Privacy Policy

AUTOWIKI FOUNDATION PRIVACY POLICY
Version: 20 May 2022

1    INTRODUCTION

1.1    Important
The AutoWiki Foundation is the nonprofit organization that operates and hosts the collaborative, free knowledge internet platform AutoWiki.org. Together with all our contributors we form the AutoWiki community.

This Policy explains how we collect, use, and share your Personal Information.
Important to know:
•    We collect very little Personal Information about you.
•    We do not rent or sell your Personal Information to third parties.

By using the AutoWiki.org platform, you consent to this Policy. For the protection of the AutoWiki Foundation and other users, if you do not agree with this Privacy Policy, you may not use the AutoWiki platform.

1.2    Beliefs
The AutoWiki platform is founded on a simple, but powerful principle: we can do more together than any of us can do alone. We cannot work collectively without gathering, sharing, and analyzing information about our users as we seek new ways to make AutoWiki.org more usable, safer, and more beneficial.

We believe that information-gathering and use should go hand-in-hand with transparency. This Privacy Policy explains how AutoWiki Foundation collects, uses, and shares information we receive from you through your use of this website. It is essential to understand that, by using the AutoWiki website, 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.

To be able to protect, control and manage the correctness of the data we need to register our contributors. For this we don’t need your real name, address, or date of birth, just some contact details for contributor verification and informative purposes.
It is optional to provide more information about yourself that you can share with other contributors within the AutoWiki community.

We do not sell or rent your Personal Information, nor do we give it to others to sell you anything. We use it to figure out how to make the AutoWiki platform 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 AutoWiki platform better for you.
After all, it's people like you, dedicated car enthusiasts, who make it possible for the AutoWiki community to not only exist, but also to build the most complete car database in the World.

2    DEFINITIONS

Because everyone (not just lawyers) 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. To help ensure your understanding of some particular key terms, here is a table of translations:

3    What This Privacy Policy Does & Doesn't Cover

Except as explained below, this Privacy Policy applies to our collection and handling of information about you that we receive as a result of your use of the AutoWiki platform. This Policy also applies to information that we receive from our partners or other third parties. To understand more about what this Privacy Policy covers, please see below.

This Privacy Policy, however, does not cover some situations where we may gather or process information. For example, some uses may be covered by separate privacy policies or sites, or services run by third parties. To understand more about what this Privacy Policy does not cover, please see below.
Where community policies govern information, the relevant community may add to the rules and obligations set out in this Policy. However, they are not permitted to create new exceptions or otherwise reduce the protections offered by this Policy.

4    COLLECTION AND USE OF INFO

4.1    Types of Information We Receive from You & How We Get It

4.1.1    Your Public Contributions
Whatever you post on the AutoWiki platform can be seen by everyone.
When you contribute to any AutoWiki page, including on user, remarks or discussion pages, you are creating a permanent, public record of every piece of content added, removed, or altered by you. The page history will show when your contribution or deletion was made, as well as your "AutoWiki Username", which is not necessarily your real name.
All your contributions are logged and an overview of your contributions with your "AutoWiki Username" can be published on the AutoWiki platform.
We may use your public contributions, either aggregated with the public contributions of others or individually, to create new features or data-related products for you or to learn more about how the AutoWiki platform is used, as further explained below in the "How We Use Information We Receive from You" section of this Privacy Policy.

4.1.2    Account Information & Registration
You are not required to create an account to read the information on the AutoWiki platform.
If you want to add, remove, or alter information on the AutoWiki platform you ask you to create an account. You do not need to give us your real name, but we need your email address and your mobile number to verify you are a real contributor.

4.1.3    Information you voluntarily provide to us
If you choose to add information to your Personal Profile, such as: your real name, your address, your date of birth, your gender, your marital or familial status, your job, your car interests, or other information, you can select who can see this information.
If you sign up for a newsletter or another service, we can ask for specific information, such as your car interest or other relevant information.

To gain a better understanding of the demographics of our users, to localize our services and to learn how we can improve our services, we may ask you for more demographic information, such as gender or age, about yourself. We will tell you if such information is intended to be public or private, so that you can make an informed decision about whether you want to provide us with that information. Providing such information is always completely optional.

4.1.4    GPS Location & Other Location Technologies
Some features we offer work better if we know what area you are in.
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.

4.1.5    Metadata
Sometimes, we automatically receive location data from your device. For example, if you want to upload a photo or video on the AutoWiki platform, we may receive metadata, such as the place and time you took the photo or video, 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 AutoWiki platform. If you do not want metadata sent to us and made public at the time of your upload, please change your settings on your device.

4.1.6    IP Addresses
Finally, when you visit the AutoWiki platform, 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.

