Our privacy policy outlines how personal data that you share on mahara.org and wiki.mahara.org is used and how you can control it. While we highlight key elements of our policy here, please read the full privacy statement below.

Key elements

• You control how much of your personal information is shared with others. By default, only your name (or display name) is visible to other people. Your email address is only viewable by administrators unless you share it with others yourself.
• The Mahara community areas are public. Your name and profile picture will be seen by others when you participate in forum discussions or upload and add content. You do not have to upload a profile picture or use your real name in the forums. You can set a display name.
• When you delete your account, your personal information is removed from our servers. Your community contributions outside of your personal account continue to be visible, but they are no longer associated with your name.
• When you use mahara.org and wiki.mahara.org, even when you are not logged into your account, we will receive some information about you such as the device and browser that you use and your I.P. address. If you use a “Do not track” browser plugin, your visits will not be logged in our analytics software.
• You can revoke your consent to our processing of your information at any point in time from your legal settings page.

• If you have any questions about our privacy policy, the collection of data, or other privacy related issues, please contact us.

Introduction

We – Catalyst.Net Limited – are committed to protecting your privacy and providing you with a safe and functional platform to discuss the Mahara software and share opinions as you use and interact with mahara.org and wiki.mahara.org (the Websites). This privacy statement governs data collection, usage and processing by us.

In general, you are able to determine what personal information you make available to other people. By default, other people may only view your first and last name. If you do not want to have your real name shown, you can add a display name to your profile, which is used around mahara.org. Wiki.mahara.org always shows your real name. This includes listings within a notification report or visitor log.

What personal information do we collect?

By registering on and using the Websites you consent us collecting a certain amount of personal information required for you to interact with the Websites and the community, namely:

1. your name;
2. email address;
3. system usage data (for example, dates and times of activities, IP addresses, and browser and device information); and
4. any other information you voluntarily share on the Websites.

We collect this information about you in order to:

1. provide our services to you and to support you in using them;
2. improve our services and to support the Mahara community; and
3. contact you where necessary.

We don’t collect any more personal information than is adequate, relevant and necessary in relation to the above purposes. In addition, we take all reasonable steps to ensure that personal information stored by us is accurate, and that any inaccuracies that we become aware of are corrected or deleted. We will not disclose any of your personal information that you have not shared publicly to any person or organisation without your written consent, unless authorised or required to do so by law.

Where do we display your personal information?

When you join mahara.org, you can automatically log in to wiki.mahara.org. Your name and email address is shared with wiki.mahara.org.

The Mahara community areas are public. Your name and profile picture will be seen when you participate in forum discussions or upload and add content. You do not have to upload a profile picture or use your real name in the forums. You can set a display name in your profile to use instead.

Pages you create in your personal area are not made public automatically. You control with whom you want to share them.

Your IP address is never made publicly available.

Your browser, device, and page activity information collected via our web analytics tools may be used for statistical analysis purposes in an aggregated fashion.

How long do we keep your personal information?

Your account on the Websites has a default life span of two years. After that, your account expires and will be deleted. If you want to keep your account for a longer period of time, you can do so by logging into mahara.org. A notification about that is sent to the email address that you set as your primary email address two weeks in advance.

You can delete your account at any point in time by going to your account settings page and deleting it there. Your personal information stored in your account on mahara.org is deleted immediately.

Cookies

A cookie is a data file that is placed on your computer by a webpage. Cookies are not programs, spyware, or viruses and are unable to perform any operation by themselves.

In order to use mahara.org you must have cookies enabled within your browser. Please note that no personal information is stored within the cookies used in mahara.org.

How do we use your personal information?

Your personal information will:

1. be used only in ways that are lawful, fair and transparent;

2. only be collected for the specific, explicit and legitimate purposes described in this privacy statement and not used in ways that are incompatible with those purposes;

3. be stored in such a way that you will not be identifiable based on the data for longer than is necessary for the purposes described in this privacy statement, or other appropriate purposes prescribed by law. In general:

   1. personal information will be kept until deleted in accordance with the Terms and Conditions; and

   2. system usage data, e.g. browsers, devices used to access the site, pages visited, will be kept for no longer than two years.

4. be processed in a manner that is appropriately secure.

You have the right to:

1. access your personal information held by us, and information about why and how we hold that information;

2. request and obtain copies, correction or erasure of your personal information, as well as certain restrictions on its processing;

3. receive your personal information from us in a structured, machine-readable format. You can export your personal data at any point in time in the Leap2A and HTML formats.

4. withdraw your consent to our using your personal information at any time by deleting your account or revoking consent to this privacy policy. If you delete your account, your personal data that is in your personal account will be deleted permanently. If you revoke your consent to the privacy policy, your account will be suspended and an administrator will be in touch with you about next steps. If you participated in forum discussions, uploaded files or created other content in a community group, your content will continue to be available; and

5. lodge a complaint about our collection or processing of your personal information with a relevant supervisory authority if you are an EU resident. If you live outside of the EU, please contact us directly.

Storage and security of your personal information

Data is stored in Aotearoa New Zealand in relation to mahara.org and wiki.mahara.org.

We take all reasonable steps to ensure that any personal information we hold is not subject to loss or misuse or unauthorised access, disclosure or alteration.

In order to help protect your personal information, please do not disclose your password to any person.

Data breach

In the event of a data breach, we will:

1. inform you without delay if the breach is likely to result in a high risk to your rights and freedoms; and

2. inform the relevant supervisory authority, unless the breach is unlikely to result in a risk to your rights and freedoms.

Changes to this privacy statement

We may occasionally make adjustments to our privacy statement to reflect changes to the system and in response to customer feedback. When any change has been made, you will be asked to consent to the new privacy statement upon your next login on mahara.org.

