Disclaimer, Copyright Notice and Privacy Policies

Thank you for visiting the APEX Website. The information on this page is subject to a disclaimer, copyright notice and rules related to privacy policies.

Disclaimer

The European Organisation for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere, APEX, maintains this website to inform the astronomical community, its staff and the general public about astronomical research in the southern hemisphere using APEX telescopes and instrumentation. The web site also includes information concerning on-going projects and developments to further enhance and enlarge APEX's observing facilities. The goal is to keep this information timely and accurate. If errors are brought to our attention, we will try to correct them. However, APEX accepts no responsibility or liability whatsoever with regard to the information on this site.

This information is:

• of a general nature only and is not intended to address the specific circumstances of any particular individual or entity;
• not necessarily comprehensive, complete, accurate or up to date;
• sometimes linked to external sites over which APEX have no control and for which the APEX assumes no responsibility.

It is our goal to minimize disruption caused by technical errors. However, some data or information on our site may have been created or structured in files or formats that are not error-free and we cannot guarantee that our service will not be interrupted or otherwise affected by such problems. APEX accepts no responsibility with regard to such problems incurred as a result of using this site or any linked external sites.

Copyright Notice

APEX, 2003-2010

Reproduction is authorised, provided the source is acknowledged, save where otherwise stated. Where prior permission must be obtained for the reproduction or use of textual and multimedia information (sound, images, software, etc.), such permission shall cancel the above-mentioned general permission and shall clearly indicate any restrictions on use.

Privacy Policies

There are various facilities accessible to the users on the APEX's web pages. Some of these include forms where the user is requested to fill in some data or information on themselves (e.g. their e-mail address or name). In addition, our information services (www, ftp, mail/majordomo servers etc.) keep logs of certain information. APEX's privacy policy can be stated simply:
We will not collect any personal information about you when you access our network services unless you choose to provide that information to us.

General
Information which the APEX maintains about our user community, such as e-mail addresses of observers and of mailing-list subscribers, is normally available only for internal access. Please note, however, that the archives of some e-mail discussion groups hosted by APEX are, by request of the group involved, publicly accessible. By posting to these discussion groups, you may therefore make public the e-mail address from which you posted.
E-mail addresses and other information obtained through any of the means below will NOT be sold or released to any third party, without prior written or authenticated e-mail consent from the owner of the information.

Web access
If you do nothing during your visit but browse through the website, read pages, or download information, information about your visit will automatically be gathered and stored. This information does not identify you personally. We collect and store only the following information about your visit:

1. The Internet domain (for example, "xcompany.com" if you use a private Internet access account, or "your_university.de" if you connect from a university's domain) and IP address (an IP address is a number that is automatically assigned to your computer whenever you are surfing the Web) from which you access our website;
2. The type of browser and operating system used to access our site;
3. The date and time you access our site;
4. The pages you visit;
5. If you linked to the APEX's website from another website, the address of that website.

The information is private and confidential and will not be released to the general public. It is useful to help making our site more useful to visitors. E.g. to learn about the number of visitors to our site, the types of technology our visitors use, and what domains are our biggest users. We do not track or record information about individuals and their visits.
This site contains links to other sites. APEX is not responsible for the privacy practices or the content of these Web sites.

FTP access
The policy in the Web section above applies here. In addition, our ftp server records whether your access was in binary or ASCII mode, and whatever e-mail address you enter as a "password" for anonymous ftp access (your browser may decide this; e.g., under Netscape, Edit Preferences, Advanced section, there is an option called "send email address as anonymous FTP password").

E-Mail
Any incoming electronic mail to APEX will generate several log entries that include the routine information associated with normal SMTP (Simple Mail Transport Protocol) operation. Such log entries do NOT include the body (main text) of the message.
In all cases, the information on mail transactions is collected and retained in log files which will not be made available to the general public. The log entries will contain the e-mail address of the sender, its size, the number of recipients, the message ID, and the actual recipient within APEX and status of delivery (deferred, success, etc.)
This information is kept purely to help us diagnose system problems, or activities that may violate our Acceptable Use Policy or other Operation