on the wiki, meaning almost anyone trusted not to abuse the deletion capability, can see what was deleted. 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.