9.5 BioLine Data Use and Protection

1. What Information BioLine Collects

User personal information is any personal information about our users that can identify them alone or in combination with other information, or is otherwise reasonably associated with them, such as username, password, email address, real name, IP address, and photo. It does not include aggregated, non-personally-identifiable information; we may use such aggregated information to operate, analyse, improve, and optimise the website and services.

Information you provide directly to BioLine includes: registration information (basic information such as a valid email address provided when creating an account); payment information (such as billing and third-party payment information provided when registering a paid account or purchasing resource packs; the platform does not process or store your full payment-card information, which is handled by third-party payment processors); and profile information (such as an avatar and bio you choose to provide). Information BioLine collects automatically when you use the services includes: transaction information, usage information (page visits, referring sites, IP address, session information, and request times), cookies, device information (IP address, browser information, language, operating system, and device type and model), and the instructions and interaction information generated when you use the AI agent.

2. Special and Sensitive Data

The BioLine platform is designed to process various types of data, including genomic data, which may constitute sensitive personal information or human genetic-resource information. If you choose to store or process such data on the platform, you are responsible for ensuring you have obtained the authorisations and approvals required to lawfully process it and for complying with applicable regulations, including the Personal Information Protection Law, the Regulations on the Administration of Human Genetic Resources, the Biosecurity Law, and the Data Security Law. Except as necessary to provide analysis services to you, we do not actively collect unrelated sensitive personal information revealing race or ethnicity, political opinions, religious belief, health, or sex life or orientation. Content stored in your projects or repositories is your responsibility as the owner.

3. How BioLine Uses Your Information

We may use your information to: create your account and provide services; provide paid-account and resource-pack services; identify you on the platform; complete and, at your request, share your profile information; communicate with you by email with your consent; respond to support requests; invite you, where necessary and with consent, to surveys or research projects; understand how users use BioLine to improve the website and services; investigate possible fraud or conduct that harms the platform or users for security purposes; and fulfil legal obligations, protect intellectual property, and enforce the terms. Our use of user personal information is limited to the purposes listed in this document and the BioLine Privacy Statement; other purposes require your consent.

4. How We Share the Information We Collect

We may share information with third parties: with your consent (for example, sharing necessary information with a third-party developer whose resource pack or flow you purchase, so they can serve you); with service providers who have signed data-protection agreements, for payment processing, customer support, data transfer, security, and similar services; with third-party large-model providers, within the minimum necessary scope, the instructions and metadata needed to complete a task (excluding raw sequencing data); with project owners and administrators, necessary information to investigate security incidents; for legally required disclosure to fulfil legal obligations; and, on a change of control or sale, transferring information under the arrangement, with the recipient observing the commitments of this document and related statements. We do not sell your user personal information for money or other consideration.

5. Data Boundaries in AI Processing

During AI-agent processing, the large model acts only as a dispatcher: it does not access your raw sequencing data or enter the compute environment to execute arbitrary code. Standardised upstream processing runs in a controlled cloud environment, and raw data is not stored locally; customised downstream analysis runs in a local secure container that is offline by default with system privileges removed. Only the natural-language instructions, task-orchestration information, and necessary metadata required to complete the task are transmitted to the (proprietary or third-party) large model. This boundary design architecturally reduces the risks of data leakage and model "hallucination".

6. How You Access and Control the Information We Collect

As a BioLine user, you may access, update, change, or delete your basic profile information by editing your profile or contacting platform support, and may restrict or keep your information updated in your profile. Data portability: you may take your data with you at any time, for example by downloading files locally. Data retention and deletion: generally, we retain your user personal information while your account is active or as necessary to provide services; to deregister your account or delete personal information, use your profile or contact support. We will retain and use information as necessary to fulfil legal obligations, resolve disputes, and enforce agreements, and, unless otherwise required by law, will delete your personal information within a reasonable period after your request; after account deletion, some data (such as contributions to collaborative projects) may be retained for a period for technical or compliance reasons.

7. Cookies and Tracking Technologies

BioLine uses only cookies necessary to provide, secure, and improve the services, for example to keep you logged in, remember preferences, identify devices for security, analyse usage, and compile statistics. We use our own cookies for analytics and do not use third-party analytics providers. Using our services means you consent to our placing such cookies on your device; if you disable these cookies via your browser or device settings, you may be unable to log in or use the services properly.

8. How BioLine Protects Your Information

BioLine takes all reasonably necessary measures to protect user personal information from unauthorised access, alteration, or destruction and to help ensure its proper use. We implement documented security programs that: conform to industry-recognised frameworks; include reasonably designed safeguards to protect the confidentiality, integrity, availability, and resilience of data; are appropriate to the nature, scale, and complexity of our operations; include incident-response and breach-notification processes; and comply with applicable information-security laws. In the event of a breach involving user personal information, we will promptly take steps to mitigate the impact and notify affected users and competent authorities as required by law. Data in transit uses SSH and HTTPS (TLS) encryption, and stored data is encrypted. Note that no method of transmission or storage is 100% secure, so we cannot guarantee absolute security. For technical details, see BioLine Supplementary Regulations for Data Protection in this chapter.