Privacy policy

Here, the projects available online at the internet domains MYBIOSIS.INFO, KLADIA.INFO, TRILLIA.INFO, or MYNATURE.NET will be referred to as MYBIOSIS.INFO.

This Privacy Policy explains how the myNature Association, the non-profit organization that hosts the MYBIOSIS.INFO sites/projects, collects, uses, and shares information we receive from you through your use of the MYBIOSIS.INFO sites or the associated mobile applications. It is essential to understand that, by using any of the MYBIOSIS.INFO projects, you consent to the collection, transfer, processing, storage, disclosure, and use of your information as described in this Privacy Policy. That means that reading this Policy carefully is important.

We believe that you shouldn't have to provide personal information to participate in our projects. You do not have to provide things like your real name (although it would be useful to associate your contribution/posts with you!), address, or date of birth to sign up for an account or contribute content to the MYBIOSIS.INFO sites.

We do not sell or rent your nonpublic information, nor do we give it to others to sell you anything. We use it to figure out how to make the MYBIOSIS.INFO projects more engaging and accessible, to see which ideas work, and to make learning and contributing more fun. Put simply: we use this information to make the MYBIOSIS.INFO sites better for you.

Because everyone should be able to easily understand how and why their information is collected and used, we use common language instead of more formal terms throughout this Policy.

Types of Information We Receive From You, How We Get It, & How We Use It
With exception of LITE version of mybiOSis (available at https://kladia.info/lite), you are required to create an account to read or contribute to a MYBIOSIS.INFO site. If you want to create an account, in most cases we require a name, a username, a password, and an email address. Your username will be publicly visible, so please be careful about using your real name as your username. Your password is only used to verify that the account is yours. Your IP address is also automatically submitted to us, and we record it temporarily to help prevent abuse. No other personal information is required: no date of birth, no credit card information, no address, etc. You may authenticate also using your Facebook account, however, this authentication process is handled entirely by Facebook, we are not involved in it.

Once created, user accounts cannot be removed entirely. This is because your contributions must be associated with their author (you!). So make sure you pick a name that you will be comfortable with for years to come. Requests to change usernames would not be accepted, not because we do not like it, but because it involves a tremendous work at database level.

Information Related to Your Use of the Wikimedia Sites
We want to make the MYBIOSIS.INFO sites better for you by learning more about how you use them. Examples of this might include how often you visit the MYBIOSIS.INFO sites, what you like, what you find helpful, how you get to the MYBIOSIS.INFO sites, and whether you would use a helpful feature more. We also want this Policy and our practices to reflect our community's values. For this reason, we keep information related to your use of the MYBIOSIS.INFO sites confidential, except as provided in this Policy.

Information We Receive Automatically
Because of how browsers work and similar to other major websites, we may receive but not necessarily record some information automatically when you visit the MYBIOSIS.INFO sites. This information includes the type of device you are using (possibly including unique device identification numbers, for some beta versions of our mobile applications), the type and version of your browser, your browser's language preference, the type and version of your device's operating system, and the date and time of each request you make to the MYBIOSIS.INFO sites.

Put simply, we may use this information to enhance your experience with MYBIOSIS.INFO sites. For example, we use this information to administer the sites, provide greater security, and fight vandalism; optimize mobile applications, customize content and set language preferences, test features to see what works, and improve performance; understand how users interact with the MYBIOSIS.INFO sites, track and study use of various features, gain understanding about the demographics of the different MYBIOSIS.INFO sites, and analyze trends.

We may use common technologies to collect information about how you use MYBIOSIS.INFO projects. We use this information to enhance your user experience and to develop new features.

Information We Collect
We actively collect some types of information with a variety of commonly-used technologies. These generally include JavaScript, and a variety of "locally stored data" technologies, such as local storage. We realize that some of these technologies do not have the best reputation in town and can be used for less-than-noble purposes. So we want to be as clear as we can about why we use these methods and the type of information we collect with them.

