Information about you: how we use it and with whom we share it


This policy applies to personal data about users of the Cirrus service. It relates to data gathered on the service itself. The details that you provide on registration are stored in the SAFE and will be processed according to the SAFE data privacy policy.

We may store details of any aspects of service use, including, for example, the amount of processor time and storage space used by user accounts. This may include some personally identifiable data such as the network addresses you use to connect to the system. We will use this information to help us manage and administer the service, to review, analyse and improve its performance, security, its patterns of use, and to plan for the future.

This information will be available to appropriate members of the staff who are working on the Cirrus project. Resource usage information will be uploaded to the SAFE where it will be processed according to the SAFE data privacy policy.

Periodically, the service may be examined by auditors acting on behalf of the system owners, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). These may see your personal data. They will be acting under conditions of professional confidentiality.

We reserve the right to monitor use of the service by your accounts, including anything transmitted over the Internet, and any data or software stored on our systems, in order to ensure that you and all the other users are complying with the Terms and Conditions of Access and not breaking the law. We must allow any court or other competent authority to inspect our records of your use of the system, or your data, and to take copies of it, if this is legally required; and we must report your activities to the competent authorities if we know or suspect that you are breaking the law. These are legal obligations for us.

We would not be able to fulfil our contract to administer the service properly, nor adequately account to our funding bodies for our conduct of this project, without processing your personal data in this way.

We may retain the data that we gather on the system for the duration of the Cirrus service. Data that could be used to identify you directly will not be retained longer than two years after the end of the service.

If you have any questions about the treatment of your personal data, please contact The Cirrus Helpdesk.