Privacy notice

Notice under Articles 13 and 14 of Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (GDPR). Last updated: 22 October 2026.

1. Who processes the data

The website statisticasociale.it is run by the Social Statistics Group, an informal network of scholars in the STAT-03/B field. Personal data are processed as joint controllers under Article 26 GDPR by the group’s coordinators: Filomena Maggino, Simone Di Zio and Massimo Aria.

The joint controllers have agreed on their respective responsibilities and have set up a single point of contact for anyone wishing to exercise their rights or ask for information: info [at] statisticasociale [dot] it. The essence of the joint-controller arrangement is available on request at the same address. No data protection officer (DPO) has been appointed, as none is required.

2. Which data, why, and on what legal basis

Browsing the website

The server hosting the website automatically records some technical data for each visit (IP address, date and time, requested page, browser type). These data are needed to run the website and protect it from abuse; the legal basis is the controllers’ legitimate interest (Art. 6(1)(f)). They are not used to identify visitors, except at the request of judicial authorities in the event of unlawful acts.

The website does not use visitor analytics, advertising or profiling, and does not load resources from third-party servers: fonts and chart libraries are hosted on the website itself. Links to external websites (for example bibliographic databases or other initiatives) lead to pages with their own privacy notices.

Cookies

The website uses a single cookie, pll_language, which remembers the chosen language (Italian or English) and lasts 12 months. It is a technical cookie and does not require consent (Art. 122 of the Italian Privacy Code and the Italian Data Protection Authority’s Guidelines of 10 June 2021). Members of the editorial team who log in to the private area also receive WordPress’s technical session cookies.

Membership form

People who fill in the membership form provide: first and last name, email, position, role, institution and department, country, Italian academic field, research interests, web page, ORCID, Scopus Author ID, Google Scholar profile and a short profile. Fields marked with an asterisk are needed to handle the request; the others are optional.

  • Handling membership (email verification, review of the request, membership of the group and communications about its activities). Legal basis: steps taken at the data subject’s request (Art. 6(1)(b)).
  • Publication in the list of members of name, role, institution, short profile and, if provided, research profiles (ORCID, Scopus, Google Scholar, web page). This happens only with the consent given in the form (Art. 6(1)(a)), which can be withdrawn at any time. The email address is never published.
  • Abuse prevention: to limit automated submissions, the IP address is kept in hashed form for one hour. Legal basis: legitimate interest (Art. 6(1)(f)).

Emails and contact form

People who write to the group, by email or through the form on the Contact page, provide their name, email address and the data contained in the message, which are used only to reply. The form does not store messages on the website: it forwards them to the group’s mailbox. Legal basis: the data subject’s request (Art. 6(1)(b)) and the legitimate interest in handling correspondence (Art. 6(1)(f)).

Thematic Atlas

The Atlas processes bibliographic data that are already public (publications, co-authors, affiliations, keywords) of scholars in the STAT-03/B field, taken from the Scopus database and cross-checked against OpenAlex. The purpose is scientific research on, and dissemination of, the discipline; the legal basis is legitimate interest (Art. 6(1)(f)), with the safeguards provided for scientific research (Art. 89). Only aggregated data are published on the website: an automated check prevents the publication of data relating to individual people. Anyone included in the analysis may object at any time by writing to the point of contact.

3. Who can access the data

Data are not sold or transferred to third parties, and are disclosed only in the cases described above (list of members, with consent). They are accessed by the joint controllers and by the members of the website’s editorial team, who are authorised and instructed to process them.

To run the website, the joint controllers rely on providers that process data on their behalf, as processors under Article 28 GDPR:

  • Amazon Web Services EMEA SARL (Luxembourg), which provides the server hosting the website (Amazon Lightsail) and the service that sends automatic emails, such as the membership form confirmation (Amazon SES). Both are located in the AWS Frankfurt region, Germany;
  • Netsons (Italy), which manages the domain and the info@statisticasociale.it mailbox; messages sent to this address are forwarded to the institutional mailbox of one of the coordinators.

Data are stored on servers located in the European Union. Amazon Web Services belongs to a group based in the United States: any access from the United States (for example for technical support or at the request of an authority) is covered by the European Commission’s adequacy decision on the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework, in which Amazon participates, and by the standard contractual clauses included in AWS’s data processing agreement.

4. How long data are kept

  • Membership requests never confirmed by email: automatically deleted after 30 days.
  • Requests not accepted: deleted at the end of the review.
  • Members’ data: for as long as the membership lasts; deleted within 30 days of withdrawal.
  • Emails: for as long as needed to handle the request, and in any case no longer than 24 months.
  • Server technical logs: automatically overwritten on a rolling basis.
  • Database backups, which also contain membership forms: 14 days.
  • Hashed IP address for abuse prevention: one hour. Language cookie: 12 months.

5. Your rights

At any time you may request access to your data, rectification, erasure, restriction of processing and portability, and you may object to processing based on legitimate interest (Articles 15–21 GDPR). You may withdraw your consent to publication in the list of members or leave the group, without affecting the lawfulness of processing carried out before. To do so, simply write to info [at] statisticasociale [dot] it. You also have the right to lodge a complaint with the Italian Data Protection Authority (Garante per la protezione dei dati personali) or with the supervisory authority of your country of residence.

No decisions are made solely on the basis of automated processing, including profiling.

6. Updates

This notice may be updated; the version in force is always published on this page, with the date of the last update.