Terms of Service / GTC

State as of Nov. 24th, 2016

General Information

Even though it should be obvious, there are a few rules for using this Jabber server. All in all they set the simple guideline that one should refrain from any actions which would hinder this server's operation, disturb or insult other users or break the law in any way. Violations are punished with expulsion from the server.

Limitations

The use of the services offered on this server is exclusively reserved for members of the Aachen universities. A valid email address of the respective university is required for verification.

German law applies. All forms of flood, spam, insult, discrimination, illegal file sharing, harassment of other users and commercial advertising are prohibited.

All activities which could lead to a drawback of the server operation are prohibited. This applies in particular to the operation of bots. If you are not sure whether the server operation would be disturbed, you should not operate a bot.

In general, we reserve the right to exclude users who violate these terms of use without prior warning from the server and to delete their account.

Terms of service from the IT Center

We explicitly point out that here, too, the usage conditions on the Jabber server are governed by the IT center's terms and conditions regarding the IT infrastructure.

Terms of service from other IM services

If you have contacts from other Jabber servers in your contact list, the communication with these contacts naturally is subject to the terms of use of both servers.

If, for example, you are chatting with users from jabber.org, you are subject to the terms of use of the RWTH server and to the terms of use of jabber.org.

Responsible handling of passwords

Each user is fully responsible for his account. To avoid misuse of your account, you should be careful with your password. This includes:

  • selecting a secure password which contains at least digits, lower and uppercase letters and which has a length of at least 8 characters
  • not selecting the same password for the Jabber server as for another service, e.g. email account or CampusOffice
  • never passing on the password to third parties
  • never leaving the password openly visible so that third parties can read it

Services

We make every effort to ensure that our services are always available. Unfortunately, we can not guarantee this. In particular, maintenance work on the server is necessary from time to time. If possible, we try to announce maintenance and to move it to times of low activity, but unfortunately this is not always possible.

Data privacy

In general, only the data necessary to operate the server is stored on the server. In detail, the following data is stored:

  • Name, JabberID, email address and contents of your VCard
  • The password is only stored in form of a secure SCRAM hash on the server and cannot be reconstructed
  • Date and time of the account's registration, last time of use and current online time
  • Online status and status messages
  • The contact list is stored completely on the server.
  • Multi user chats (MUCs) store a certain number or all messages depending on the moderator's setting.
  • Offline messages must be stored on the server in principle.
  • Some clients store additional data (such as the "Folders, PubSub, ...") on the server. Through his client, the user has control over what data is stored on the server.
  • When users use the optional Message Archive Managent feature to synchronize chat sessions on different devices, this data must also be stored on the server in principle. However, messages older than 90 days are automatically deleted from the server.
  • When users use the optional HTTP File Upload feature to exchange files with contacts, these files must be stored on the server as a matter of principle. Users can use this website to see which files they have uploaded, view them and selectively delete them. After one month, these files are automatically deleted from the server.
  • If the above data is in the database during a backup, it will be saved permanently. Confidential messages should therefore be encrypted with OpenPGP, OMEMO or OTR. Messages in the Message Archive Management and files via HTTP File Upload are excluded from the backup.

No data will be passed on to third parties unless we are legally obliged to provide the data, except for data which is obviously public:

  • Information from the VCard and avatar images (the user search is accessible to all registered users)
  • Chat messages and status information in the public Multi User Chats

Content Liability

The pages on https://jabber.rwth-aachen.de are designed, published and updated by the IT Center. If a Jabber web client is used, the respective creator (ie the users on the other side of the chat conversation) is responsible for the content of the chat messages.

Change of General Terms and Conditions

Should the terms of service change, a Jabber message will be sent to all users. In addition, an email is sent to the email address given at registration. The new terms of service shall be effective no later than 14 days after the change. Anyone who does not delete their account from the server within this period will agree to the new terms and conditions.

 

 

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