Lucy
in the sky, with diamonds.
- Joined
- Aug 9, 2009
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- 7,110
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- Location
- 10.0.0.1
- Website
- www.orbiter-radio.co.uk
- Preferred Pronouns
- she/her
Hello friends. You might never have read it (though you should have!) but we have a privacy policy here on Orbiter-Forum that outlines what data we collect about our users and how we use it.
I've been... motivated to review these myself, more recently, and it occurred to me that ours was long overdue for an update, given how old it is and how much the internet has changed in recent years. There follows a summary of the changes I've just made, so it's easier to understand what the policy was and what it now is. Key to understand here is that nothing has changed in regards to how we collect or use your information; the policy just previously didn't reflect reality in a few places.
I've been... motivated to review these myself, more recently, and it occurred to me that ours was long overdue for an update, given how old it is and how much the internet has changed in recent years. There follows a summary of the changes I've just made, so it's easier to understand what the policy was and what it now is. Key to understand here is that nothing has changed in regards to how we collect or use your information; the policy just previously didn't reflect reality in a few places.
Code:
- Revised first line from "<p>Your privacy on the Internet is of the utmost importance to us. We want to make your online experience satisfying and safe. </p>" to "<p>Your privacy on the Internet is important. This document lays out how using {board_title} affects your privacy, what information we collect about you and what we do with that information.</p>" because I didn't like the former wording, really.
- This new first line encompassed the content of the next line, so that one was removed - it used to say "Because we gather certain types of information about our users, we feel you should fully understand the terms and conditions surrounding the capture and use of that information. This privacy statement discloses what information we gather and how we use it."
- Changed "invite" to "encourage" in "We encourage you to contact us if you have questions about this policy. You may contact us via <a href="{contactUrl}">the contactform</a>" to offer a more welcoming tone. Please contact us about the policy if you have concerns about it.
- Removed PO Box information for mail-contact about the privacy policy. Please email us or use the forum to contact us about the privacy policy. I believe the PO Box is only rarely checked for correspondence. To wit, also added "or via the private messaging functions within the forum itself" to this line.
# INFORMATION THIS SITE GATHERS AND TRACKS
- Revised second paragraph - removed "This information allows us to better tailor our content to readers' needs and to help any of our advertisers and/or sponsors better understand the demographics of our audience. Because ORBITER-FORUM.COM derives its revenue mainly from donations, advertising, and/or sponsorship, providing such aggregated demographic data is essential to keeping our service free to users.". We do not serve advertisements on Orbiter-Forum, so this line was woefully incorrect. We don't capture data for these purposes, because we don't need to.
- Appended "and it is not stored" to the paragraph about "email this to a friend" so it now reads "<p>2. "E-mail this to a friend" - Our site users can choose to electronically forward a link, page, or documents to someone else by clicking "e-mail this to a friend". The user must provide their email address, as well as that of the recipient. This information is used only in the case of transmission errors and, of course, to let the recipient know who sent the email. The information is not used for any other purpose and it is not stored.</p>".
- Expanded the line that says we capture "click-stream data" to explain what that is.
- Removed the "User's Name" line. We don't capture your actual name unless you make an account and use your real actual name in as your username. I don't recommend doing that, equally. But, "username" and "First name" are also lines in our voluntary information section just below, so this is incorrect here (since you can browse while not logged in and thus not share a username).
- Expanded the line that says we capture "computer information" to explain the limited sub-set of information about your computer that gets captured.
# USE OF INFORMATION
- Revised "<p>{board_title} may use any information voluntarily given by our users to enhance their experience on our site, whether to provide interactive or personalized elements on the site or to better prepare future content based on the interests of our users. </p>" to instead say "<p>{board_title} uses information voluntarily given by our users to provide interactive or personalized elements on the site (for instance to associate your user profile alongside posts you make to the board).</p>"
# SHARING OF THE INFORMATION
- removed "and help our potential advertisers better understand our audience's demographics" as we do not run adverts and do not intend to, so there are no potential advertisers (I think this was a bit of boilerplate text)
- remove "This is essential to keeping our service free." as it heavily implies that sharing of user information is what keeps Orbiter-Forum free, which is not true.
