GDPR: restricting access to project statistics downloads

Hi everyone,

we'd like to announce that we're going to disable anonymous access to our project statistics downloads, becoming effective tomorrow, June 14th at 15:00 CEST. The reasoning behind this move is the new EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and its obligation concerning the publication of personal information of our users. We've discussed this matter with our community beforehand and found a way that seems to be acceptable for most. Fear not, the following services and projects already registered individual access accounts with us and will therefore be able to gather our statistics data as usual:

  • BOINCstats
  • BOINC Combined Statistics
  • Free-DC
  • GridRepublic
  • Gridcoin

We're also planning to add a new feature that will allow individual users to fetch their statistics data automatically and in machine readable form (presumably XML). We're going to announce that and further related changes as soon as they're ready.

Cheers,
Oliver

 

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Bernd Machenschalk
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Stats dump access is

Stats dump access is restricted now.

BM

Local RF Dude
Local RF Dude
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Boinc Combined Stats is not

Boinc Combined Stats is not including any of my credits from Einstein@home.  The two previous posts seem to be at odds.  How do I get credit for my work on Einstein.

B. B. Stanfield
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I'm having the same issues as

I'm having the same issues as LOCAL RF DUDE in that my stats no longer include Einstein@home. When will we see credits returned to our accounts?

Neil Munday
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Hi,I run

Hi,

I run https://boinc.mundayweb.com which has provided customisable user stats graphics since BOINC began.

It would be great if my users could continue to see their Einstein@Home stats. 

Please can I request access to your XML stats files?

Many thanks,

Neil. 

Oliver Behnke
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Local RF Dude / B. B.

Local RF Dude / B. B. Stanfield: we'll contact BOINC Combined Stats to see what's wrong. FYI, you are getting your credit from us, here at our project. IOW, that's totally independent of any external stats site.

Neil: I'll send you a PM with the details.

Cheers

 

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Oliver Behnke
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Local RF Dude / B. B.

Local RF Dude / B. B. Stanfield: I can see both your records at BOINC Combined Stats. Can you confirm that?

 

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Vit Kliber
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Hi, I

Hi,

I run https://stats.czechnationalteam.cz/ which has provided user stats for Czech National Team.

It would be great if my users could continue to see their Einstein@Home stats.

Please can I request access to your XML stats files?

Many thanks,

Vít Kliber, Czech National Team.

marsinph
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Hello, Did you exclude

Hello,
Did you exclude SetiBZH from stats ???
Also Formula BOINC have no more acces !
There are hundreds of billions "lost credits"

Best regards from the first belgian team.

[img]http://boincstats.com/signature/-1/user/8912/sig.png[/img]

Aurum
Aurum
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When will E@H credit be shown

When will E@H credit be shown on my BOINC account so I can earn Gridcoin???

Bernd Machenschalk
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The new EU General Data

The new EU General Data Protection Regulation requires us to deal with your data in a responsible way. Here in particular this means that we don't openly give it to anyone that we don't know and who hasn't confirmed to us that he will also treat it with responsibility. Thus we disallowed anonymous access to the full project statistics about every host, user and team (i.e. the full stats DB dump) and restricted it to the people / sites that registered with us. Nothing and noone got excluded in particular. This step was coordinated with the most popular stats sites, publicly discussed and announced well in advance. It's still possible to contact us to get access to the stats dumps, however currently it may tike some more time at our end to process such requests.

Gridcoin apparently systematically relied on such anonymous access to information about anyone from anywhere, so this change affects gridcoin more than other ordinary stats sites. I know that they're working on a solution, but there's nothing we can do from our end to speed that up.

In any case no credit will be lost at all; depending on the way or site you count it at, it might show up with more or less delay.

BM

ChristianVirtual
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Send PM to Oliver asking what

Send PM to Oliver asking what is needed to get access back to feed our team stats sites. Hope it can be resolved soon.

marsinph
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Hello Bernd, I understand

Hello Bernd,

I understand about anonymous acces.
But SETIBZH (and FormulaBoinc) are wel known stats !
Why they are blocked ?
Best regards from first Belgian team admin

[img]http://boincstats.com/signature/-1/user/8912/sig.png[/img]

Eskomorko
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It looks like my account is

It looks like my account is having some credit issues. My boinc.exe is currently showing 246 million points which is correct, but boincstats keeps saying 14 319 points total and identical amount of 14 319 points everyday since june 13th?

My team stats etc has also zeroed. My current team status is switched to N/A now.

Eskomorko
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It looks like there is TWO

It looks like there is TWO accounts/CPIDs linked to one computer and now BAM! is showing the wrong one and the right one still updates correctly. I tried to synchronize my account again but still no success.

Neil Munday
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Hi,Is it also possible to

Hi,

Is it also possible to have access to the Albert@Home stats as well? I tried using my Einstein@Home server credentials, but these were rejected.

