1. Who is responsible for your data

The controller of the personal data described here is u2eastlink.com. If u2eastlink.com is a private person, the controller is the person who operates this forum.

Contact for any privacy question: [email protected]

2. What data we collect

We only collect what the forum needs to work. Depending on how you use it, this can be:

• Account data: the user name you choose, your email address, and the optional details of your profile (real name, location, web site, signature and avatar).
• Content: the messages, replies and private messages you write, the files you attach, and the technical information of each of them (for example the time it was written and the edits that were made).
• Technical data: your IP address, your browser and operating system, the pages you visit and the times you visit them. We use this to keep the forum secure, to find faults and to moderate.
• Sign-in data: if you sign in with Google or Facebook, the name of the provider, the identifier that the provider gives for your account there, your email address, and the dates on which the link was created and last used.
• Activity in the forum: the "likes" you give (the other members can see who liked a message), the members you mention with @, the topics you follow, the notifications that the forum creates for you (replies, mentions, likes and announcements) and the types of notification that you have switched off.
• Images that you upload with the editor: they are stored on the server of the forum. Before we store a JPEG photo we remove its metadata (EXIF), which can include the place where the photo was taken and the camera that took it.
• Security records: failed sign-in attempts (the IP address and the user name that was typed), and records of new registrations and of password reminder requests (the IP address, the e-mail address and the decision of the spam filter). We use them only to stop automated attacks and spam.

3. Signing in with Google or Facebook

When you press "Continue with Google" or "Continue with Facebook", you are taken to the site of that provider and you sign in there, not on this forum. We never receive and we never store your Google or Facebook password.

We ask for the smallest set of information that lets us recognise you: from Google the scopes "openid", "email" and "profile" (your identifier, your name, your email address and whether that address is verified), and from Facebook the permissions "public_profile" and "email".

We use that information for one single purpose: to create your account on this forum, to recognise you when you sign in and to contact you about your account. We do not use it for advertising, we do not build advertising profiles with it, we do not sell it and we do not share it with advertising networks.

We keep only these values from the sign-in: the provider, the identifier of your account at the provider, your email address, and the two dates mentioned above. We do not keep the access token that the provider gives us, so we cannot read anything in your Google or Facebook account afterwards.

Your accounts are matched by the identifier that the provider gives, never by your name or by your email address. An existing account on this forum is never linked to a Google or Facebook account just because the email addresses are the same: you have to confirm the link with the password of your forum account, or sign in with it once.

You can remove the link whenever you want from the page "Linked accounts" in your user area, and you can withdraw the permission in the settings of your Google or Facebook account.

4. Cookies

The forum uses cookies because it cannot work without them:

We do not set advertising or tracking cookies. The sites whose content is embedded in a message (see section 7) can set their own cookies.

• Session cookie: keeps you signed in during a visit and protects the forms against being sent from another site.
• Login cookie: if you tick "Remember me", it keeps you signed in when you come back later.
• Sign-in cookie: a short-lived cookie (10 minutes, valid once, HttpOnly) that ties a Google or Facebook sign-in to the browser that started it.
• Time zone cookie: holds the name of the time zone of your browser (for example "Europe/Madrid") for one year, so that dates are shown in your local time. It holds nothing else.
• Draft cookie: a cookie of 5 minutes that tells your browser to delete the draft of a message once that message has been posted.

The forum also keeps some data in the storage of your browser (local storage). It stays on your device and is never sent to us: the draft of the message that you are writing, so that it is not lost if the page is closed (it is deleted when you post the message, when you log out, or after 30 days), the text that you are quoting while you go to the reply form, and small display preferences.

5. Why we process your data

To give you the service you ask for: creating and keeping your account, letting you read and write messages, and sending you the notifications you asked for (contract).

To keep the forum secure, to prevent spam and abuse and to apply the rules of the forum (our legitimate interest).

To send you e-mail about replies, private messages or forum notices when you have asked for it (our legitimate interest).

To obey the law when we are obliged to (legal obligation).

6. Who we share your data with

We share your data only with:

• Google or Facebook, only as described in section 3 and only when you sign in with them.
• StopForumSpam, a public database of known spammers: when somebody registers, we check the IP address and the e-mail address of the registration against it. We only receive an answer saying whether they are listed as spam.
• The company that hosts this forum and keeps its database and its files on its servers, on our instructions.
• The service that sends the e-mail of the forum, on our instructions.
• The moderators and administrators of this forum, but only as far as they need it to moderate the forum.

We do not sell or rent your personal data, and we do not disclose it to anybody else.

7. Content embedded from other sites

Messages can show content that lives on other sites: videos from YouTube, Vimeo or Dailymotion, and posts from X (Twitter). When you open a page with such content, your browser loads it directly from that site, which then receives your IP address and the details of your browser, and can set cookies and record your visit under its own privacy policy. This happens just as if you visited that site yourself.

YouTube videos are loaded from youtube-nocookie.com, the privacy-enhanced mode of YouTube, which does not set cookies until you play the video.

To show a post from X, the server of the forum asks X for that public post using only its address. That request carries no data about you.

8. Where your data is processed

Our hosting and e-mail providers, as well as Google and Facebook, can process your data outside the European Economic Area. When that happens, the transfer is covered by the guarantees that apply internationally, such as an adequacy decision or the standard contractual clauses of the European Commission.

9. How long we keep your data

Account data: for as long as your account exists. When you delete your account (see section 10), it is removed from the forum at once.

Messages and attachments: for as long as the forum exists, unless you delete them or a moderator removes them. They are not removed when you delete your account: they stay in the forum, shown as written by an anonymous user.

Technical logs (IP address, access data): only for the time that our host keeps them, normally a few weeks or months.

Sign-in links: until you unlink the account, you delete your account, or the provider user is deleted from this forum.

Notifications: 90 days. You can delete the ones you have read earlier.

Uploaded images: for as long as the message that uses them exists, unless you delete them.

Failed sign-in attempts: about 15 minutes.

Records of registrations and password reminders: 30 days. The answer of StopForumSpam is kept for one day.

10. Your rights

You have the right to ask us to show you the personal data we hold about you, to correct it, to delete it, to limit its use, to oppose its use, to get a copy of it in a portable format, and to withdraw a consent that you had given. Where our legal obligation or our legitimate interest applies, we may not be able to answer, and we will explain why.

You can do most of this yourself: your profile and your e-mail settings are in your user area, and you can delete your own messages.

You can also delete your account yourself, in Control panel > Personal profile > "Delete account". You confirm it with your user name and your password (not needed if you signed up with Google or Facebook). Deleting the account is permanent: it removes your profile, signature, avatar, private messages, followed topics, notifications, likes, personal files and the link with Google or Facebook, and it signs you out. The messages that you wrote in the forum stay, shown as written by an anonymous user; if you want them gone too, delete them before you delete the account, or write to us.

Write to [email protected] to exercise any of these rights. We may ask you to prove that you are the owner of the account.

You can also complain to the data protection authority of your country.

11. Children

This forum is not meant for children under 13 years old, and we do not knowingly collect data from them. If you think that a child has given us data, write to [email protected] and we will delete it.

12. Security

We protect your data with the measures that are normal for this kind of service: the site is served over HTTPS, passwords are stored only as a one-way hash (they cannot be read back, not even by us), repeated failed sign-ins are slowed down, registrations and password reminders are protected against bots, and only moderators and administrators can see the information of the members. No system is perfectly safe, so please tell us at [email protected] if you think that something has gone wrong.

13. Changes to this policy

We may update this page when the forum changes. The date at the top always shows the version that is currently published.

14. Contact

For any question about this policy or about your data, write to [email protected].