FRUCT Privacy Policy

Privacy Information Notice

Protecting your privacy is important to us. Please take a few moments to review this Policy as we have updated and expanded it to include information on:
- the information we collect from you and how we use it;
- why we need to collect personal data;
- how we store personal data;
- how we process it;
- for how long we store that data and when we delete data;
- who we share data with;
- how to delete your account and request that your personal data is deleted;
- how to withdraw consent;
- how to complain.

Summary

The FRUCT Association, managed independently by FRUCT Oy registered in Finland, is a self-organized community of researchers and developers that organize joint project and make publication in an open access proceedings of FRUCT. In order to ensure smooth operation of FRUCT web and organization of FRUCT events (e.g., conferences) , the FRUCT collects and stores name of the person, email address, affiliation and country of residence. The user can also provide some additional information, but it is not mandatory. All provided information is stored in the database of web site and, if an application is successful, a user account is created which contains the local login ID, which is later used. The collected data is shared only with parties directly involved in the corresponding FRUCT activities.

Who to contact at FRUCT about protecting your privacy

The FRUCT president, Sergey Balandin, has assumed responsibility of the FRUCT data policy and implementing the changes required by the GDPR which comes into effect on 25th May 2018. If you have any questions or concerns about any of the information laid out in this Notice, or any other question about how FRUCT protects your data, please send an email to Sergey: sergey.balandin@fruct.org.

The Policy

This is the website for FRUCT Association, which is a web site managed by FRUCT Oy, a Finnish-based Company. The FRUCT uses Drupal as a main engine of FRUCT web site. This Privacy Information Notice pertains to this website and its operations.

1) THE INFORMATION WE COLLECT AND HOW WE USE IT

When someone register at FRUCT (e.g., as a conference participant), we ask to provide the following sets of contact details:
Name
Email Address
Affiliation
Country of residence
<optional info provided by the user>

We must have these details to process the application. If an application is successful, a user account is created which stores the listed information as well as some additional optional information that the user can voluntarely add to the system (the mandatory fields are explicitly marked in the application). We use the provided information to contact the user related to the issue he/she is registered for, e.g., related participation in a conference. Moreover, in the end of registration form the user can accept invitation to join FRUCT mailing list. In this case we will contact user from time to time for the following reasons:
- to inform about new events and changes in the status of the past events
- to share major announcements of FRUCT Association activities
- to contact user regarding a question on materials he/she was involved in creating.

It is not possible for the review emails, created by the FRUCT Team and Volunteers, to be sent to Applicants or Journal Contacts from within the system. The FRUCT Team members use a dedicated FRUCT workspace, hosted by Hetzner and own protected email server.

You may access, review and edit your account details by logging into your FRUCT account. The collected data is shared only with parties directly involved in the corresponding FRUCT activities. For example, list of conference participants in shared with IEEE and the conference hosting organization. We never provide the list of emails with 3rd parties that are not directly involved in organization of the corresponding activities of FRUCT Association. And we never discuss the details of your account with anyone apart from you or confirmed representatives from your organisation.

2) WHY WE NEED TO COLLECT PERSONAL DATA

Anything to do with user's participation in FRUCT events has to be linked to individual's user account. Also this data is needed to provide other supporting services to the member of FRUCT Association and attendees of FRUCT events, e.g., create official list or registrations, publish conference programs and proceedings, make diplomas and certificates (on users' requests).

3) HOW WE STORE PERSONAL DATA

The User details (name, email address, affiliation, country of residence, <optional info provided by the user>) are stored in a separate database, the User database within the FRUCT Admin system, which is accessible only by the FRUCT Team. The main reason and objective for accessing the database is to process users' applications. Sometimes, the FRUCT Team will access user accounts to make updates, reset passwords or delete the user account entirely. FRUCT doesn't have access to users' passwords which are encrypted.

4) HOW WE PROCESS PERSONAL DATA

FRUCT exports this list into Mailman, where it is password-secured. We use this list to contact FRUCT community members to share important information about events, changes and updates FRUCT.

5) HOW LONG WE STORE PERSONAL DATA FOR AND WHEN WE DELETE DATA

FRUCT stores the personal data for as long as the corresponding user account exists at FRUCT web site. If/when an application is rejected or user is deleted from FRUCT, we delete the corresponding personal data at the record. But, we don't delete corresponding personal data embedded in the records of events attended by the user. This is because we have to keep basic details of the event attendees for the case if it will be legally requested by state authorities. Users may request at any time that we delete all their personal data from our systems by submitting a Subject Access Request to us. FRUCT last reviewed the User accounts it holds in 2017.

6) WHO WE SHARE DATA WITH

FRUCT does share personal data only with organisations and individuals that are immediately involved in organization of FRUCT activities (events) and only in the volume that absolutely needed to provide service requested by the user. Among such organization we can list IEEE Publishing team, IEEE ComSoc team, conference hosts organizations. All these organizations are trusted partners and fulfill requirements of GDPR. We never discuss the details of your account with anyone apart from you or confirmed representatives from your organisation.

FRUCT has a GNU Mailman account (http://lists.fruct.org/mailman/listinfo) into which we import email addresses of users that agreed to join FRUCT email distribution (see section 4 above)

7) HOW TO DELETE YOUR ACCOUNT AND REQUEST THAT PERSONAL DATA IS DELETED

7.a How to delete your account

An individual may request at any time that FRUCT deletes all the personal data and the user account from the FRUCT Admin system. Do this by using our Contact Us form.

7.b How to request that all personal data is deleted

To request that FRUCT deletes all of the personal data that we hold about you, please send an email to the FRUCT President, Sergey Balandin: sergey.balandin@fruct.org.

8) WITHDRAWING CONSENT

As stated in Sections 7 above, you can withdraw your consent for us to store and process your personal data at any time by submitting an email to the FRUCT President. You may also request that we delete your email address from Mailman, even if before you agreed to add it into the FRUCT email-list.

9) HOW TO COMPLAIN

If you need to complain about how FRUCT has handled an SAR or your request to withdraw consent, or any other aspect related to the information detailed in this Privacy Information Notice, please send an email to the FRUCT President, Sergey Balandin: sergey.balandin@fruct.org.