Cheers,

Neil.

bcavnaugh
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Well they have no Badges and

Well they have no Badges and Mining has Taken over BOINC in general so it is odd that not all the Other BOINC Projects did this, but WCG did this as well.

Sad that the EU is trying to take over the World.

Funny that they are more powerful than the United Nations now, Sad Day for the United Nations IMO.

main-qimg-02b4d0ba62b06aaa37c8a0c95b7fd298-c

 


Crunching@EVGA The Number One Team in the BOINC Community. Folding@EVGA The Number One Team in the Folding@Home Community.

ChristianVirtual
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What do I need to do to

What do I need to do to obtain access to stats again ? Can a admin/moderator please contact me via eMail/PM on details of rules ?

Thanks

CV

Oliver Behnke
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marsinph wrote: But SETIBZH

marsinph wrote:

But SETIBZH (and FormulaBoinc) are wel known stats !
Why they are blocked ?

As Bernd already tried to explain: we're not explicitly blocking anyone, we locked down anonymous access for everyone. All services and individuals who asked for a personalized account in time got one. I'm not aware of SETIBZH or FormulaBoinc so they're not necessarily well known, but they can certainly request individual accounts. They just need to PM or email us.

Cheers,
Oliver

 

Einstein@Home Project

Oliver Behnke
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ChristianVirtual wrote:Can a

ChristianVirtual wrote:
Can a admin/moderator please contact me via eMail/PM on details of rules ?

Done :-)

 

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Oliver Behnke
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Neil Munday wrote:Is it also

Neil Munday wrote:
Is it also possible to have access to the Albert@Home stats as well? I tried using my Einstein@Home server credentials, but these were rejected.

Sure, and sorry for the delay. We're understaffed due to vacation and sick-leave right now. We'll look into this shortly and get back to you via PM or email.

Update: that got already resolved in the meantime.

Oliver

 

Einstein@Home Project

mmonnin
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Not sure why a forum thread

Not sure why a forum thread was locked in favor of a news thread but I was going to add a comment about one of the last posts in there.

Gridcoin production has dropped in half over the last month. I am in no way associated with that team, just pointing it out.

https://stats3.free-dc.org/stats.php?page=team&proj=eah&team=13630

Oliver Behnke
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Well, (historically) there

Well, (historically) there were three threads dealing with the same topic, that's why. Avoiding duplicate discussions. This one is the most visible one of the three. Easy choice.

Again, Gridcoin confirmed they have full access to our data almost a month ago. I can't speak for them if there are still internal issues at their site but we're waiting for their feedback on the current status of things.

Oliver

 

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Bernd Machenschalk
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Sadly, I plan stopping

In a locked thread, SHOPXXL-COM wrote:

Sadly, I plan stopping crunching this project until Gridcoin project can again access the required data that it has to rely on in order to process its own data. :( I will try to find a replacement project that can afford to somehow *not comply* with the new privacy rules that have been introduced by the EU.... i.e a project with servers outside of the EU.

Well, legally every project that has participants from the EU will need to comply with these EU regulations, and the BOINC developers, driven mainly by E@H. WCG and CERN/LHC are currently working hard to ensure that GPDR compliance is available for all projects. Sooner or later all projects will implement similar restrictions.

Gridcoin as a project with a central server does have access to the projects stats. The problem seems to be that they relied on anonymous access to the complete stats from every "wallet" (which I assume to be distributed). I know that they're working on a solution, but apparently they're not finished yet, and there's nothing we can do at our end to speed that up.

BM

ChristianVirtual
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Thanks Oliver. reveiced your

Thanks Oliver. reveiced your input and will reintegrate on weekend. Thanks also for the additional links.

Very helpful ! 

Oliver Behnke
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Sure, you're welcome. Let us

Sure, you're welcome. Let us know if we can be of any further assistance.

Cheers,
Oliver

 

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Oliver Behnke
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Update regarding

Update regarding Gridcoin

NeuralMiner (NM) from Gridcoin got back to us and said that they originally planned to reenable our project with the next release. They're now trying to fast-track us such that we should be back "soon-ish". In the meantime feel free to message NM above or use any of their social media channels to reach out to them:

 
Hope that helps,
Oliver

 

Einstein@Home Project

Tom Poleski
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Why is the Einstein@Home

Why is the

Einstein@Home Progress

(Credits per day)
 
 
graphic on the main page not being updated?
Also the same graphic on my stats page?

Oliver Behnke
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How do you tell it

How do you tell it isn't? The spike just dwarfs the regular values due to scaling.

Oliver

 

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Tom Poleski
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Because the graphic hasn't

Because I check it almost every day and the graphic hasn't changed ever since the whole GDPR thing. That one spike has been in that same place ever since June, and hasn't moved. And same goes with my stats page on my profile. The graphic seems frozen in place. Before June it used to change frequently.