Contact

If you have any questions regarding this privacy statement, please contact us and we will use all reasonable efforts to remedy the issue.

Email for all jurisdictions: [email protected]

Postal mail for all jurisdictions except European Union:

Data Privacy Officer
Catalyst.Net
P.O. Box 11-053
Manners Street
Wellington, 6142
New Zealand

Postal mail for the European Union:

Data Privacy Officer
Catalyst EU
Lower Ground Floor, Olivier House
18 Marine Parade
Brighton BN2 1TL
United Kingdom

If you have a question regarding the privacy of any other Mahara site, e.g. the one that you use for your portfolio, education or other purposes, please contact the relevant privacy officer or administrator of that specific Mahara site. The Data Privacy Officer for the Mahara Project is only responsible for https://mahara.org and https://wiki.mahara.org.

This document constitutes a binding agreement between the provider of mahara.org – Catalyst.Net Limited – and yourself. The terms and conditions contained in this document govern your use of the website.

The Privacy Statement displayed above forms part of these terms and conditions and is hereby incorporated by reference.

Purpose of mahara.org

Mahara.org is the community hub for discussions around the ePortfolio application Mahara. It is not a site where you can keep your personal portfolio.

Use our demo site to try Mahara. That site has the latest features.

If you are looking for such a space, please refer to the Mahara Partners. There are also some sites that you may be able to join for free as an individual or low cost as an organisation.

If you are a student who had been asked to create a Mahara portfolio, please check with your instructor on the correct URL. Schools, colleges and universities have their own Mahara site. Your fellow students, your instructor, or your institution's IT department can help you find the correct URL.

Users who register with mahara.org will receive a maximum of 5 MB of disk space to store files, e.g. screenshots to share with others to discuss features.

Our obligations

We provide a secure environment in which you can discuss the Mahara software, ask questions about Mahara and receive answers. Support is provided for free in the community discussion forums on best efforts basis.

We encourage you to report objectionable material or inappropriate behaviour to the Site Administrator immediately. We will ensure the matter is investigated in a timely manner.

Site Administrators may access your account and its contents at any time. However, they will avoid doing so unless specifically required to support your use of mahara.org or as per these terms and conditions. When a site administrator accesses your account, you will receive a notification in Mahara that includes the reason for accessing your account. Your password is never revealed to any administrator.

Your obligations

You must be at least 16 years of age to use mahara.org.

All files and content you upload to mahara.org are subject to copyright law. You are responsible for ensuring you have appropriate permission to reproduce and publish any work that is not your own.

You must not use your account on mahara.org to store or display offensive material. If the Site Administrator receives a report of any objectionable material within your account, your account will be suspended and your access to mahara.org frozen.

If the Site Administrator receives a report of any inappropriate behaviour on your part, where it relates to mahara.org, your account will be suspended and your access to mahara.org frozen.

Inappropriate behaviour includes misuse of the objectionable material reporting system, sending community members unsolicited messages that don't relate to Mahara, intentionally attempting to upload files with virus content, placing objectionable or excessive feedback or comments on any other user's pages and / or files and any other behaviour deemed to be nuisance or offensive by the Site Administrator.

Any unsolicited contact you receive as a result of personal information you have publicly released via your portfolio is your responsibility, however any misconduct in behaviour from users of the system should be reported to the Site Administrator immediately.

Please review the code of conduct before engaging on the forums.

Account expiry

User accounts expire after two years of inactivity on mahara.org. You will not be able to log in any more and your data (excluding the content of your forum posts) will be deleted. To prevent the expiry of your account, you can log in again to keep it active.

Communication

From time to time, we may contact you via a notification in Mahara, which you may receive as an email, depending on your notification settings. Reasons for these notifications may be:

• Important changes to our service offering; and
• Notification of a data breach that may affect you.

You can subscribe to discussion forums to receive notifications when new posts have been made. We do not auto-subscribe you to community support forums. If you'd like to receive notifications, you will need to subscribe yourself.

Liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law, we will not be liable to you any direct, indirect, or consequential loss or damages (including but not limited to loss of business profits, business interruption, loss of business information, data, goodwill or other non-pecuniary loss) arising out of or in connection with this agreement or the provision of the website, whether arising from negligence, breach of contract or otherwise.

Our maximum aggregate liability for all lawfully limitable claims under or in connection with this agreement (whether arising from negligence, breach of contract or otherwise) will be NZ$0.

You agree to defend, indemnify and save us, our affiliated and subsidiary corporations, our officers, directors, employees, agents, successors, shareholders and assigns harm from and against all liability, loss, expense, fines, penalties, or damages (including legal costs) to the extent that such claim arises out of or is in any way connected with the non-performance or breach of any obligation imposed on you by this agreement or other general laws and obligations or by reason of and to the extent of your fraud, negligence or wilful misconduct or that of or any of your agents or employees.

We make no representations and give no warranties, guarantees or undertakings concerning our provision or administration of the website, or your use thereof, except as expressly set out in this agreement. Other warranties, express or implied, by statute or otherwise (including but not limited to the warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and satisfactory quality) are excluded from this agreement. It is intended that this clause will apply only to the maximum extent permitted by law: the clause is not intended to exclude the application of the New Zealand Consumer Guarantees Act 1993 or similar law where we are providing services to consumers.

Wiki License

The Mahara wiki is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

By contributing to the wiki, you are explicitly licensing your contributions under the same license.

Governing Law

These Terms and Conditions are governed by the laws of New Zealand (excluding its conflict of laws rules), and the courts of New Zealand shall have exclusive jurisdiction to hear and determine any claim arising under them.