Thank you for visiting MessengerGeek. We respect and protect the privacy of our users. This privacy policy tells you how we collect and use information.

What information do we collect?

We collect data when you…

  • browse the forum
  • create and use an account on the forum
  • post, send private messages, and otherwise participate in the forum

This data is collected whether you use the forum using a web browser on your own computer, or use Discourse apps for mobile devices.

We do not buy or otherwise receive data about you from data brokers.

What data we collect about you, and why

We collect data about visits to the forum

When you visit the 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 this 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
  • compile statistics on the kinds of software and computers visitors use

We usually store data about how you use the forum in identifiable form for just a few weeks. In special circumstances, like extended investigations about technical attacks, we may preserve log data longer, for analysis. We store aggregate statistics about use of the forum for the lifetime of the forum, but those statistics don’t include data identifiable to you personally.

We collect account data

Many features of the forum require a forum account. For example, posting and replying to topics.

To sign up for a forum account, we require your name, a user name, and an e-mail address. Sometimes this will be retrieved from 3rd party authentication systems (such as your Google or GitHub account), with your permission of course.

We use your account data to identify you on the forum, and to create pages specific to you, like your profile page. We publish this account data, except for your email address.

We use your e-mail address 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
  • contact you about legal requests, like DMCA takedown requests

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. We make that data available to others who access the forum. You don’t have to provide this additional information, and you can erase it at any time.

We store your account data as long as your account remains open.

We collect data about posts and other activity on the forum

We collect the content of your posts, plus data about bookmarks, likes, and links you follow in order to share that data with others, through the forum. We publish this public activity in various parts of the forum.

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

We store your posts and other activity as long as your account remains open.

The legal basis for collection

The reasons that we collect data vary based upon the type of data.

Information you supply for your account / profile

We need to process this in order to deliver the service you have requested us to provide.

Information supplied automatically by your web browser

We need to process this for pursuing legitimate interests, as explained elsewhere in this notice.

Information supplied into content you add to the forum

We process this for the purposes of archival in the public interest.

How you can make choices about data collection

You can make choices about how data about you is used on the settings page for your account.

The forum does not respond to the Do Not Track HTTP header.

Where we store data

Data is hosted both in Canada and the United States.

What is your data retention policy?

We will make an effort to:

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

We comply(ish) with the EU General Data Protection Regulation

We respect privacy rights under Regulation (EU) 2016/679, the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Information that GDPR requires companies to give can be found throughout this privacy notice. So can information about specific rights, like access, rectification, erasure, data portability, and objection to automated decision-making.

However, note that because this website is run by community volunteers, some technical details of GDPR compliance are not applicable and this essentially means that you should consider this forum to be run with the aim of GDPR compliance, albeit without the legal obligations that an actual company would face with respect to the GDPR.

Accessing your own data

You can see your account data at any time by visiting your account page on the forum. Your account page also lists your posts and other activity on the forum.

Your account activity page also includes a link to download all of your activity in a standard format.

Changing or erasing your data

You can change your account data at any time by visiting the profile settings page for your account. You can also close your account, on the settings page for your account. Closing your account starts a process of erasing or anonymizing our records of data you provided for your account. Forum administrators can also erase and anonymize accounts. If you are unable to perform this action, contact @TReKiE for assistance.

Note that as per our terms of service, the content of the posts you create are licensed under a public license so we would not typically erase such posts. However, if you accidentally posted private information to a public post and are unable to delete or edit that information yourself for some reason, we may, in our sole discretion, elect to remove that information on a case by case basis.

We make automated decisions based on data about you

We classify posts as spam automatically

We use data about your posts and other activity on the forum to make automated decisions about whether your posts to the forum are spam.

If you think a post has been wrongly blocked or removed, contact an administrator of the forum. We can override the decision.

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

The forum may use 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 the forum. They can manually adjust the trust level of your account.

We share data about you with others

We share your public account data with others as mentioned in the section about account data.

We share data about your posts and other forum activity with others as mentioned in the section about account data.

We do not sell or give information about you to other companies or services. However, we do utilise Google Analytics to compile visitor statistics on the forum. You can opt out of Google Analytics using a browser extension. Google Analytics will store a cookie on your system to either track visitor statistics or record your desire to opt-out of such statistics (unless you utilise the browser extension linked previously). They may change their privacy policy or technical details of their implementation without notice being made to our privacy notice.

Your Consent

By using our site, you consent to our web site privacy policy.

Use by children

If you are under the age applicable in your country, you must not use this site unless your local laws permit your parent/guardian to allow you to do so. Some example age limits include 13 in the USA and UK or 16 in some parts of the EU. It is your responsibility to verify if your local privacy laws consider that you are a child or not.

Changes to our Privacy Policy

If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post those changes on this page.

This document is CC-BY-SA. It was last updated December 2, 2021.