# INFORMATION AND LARGE LANGUAGE MODELS (AI)
- This section is entirely new. It covers our approach to feeding Orbiter-Forum's data into AI models (we don't).
# ADVERTISING PROVIDERS
- This section is entirely new. It covers our current approach to advertising providers and sharing information with them (there are none and we don't).
# COOKIES
- Revised first paragraph from "<p>We may place a text file called a "cookie" in the browser files of your computer. A cookie is an element of data that a Web site can send to your browser, which may then store it on your system. You can set your browser to notify you when you receive a cookie, giving you the chance to decide whether to accept it or not. You don't have to accept cookies to use this site, however you do need cookies to participate actively in message boards, forums, polling, and surveys.</p>" to "<p>When you visit us, we may place a text file called a "cookie" in the browser files of your computer. This is usually for holding your login session (if you choose to log in) and your preferences. You don't have to accept cookies to use this site, however you do need cookies to participate actively in message boards, forums, polling, and surveys, because you have to be logged in to do that, and this feature relies on cookies.</p>" in an effort to make it a bit clearer when we do and don't set cookies and what for.
- Removed the following incorrect paragraph that previously said "<p> Cookies are used to track visitors to our site, so we can better understand what portions of our site best serve you. The cookie itself does not contain Personal Information although it will enable us to relate your use of this site to information that you have specifically and knowingly provided. But the only personal information a cookie can contain is information you supply yourself. A cookie can't read data off your hard disk or read cookie files created by other sites.</p>" - we do not use cookies to track visitors to our site.
- Removed incorrect (and bile inducing) line "We use tracking information to determine which areas of our site users like and don't like based on traffic to those areas. We do not track what individual users read, but rather how well each page performs overall. This helps us continue to build a better service for you."
- Revised next paragraph from "<p>ORBITER-FORUM.COM tracks user traffic patterns throughout all of our site. However, we do not correlate this information with data about individual users. ORBITER-FORUM.COM does break down overall usage statistics according to a user's domain name, browser type, and MIME type by reading this information from the browser string (information contained in every user's browser). </p>" to "<p>ORBITER-FORUM.COM tracks user traffic patterns throughout all of our site in the form of "view" counts. When you view content on the forum, whether you are logged in or not, this action is recorded by those counters. However, we do not correlate this information with data about individual users. For administrative use only, ORBITER-FORUM.COM does break down overall usage statistics according to a user's domain name, browser type, and MIME type by reading this information from the browser string (information contained in every user's browser). This helps us to understand what browser versions to prioritise support for, for instance.</p>"
- Removed incorrect paragraph "<p>ORBITER-FORUM.COM sometimes tracks and catalogs the search terms that users enter in our Search function, but this tracking is never associated with individual users.</p>" - search traffic is not collected in this way.
# ACCOUNT REMOVAL
- This section is entirely new. We previously didn't allow account removals because our previous forum technology made them extremely arduous to achieve while retaining post consistency, but I don't think this is a concern any more.
# YOUR CONSENT
- Appended first line so that it now reads "By using this site, you consent to the collection and use of this information by ORBITER-FORUM.COM as outlined above."
- Removed "You also consent that ORBITER-FORUM.COM retains the right to deny any account deletion requests, except to comply with COPPA.". You have the right to remove your account. See the new "ACCOUNT REMOVAL" section.
- Expanded final paragraph "<p> By using this site, you consent to the collection and use of this information by ORBITER-FORUM.COM. You also consent that ORBITER-FORUM.COM retains the right to deny any account deletion requests, except to comply with COPPA. If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post those changes on this page so that you are always aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances we disclose it.</p>" to additionally include "Any changes to the privacy policy will also be announced on the forum itself along with a summary of what was changed and why." (you are reading this because of this change)
I also made all the headings capitalised for consistency, tweaked the spacing a bit and replaced all the shouty-caps ORBITER-FORUM.COM instances with the "{board_title}" subsitution, which currently injects "Orbiter Forum" in Title Case instead.
