LHC@home

Following the implementation of GDPR compliance with BOINC, user consent is now required to export BOINC statistics from LHC@home to BOINC statistics sites, such as BOINC stats.

To grant your consent, please login to the LHC@home site and update your project preferences. Once logged on to the LHC@home site, please navigate to the Project Preferences page.

Click on "Edit preferences" and then tick the box on the line:
"Do you consent to exporting your data to BOINC statistics aggregation Web sites?"

This will enable continued export of statistics from LHC@home for your BOINC user account. If you leave the box unchecked, statistics should no longer be exported.

Thanks for your contributions to LHC@home!

It is unfortunate that this GDPR thing has been implemented the way it has.

As a long term user (many years), it was annoying to find when logging into my account that now I have to justify being a volunteer of your project.

So I clicked on the "I AGREE" button to agree to the terms of use and to move to my account.

NO you have not agreed to our terms of use ????? What? I just clicked on "I Agree"

So I log in again and this time I have to "Tick The Box" as well as clicking on "I AGREE", and then finally get into my account.

Then I have to navigate to my preferences and tick another box to get my statistics exported.

The default should be to ALLOW the export of personal data , if you don't want this THEN you have the option to block the export by removing the tick.

Einstein have done the same as you have and made the default OFF, when it has been ON since inception of BOINC. Very annoying, and it has been voiced over there as well.

Suddenly having to agree to terms of use of a product, when I have been using that product for many years, seems like a backward step to me.
You are more likely to scare people away than to attract them.

Thanks for you time
Conan

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Personally I tend to agree with you Conan, but we need to comply with the GDPR regulations, and therefore the implementation of this within BOINC requires that users actually give their consent.

If any of you should have similar problems with the consent pages, or get another error message, please clean your browser history and cookies and try a new login with a fresh browser session.

I checked that box when the issue first came up and my credits have been exported since.

Today I see that BOINCSTATS thinks I had 0 credits. I double checked my preferences here and the box is still checked.

It appears I do have some credits due today so I'm wondering if there's a separate problem or if there's something else I need to do regarding the exporting.

Thanks.

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Boincstats have for the most User no credits today.
Free-DC have Credits!?!

Boincstats have for the most User no credits today.
Free-DC have Credits!?!

Oops! Thanks, maeax. I should have noticed that.

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At Free-DC until this whole change settles down I set a short delay before the user stats are deleted when they are no longer in the xml file, after the 4th update the users will be permanently deleted.

I'll remove this delay at some point.

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This may not be the right place for this question but I'm not sure where that place is.

Anybody know why there are no credits from LHC on BOINCSTATS for 3 days? I'm asking on this site rather than the BOINCSTATS forum because LHC did have the problem for a couple of days in late December when the server was upgraded. It's been 3 days now with the same symptom.

Thanks.

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Anybody know why there are no credits from LHC on BOINCSTATS for 3 days?
I'm asking on this site rather than the BOINCSTATS forum because LHC did have the problem for a couple of days in late December when the server was upgraded.
It's been 3 days now with the same symptom.

As I've understood the update mechanism of BOINCstats, Willy's program checks the size of the export files.
When the files are much smaller, the export files from LHC/ import files for BOINCstats are not used. Willy has to do it manual (when he has time).
The team export is updated at BOINCstats, what's logical cause the number of teams is not changed (much),
but the host and user export files may have shrunken, due to the re-introduced needed consent leaving out a lot of members/users/hosts.

Thanks, Crystal.

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Thank you for the explanation. I use a false name and a VPN to protect my identity and it is legal to do so. I do not understand why you have to protect my points which has no monetary value. I have spent a lot of money to have the PRIVILEGE of doing your work for no pay.

Have you actually requested clarification of that rule from GDPR since we are volunteers helping a research project and the scores are meaningless since it is tied to an anonymous name, therefore it should not apply to you..?

I believe the rule should be to continue exporting stats as a default but give the user a choice to opt out if they desire to do so.

Continue on this path will only cause anger of your existing users and are likely to pull out. I have already pulled out of CPDN, Einstein and now will do do here as well because I am not getting support from you by making it harder to see my scores at a central location.

Good Luck with your work, hope you have enough volunteers left to make it worthwhile running it.

BTW, I did tick the box and although I have been running the project on 16 machines 24/7 for the last 4 days at least, I have not seen the stats exported and there is no change in BoinStats.

Boincstats is back.
Thank you.

Boincstats is back.
Thank you.

What maeax said!

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Boincstats is back.
Thank you.

At least the user information, not yet the hosts (never looked into that).

On the other hand it shows that 'only' 1,632 users so far have given consent to export their stats.
Yeah, I know: From the 163,850 all-time users most are not active anymore or have never been.
8,764 users have got credit granted in December or November.

[...] I use a false name and a VPN to protect my identity and it is legal to do so. I do not understand why you have to protect my points [...]

This kind of information must also be protected. LHC may use your data only for the purpose you have allowed it to. In particular, LHC is allowed to use it in statistics on its own website, but is not allowed to share it with third parties unless you give your permission to that use.

Article 4, point 1, of GDPR states to what kind of users the Regulation is applicable to:

For the purposes of this Regulation:
(1) ‘personal data’ means any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person (‘data subject’); an identifiable natural person is one who can be identified, directly or indirectly, in particular by reference to an identifier such as a name, an identification number, location data, an online identifier or to one or more factors specific to the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural or social identity of that natural person;

Although "Cruncher Pete" is not your legal name, it is your "online identifier" and therefore LHC is forced to protect your data, unless you allow it to share your data with third parties. Just tick the box and you have given your permission. LHC will then export your statistics, since that is what you want.

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BOINCstats is once again showing stats for all users and not just the ones who have given their consent. Or everybody have just given their consent...

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No, the consent feature is still enabled and our users export table only contains records of users who have given their consent.

E.g. my user is in there, while Agile Boincers is not.

2730 users have given their consent so far on LHC@home.

If I interpret this view on Boincstats correctly, those users with no change over the last day, week and month have not given consent, as BOINCstats shows the last exported value.

No, the consent feature is still enabled and our users export table only contains records of users who have given their consent.

E.g. my user is in there, while Agile Boincers is not.

2730 users have given their consent so far on LHC@home.

If I interpret this view on Boincstats correctly, those users with no change over the last day, week and month have not given consent, as BOINCstats shows the last exported value.

Anyway there are a lot more users visible in the list than there was yesterday.

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What is the "agree terms of use" checkbox for ? when did it appear ? why is it not asked at login at some point ? any relation to GDPR ?

Thx

What is the "agree terms of use" checkbox for ? when did it appear ? why is it not asked at login at some point ? any relation to GDPR ?

Thx

Probably you ticked it already in your preferences, because you never log out (ticked stay logged in).

The Terms of use etc, you may find here: https://lhcathome.cern.ch/lhcathome/create_account_form.php?next_url=