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Privacy policy

Last revision: 22 January 2020

Purposes of personal data collection

The Netherlands Polar Data Center (hereafter referred to as NPDC) collects and uses personal data for the following purposes:

  • Support researchers with management of the data from their research
  • Provide information about the research (projects) and results (data and publications) of the Netherlands Polar Program to the research community and general public
  • Add data set descriptions to the Global Change Master Directory (the international portal for polar data hosted by NASA in the USA, hereafter referred to as GCMD)

Which personal data does NPDC collect?

For everybody involved in the research projects, data sets or publications NPDC records:

  • Name
  • Projects, data set and publications the person is involved in

For everybody involved in projects and data sets, and where possible for everybody involved in publications NPDC also collects:

  • E-mail address
  • Phone numbers
  • Employer (affiliation) including address

For registered users NPDC also collects:

  • Password (hashed (using a strong one-way hashing algorithm) before storing)
  • User level (assigned by NPDC, see below)

NPDC collects this information from NWO, websites of the institutions where the involved people work, and researchers themselves or their colleagues. Information is stored in a database on the NPDC server.

Information given in the contact forms is stored in the session when submitting the form. As soon as the form has been submitted without errors, and the spam algorithm doesn't consider the message spam, the mail is forwarded to the intended recipient. All submitted information also stored in the database together with ip and browser details to allow improvement of the spam prevention. Before storing the message text is base64 encoded for privacy, NPDC staff will only decode text of a message when there is a (strong) suspicion that the message is spam. Messages that are not spam will be periodically removed from the database.

Securing personal data

Communication between the user’s computer and the NPDC server is protected by encryption (https). This prevents unauthorized reading or alteration of information sent between the user’s computer and the NPDC server.

Passwords are stored using strong one-way encryption. This allows for checking whether the password given during the login process matches the registered password, but prevents retrieving or reading the password.

Sharing personal data

On the NPDC website

Name, employer (affiliation) and address of the employer are publicly available on the NPDC website. Users can choose which phone numbers they want to have listed (if any) in the personal details form. On each project, data set or publication a person is involved in the person’s name will be displayed with a link to the aforementioned information. E-mail addresses will not be displayed on the NPDC website, instead NPDC provides a contact form that allows sending a message without disclosing the e-mail address of the person being contacted.

To third parties

The NPDC shares descriptions of data sets with the GCMD. These descriptions include all information provided in the forms to describe a data set. The personal details shared are name, affiliation (including address of the organization), phone numbers and e-mail address.

User levels

NPDC uses four different user levels where every level has rights of all levels described before that level as well:

  • Guests (no login required) can view the public areas of the site and use the search and contact forms
  • Logged in users can edit their own personal information, download data that requires registration and request access to more restricted data
  • Editors (researchers) can update projects, data sets and publications which they created or for which they have been granted access, and they can add new projects, data sets, publications and persons
  • Admins (employees of the NPDC) can edit all content on the website

Editing or deleting personal information

Users can only edit the personal information linked to their e-mail address. If your information is not linked to your e-mail address you can send an e-mail to info[at]npdc.nl to ask to link your information to your e-mail address.

If you wish to have information removed from the NPDC website or be completely removed from the NPDC website, please send an e-mail to info[at]npdc.nl, please also indicate which information you wish to have removed.

Updating this policy

NPDC can update this policy. On top of this page the date of latest update will always be displayed.

Contact NPDC

If you have any questions about this privacy policy or NPDC’s treatment of personal information, please write:

  • by email to info[at]npdc.nl; or
  • by post to Landsdiep 4, 1797SZ Den Hoorn, Texel, The Netherlands.