Privacy Policy

Last Updated: April 2016

General Scope

This policy covers personally identifiable information collected or stored by Blumble on its servers in relation to the Projects and their communities. Consistent with its Data Retention Policy, Blumble collects and retains the least amount of personally identifiable information needed to fulfill the Projects' operational needs.

The public and collaborative nature of the projects

All Blumble Services are collaboratively developed by its users using the Blumble software. Anyone with Internet access (and not otherwise restricted from doing so) may edit the publicly editable transcript pages of these sites after logging in as a registered user using their Facebook or Google+ login credentials. 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. All contributions made to a Project, and all publicly available information about those contributions, are irrevocably licensed and may be freely copied, quoted, reused and adapted by third parties with few restrictions.

Activities on Blumble projects

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

Interactions with the Projects not covered by this Policy include, but are not limited to, aspects of browsing and editing pages. These interactions may reveal a contributor's IP address, and possibly other personal information, indiscriminately to the general public, or to specific groups of volunteers acting independently of Blumble.

User accounts and authorship

Blumble does not require editors to create a Blumble account in order to edit a project. Anyone can edit a page by logging in using their Facebook or Google+ login credentials. Users that login are identified by their Facebook or Google+ username, and by their network IP address.

Purpose of the collection of private information

Blumble limits the collection of personally identifiable user data to purposes which serve the well-being of its projects, including but not limited to the following:

To enhance the public accountability of the projects. Blumble 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. Blumble and the project communities have established a number of mechanisms to prevent or remedy abusive activities. For example, when investigating abuse on a project, including the suspected use of malicious “sockpuppets” (duplicate accounts), vandalism, harassment of other users, or disruptive behavior, the IP addresses of users (derived either from those logs or from records in the database) may be used to identify the source(s) of the abusive behavior. This information may be shared by users with administrative authority who are charged by their communities with protecting the projects.

To provide site statistics. Blumble statistically samples raw log data from users' visits. These logs are used to produce the site statistics pages; 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

General expectations

IP and other technical information

When a visitor requests or reads a page, or sends email to a Blumble server, no more information is collected than is typically collected by web sites. The Blumble 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 Project page is visited. Readers who do not intend to log in or edit 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.

Page history

Edits or other contributions to a Project on its transcripts are generally retained forever. Removing text from a project does not permanently delete it. Normally, in projects, anyone can look at a previous version of a transcript and see what was there. Even if a transcript is "deleted", a user entrusted with higher level of access may still see what was removed from public view. Information can be permanently deleted by individuals with access to Blumble servers, but aside from the rare circumstance when Blumble is required to delete editing-history material in response to a court order or equivalent legal process, there is no guarantee any permanent deletion will happen.

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 Facebook/Google+ username and 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 transcript page by the user or by another user with the same IP address. A user's IP address is stored on the Blumble servers for a period of time, during which it can be seen by server administrators and by users who have been granted CheckUser access.

Release: Policy on Release of Data

It is the policy of Blumble that personally identifiable data collected in the server logs, or through records in the database via the CheckUser feature, or through other non-publicly-available methods, may be released by Blumble staff, 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 transcripts 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 Blumble, its users or the public Except as described above, Blumble policy does not permit distribution of personally identifiable information under any circumstances.

Third-party access and notifying registered users when receiving legal process:

As a general principle, the access to, and retention of, personally identifiable data in all projects should be minimal and should be used only internally to serve the well-being of the projects. Occasionally, however, Blumble may receive a subpoena or other compulsory request from a law-enforcement agency or a court or equivalent government body that requests the disclosure of information about a registered user, and may be compelled by law to comply with the request. In the event of such a legally compulsory request, Blumble will attempt to notify the affected user within three business days after the arrival of such subpoena by sending a notice by email to the email address (if any) that the affected user has listed in connection to their Google+/Facebook account.

Disclaimer

Blumble believes that maintaining and preserving the privacy of user data is an important value. This Privacy Policy, together with other policies, resolutions, and actions by Blumble, represents a committed effort to safeguard the security of the limited user information that is collected and retained on our servers. Nevertheless, Blumble 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, Blumble can make no guarantee against unauthorized access to information provided in the course of participating in Blumble Projects or related communities.