General Scope

This policy covers personally identifiable information collected or stored by Delta Zones.

The public and collaborative nature of the website

Information on Delta Zones is contributed and edited by its users. Users may edit pages of these sites by logging in as a registered user. By doing this, editors create a published document, and a public record of every word added, subtracted, or changed. This is a public act, and editors are identified publicly as the author of such changes.

In general, this Policy only applies to private information stored or held by Delta Zones which is not publicly available.

Interactions with the Delta Zones site not covered by this Policy include, but are not limited to, aspects of browsing and editing pages, which may reveal a contributor's IP address, and possibly other personal information, indiscriminately to the general public.

User accounts and authorship

Delta Zones requires editors to register on the site, and they are then identified by their chosen username. Users select a password, which is confidential and used to verify the integrity of their account. Except insofar as it may be required by law, no person should disclose, or knowingly expose, either user passwords and/or cookies generated to identify a user. Once authorized by the site administrator, user accounts will not be removed, though they may be edited by the site administrator if deemed inappropriate.

Purpose of the collection of private information

Delta Zones limits the collection of personally identifiable user data to purposes which serve the objectives of the site, including but not limited to the following:
- To enhance the public accountability of the projects. Delta Zones recognizes that any system that is open enough to allow the greatest possible participation of the general public will also be vulnerable to certain kinds of abuse and counterproductive behavior.
- To provide site statistics. Delta Zones statistically samples raw log data from users' visits. These logs are used to produce site statistics; the raw log data is not made public.
- To solve technical problems. 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.

Details of data retention

IP and other technical information

When a visitor requests or reads a page, no more information is collected than is typically collected by web sites. Delta Zones may keep raw logs of such transactions, but these will not be published or used to track legitimate users.
When a page is edited by a logged-in editor, the server confidentially stores related IP information for a limited period of time. This information is automatically deleted after a set period.

Cookies

The sites set a temporary session cookie on a visitor's computer whenever a page is visited. Readers who do not intend to log in may deny this cookie; it will be deleted at the end of the browser's session. More cookies may be set when one logs in to maintain logged-in status. If one saves a user name or password in one's browser, that information will be saved for up to 30 days, and this information will be resent to the server on every visit to the same Project. Contributors using a public machine who do not wish to show their username to future users of the machine should clear these cookies after use.

Page history

Edits or other contributions to a page are generally retained forever. Removing text from a page does not permanently delete it. Normally, anyone can look at a previous version of a page and see what was there.

User contribution

User contributions are also aggregated and publicly available. User contributions are aggregated according to their registration and login status. Data on user contributions, such as the times at which users edited and the number of edits they have made, are publicly available via user contributions lists, and in aggregated forms published by other users.

Reading projects

No more information on users and other visitors reading pages is collected than is typically collected in server logs by web sites. Aside from the above raw log data collected for general purposes, page visits do not expose a visitor's identity publicly. Sampled raw log data may include the IP address of any user, but it is not reproduced publicly.

Editing projects

Edits to Project pages are identified with the username or network IP address of the editor, and editing history is aggregated by author in a contribution list. Such information will be available permanently on the projects.

Logged in registered users

Logged in users do not expose their IP address to the public except in cases of abuse, including vandalism of a wiki page by the user or by another user with the same IP address. A user's IP address is stored on the servers for a period of time, during which it can be seen by server administrators.

Discussions

On wiki discussion pages:

Any editable page can theoretically be the location of a discussion. In general, discussions on Delta Zones occur in the forum. Privacy expectations apply to discussion pages in the same way as they do elsewhere.

Via site messaging:

Users can contact other logged-in users through the site messaging system. When sending and receiving messages through this system, one's email address is not revealed.

Via email:

The email address put into one's user account may be used by Delta Zones for communication, such as resetting passwords. Email addresses are not made public.

Access to and release of personally identifiable information

Access:

Delta Zones is run by an administrator who has access to information collected by the site, including IP addresses, and email addresses used to register on the site.

Release: Policy on Release of Data

It is the policy of Delta Zones that personally identifiable data collected in the server logs, or through other non-publicly-available methods, may be released by Delta Zones in any of the following situations:

• In response to a valid subpoena or other compulsory request from law enforcement,
• With permission of the affected user, 
• 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 vandalizing pages 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, 
• Where it is reasonably necessary to protect the rights, property or safety of Delta Zones, its users or the public. 

Except as described above, Delta Zones policy does not permit distribution of personally identifiable information under any circumstances. 

Disclaimer

Delta Zones believes that maintaining and preserving the privacy of user data is an important value. This Privacy Policy represents a committed effort to safeguard the security of the user information that is collected and retained on our servers. Nevertheless, Delta Zones cannot guarantee that user information will remain private. We acknowledge that, in spite of our committed effort to protect private user information, determined individuals may still develop data-mining and other methods to uncover such information and disclose it. For this reason, Delta Zones can make no guarantee against unauthorized access to information provided in the course of participating on the Delta Zones site.