Your privacy is critically important to us. At Automattic, we have a few fundamental principles:

• We are thoughtful about the personal information we ask you to provide and the personal information that we collect about you through the operation of our service.
• We store personal information for only as long as we have a reason to keep it.
• We aim to make it as simple as possible for you to control what information on your website is shared publicly (or kept private), indexed by search engines, and permanently deleted.
• We aim for full transparency on how we gather, use, and share your personal information.

Below is our Privacy Policy, which incorporates and clarifies these principles.

Who We Are and What This Policy Covers

PhylomeDB is a public database for complete catalogs of gene phylogenies (phylomes). It allows users to interactively explore the evolutionary history of genes through the visualization of phylogenetic trees and multiple sequence alignments. Moreover, phylomeDB provides genome-wide orthology and paralogy predictions which are based on the analysis of the phylogenetic trees. The automated pipeline used to reconstruct trees aims at providing a high-quality phylogenetic analysis of different genomes, including Maximum Likelihood tree inference, alignment trimming and evolutionary model testing. PhylomeDB includes also a public download section with the complete set of trees, alignments and orthology predictions. Finally, phylomeDB provides an advanced tree visualization interface based on the ETE toolkit, which integrates tree topologies, taxonomic information, domain mapping and alignment visualization in a single and interactive tree image.

This Privacy Policy applies to information that we collect about you when you use our website, https://phylomedb.org.

Throughout this Privacy Policy we'll refer to our website collectively as "Service."

Below we explain how we collect, use, and share information about you, along with the choices that you have with respect to that information.

Creative Commons Sharealike License

We've decided to make this Privacy Policy available under a Creative Commons Sharealike license. You can grab a copy of this Privacy Policy and other legal documents on GitHub. You're more than welcome to copy it, adapt it, and repurpose it for your own use. Just make sure to revise the language so that your policy reflects your actual practices. If you do use it, we'd appreciate a credit and link to Automattic somewhere on your site.

Information We Collect

We only collect information about you if we have a reason to do so — for example, to provide our Service, to communicate with you, or to make our Service better.

We collect this information from three sources: if and when you provide information to us, automatically through operating our Service.. Let's go over the information that we collect.

Information You Provide to Us

It's probably no surprise that we collect information that you provide to us directly. Here are some examples:

• Basic account information: We ask for basic information from you in order to set up your account. For example, we require individuals who sign up for a phylomedb.org account to provide an email address and password, along with a username or name — and that's it. You may provide us with more information — like your address and other information you want to share — but we don't require that information to create a phylomedb.org account.
• Communications with us (hi there!): You may also provide us with information when you respond to surveys, communicate with our Happiness Engineers about a support question, post a question in our public forums, or sign up for a newsletter like the one we send through Longreads. When you communicate with us via form, email, phone, phylomedb.org comment, or otherwise, we store a copy of our communications (including any call recordings as permitted by applicable law).

Information We Collect Automatically

We also collect some information automatically:

• Log information: Like most online service providers, we collect information that web browsers, mobile devices, and servers typically make available, including the browser type, IP address, unique device identifiers, language preference, referring site, the date and time of access, operating system, and mobile network information. We collect log information when you use our Service — for example, when you create or make changes to your website on WordPress.com.
• Usage information: We collect information about your usage of our Service. For example, we collect information about the actions that site administrators and users perform on a site using our phylomedb.org or Jetpack service — in other words, who did what and when (e.g., [phylomedb.org username] deleted "[title of post]" at [time/date]).
• Location information: We may determine the approximate location of your device from your IP address. We collect and use this information to, for example, calculate how many people visit our Service from certain geographic regions.

The information we receive depends on which service you use or authorize and what options are available.

How and Why We Use Information

Purposes for Using Information

We use information about you for the purposes listed below:

• To provide our Service. For example, to set up and maintain your account, backup and restore your saved contents and verify user information.
• To ensure quality, maintain safety, and improve our Service. For example, by providing automatic upgrades and new versions of our Service. Or, for example, by monitoring and analyzing how users interact with our Service so we can create new features that we think our users will enjoy and that will help them create and manage websites more efficiently or make our Service easier to use.
• To protect our Service, our users, and the public. For example, by detecting security incidents; detecting and protecting against malicious, deceptive, fraudulent, or illegal activity; fighting spam; complying with our legal obligations; and protecting the rights and property of Automattic and others, which may result in us, for example terminating Service.
• To fix problems with our Service. For example, by monitoring, debugging, repairing, and preventing issues.

