Privacy policy

Who runs PhD TV

PhD TV (phdtv.net) is run by Nikolaos Batalas, in Greece, who decides what is done with the personal data described here and is its controller under the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). “We” means Nikolaos Batalas and the curators who help keep the listings. Write to nikolaos.batalas@gmail.com about anything on this page.

In short

• We show no ads and sell no data.
• Reading the site needs no account. Visits are counted on our own server, without cookies.
• An account holds your name, your email address and what you choose to keep there.
• The listings come from universities’ public announcements. Anyone named in one can ask to be taken off.
• You can ask us what we hold about you, and have it corrected or deleted.

When you read the site

Server logs. Our server notes each request: your IP address, the page, the time, where you came from and which browser you use. The logs are kept for 14 days, to keep the site running and to stop abuse.

Counting visits. Software on our own server counts visits without cookies: which pages are read and in which language, which defenses are opened, what is pressed and how far each page is scrolled, and the site you came from. Your IP address tells it the country and city and one visit from another, and is not kept. It also tells which organisation’s network a page was read from, an internet provider’s or a university’s, from a table on our own server; where many universities share a network, we ask the public registry of internet addresses which one holds that block of addresses, never the address itself. If you are signed in, your visits are recorded under your name and account number.

Cookies and videos. One cookie remembers your language for a year and another keeps you signed in for 30 days; a few settings stay in your browser and never reach us. Streams and recordings play from the university’s video service or a public one, and load only when you press play. From then on, as whenever you follow a link off the site, that site’s own policy applies.

Recorded visits. When we ask someone to try the site, we send them a link. A visit that starts from such a link, or a curator’s own, is recorded in full on our server, with what is typed hidden.

If you make an account

An account holds your email address, your name, a scrambled form of your password, and what you do with it: the defenses you save, the fields you follow, what you send in, your claims, and a page about your own defense with its pictures. The few questions we ask after you sign up are optional, and only we read the answers. Your calendar feed has a private address: anyone who has it can see what you saved.

To delete your account, or change what it holds, write to nikolaos.batalas@gmail.com from the address on the account. You can see what it holds on your account.

What you send us

Feedback from the foot of a page is mailed to us and kept, with what you tell us about yourself and the page you wrote from, tied to your account if you are signed in. A defense or a page you send in is read by a curator and, if accepted, published on the site and in its feeds; your name and address are not published unless you wrote them in. A picture you add can be opened by anyone who has its address, and we do not strip what a camera writes into a photo. If you start a submission from a link, our server fetches that page and a language model reads it to fill in the form.

We send mail only when you asked for it or something you did calls for it: a confirmation code, a password reset, the topic mail at the pace you chose, a curator’s decision on something you sent. Every topic mail has a link that stops it.

If your defense is listed

Most listings are copied from a university’s public announcement of a defense; some are sent in. A listing shows the candidate’s name, the thesis title and abstract, the university, the time, the stream or recording, and the supervisors and committee with their roles. Where a public academic profile is certain, it is linked; we look names up in a public bibliography to find them. Every supervisor and committee member named in a listing has a page that gathers, by name, the listings that name them; search engines are asked not to index it.

Language models help us keep the listings: they read the announcements, find the abstract in the published thesis, write the plain line under each title, find defenses that are alike and write the daily briefing. They are given the announcements and the listings, never anything about the people who read the site.

So that a curator can write to you by hand, we may keep a work email address found on a public page such as your staff page. It is never published and never mailed by the site itself; write to nikolaos.batalas@gmail.com and we remove it. If you are named in a listing and would rather not be, write and we take it down, keeping a hidden note so that the next night’s reading does not list it again. If something is wrong, tell us and we correct it.

Who else handles the data

These do part of the work for us, and see what that part needs:

• The company that hosts our server, in France, where the site, the database, the logs, the backups and the recorded visits live.
• A mail service in the United States, which sees your address and the message.
• Language-model services in the United States and in China, which see the announcements and the listings.
• A public bibliography of computer science, in Germany, which we ask about the names in the listings.
• The public registry of internet addresses for Europe, in the Netherlands, asked who holds a network or a block of addresses on a network that many universities share.

Some of them are outside the European Union. What the language models are given is about the listings, not about the people who read the site. We sell no personal data and share none for advertising.

Why we are allowed to

• Your account and the mail you asked for: that is the service you signed up for.
• Your answers about yourself, and a recorded visit on a link we sent you: you agreed to them, and can take that back at any time.
• The listings, a work address kept to write to someone, the visit counting and the server logs: our legitimate interest in telling people about public defenses and in knowing that the site works. You can object to any of these.

How long we keep it

• Server logs 14 days; a sign-in 30 days; a sign-up waiting for its code 30 minutes; a link to reset a password one day.
• Your account and everything tied to it, including the visits recorded under your name: until you ask us to delete it. Feedback and recorded visits: until we delete them, or you ask.
• A work address a curator kept: until the person asks us to remove it, or no listing names them any more. A listing: for as long as the defense is listed. Visits counted without a name: for as long as the site runs.
• Anything deleted stays in our backups for up to two weeks.

Your rights

Under the GDPR you can ask us for a copy of the personal data we hold about you, and to correct it, delete it, limit what we do with it or stop using it, including in a listing; where you agreed to something, you can take that back. Write to nikolaos.batalas@gmail.com, from the address on your account if it is about an account. We answer within a month.

If you think we have handled your data wrongly, you can complain to the Hellenic Data Protection Authority, or to the authority of the country where you live. PhD TV is not meant for children: an account needs you to be at least 16, as the terms of service say.

Changes to this policy

When this policy changes, so does the date at the top. If a change affects what happens to the data in your account, we email everyone with an account before it takes effect.