Single Cell Portal Privacy Policy

The following discloses our information gathering and dissemination practices for the Broad Institute Single Cell Portal website (https://singlecell.broadinstitute.org/single_cell)

Information gathering

The Broad Institute Single Cell Portal receives and stores information related to user's Google profiles, including email addresses, user IDs, and OAuth tokens. This information is gathered as part of the standard Google sign-in process.

Use of information

The Single Cell Portal uses the information gathered above to enable integration with Google-based services that require a Google account, such as Terra and Google Cloud Storage Platform. We may also use this information to provide you with the services on the platform and to communicate with you (e.g., about new feature announcements, unplanned site maintenance, and general notices). If you’d like to opt-out of receiving communications from our team, you can choose to do so through your profile settings. At no time do we disclose any user information to outside sources. Web server logs are retained on a temporary basis and then deleted completely from our systems. User information is stored in a password-protected database, and OAuth tokens are only stored for the length of an active session, is encrypted at rest (using 256-bit AES encryption), and is deleted upon sign out.

Publicly Uploaded Information

Some features of the Single Cell Portal are public facing and allow you to upload information (such as new studies) that you may choose to make publicly available. If you choose to upload content is public-facing, third parties may access and use it. We do not sell any information that you provide to the Single Cell Portal; it is yours. However, any information that you make publicly available may be accessed and used by third parties, such as research organizations or commercial third parties.

Security

This site has security measures in place to protect the loss, misuse and alteration of the information under our control. The Broad Institute Single Cell Portal, however, is not liable for the loss, misuse or alteration of information on this site by any third party.

Changes

Although most changes are likely to be minor, we may change our Privacy Policy from time to time. We will provide notification to you of material changes to this Privacy Policy through the Single Cell Portal website at least 30 days prior to the change taking effect by posting a notice on our home page or by sending an email to the email address specified in your user account. For changes to this Privacy Policy that do not affect your rights, we encourage you to check this page frequently.

Contacting the Single Cell Portal

If you have any questions about this privacy statement, the practices of this site, or your dealings with this site, you can contact us through our help desk.