Legal Bases for Collecting and Using Information

A note here for those in the European Union about our legal grounds for processing information about you under EU data protection laws, which is that our use of your information is based on the grounds that:

1. (1) The use is necessary in order to fulfill our commitments to you under the applicable terms of service or other agreements with you or is necessary to administer your account — for example, in order to enable access to our website on your device or charge you for a paid plan; or
2. (2) The use is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation; or
3. (3) The use is necessary in order to protect your vital interests or those of another person; or
4. (4) We have a legitimate interest in using your information — for example, to provide and update our Service; to improve our Service so that we can offer you an even better user experience; to safeguard our Service; to communicate with you; to measure, gauge, and improve the effectiveness of our advertising; and to understand our user retention and attrition; to monitor and prevent any problems with our Service; and to personalize your experience; or
5. (5) You have given us your consent — for example before we place certain cookies on your device and access and analyze them later on, as described in our [Cookie Policy](http://www.automattic.com/cookies).

Sharing Information

How We Share Information

We share information about you in limited circumstances, and with appropriate safeguards on your privacy. These are spelled out below, as well as in the section called [Ads and Analytics Service Provided by Others](https://automattic.com/privacy/#ads-and-analytics-service-provided-by-others):

• Legal and regulatory requirements: We may disclose information about you in response to a subpoena, court order, or other governmental request. For more information on how we respond to requests for information about phylomedb.org users, please see our [Legal Guidelines](https://en.support.wordpress.com/report-blogs/legal-guidelines/). Additionally, if you have a domain registered with WordPress.com, we may share your information to comply with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers' (ICANN) regulations, rules, or policies. For example, your information relating to your domain registration may be available in the WHOIS database, or we may be required to share your information with ICANN-approved Dispute Resolution Service Providers. Please see our [Domain Registrations and Privacy support document](https://en.support.wordpress.com/domains/domain-registrations-and-privacy/) for more details.
• To protect rights, property, and others: We may disclose information about you when we believe in good faith that disclosure is reasonably necessary to protect the property or rights of Automattic, third parties, or the public at large. For example, if we have a good faith belief that there is an imminent danger of death or serious physical injury, we [may disclose information related to the emergency without delay](https://en.support.wordpress.com/report-blogs/legal-guidelines/#emergency-requests-from-government-agencieslaw-enforcement).
• With your consent: We may share and disclose information with your consent or at your direction. For example, we may share your information with third parties when you authorize us to do so, like when you connected your site to a social media service through our Publicize feature.
• Aggregated or de-identified information: We may share information that has been aggregated or de-identified, so that it can no longer reasonably be used to identify you. For instance, we may publish aggregate statistics about the use of our Service, or share a hashed version of your email address to facilitate customized ad campaigns on other platforms.
• Site owners: If you have a phylomedb.org account and interact with another site using our Service, your information may be shared with the administrators of the site. For example, if you leave a comment on a site created on phylomedb.org or running Jetpack, your IP address and the email address associated with your phylomedb.org account may be shared with the administrator(s) of the site where you left the comment.
• Published support requests: If you send us a request for assistance (for example, via a support email or one of our other feedback mechanisms), we reserve the right to publish that request in order to clarify or respond to your request, or to help us support other users.

Information Shared Publicly

Information that you choose to make public is — you guessed it — disclosed publicly.

That means information like your public profile, posts, other content that you make public on your website, and your "Likes" and comments on other websites are all available to others — and we hope they get a lot of views!

Please keep all of this in mind when deciding what you would like to share publicly.

How Long We Keep Information

We generally discard information about you when it's no longer needed for the purposes for which we collect and use it — described in the section above on How and Why We Use Information — and we're not legally required to keep it.

For example, we keep web server logs that record information about a visitor to one of PhylomeDB's websites, like the visitor's IP address, browser type, and operating system, for approximately 30 days. We retain the logs for this period of time in order to, among other things, analyze traffic to PhylomeDB's websites and investigate issues if something goes wrong on one of our websites.

As another example, when you delete a post, page, or comment from your phylomedb.org site, it stays in your Trash folder for thirty days in case you change your mind and would like to restore that content, because starting from scratch is no fun. After the thirty days are up, the deleted content may remain on our backups and caches until purged.