Oliver Behnke
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We'll keep an eye on it and

We'll keep an eye on it and will fix it if that's indeed the case.

Thanks

 

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Oliver Behnke
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Ok, after a day I checked the

Ok, after a day I checked the data again and the charts are updated. Keep in mind that you're looking at 90 values which means the currently visible peak is only shifting slightly, yet clearly visible on comparison.

Oliver

 

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Tom Poleski
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Oh, okay. Thanks for

Oh, okay. Thanks for checking. I'm guessing after a little while longer, once the really large spike moves off the edge of the graph, we'll start seeing more regular, smaller spikes? Also, is the graph on my account dashboard and the one on the "Home" page supposed to be the same thing? I was under the impression that one is to show only my own "credits per day" while the other one is for the overall project. I admit I'm not entirely clear on how to read that graph..

Oliver Behnke
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Yes, after the spike you'll

Yes, after the spike you'll see a normal curve again (scaling issue). No, they are not the same, but whole project vs. your personal account. However, they show the same characteristic as they both suffer from the same scaling issue which is the result of when the external statistics service we query got excluded from our stats exports, duh (see first post). When that connection was reestablished all credit that "accumulated" in the meantime was attributed once, hence the spike.

Anyhow, those graphs are mainly eye-candy that should give you some indication of how the project and you performed over the past 60 days. That's also why there's no actual y-axis :-)

Hope this helps,
Oliver

 

 

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Tom Poleski
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Yes, I understand now. Thank

Yes, I understand now. Thank you! :D

an0n
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Hey guys I'm curious about

Hey guys

I'm curious about the rationale behind Einstein's move towards restricting anonymous stats export. Specifically, I wanted to point out that World Community Grid conducted a very lengthy legal review of GDPR. In the end, they decided to not implement more restrictions on their data. The actual post is here:

https://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/forums/wcg/viewpostinthread?post=588719

I am pleased to report that access to the data export files has been re-activated and is available again. Volunteers who wish to access the data will not need to sign a Data Processing Agreement or obtain tokens.

The review concluded that if volunteers are given explicit notice of and sufficient control over how their data is used, there was no legal justification for imposing any further restrictions on the data export files. The review also concluded that we will likely need to reinforce and strengthen the consent language in a few places on our website, but that doesn't stop us from opening up access to the data exports in the meantime.

This process took significantly longer than any of us hoped or anticipated, and we understand people's frustrations while we had to disable access pending the legal review. But we felt it was important to push back aggressively on what was initially a process more appropriate to a commercial engagement than a philanthropic initiative and to persevere until we had an outcome that was both GDPR-compliant as well as volunteer-friendly. 

Finally, a reminder that while access to the data exports is now unrestricted, the export files only include data of volunteers who have opted to make their information public.

Thanks as always for all your support, Juan

What was the reason for Einstein going ahead with these changes when IBM decided against it? Serious question here, I'm not trying to stir the pot or anything.

Oliver Behnke
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Hi! The point here is that

Hi!

The point here is that we're talking about a legal topic and laws are always up to interpretation - that's why we have courts. WCG/IBM made their choice after consulting with their lawyers; we made our choice after consulting with our data protection officer (and thereby also our lawyers). We interpret the relevant GDPR clauses in a way that we want to be able to tell who is consuming the personal data we explicitly publish for external consumption, since we can be held accountable of how we share such data. If WCG/IBM decided to be less restrictive that's their prerogative. We chose differently.

Hope this helps,

Oliver

 

 

 

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[AF>Libristes] Dudumomo
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I'm a bit late here, but I am

I'm a bit late here, but I am the admin of https://statsbzh.boinc-af.org

May I have access (Login/pass?) to the stats?
Thank you

 

PS: IM sent already

MyUneo, the Cupid of Services

Oliver Behnke
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Sure, please check your

Sure, please check your inbox...

Oliver

 

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Kashra
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Can someone bring me up to

Can someone bring me up to speed regarding Einstein and Gridcoin?

Thanks in advance, it is quite hard to find some answers on this topic. Has the GDPR problem been solved somehow?

Oliver Behnke
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They've kept telling us that

They've kept telling us that they're working on it. They have everything they need from us so there's nothing we can do other than ask and ask again. My advise would be that the community should reach out to them to add some (positive) pressure to the matter.

Hope this helps,
Oliver

 

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Oliver Behnke
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There's an update by

There's an update by NeuralMiner, a Gridcoin representative.

 

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TeamAdmin
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Hello administrators, I'm the

Hello administrators,
I'm the founder of the boinc-wide team Boinc.Italy, and the relative community www.boincitaly.org
We have a stats section on our portal, we are working on a new version and we'd like to get einstein@home working again.
Is it possible to have credentials to access project stats xml data?

Thank you.

Paolo.

Oliver Behnke
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Hi Paolo, I'll get back to

Hi Paolo, I'll get back to you via PM.

 

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