BIOGRIDS PRIVACY POLICY

The following discloses the information gathering and dissemination practices 
for BioGrids through this website: https://biogrids.org/, and in connection with the related software support system.

“BioGrids” is the business name for a bioinformatics computing facility operated out of Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, USA

Our “members” are scientific researchers in universities, government agencies and other institutions around the world.



Information Gathering and Use

Member Information
The information the BioGrids collects about its members can be divided 
into two categories: business information and operational information. 



The business information BioGrids collects is of the type necessary for our business purposes.

• Principal Investigator Information: PI name, business address, PI phone, PI email, lab website, and university.
• Lab staff (billing, technical, administrative contacts, students and BioGrids users) information: name, email, phone number.

We use this information as follows:

• for internal business purposes such as making software tools available, executing license agreements where needed, providing support, tracking usage, tracking and processing fee payments, and communicating directly with members.
• for making useful information available to members and the public, including listing member institutions on the BioGrids website, which might include the names of PIs, institutional affiliations and the year each institution joined BioGrids.

The operational information BioGrids collects is used to monitor and improve BioGrids technical operations and software resources and to help guide future software development. BioGrids operational information may include irreversibly hashed UNIX user names, irreversibly hashed computer IP addresses, lab/university name, operating systems type and computer architectures, program usage duration and volume, and crash statistics in the form of application exit status. BioGrids does not collect file names, file paths, program logs, program output, or any locally stored user data or metadata. We use the user-level operational information to better support our software, to curate our software library, and give useful feedback to program developers. BioGrids may also share deidentified, aggregate user-level operational data with developers about the particular software they contributed to BioGrids, to help developers to continue to improve the programs.

We also use deidentified, aggregated operational data internally, in funding proposals and policy and research papers. A selection of the deidentified, aggregate data may also be disseminated on the BioGrids website and other public forums to help all members of the community better understand structural biology software and hardware trends.

BioGrids may also provide your information to third parties in circumstances where we believe that doing so is necessary or appropriate to satisfy any applicable law, regulation, legal process or governmental request; detect, prevent or otherwise address fraud, security, or technical issues; or protect our rights and safety and the rights and safety of our users or others.

Other Information
BioGrids also collects other information from public sources and disseminates it through the website, including:

• Photos and additional biographical information about some members, such as work history and nationality;
• Names of the developers of software tools and their institutional affiliations and email addresses;
• Photos and biographical information about some developers, such as institutional affiliations, work history, nationality;
• Information about publications by members, developers and other researchers;
• Names and biographical information for workshop presenters;
• Names, photos and biographical information on BioGrids staff and advisory board members.

If you send us an email, the email address you provide may be used to send you information, respond to inquiries, and/or other requests or questions. We will not share, sell, rent, swap, or authorize any third party to use your email address for commercial purposes.

Third Party Tools

All business information collected by BioGrids is stored on systems, which are located behind a firewall located at Harvard Medical School (e.g. Admin Database, LDAP, SYMPA mailing list), in third-party cloud-based systems such as Freshbooks (used for billing purposes), GSuite, Salesforce, and other comparable business tools which are used to support our operation. We also may use YouTube, Twitter and FaceBook and other social media sites for distribution of webinars and other information published on the BioGrids website. All these third-party tools may also be governed by their own additional privacy policies (e.g. https://www.freshbooks.com/policies/privacy). Please note that BioGrids does not control and can take no responsibility for the privacy practices and data security measures of such third parties.

Website Analytics and Cookies
Google and other third parties may use cookies, web beacons, and similar technologies to collect or receive information from this website and elsewhere on the internet and use that information to provide various measurement services and target ads. For more information on Google Analytics, consult their terms of use, privacy practices, and ads settings. You can opt out of the collection and use of this information through tools like the Network Advertising Initiative opt-out page.

Cookies are small files that are stored on your computer (unless you block them). We use cookies to understand and save your preferences for future visits and compile aggregate data about site traffic and site interaction so that we can offer better site experiences and tools in the future. You may disable cookies through your individual browser options or you can opt out of the collection and use of this information through tools like the Network Advertising Initiative opt-out page.

Security
BioGrids employs administrative, technical, and physical security measures to protect the security of the operational information under our control. UNIX User names and IP addresses are irreversibly hashed as part of data collection, and only resulting unique hash values are transmitted to BioGrids. The remaining operational information is encrypted on users’ computers and transmitted to BioGrids using secure protocols. The data is encrypted at rest on servers under BioGrids administration.

Also, BioGrids is not responsible for the security measures or privacy practices of any third party program or software contained in the BioGrids software library, which might collect additional information and transmit it directly to developers.

Please be aware that no method of transmission over the Internet or method of electronic storage is 100% secure.

Further Information