This page details our approach to your privacy, and in italics, what you need to do to make it work.

Who we are

We are the network23 collective. Our website address is: http://network23.org/

What personal data we collect and why we collect it

Your email address is stored on the server to send you password resets and to contact you with technical information or for legal reasons. If you can be traced by your email address then this data may end up in the wrong hands if the server were to be seized. Be aware of this. We suggest that you apply for a blog from a secure email address if you can. You must never post other people’s personal details and we may remove personal details from posts. We encourage the use of pseudonyms. We discourage filling out details in your user profile. We do not retain any unnecessary data, and do not log your IP address or browser details.

Occasionally we need to send an email to all users, for example to warn you about planned maintenance or explain why something has changed. This usually only happens once or twice per year. You can not opt out of these mailings and it is a condition of service that you read them.

Comments

When human visitors leave comments on the site we collect the data shown in the comments form, and which user account the commentator is logged-in as.

An anonymized string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment. For this reason, we discourage bloggers from using Gravatar, and suggest using the ‘simple local avatars’ plugin instead

Media

If you upload images to the website, you should avoid uploading images with embedded location data (EXIF GPS) included. Visitors to the website can download and extract any location data from images on the website.

Contact forms

Whatever information you type into a contact form will be sent to the email address provided by the blogger who set up that form. We do not store any of this information.

Cookies

If you leave a comment on our site you may opt-in to saving your name, email address and website in cookies. These are for your convenience so that you do not have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment. These cookies will last for one year.

If you have an account and you log in to this site, we will set a temporary cookie to determine if your browser accepts cookies. This cookie contains no personal data and is discarded when you close your browser.

When you log in, we will also set up several cookies to save your login information and your screen display choices. Login cookies last for two days, and screen options cookies last for a year. If you select “Remember Me”, your login will persist for two weeks. If you log out of your account, the login cookies will be removed.

If you edit or publish an article, an additional cookie will be saved in your browser. This cookie includes no personal data and simply indicates the post ID of the article you just edited. It expires after 1 day.

All of the above cookies could be used to link your computer to your activity on network23.org so we recommend that you configure your browser to delete all cookies when closed.

Embedded content from other websites

Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.

These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.

Who we share your data with

We do not share your data with anyone, ever. For this reason, if you lose access to your email account and lose your password, we can not prove who you are, and can’t give you back your blog. If we were forced to hand over your information by law, all we would be able to give would be your email address.

You may ask – how do I know that my IP address isn’t being recorded by you, or one of your upstream providers and being passed on? We would answer something like you can’t really check this and nor can we fully. But this is only one threat scenario, and one that would need (probably) state-sanctioned powers. A more likely scenario is a whistle blower unhappy with work practices who wants to protect their identity from their employers – e.g. Gary Duke’s story.

How long we retain your data

If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognize and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.

For users that register on our website, we also store the personal information they provide in their user profile which we discourage. All users can see, edit, or delete their personal information at any time (except they cannot change their username). Website administrators can also see and edit that information.

What rights you have over your data

If you have an account on this site, you can view all your data by logging in. If you’re unable to log in, we would not be sure it was really you, so we will not export your data to create a report. You can also erase any personal data we hold about you. If you tell us to permanently delete your account, you will also need to tell us what should happen to the content you created. Your created content remains yours at all times.

Where we send your data

Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service. For this reason we discourage you from using the Akismet plugin. We recommend you use AntiSpamBee instead.

Some plugins will offer your ‘premium features’, ‘opt-in extras’, and so on. Do not use these services as they compromise your own and visitors privacy.

What else we do to keep your information safe

We make every effort to keep the wordpress software with its associated themes and plugins up-to-date and therefore less vulnerable to online attacks.

Take down notices

If we receive a legally binding take-down notice we will contact you and try to support you. To do this you need to be able to reply to the emails we send you within a reasonable time. If you don’t we may have to take your site offline until you do get back to us. We don’t guarantee to keep up a website if there are serious legal implications but this may change if we find people who are prepared to do legal work on your behalf and keep us informed. It’s therefore essential that the email address you register with us is real and will reach a human, not a robot or mailing list. We don’t want to know who you really are, just how to get in touch if the shit hits the fan.