×

Privacy Notice
Last updated: September 29, 2022

This privacy notice describes how we collect and use personal information that you provide to us when you create a BIIGLE account or subscribe to the BIIGLE newsletter, what we do with the information collected, and how you can exercise your privacy rights.

What personal information do we collect?

Information you provide to us

When requesting to use BIIGLE or subscribe to the BIIGLE newsletter we may ask you to provide personal information to us. For example, when a BIIGLE account is created, we will ask you for your full name, email address and affiliation. During your interaction with BIIGLE, you may choose to provide us with personal information when you email us.

Information that we collect automatically

When you use BIIGLE we may collect certain information automatically from and about your device. This includes data about your browser, the operating system you use when accessing our service, your Internet Protocol address and the date and time of each request you make to BIIGLE. This information is not directly associated with your user account. We delete all this information when it gets more than six months old.

We also store the date and time on which your user account has been used last.

Collecting this information enables us to better diagnose problems with the application, provide support more effectively as well as ensure the continuous functionality of the service.

What we do with your personal information

Your full name and affiliation is used to identify you in BIIGLE. This information is shown to other BIIGLE users e.g. if they want to add you as a member of a project or if they browse your annotations. We do not show your email address to other BIIGLE users.

We might use your email address to contact you in case we noticed some malfunction of BIIGLE that affects you or in case of other important information regarding BIIGLE. If you reset your password, BIIGLE will use your email address to send you instructions via email.

You can opt out of certain email notifications in the notification center of your account. If you do not wish to receive any email from us you can delete your account.

If you subscribe to the BIIGLE newsletter, we will use your email address to send you the newsletter.

Who we share your information with

We may share and disclose your personally identifiable information only in the limited circumstances described below:

  • We may disclose your information to third parties: (a) where required by law or regulatory requirement, court order or other judicial authorization, (b) to investigate any wrongdoing in connection with our services; and (c) to protect the vital interests of an individual.
  • To any other person with your consent.

Legal basis for processing your personal information

If you have questions about or need further information concerning the legal basis on which we collect and use your personal information, please contact us using the contact details provided below.

Cookies

We use a cookie to track your login state in BIIGLE. Without this cookie you would have to enter your login credentials for every single request that you make to BIIGLE. This procedure follows security best practices and is a crucial part of the service we provide to you.

How we protect your information

The hardware and storage infrastructure on which this BIIGLE instance is running is located at Bielefeld University. We do not store or process your personal information through a third party.

We use appropriate technical and organizational security measures to protect your personal information from loss, misuse, and unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration and destruction, both during transmission and once we receive it. However, no method of transmission over the Internet, or method of electronic storage, is 100 % secure. Therefore we cannot guarantee its absolute security.

Your data protection rights and choices

You have the following rights:

  • If you wish to access your personal information, you can do so at any time by contacting us using the contact details provided below. Alternatively you can use the BIIGLE API to fetch your personal information as machine readable JSON format (most browsers display it in a human readable way, though).
  • You can correct, update or request deletion of your details in your user settings. You can also contact us using the contact details provided below in order to request that your data is deleted. You can unsubscribe from the BIIGLE newsletter on this page.
  • We have no way to restrict processing of your personal information as they are required by BIIGLE for the service we provide to you. If you wish to object to processing of your personal information you can delete your user account (see above).
  • If we have collected and processed your personal information with your consent, then you can withdraw your consent at any time. Withdrawing your consent will not affect the lawfulness of any processing we conducted prior to your withdrawal, nor will it affect processing of your personal information conducted in reliance on lawful processing grounds other than consent. To withdraw your consent, delete your user account or unsubscribe from the newsletter (see above).
  • You have the right to complain to a data protection authority about our collection and use of your personal information. You can find the contact details of the data protection authority of North Rhine-Westphalia here.

We respond to all requests we receive from individuals wishing to exercise their data protection rights in accordance with applicable data protection laws.

How we link to other websites

Our website contains links to third party websites operated by other companies. We are not responsible for the privacy practices of such other websites. We encourage you to be aware that when you leave our site you read the privacy notices of such other websites. This privacy notice applies solely to information collected by the BIIGLE service.

Data retention

We will retain your personal information for the period necessary to fulfil the purposes outlined in this privacy notice unless a longer retention period is required or permitted by law, for legal, tax or regulatory reasons, or other lawful purposes.

When we have no ongoing legitimate need to process your personal information, we will either delete or anonymize it or, if this is not possible (for example, because your personal information has been stored in backup archives), then we will securely store your personal information and isolate it from any further processing until deletion is possible.

Changes to our privacy notice

Changes to this privacy notice will be made when required in response to changing legal, technical or business developments. When we update our privacy notice, we will take appropriate measures to inform you, consistent with the significance of the changes we make. We will obtain your consent to any material privacy notice changes if and where this is required by applicable data protection laws.

You can see when this privacy notice was last updated by checking the "last updated" date displayed at the top of this privacy notice. The new privacy notice will apply to all current and past users of the website and will replace any prior notices that are inconsistent with it.

How to contact us

If you have any questions or concerns regarding the use or disclosure of your personal information, you can contact us using the following contact details:

Email: info@biigle.de

Address:
Prof. Dr. Tim W. Nattkemper
Biodata Mining Group
Universitätsstr. 25
33615 Bielefeld
Germany

You may also contact the data protection officer of Bielefeld University:

Email: datenschutzbeauftragte@uni-bielefeld.de
Phone: +49 521 106-5225

Address:
Universität Bielefeld
z. H. Anja Schmid
Detenschutzbeauftragte
Universitätsstr. 25
33615 Bielefeld
Germany

Please note that for the purposes of EU data protection legislation, the BIIGLE service is the controller of your personal information.