VassarWiki:Privacy policy

VassarWiki is a collectively governed wiki for the Vassar College community, maintained by volunteer administrators. VassarWiki is not officially affiliated with or endorsed by Vassar College.

This policy describes what information VassarWiki collects from people who read, edit, or create accounts on the wiki, how that information is used, and who it is shared with. By using VassarWiki, you agree to the practices described here.

Data collection, usage, and retention

If you read the wiki without an account, we do not collect any information about you directly. However, Cloudflare may log your IP address and other technical data as part of its normal operation.

If you create an account, we collect:

• Your chosen username. This is public and used for attribution.
• Your email address. This may be used to confirm your account or allow password resets. We do not send marketing emails. Your email address is only shared with administrators.
• A hashed version of your password. This hashed version is only shared with administrators; the original version of your password is not readable by administrators.
• Verification of your connection to Vassar College. This is to ensure that all contributors are community members. If you use a vassar.edu email, you do not need to provide additional verification. This will only be viewable by administrators, and will be promptly deleted after account creation.
• A record of every edit you make, associated with your username. This record is public and used for attribution.

In addition, MediaWiki stores cookies in your browser to keep you logged in and remember certain preferences. We do not sell, rent, or share your personal data with third parties for advertising or commercial purposes. We do not display advertising on VassarWiki.

VassarWiki is intended for Vassar College students, faculty, staff, and alumni. As such, it is not directed at children under the age of 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 13.

Your account information (username and email) is retained for as long as your account exists. You can request deletion of your account at any time. Server logs are retained for approximately 14 days and then deleted. The record of who made which changes to which pages is permanent and public by design, but information can be removed under exceptional circumstances (see below).

Third-party services

Running VassarWiki requires us to use a small number of external services, each with its own privacy practices.

• DigitalOcean hosts the server that VassarWiki runs on. Your data physically lives on their infrastructure. See DigitalOcean's privacy policy.
• Cloudflare provides DNS and network protection for VassarWiki. All traffic to the wiki passes through Cloudflare's network. See Cloudflare's privacy policy.
• Brevo is used to send transactional emails such as account confirmation and password reset messages. See Brevo's privacy policy.

Your rights and choices

You may create an account under a pseudonymous username as long as it doesn't violate our policies. You can request that your account and associated email address be removed by contacting an administrator.

As attribution is a core part of how wikis function, we cannot remove your edits from the public edit history as a routine matter. In exceptional cases (for example, if you accidentally posted personal information or copyrighted material), administrators can suppress specific revisions from public view.

If you are not a VassarWiki contributor but believe that your personal information has been added to the wiki without your consent, you may request that it be removed. To do so, contact the admin team, describing the page and information in question. If an administrator determines the information is genuinely private or was added without a reasonable basis, we will remove it and suppress it from the public edit history. We cannot guarantee removal in every case. We take these requests seriously and will explain our reasoning if we decline. For example, we may choose to retain information that is publicly available elsewhere or that is legitimately relevant to the wiki's purpose.

VassarWiki does not have a formal legal team or GDPR/CCPA compliance machinery. However, we take privacy seriously and will make a good-faith effort to respond to any reasonable request related to your data.

Security

While we take reasonable precautions to protect your data, no system is perfectly secure. We cannot guarantee that data stored on or transmitted to VassarWiki will never be compromised. By using VassarWiki, you accept this risk.

Changes to this privacy policy

If we make significant changes to this privacy policy, we will post a notice on the VassarWiki Main Page. Continued use of the wiki after a change is posted constitutes acceptance of the updated policy.

Contact

To contact the VassarWiki admin team with privacy questions, account deletion requests, or other concerns, leave a message at VassarWiki:Help or email us at vassarwiki@gmail.com. We will attempt to honor requests promptly.