T-REX Privacy Statement

Introduction

This is a statement of the practice of T-REX, in collecting and using your personal data as part of the functioning of the T-REX social network – that is, the use of all web pages within the domain www.t-rex.ie

T-REX is not responsible for the content or privacy practices of other websites accessed via links to outside of this domain.

Please note that if you share documents or research data via the site (for example, within a Project group) you also have data protection responsibilities. Please be aware of these (they are outlined below).

General Statement

T-REX takes privacy very seriously. We aim to collect only that information that is necessary to support and nurture the educational research community on T-REX. We also aim to ensure that you have direct control over that information as much as possible (for example, through the control of who sees information included within your user profile). Furthermore, we are keenly aware of the importance of keeping data shared between researchers on the site safe and secure.

Collection and Use of Personal Information

You provide personal information to T-REX when you register or edit your user profile, when you post or share documents to the site, and through your engagement with the resources on the site.

The data are used only to allow the site to function as a means to support and nurture the community of educational researchers who make up its users. Data are stored indefinitely, unless you choose to delete your profile, by deleting your account.

In addition to enabling the appropriate activity of the site (communication, collaboration, amongst educational researchers), your data are also combined with other information by our technical team in order to monitor the effectiveness and general functioning of the site, through statistics and other “analytics” of various kinds. These analytics are sometimes reported to outside bodies (e.g. funding support bodies), but never include personal information of individual users.

    Your Personal Profile

The Name, Username, and Research Interests elements of your user profile are fixed as visible to all users of the site. All other elements of your profile can be designated as private or shared by editing your user profile (see our Support pages for how to do this).

          Visibility of Your Posts

Who can see your posts depends on where you make it. By default, posts are made to the general activity (All Members) feed, which means that all users of the site can see its content.

If you post to a particular Project or group, then all members of that group can see the post. If the Project's settings indicate that it is a public group, then all posts will also be made to the general activity (All Members) feed. You should check with the person who set up the group, or check in the group's “Manage” tab to confirm settings that apply within groups.

What Steps Do We Take To Keep Your Data Secure?

Only members of T-REX can access any user information. Beyond the core elements of your user profile required to enable communication and collaboration, all other elements are set as private (visible only to you) by default.

All documents shared within projects are accessible only to members within those projects, and, technically, to T-REX site administrators. All files shared through T-REX (e.g. personal publications or research data files shared within a project) are stored in an encrypted format on the site servers, to help keep them secure. However, it is T-REX policy that all research data uploaded to a project be anonymised before it is posted to the site (even within a private group).

User data is accessible by some of T-REX's technical partners (the company who hosts the site on its servers, and the software company responsible for the development of the site). T-REX will not share your data with any other third parties, and these partners will not have access to your data for any purpose save for the proper maintenance and support of the site's operation.

If you have any specific queries regarding the use or storage of your personal data, you should contact the T-REX Data Protection Officer [rex@mic.ul.ie]

Your Data Protection Responsibilities

     Sharing Research Data Through T-REX

Within Project groups on T-REX, you may share documents, and may find it useful to include data that you have collected as part of the project. If you have collected personal data from people (anything that would enable someone to identify a person, this may not necessarily require their name to be included), you must take great care to keep it safe, secure, and use it only for the purposes for which you collected it, and for which you told your participants you were collecting it. Note that this could mean that you may not share the data through T-REX, even privately.

This statement cannot provide you with a primer on data protection for research purposes. If you collect personal information as part of your research, you are strongly encouraged to seek support for data protection considerations.

Cookies on the T-REX website

 

What Are Cookies

As is common practice with almost all professional websites this site uses cookies, which are tiny files that are downloaded to your computer, to improve your experience. This page describes what information they gather, how we use it and why we sometimes need to store these cookies. We will also share how you can prevent these cookies from being stored however this may downgrade or 'break' certain elements of the sites functionality.

For more general information on cookies see the Wikipedia article on HTTP Cookies.

How We Use Cookies

We use cookies for a variety of reasons detailed below. Unfortunately in most cases there are no industry standard options for disabling cookies without completely disabling the functionality and features they add to this site. It is recommended that you leave on all cookies if you are not sure whether you need them or not in case they are used to provide a service that you use.

Disabling Cookies

You can prevent the setting of cookies by adjusting the settings on your browser (see your browser Help for how to do this). Be aware that disabling cookies will affect the functionality of this and many other websites that you visit. Disabling cookies will usually result in also disabling certain functionality and features of the this site. Therefore it is recommended that you do not disable cookies.

The Cookies We Set

• Account related cookies

  If you create an account with us then we will use cookies for the management of the signup process and general administration. These cookies will usually be deleted when you log out however in some cases they may remain afterwards to remember your site preferences when logged out.

• Login related cookies

  We use cookies when you are logged in so that we can remember this fact. This prevents you from having to log in every single time you visit a new page. These cookies are typically removed or cleared when you log out to ensure that you can only access restricted features and areas when logged in.

• Forms related cookies

  When you submit data to through a form such as those found on contact pages or comment forms cookies may be set to remember your user details for future correspondence.

• Site preferences cookies

  In order to provide you with a great experience on this site we provide the functionality to set your preferences for how this site runs when you use it. In order to remember your preferences we need to set cookies so that this information can be called whenever you interact with a page is affected by your preferences.

Third Party Cookies

In some special cases we also use cookies provided by trusted third parties. The following section details which third party cookies you might encounter through this site.

• This site uses Google Analytics which is one of the most widespread and trusted analytics solution on the web for helping us to understand how you use the site and ways that we can improve your experience. These cookies may track things such as how long you spend on the site and the pages that you visit so we can continue to produce engaging content.

  For more information on Google Analytics cookies, see the official Google Analytics page

More Information

Hopefully that has clarified things for you and as was previously mentioned if there is something that you aren't sure whether you need or not it's usually safer to leave cookies enabled in case it does interact with one of the features you use on our site.

However if you are still looking for more information then you can contact us through one of our preferred contact methods:

• By visiting this link: /support#contact_form