PRIVACY, POLICY & COMPLAINTS 


Who we are

Our website address is: https://webscience.org, https://webscience.org

  • As WST we do not collect (personal) information for the purposes of selling data or for marketing campaigns. Any information we collect is required exclusively for the purposes of supporting the technical functionality of the WordPress platform and/or to analyse traffic to the site to improve content/layout.

What personal data we collect and why we collect it

Comments

  •  When visitors leave comments on the site we collect the data shown in the comments form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection.
  •  An anonymized string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment. 

Media 

  •  If you upload images to the website, you should avoid uploading images with embedded location data (EXIF GPS) included. Visitors to the website can download and extract any location data from images on the website. 

Contact forms

  •  If you complete a contact form the platform will store the data supplied in the form to allow us to contact you and address your request.

Cookies 

  •  If you leave a comment on our site you may opt-in to saving your name, email address and website in cookies. These are for your convenience so that you do not have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment. These cookies will last for one year. 
  •  If you visit our login page, we will set a temporary cookie to determine if your browser accepts cookies. This cookie contains no personal data and is discarded when you close your browser.
  •  When you log in, we will also set up several cookies to save your login information and your screen display choices. Login cookies last for two days, and screen options cookies last for a year. If you select “Remember Me”, your login will persist for two weeks. If you log out of your account, the login cookies will be removed.
  •  If you edit or publish an article, an additional cookie will be saved in your browser. This cookie includes no personal data and simply indicates the post ID of the article you just edited. It expires after 1 day. 

Embedded content from other websites

  • Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.
  • These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.
  • WST DOES NOT VET EXTERNAL CONTENT/LINKS AND DOES NOT BLOCK EXTERNAL SYSTEMS FROM TRACKING/MONITORING.
  • WST DOES NOT WARRANT THAT EXTERNAL PLATFORMS OFFER GDPR COMPLIANCE NOR THAT EXTERNAL LINKS/SYSTEMS ARE SAFE OR SECURE. 

Analytics 

  •  We may run traffic analytics on the site to ensure we are providing sufficient technical resources to the platform and also to determine which types of content are more/less popular in order to improve the service to our users. No personal information is stored by WST in this process.
  • “We use Hotjar in order to better understand our users’ needs and to optimize this service and experience. Hotjar is a technology service that helps us better understand our users’ experience (e.g. how much time they spend on which pages, which links they choose to click, what users do and don’t like, etc.) and this enables us to build and maintain our service with user feedback. Hotjar uses cookies and other technologies to collect data on our users’ behavior and their devices. This includes a device’s IP address (processed during your session and stored in a de-identified form), device screen size, device type (unique device identifiers), browser information, geographic location (country only), and the preferred language used to display our website. Hotjar stores this information on our behalf in a pseudonymized user profile. Hotjar is contractually forbidden to sell any of the data collected on our behalf. For further details, please see the ‘about Hotjar’ section of Hotjar’s support site.”

    Who we share your data with

  •  Only the WST technical team have access to the platform data whilst the WST management will have access to anonymised reports of platform performance.
  • The platform may send data to external systems to support technical features. WST does not explicitly share your data for commercial purposes.
  •  If you request a password reset, your IP address will be included in the reset email.

 How long we retain your data

  •  If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognize and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.
  •  For users that register on our website (if any), we also store the personal information they provide in their user profile. All users can see, edit, or delete their personal information at any time (except they cannot change their username). Website administrators can also see and edit that information.

What rights you have over your data

  •  If you have an account on this site, or have left comments, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.

Where we send your data

  • Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service.
  • Visitor clicks and navigation data may be sent to a third-party analysis service to determine how the site is used and which pages/content are more/less popular.

Your contact information

  • Your contact data is stored if you create an account on the platform and if you provide it as part of a contact form.

How we protect your data

  • WST uses a professional hosting service to offer/operate the platform. Their policies, procedures and standards are available from the hosting company on request.
  • The platform uses modern web standards for such as https and password protected access.
  • The platform is updated in line with the platform provider guidelines to ensure the latest security patches are in place.

What data breach procedures we have in place

  • WST keeps the platform software up to date in line with the hosting provider and platform provider guidelines – this ensures the latest security.
  • WST will contact users with accounts directly in the event of a data breach to advise them on possible remedial action and the scope of the breach.

What third parties we receive data from

  • None.

What automated decision making and/or profiling we do with user data

  •  We may profile the traffic to various pages/content on the site to understand how to improve the user experience. We do not gather/store data about specific named users.

Industry regulatory disclosure requirements 

  •  None.


    Complaints

If you have a complaint about content on this site please do not hesitate to contact us at info@webscience.org.  We endeavour to ensure that data is accurate, and that 3rd-party (aggregated) content is correctly attributed/linked and limited to short extracts under fair usage terms.

If you believe we have failed to reference/quote material correctly or have used copyright material incorrectly please contact us and we will address your concerns accordingly.