Privacy Policy

The Long-Term Ecological Research Network Office (LNO) places a high priority on protecting your privacy. This policy explains what types of information is collected by the LTER Network website, lternet.edu, and how this information is used.

What personally identifiable information is collected?

LTER Network participants that register on lternet.edu and individuals that sign up to receive LTER e-communications voluntarily provide us with contact information (such as name and e-mail address). We may use this information for specific, limited purposes. You may always “opt out,” either now or at any time in the future, if you do not wish to receive our messages.

Scope of this policy

This policy applies only to the publicly available web sites for the LTER Network (lternet.edu). Please note that if you leave this web site for another web site, including the web site of another LTER project, this privacy policy will no longer apply.

IP addresses

The LTER uses your IP address to help diagnose problems with our server, to administer lternet.edu, and for statistical metrics used to track website visitor traffic.

Cookies

lternet.edu may use “cookie” messages to automatically help provide better services. They remind us who you are and your preferences for our website based on what you’ve done and told us before. The “cookie” is placed in your computer and is read when you come back to our website. Cookies let us take you to the information and features you’re particularly interested in. They also let us track your usage of lternet.edu, so we know which parts of our sites are most popular. You can reject cookies or cancel them by instructing your Web browser accordingly.

How your information may be used

We use your personal information to provide you with personalized information to:

Provide a publicly-accessible online directory of LTER personnel
Allow access to appropriate content
Personalize access based on area of role
Generate web metrics
Group of individuals into email lists based on position, interest, or other voluntary attributes
Issue updates, invitations, newsletters, etc.
Confirm personal accounts

We may also use your information to track visits to our website. This lets us see which of our features are the most popular so we can better serve our users’ needs. It also lets us provide aggregate data about our traffic (not identifying you personally, but showing how many visitors used which features, for example) to outside parties

Access to information

LNO maintains the accuracy of our information by relying on site authorities and individuals. Users may access and edit their own personal information. Users may contact us about any inaccuracies they may find. Users may delete their voluntary personal information from our database and may be entirely deleted by contacting their site authority.