Security

While no online service is 100% secure, we work very hard to protect information about you against unauthorized access, use, alteration, or destruction, and take reasonable measures to do so. We monitor our Service for potential vulnerabilities and attacks.

Choices

You have several choices available when it comes to information about you:

• Limit the information that you provide: If you have an account with us, you can choose not to provide the optional account information, profile information. Please keep in mind that if you do not provide this information, certain features of our Service may not be accessible.
• Set your browser to reject cookies: At this time, Automattic does not respond to "do not track" signals across all of our Service. However, you can [usually choose](https://automattic.com/cookies/#controlling-cookies) to set your browser to remove or reject browser cookies before using PhylomeDB's website, with the drawback that certain features of PhylomeDB's websites may not function properly without the aid of cookies.
• Opt out of our internal analytics program: You can do this through your user settings. By opting out, you will stop sharing information with our analytics tool about events or actions that happen after the opt-out, while you're logged in to your phylomedb.org account.
• Close your account: While we'd be very sad to see you go, you can close your account if you no longer want to use our Service.

Your Rights

If you are located in certain parts of the world, including some US states and countries that fall under the scope of the European General Data Protection Regulation (aka the "GDPR"), you may have certain rights regarding your personal information, like the right to request access to or deletion of your data.

European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)

If you are located in a country that falls under the scope of the GDPR, data protection laws give you certain rights with respect to your personal data, subject to any exemptions provided by the law, including the rights to:

• Request access to your personal data;
• Request correction or deletion of your personal data;
• Object to our use and processing of your personal data;
• Request that we limit our use and processing of your personal data; and
• Request portability of your personal data.

You also have the right to make a complaint to a government supervisory authority.

US Privacy Laws

Laws in some US states require us to provide residents with additional information about the categories of personal information we collect and share, where we get that personal information, and how and why we use it. You'll find that information in this section (if you are a California resident, please note that this is the Notice at Collection we are required to provide you under California law).

Contacting Us About These Rights

You can usually access, correct, or delete your personal data using your account settings and tools that we offer, but if you aren't able to or you'd like to contact us about one of the other rights, you can e-mail to "gabaldonlab@gmail.com".

When you contact us about one of your rights under this section, we'll need to verify that you are the right person before we disclose or delete anything. For example, if you are a user, we will need you to contact us from the email address associated with your account. You can also designate an authorized agent to make a request on your behalf by giving us written authorization. We may still require you to verify your identity with us.

Appeals Process for Rights Requests Denials

In some circumstances we may deny your request to exercise one of these rights. For example, if we cannot verify that you are the account owner we may deny your request to access the personal information associated with your account. As another example, if we are legally required to maintain a copy of your personal information we may deny your request to delete your personal information.

In the event that we deny your request, we will communicate this fact to you in writing. You may appeal our decision by responding in writing to our denial email and stating that you would like to appeal. All appeals will be reviewed by an internal expert who was not involved in your original request. In the event that your appeal is also denied this information will be communicated to you in writing.

If your appeal is denied, in some US states you may refer the denied appeal to the state attorney general if you believe the denial is in conflict with your legal rights. The process for how to do this will be communicated to you in writing at the same time we send you our decision about your appeal.

How to Reach Us

If you have a question about this Privacy Policy, or you would like to contact us about any of the rights mentioned in the Your Rights section above, you can e-mail us via "gabaldonlab@gmail.com".

Ads and Analytics Service Provided by Others

Ads appearing on any of our Service may be delivered by advertising networks. Other parties may also provide analytics service via our Service. These ad networks and analytics providers may set tracking technologies (like cookies) to collect information about your use of our Service and across other websites and online service. These technologies allow these third parties to recognize your device to compile information about you or others who use your device. This information allows us and other companies to, among other things, analyze and track usage, determine the popularity of certain content, and deliver ads that may be more targeted to your interests. Please note this Privacy Policy only covers the collection of information by Automattic and does not cover the collection of information by any third-party advertisers or analytics providers.

Privacy Policy Changes

Although most changes are likely to be minor, PhylomeDB may change its Privacy Policy from time to time. PhylomeDB encourages visitors to frequently check this page for any changes to its Privacy Policy. If we make changes, we will notify you by revising the change log below, and, in some cases, we may provide additional notice (like adding a statement to our homepage or sending you a notification through email or your dashboard). Your further use of the Service after a change to our Privacy Policy will be subject to the updated policy.