Snowdrift.coop Privacy Policy

Version 0.6 effective June 7, 2018

Snowdrift.coop maintains utmost respect for user privacy. We collect, store, and process personal data only in the ways described below. Aside from any legal obligations, we do not share your data with any party not directly involved with our operations.

Contents

  1. Definition of personal data
  2. When and what personal data do we collect?
  3. What do we do with your data?
  4. When do we share your data?
  5. Storage and protection of data
  6. Getting, correcting, or deleting your data
  7. Specific privacy issues for our Discourse forum
  8. Appendices

Definition of personal data

We consider "personal data" to mean any of:

  • information directly identified with you (such as name or email address)
  • several pieces of information that may identify you when combined (even if each piece individually does not)
  • any other data specific to an individual user when stored together with personal data

When and what personal data do we collect?

  • If you simply view the site, we collect no data beyond server logs (which include IP address, referring site, time, and your browser's user agent).
    • And we make a good faith effort to retain IP addresses of requests for no more than 90 days.
  • If you create a Snowdrift.coop account, we store your email address and use cookies to keep you logged in.
  • If you connect a third-party payment service to your account, their terms apply, and you should read their independent privacy policy. Snowdrift.coop does not directly collect, retain, or process any financial information (such as credit card numbers).
  • If you pledge as a patron to any projects, we keep a record of your transactions, such as your pledges and donation amounts.
    • This policy does not cover interactions with projects outside of Snowdrift.coop. External project websites may have their own policies.
  • If you are a team leader who submits a project to Snowdrift.coop, we will ask for detailed information including the personal data necessary to validate your identity, your role with the project, and your legal status as a potential recipient of funds.
  • If you give us any further personal data (such as a mailing address for sending a physical gift as thanks for a donation), we may store it in our contacts database with your permission.
  • If we receive personal data about you from a third party (such as a colleague suggesting a business connection), we will make a good faith effort during our initial contact to ask for your permission to continue using or storing your data and to delete it if you do not consent.

What do we do with your data?

(comic) Mimi: 'I sent $20 to a non-profit. Since then, they've spent $30 sending me junk-mail solicitations. I want a refund.' Eunice: 'But you owe them $10!'

We may use your data to provide a customized experience with our website and as part of determining non-personal aggregate statistics about the service. We otherwise aim to offer opt-in choices for personal data processing whenever feasible.

Besides notifications and announcements that you opt-in to receiving, we will use your email address to send you important policy and security updates.

When do we share your data?

  • With your consent, we may publicly display your name or alias along with information about your pledges and other activity in lists of project patrons or similar cases.
  • We may share your data if we are compelled to by law or when it is reasonably necessary to do so to protect the rights, property, or safety of you, our other users, Snowdrift.coop, or the public.
    • Whenever we receive legal requests for your data, we will notify you unless we are legally prohibited from doing so or circumstances require otherwise. Nothing in this policy is intended to limit any legal defenses or objections that you may have to a third party's request to disclose your data.
  • We otherwise only share your data with those employees, contractors, and service providers who have contractually promised to use it only for specified purposes in line with the rest of this privacy policy.
  • If our corporate structure or status changes (e.g., if we restructure, are acquired, or go bankrupt), we will notify all users so that you may choose to anonymize or delete your private data before we pass on any data to a successor or affiliate.

Storage and protection of data

We make concerted efforts to follow the best security practices. But if we discover a security breach, we'll make concerted efforts to let you know as soon as possible.

Unless we are legally required to retain it, we make a good faith effort to delete personal data when no longer needed.

Getting, correcting, or deleting your data

If you want to download your personal data or have it edited, anonymized, or deleted, please email privacy@snowdrift.coop.

Specific privacy issues for our Discourse forum

At community.snowdrift.coop, we run an instance of Discourse, a free/libre/open forum program.

Discourse tracks users in order to customize the experience, award badges, calculate a "trust level" for each user, provide stats about usage, determine when to send notification emails, and prevent spam.

We make no use of this data outside of Discourse. Within available settings, we turn off unnecessary tracking where we can. We also advocate at Discourse's own community forum for stronger privacy options.

We know that Discourse collects at least the following data:

  • If you visit any posts, Discourse tracks which posts have focus in your browser and for how long.
  • If you click links in Discourse (whether external or internal), Discourse tracks those clicks.
  • If you arrive at Discourse from an outside link, Discourse logs referer information.
  • When you first sign in and when you post, Discourse records your IP address.
    • But we make a good faith effort to retain the IP addresses associated with users for no more than 5 years.
  • Discourse uses cookies to save some preferences and state of visitors and to compile aggregate data about site traffic and site interaction.

Correcting, anonymizing, or deleting your data in Discourse

  • You can see the data Discourse stores with your account by visiting your account page on the forum.
  • Your Discourse 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 standard comma-separated values format.
  • You can change your Discourse account data at any time by visiting the profile settings page for your account.
  • If you think your trust level has been set incorrectly, contact an administrator.
  • Depending on the settings available, you may also be able to edit, anonymize, or erase your posts.
    • Note that when you edit posts, Discourse keeps all versions of your posts, and forum administrators can view old versions of posts and optionally make them visible to other forum visitors.

Appendices

Policy changes

We may sometimes change this privacy policy. When we do, we'll post a notice about the change on Snowdrift.coop and email anyone who we have on record as accepting the previous policy version. When feasible, we will post proposed changes in advance and offer a reasonable comment period before they become effective. Once official, we will ask users to accept the updated policy.

Contact options

  • In addition to requests for data correction, deletion etc (mentioned above), you may contact privacy@snowdrift.coop with any other personal concerns.
  • For general questions or comments about this policy, consider posting at our community forum.

License for this policy

The Snowdrift.coop Privacy Policy is available for free adaptation under the CC-BY-SA 4.0 International license.