4.1.7    Information Related to Your Use of the AutoWiki platform
We use certain technologies to collect information about how you use the AutoWiki platform.
Like other websites, we receive some information about you automatically when you visit the AutoWiki platform.
We also use a variety of commonly used technologies, like cookies, to collect information regarding how you use the AutoWiki platform, make our services safer and easier to use, and to help create a better and more customizable experience for you.

We want to make the AutoWiki platform better for you by learning more about how you use it. Examples of this might include how often you visit the AutoWiki platform, what you like, what you find helpful, how you get to the AutoWiki platform, and whether you would use a helpful feature more if we explained it differently. 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 AutoWiki platform confidential, except as provided in this Policy.

4.1.8    Information We Receive Automatically
Because of how browsers work, we receive some information automatically when you visit the AutoWiki platform. This includes when you use an online tool on a third-party site that loads information coming from the AutoWiki platform. 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, in some cases the name of your internet service provider or mobile carrier, the website that referred you to the AutoWiki platform, which pages you request and visit, and the date and time of each request you make to the AutoWiki platform.

Put simply, we use this information to enhance your experience with the AutoWiki platform. 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 AutoWiki platform, track and study use of various features, gain understanding about the demographics of the AutoWiki platform, and analyze trends.

4.1.9    Information We Collect
We use a variety of commonly used technologies, like cookies, to understand how you use the AutoWiki platform, make our services safer and easier to use, and to help create a better and more customizable experience for you.

We actively collect some types of information with a variety of commonly used technologies. These generally include tracking pixels, JavaScript, and a variety of "locally stored data" technologies, such as cookies and local storage. These types of technologies may also be used in online tools on a third-party site that loads information from the AutoWiki platform. 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.

Depending on which technology we use, locally stored data may include text, Personal Information (like your IP address), and information about your use of the AutoWiki platform (like your "AutoWiki Username" or the time of your visit). See below for more information.

We use this information to make your experience with the AutoWiki platform safer and better, to gain a greater understanding of user preferences and their interaction with the AutoWiki platform, 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 privacy@autowiki.org

We believe this data collection helps improve your user experience, but you may remove or disable some or all locally stored data through your browser settings, depending on your browser. While locally stored data may not be necessary to use our sites, some features will not function properly if you disable locally stored data.
While the examples above concerning information about you collected through the use of data collection tools are kept confidential in accordance with this Policy, please note that some information about the actions taken by your "AutoWiki Username" is made publicly available through public logs alongside actions taken by other users. For example, a public log may include the date your account was created on the AutoWiki platform along with the dates that other accounts were created on the AutoWiki platform.

4.2    How We Use Information We Receive from You

4.2.1    General
We and our service providers use your information for the legitimate purpose of pursuing our charitable mission, including:
•    Operating the AutoWiki platform, sharing your contributions and administering our Services.
•    Providing customized Services.
•    Sending emails with news updates and communications about items we believe may be of interest to you.
•    Sending optional surveys and requesting feedback.
•    Improving the AutoWiki platform and making your user experience safer and better.

4.2.2    GPS Location & Other Location Technologies
As stated above, we can use commonly used location technologies to show you more relevant content. For example, our mobile apps can identify articles from the AutoWiki platform about points of interest near your location. As a reminder, you can consent to and/or deactivate our access to these location technologies at any time for example through the native OS functionalities on your mobile device, and still use the AutoWiki platform.

4.2.3    Metadata
As stated above, we may automatically receive location data from your device. For example, if you upload a photo from your mobile device, please be aware that the default setting on your mobile device typically results in the metadata associated with your photo being included in the upload. As a reminder, if you do not want metadata sent to us and made public at the time of your upload, please change your settings on your device.

4.2.4    IP Addresses
When you visit the AutoWiki platform, 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. If you are visiting the AutoWiki platform with your mobile device, we may use your IP address to provide anonymized or aggregated information to service providers regarding the volume of usage in certain areas.

We use this location information to make your experience with the AutoWiki platform safer and better, to gain a greater understanding of user preferences and their interaction with the AutoWiki platform, and to generally improve our services. For example, we use this information to provide greater security, optimize mobile applications, and learn how to expand and better support AutoWiki community. We also use Personal Information in the manner described in the sections of this Policy titled "For Legal Reasons" and "To Protect You, Ourselves & Others."

5    SHARING

5.1    When May We Share Your Information?
We use and share your Personal Information when you give us specific permission to do so, for legal reasons, and in the other circumstances described below.

5.1.1    With Your Permission
We share your Personal Information for a particular purpose, if you agree. For example, if you want to use a service of one of our service providers. In such a case we will always ask you for your permission with a specification of the shared data.

5.1.2    For Legal Reasons
We will disclose your Personal Information to public authorities or other persons in response to an official legal process only if we believe it to be legally valid. See also our Requests for user information procedures and guidelines. We will notify you of such requests when possible. We do so to further our legitimate interest and/or to comply with our legal obligations.

