ALMA Science Portal Privacy Statement
1. Introduction
The ALMA Science Portal is distributed to the ALMA Regional Centers and resides in three different locations: NAOJ in Tokyo, Japan for the East Asian partnership, ESO in Garching, Germany for the European partnership and NRAO in Charlottesville, USA for the North American partnership. The functionality of the ALMA Science Portal is the same for each of the distributed versions and this Privacy Statement applies to each of the versions.
There are two types of users of the ALMA Science Portal: authenticated users (registered and logged in to the Science Portal), and non-authenticated users (not logged in to the Science Portal, whether registered or not)
There are various facilities accessible to the authenticated and non-authenticated users on the ALMA Science Portal. Some of these include forms where the user is requested to fill in data or provide information about themselves (e.g., name, e-mail address, affiliation, etc). In addition, our information services keep logs of certain information. The ALMA Science Portal privacy policy can be stated simply:
Except as provided elsewhere in this policy, we will not collect any personal information about you when you access our network services unless you choose to provide that information to the ALMA project.
Any information regarding users to the ALMA Science Portal will not be released to any third party, without prior written or authenticated e-mail consent from the owner of the information.
Your information will be treated as private and confidential unless you clearly state and request otherwise.
The following information may be made public regarding proposals and archived data: name of the Principal Investigator, proposal category, proposal title and abstract.
The purpose of this page is to ensure that you are aware of, and understand what information may be collected when you access our website, and what we do with that information. Common sense is the general rule here; we will endeavor to keep any personal information private, we will not spam you, and we won't publish any specific information about you without your prior permission.
2. In General
Information maintained by the ALMA Science Portal, such as e-mail addresses of registered users, is available only for ALMA personnel. E-mail addresses and other information obtained through any of the means below will NOT be released to any third party, without prior written or authenticated e-mail consent from the owner of the information. A special case occurs for authenticated users when they are utilizing the Observing Tool for proposal preparation. In this case, certain information about other registered users is available (see Section 5 below). The ALMA Science Portal contains links to websites external to the portal. This Privacy Statement only concerns the content and functionality of the ALMA Science Portal. When following a link to an external website, the user is subjected to the privacy policy associated with that particular website.
3. Web Access
The ALMA Science Portal uses Google Analytics, a web analytics service provided by Google, Inc. (“Google”). Google Analytics uses “cookies”, which are text files placed on your computer, to help the website analyze how you use the site. The information generated by the cookie about your use of the website (including your IP address) will be transmitted to and stored by Google on servers in the United States. Google will use this information for the purpose of evaluating your use of the website, compiling reports on website activity for website operators and providing other services relating to website activity and internet usage. Google may also transfer this information to third parties where required to do so by law, or where such third parties process the information on Google's behalf. Google will not associate your IP address with any other data held by Google. You may refuse the use of cookies by selecting the appropriate settings on your browser, however please note that if you do this you may not be able to use the full functionality of this website. By using this website, you consent to the processing of data about you by Google in the manner and for the purposes set out above.” In order to increase your privacy we use the Google's anonymizeIp method which removes the last 8 bits of each stored IP address.
4. E-Mail
Any incoming electronic mail to ALMA will generate several log entries that include the routine information associated with normal SMTP (Simple Mail Transport Protocol) operation. Such log entries do NOT include the body (main text) of the message.
In all cases, the information on mail transactions is collected and retained in log files that will not be made available to the general public. The log entries will contain the e-mail address of the sender, its size, the number of recipients, the message ID, and the actual recipient within ALMA and status of delivery (deferred, success, etc.) This information is kept purely to help us diagnose system problems, or activities that may violate our Acceptable Use Policy or other Operational or Employee rules and regulations.
5. ALMA Proposals, Archive and Helpdesk
Certain information pertaining to Principal Investigators and Co-Investigators, such as names, e-mail addresses and affiliation will be made available to persons on the ALMA Review Panels (ARP) and the ALMA Proposal Review Committee (APRC).
Certain information pertaining to proposals that generate data in the ALMA Science Archive will be made public on the ALMA Science Portal, Newsletter or other publications as well as meta-data in the ALMA Science Archive. This includes the name of the Principal Investigator(s), science category, the title of the proposal and proposal abstract.
Certain information, including names, affiliation, user name and e-mail addresses of registered ALMA users, will be available through the ALMA Observing Tool. This information is only available to registered ALMA users when they are using the Observing Tool. Non-registered users will not have access to this information.
This Privacy Statement applies to the ALMA Helpdesk for both authenticated and non-authenticated users. Helpdesk tickets issued by users will only be viewed by staff within the ALMA Project. No identifying information will be disclosed when publishing information in the Helpdesk’s knowledgebase.