We use this information to make your experience with the MYBIOSIS.INFO sites safer and better, to gain a greater understanding of user preferences and their interaction with the MYBIOSIS.INFO sites, and to generally improve our services. We will never use third-party cookies, unless we get your permission to do so. If you ever come across a third-party data collection tool that has not been authorized by you (such as one that may have been mistakenly placed by another user or administrator), please report it to us at info@mybiosis.info.

Locally stored data and JavaScript help us do things like:

Provide you with a personalized experience, such as using local storage to know your language preference, to remember the user preferences you set so we can provide you with the customized look and feel that you want.
Deliver more relevant content to you faster. Also, we may use cookies to learn about the topics searched so that we can optimize the search results we deliver to you.
Understand how you use the MYBIOSIS.INFO sites, so that we know what works and what is useful.
Understand how you use the MYBIOSIS.INFO sites across different devices, so that we can make our varied MYBIOSIS.INFO sites more efficient and effective for you.

e-mail addresses
Your email address is kept confidential, except as provided in this Policy. We do not sell, rent, or use your email address to advertise third-party products or services to you.

We use your email address to let you know about things that are happening within the MYBIOSIS.INFO sites/projects, such as telling you important information about your account, letting you know if something is changing about the MYBIOSIS.INFO sites/projects or policies, and for sites activity notifications. Please note that if you email us, we may keep your message, email address, and any other information you provide us, so that we can process and respond to your request. You can choose to limit some of these kinds of notifications, like those alerting you if somebody likes your posts.

We will never ask for your password by email. If you ever receive such an email, please let us know by sending it to info@mybiosis.info, so we can investigate the source of the email.

Direct communications between users (such as messages sent through the "myChat" or "Forum" features), to the extent such communications are nonpublic and stored in or in transit through MYBIOSIS.INFO systems, are kept confidential by us, except as provided in this Policy.

GPS & Other Location Technologies Some features we offer work better if we know what area you are in. But it's completely up to you whether or not you want us to use geolocation tools to make some features available to you. If you consent, we can use GPS (and other technologies commonly used to determine location) to show you more relevant content. We keep information obtained by these technologies confidential, except as provided in this Policy. GPS data is of course used also for recording geographic position of organism observations. This info is stored with observation metadata and is only partially visible to other users unless you decide to share the information to other users or you include the observation to be accessible to research groups or projects within MYBIOSIS.INFO sites. Sometimes, we may automatically receive location data from your device. For example, if you want to upload a photo. With the photo we may receive metadata, such as the place and time you took the photo, automatically from your device. Please be aware that, unlike location information collected using GPS signals described above, the default setting on your mobile device typically includes the metadata in your photo or video upload to the MYBIOSIS.INFO sites. If you do not want metadata sent to us at the time of your upload, please change your settings on your device.

IP Addresses
When you visit some of the MYBIOSIS.INFO sites, we automatically receive the IP address of the device (or your proxy server) you are using to access the Internet, which could be used to infer your geographical location. We keep IP addresses confidential, except as provided in this Policy. We may use IP addresses for research and analytics; to better personalize content, notices, and settings for you; to fight spam, identity theft, malware, and other kinds of abuse; and to provide better mobile and other applications.

When May We Share Your Information? We may share your information for a particular purpose, with your permission. We may access, preserve, or disclose your personal information if we reasonably believe it necessary to satisfy a valid and legally enforceable warrant, subpoena, court order, law or regulation, or other judicial or administrative order. We are committed to notifying you via email at least ten (10) calendar days, when possible, before we disclose your personal information in response to a legal demand. However, we may only provide notice if we are not legally restrained from contacting you, there is no credible threat to life or limb that is created or increased by disclosing the request, and you have provided us with an email address.

How Do We Protect Your Data?
We strive to protect your information from unauthorized access, use, or disclosure. We use a variety of physical and technical measures, policies, and procedures (such as access control procedures, network firewalls, and physical security) designed to protect our systems and your personal information. Unfortunately, there's no such thing as completely secure data transmission or storage, so we can't guarantee that our security will not be breached (by technical measures or through violation of our policies and procedures).

This privacy policy is a lightly modified version of Wikimedia Privacy policy available at https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Privacy_policy

The current privacy policy is dated 27.02.2018.

Links to old privacy policies will be listed below.