We will access, use, preserve, and/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. However, if we believe that a particular request for disclosure of a user's information is legally invalid or an abuse of the legal system and the affected user does not intend to oppose the disclosure themselves, we will try our best to fight it. 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.

Nothing in this Privacy Policy is intended to limit any legal objections or defenses you may have to a third-party's request (whether it be civil, criminal, or governmental) to disclose your Personal Information. We recommend seeking the advice of legal counsel immediately if such a request is made involving you.

5.1.3    If the Organization is Transferred (Really Unlikely!)
In the extremely unlikely event that ownership of all or substantially all of the Foundation changes, or we go through a reorganization (such as a merger, consolidation, or acquisition), consistent with our legitimate interest, we will continue to keep your Personal Information confidential, except as provided in this Policy, and provide notice to you via the AutoWiki platform and an e-mail at least thirty (30) calendar days before any Personal Information is transferred or becomes subject to a different privacy policy.

5.1.4    To Protect You, Ourselves & Others
We, or users with certain administrative rights, use and disclose Personal Information that is reasonably necessary to:
•    enforce or investigate potential violations of AutoWiki Foundation or community-based policies;
•    protect our organization, infrastructure, employees, contractors, or the public; or
•    prevent imminent or serious bodily harm or death to a person.
We do so to manage our relationship with you, to further our legitimate interest, and/or to comply with our legal obligations.

We, or particular users with certain administrative rights as described below, need to use and share your Personal Information if it is reasonably believed to be necessary to enforce or investigate potential violations of our Terms of Use, this Privacy Policy, or any AutoWiki Foundation or user community-based policies. We may also need to access and share Personal Information to investigate and defend ourselves against legal threats or actions.

The AutoWiki platform is collaborative, with users writing most of the policies and selecting from amongst themselves people to hold certain administrative rights. These rights may include access to limited amounts of otherwise nonpublic information about recent contributions and activity by other users. They use this access to help protect against vandalism and abuse, fight harassment of other users, and generally try to minimize disruptive behavior on the AutoWiki platform. These various user-selected administrative groups have their own privacy and confidentiality guidelines, but all such groups are supposed to agree to follow our Access to Nonpublic Information Policy. These user-selected administrative groups are accountable to other users through checks and balances: users are selected through a community-driven process and overseen by their peers through a logged history of their actions. However, the legal names of these users are not known to AutoWiki Foundation.

We hope that this never comes up, but we may disclose your Personal Information if we believe that it's reasonably necessary to prevent imminent and serious bodily harm or death to a person, or to protect our organization, employees, contractors, users, or the public. We may also disclose your Personal Information if we reasonably believe it necessary to detect, prevent, or otherwise assess and address potential spam, malware, fraud, abuse, unlawful activity, and security or technical concerns. (Check out the list of examples in our FAQ for more information.)

5.1.5    To Our Service Providers
We disclose Personal Information to our third-party service providers or contractors to help run or improve the AutoWiki platform and provide services in support of our mission.

We use third-party service providers or contractors to help run or improve the AutoWiki platform for you and other users. We give access to your Personal Information to these providers or contractors as needed to perform their services for us or to use their tools and services. We put requirements, such as confidentiality agreements, in place to help ensure that these service providers treat your Personal Information consistently with, and no less protective of your privacy than, the principles of this Policy. For further information, please see our FAQ.

If you are visiting the AutoWiki platform with your mobile device, we use your IP address to provide anonymized or aggregated information to service providers regarding the volume of usage in certain areas.

Some of our service providers ask us to post links to their privacy policies; a list of these service providers and links to their policies can be found on this page.

5.1.6    To Understand & Experiment
We give volunteer developers and researchers access to systems that contain your Personal Information to allow them to protect, develop, and contribute to the AutoWiki platform.
We also share non-Personal Information or aggregated information with third parties interested in studying the AutoWiki platform.
When we share Personal Information with third parties for these purposes, we put reasonable technical and contractual protections in place to protect your Personal Information consistent with this Policy and our legitimate interest.
The software that powers the AutoWiki platform depends on the contributions of software developers, who spend time writing and testing code to help it improve and evolve with our users' needs. To facilitate their work, we give some developers limited access to systems that contain your Personal Information, but only as reasonably necessary for them to develop and contribute to the AutoWiki platform.

Similarly, we share non-Personal Information or aggregated information with researchers, scholars, academics, and other interested third parties who wish to study the AutoWiki platform. Sharing this Personal Information helps them understand usage, viewing, and demographics statistics and patterns. They then can share their findings with us and our users so that we can all better understand and improve the AutoWiki platform.

