Privacy Policy

system · August 4, 2017, 3:19pm

This notice describes how Particular Software Ltd, or Particular for short, collects and uses data about you as a user of this forum.

What data do we collect about you, and why?

When you visit a forum, whether you have an account or not, the forum uses cookies, server logs, and other methods to collect data about what pages you visit and when.

We use the data about how you use the website to:

optimize the forum, so that it’s quick and easy to use
diagnose and debug technical errors
defend the forum from abuse and technical attacks
compile statistics on forum and topic popularity

The data about how you use the forum in identifiable form for just a few weeks. The aggregate statistics about forum usage, such as topic views, are kept forever, but those statistics don’t include data identifiable to you personally.

Account data

Many features of the forum require a forum account. For example, you can visit and read the discussions without registering, however posting a new topic and replying require you to create an account.

To sign up for a forum account, we require your name, a user name, and an e-mail address. Alternatively, you can sign up using a third party identity provider, such as Github or Facebook.

Your account data is used to identify you on the forum, and to create pages specific to you, like your profile page.

In particular, your e-mail address is used to:

notify you about posts and other activity on the forum
reset your password and help keep your account secure
contact you in special circumstances related to your account

You may provide additional data for your account, like a short biography, your location, or your birthday, on the profile settings page for your account. That data will be available to others who can access the forum. You don’t have to provide this additional information, and you can erase it at any time.

Your account data is stored as long as your account remains open.

Data about posts and other activity on the forum

The content of your posts, plus data about bookmarks, likes, and links you follow is collected in order to share that data with others, through the forum.

We also collect data about private messages that you send through the forum. The private messages are available to senders and their recipients, and also to forum administrators.

Your posts and other activity data is stored as long as your account remains open.

How can I make choices about data collection?

You can make choices about how data about you is used on the settings page for your account. When a forum uses access restrictions that vary by category, you can choose who will see your post by choosing the appropriate category.

In case you want your account removed, contact the forum administrators. The data will be anonymized on your request, which effectively removes your personal information while retaining posts related to the account.

You can contact administrators from the About page.

What is your data retention policy?

We will make a good faith effort to:

Retain server logs containing the IP address of all requests to this server no more than 90 days.
Retain the IP addresses associated with registered users and their posts no more than 5 years.

Do we use cookies?

Yes. Cookies are small files that a site or its service provider transfers to your computer’s hard drive through your Web browser (if you allow). These cookies enable the site to recognize your browser and, if you have a registered account, associate it with your registered account.

We use cookies to understand and save your preferences for future visits and compile aggregate data about site traffic and site interaction so that we can offer better site experiences and tools in the future. We may contract with third-party service providers to assist us in better understanding our site visitors. These service providers are not permitted to use the information collected on our behalf except to help us conduct and improve our business.

Do we disclose any information to outside parties?

We do not sell, trade, or otherwise transfer to outside parties your personally identifiable information. This does not include trusted third parties who assist us in operating our site, conducting our business, or servicing you, so long as those parties agree to keep this information confidential. We may also release your information when we believe release is appropriate to comply with the law, enforce our site policies, or protect ours or others rights, property, or safety. However, non-personally identifiable visitor information may be provided to other parties for marketing, advertising, or other uses.

Service	Privacy Notice	Description
Akismet	Privacy Policy – Automattic	reduces spam posts on some forums
DiscourseHosting	Communiteq Privacy Policy - Communiteq	the company hosting the forum

Does the forum make automated decisions based on data about me?

Posts are automatically recognized as spam.

We use data about your posts and other activity on many forums to make automated decisions about whether they are spam. When Akismet decides that a post is likely spam, the forum refuses to accept the post.

If you think a post has been wrongly blocked or removed, contact an administrator of your forum. They can override the decision that a post was spam.

We use data about posts and activity to set trust levels automatically.

The forum uses data about your posts and activity to award you badges and calculate a trust level for your account. Your trust level may affect how you can participate in the forum, such as whether you can upload images, as well as give you access to moderation and management powers in the forum. Your trust level, therefore, reflects forum administrators’ confidence in you, and their willingness to delegate community management functions, like moderation.

If you think your trust level has been set incorrectly, contact an administrator of your forum. They can manually adjust the trust level of your account.