Help: Privacy

Understanding Privacy

Documents you upload aren't public until you publish them.

If you are concerned about the secrecy of documents you have uploaded to sourceAFRICA and annotations you have made to them, you should keep a couple of things in mind:

  • sourceAFRICA is beta software.

  • sourceAFRICA does have a privacy policy.

  • All documents uploaded to sourceAFRICA are passed through OpenCalais via its API. Take a look at its terms of service if you haven't already.

  • This is the internet. Your documents are only ever as private as your password, and documents shared internally are only as private as the least responsible user in your newsroom. There are countless ways to compromise your account, such as logging in from a publicly accessible workstation and failing to log out or accessing sourceAFRICA over a public wireless connection.

All of that said, we're doing our best to ensure that private material is and remains private.

sourceAFRICA's Privacy Settings

When you upload a document, you can decide whether or not you're ready to make it public. By default, no one but you will be able to see documents you've uploaded to sourceAFRICA. When you're ready to share your documents, you can select them and use the "Edit Access Level" options in the "Edit" menu to make them public.

Use the "Private to my newsroom" option to give your colleagues access without making the document public. You can also share individual projects with other sourceAFRICA users, whether or not they're in your newsroom, using our collaboration tools.

Who Can Read Notes?

Your "private" notes will always be private. Public notes, on the other hand, are as public as the document. If access to the document is limited to your newsroom, your "public" notes will be able to be read and edited by anyone in your newsroom. When you make a document public, your public notes become visible to other sourceAFRICA users along with it.

Still have questions about privacy and permissions? Don't hesitate to contact us.