When we give access to Personal Information to third-party developers or researchers, we put requirements, such as reasonable technical and contractual protections, in place to help ensure that these service providers treat your Personal Information consistently with the principles of this Policy and in accordance with our instructions. If these developers or researchers later publish their work or findings, we ask that they not disclose your Personal Information. Please note that, despite the obligations we impose on developers and researchers, we cannot guarantee that they will abide by our agreement, nor do we guarantee that we will regularly screen or audit their projects.

5.1.7    Because You Made It Public
Information that you post in your contributions at the AutoWiki platform is public and can be seen by everyone. Information that you have added to your Personal Profile is only public if you have specifically selected it to be public.

Any information you post publicly on the AutoWiki is just that – public. For example, if you put your address in one of your contributions, that is public, and not specifically protected by this Policy.

Personal information about yourself that you have added to your Personal Profile such as your age, address, car interests and cars you own(ed) and you have selected the button ‘Publicly visible’ per datafield is public.
Please think carefully about your desired level of privacy before you disclose Personal Information on your Personal Profile or elsewhere.

6    PROTECTION

6.1    How Do We Protect Your Personal Information?
We use a variety of physical and technical measures, policies, and procedures to help protect your Personal Information from unauthorized access, use, or disclosure.

We strive to protect your Personal 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).

We will never ask for your password by email (but may send you a temporary password via email if you have requested a password reset). If you ever receive an email that requests your password, please let us know by sending it to privacy@autowiki.org, so we can investigate the source of the email.

6.2    How Long Do We Keep Your Data?
Except as otherwise stated in this Policy, we only keep your Personal Information as long as necessary to maintain, understand and improve the AutoWiki platform or to comply with applicable law.

Once we receive Personal Information from you, we keep it for the shortest possible time that is consistent with the maintenance, understanding, and improvement of the AutoWiki platform, and our obligations under applicable law. In most instances, Personal Information is deleted, aggregated or de-identified after 90 days. Non-Personal Information may be retained indefinitely as appropriate.

Please remember that when you make a contribution to any AutoWiki platform, the page history will show when your contribution was made in combination with your "AutoWiki Username". The transparency of the contribution and revision histories is critical to their efficacy and trustworthiness. To learn more about our data retention practices, see our data retention guidelines.

6.3    Your rights
If you would like to request access to or removal of your Personal Information, you may contact us.

For information about how you may request removal of your Personal Information, or other rights you may have with respect to your Personal Information, see our FAQ. If you would like to request to access, update or restrict/object to the processing of Personal Information, or receive a copy of your Personal Information for purposes of transmitting it to another organization, you may Contact Us. We will respond to your request consistent with applicable law.

Please note also that you may be able to exercise some of these rights without our intervention. For example, if you are a registered user, you can access and update some Personal Information in your Preferences, as well as download your user account data. You may also manage what kinds of notifications you receive and how often you receive them by going to your Notifications Preferences.

7    FURTHER RELEVANT INFO

7.1    Where is the Foundation & What Does That Mean for Me?
The AutoWiki Foundation is a non-profit organization based in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, with servers and data centers located in The Netherlands. If you decide to use the AutoWiki platform, whether from inside or outside of The Netherlands, you understand that your Personal Information will be collected, transferred, stored, processed, disclosed and otherwise used in The Netherlands as described in this Privacy Policy. You also understand that your information may be transferred by us from The Netherlands to other countries, which may have different or less stringent data protection laws than your country, in connection with providing services to you.

7.2    Our Response to Do Not Track (DNT) signals
We are strongly committed to protecting users' Personal Information. Under this Policy, we may share your information only under particular situations, which you can learn more about in the "When May We Share Your Information" section of this Privacy Policy. In particular, we do not share your Personal Information for marketing purposes.

Because we protect all users in accordance with this Privacy Policy, we do not change our behavior in response to a web browser's "do not track" signal. For more information regarding Do Not Track signals and how we handle them, please visit our FAQ.

7.3    Changes to This Privacy Policy
Because things naturally change over time and we want to ensure our Privacy Policy accurately reflects our practices and the law, it may be necessary to modify this Privacy Policy from time to time. We reserve the right to do so in the following manner:

In the event of substantial changes, we will send a notification by e-mail to our contributors in English about the changes at least thirty (30) calendar days in advance.
For minor changes, such as grammatical fixes, administrative or legal changes, or corrections of inaccurate statements, we do not send a notification by e-mail.
We ask that you please review the most up-to-date version of our Privacy Policy. Your continued use of the AutoWiki platform after any effective date of a subsequent version of this Privacy Policy constitutes acceptance of this Privacy Policy on your part.

7.4    Contact Us
If you have questions or suggestions about this Privacy Policy, or the information collected under this Privacy Policy, please email us at info@autowiki.org 

Thank You!
Thank you for reading our Privacy Policy. We hope you enjoy using the AutoWiki platform and appreciate your participation in creating, maintaining, and constantly working to improve the largest car database in the world.

AutoWiki Foundation Privacy Policy, version: 20 May 2022