Privacy Statement

1. Introduction

This statement outlines our practices regarding the processing of personal data in connection with Decoding-Us.com. As a Hypermedia as the Engine of Application State (HATEOAS) application focused on providing public data, we also integrate anonymized and public data from a federated platform to enhance our content.

2. Features Facilitating Research Collaboration

Decoding-Us.com provides an Application View that allows users of participating AT Protocol Personal Data Servers (PDS) within the private research federation to send messages to one another. This messaging functionality is intended to facilitate collaboration among researchers based on shared haplogroups in the genealogical era, ancestral populations, or existing matching networks. Users on the PDS have full control over whether to allow or ignore incoming messages.

To further enhance research and potential connections, Decoding-Us.com may also collect anonymized ancestral population information and Earliest Known Most Distant Ancestor (MDKA) data from publicly shared data on the federated PDS. This MDKA information may include geocoordinates, date of birth, date of death, and surname. To protect potential privacy, the MDKA's date of birth will be masked if it falls within the last 100 years.

It is crucial to understand that researchers control what information they make public on their PDS through their privacy settings. Decoding-Us.com only accesses and processes data that has been explicitly shared publicly by these researchers within the federated environment. We do not access or collect any private or personally identifiable genetic or genealogical data beyond what researchers choose to share publicly.

The purpose of these features is to empower researchers to connect, share insights, and collaboratively refine haplogroup understanding and genealogical connections. The anonymized MDKA information helps provide context without revealing recent personal details.

3. Data We Collect

Currently, this Website does not actively collect personal data such as names, email addresses, or account information directly from our viewing users. Our design does not require or facilitate user registration or login on Decoding-Us.com itself.

However, our server logs automatically record certain information when you access the Website, including:

• Your IP address
• The date and time of your request
• The type of browser and operating system you are using (user-agent string)
• The specific endpoints (URLs) you access

Through our Application View functionality for the private research federation, we may also process the following types of publicly shared, anonymized data from participating PDS:

• Aggregated statistics on genetic tests and coverage.
• Information about private SNPs beyond the terminal haplogroup branch.
• Data on negative calls for the terminal branch and its siblings.
• Anonymized ancestral population information.
• Earliest Known Most Distant Ancestor (MDKA) data (geocoordinates, masked date of birth if within the last 100 years, date of death, and surname).

This data is processed to facilitate research collaboration and enhance the haplogroup information presented on Decoding-Us.com.

4. Communication Between PDS Users

The messaging feature is facilitated by the AT Protocol PDS infrastructure. Decoding-Us.com provides the interface for this communication, but the control over allowing or ignoring messages resides entirely with the individual PDS users. We do not monitor the content of these messages.

5. Data Sharing

Decoding-Us.com does not share the personal data of our website viewers with the federated researchers or their AT Protocol PDS applications. Our interaction with the federation involves crawling and analyzing aggregated, non-personally identifiable data that researchers have chosen to make public within their PDS privacy controls. We also facilitate direct messaging between PDS users within the federation, but we do not access or store the content of these messages. The anonymized ancestral population and MDKA information we collect is used to enhance the research capabilities and content on Decoding-Us.com and is not shared back with individual PDS users in a personally identifiable way.

6. Your Rights and International Data Protection Laws

Depending on your location and applicable data protection laws, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the European Union, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) in California, and similar regulations elsewhere, you may have certain rights regarding your personal data. These rights can include the right to access, rectify, erase, restrict processing, and object to the processing of your personal data, as well as the right to data portability.

While the scope of personal data we currently process from our users is limited to server logs, we are committed to respecting these rights where applicable. If you have any inquiries regarding your rights under relevant data protection laws and how they might apply to the limited data we process, please contact us using the information below.

7. Updates to this Privacy Statement

We may update this Privacy Statement from time to time to reflect changes in our practices or legal requirements, including the integration with the federated platform. We will post any changes on this page, and we encourage you to review this statement periodically.