Privacy Policy

Your privacy matters to us. We believe in transparency; therefore, we've developed a Privacy Policy that covers how we collect, use, disclose, transfer, and store your personal information when you use our services.

What we collect

Information you provide to us

We collect information you provide to us directly when you use our services. This includes:

Account information. To create an account, you must provide a username, valid email address, and password. We also store your account preferences and settings.

Profile information. You may provide your real name or a pseudonym, and other personal information (such as website URL, social media handles, and a short biography) in connection with your account. This information is publicly displayed on your profile page.

Other information. You may choose to provide other information directly to us. For example, we may collect information when you fill out a form, request support or otherwise communicate with us.

Information we collect automatically

When you access our services, we may also automatically collect information about you. This includes:

Log and usage data. Just as when you visit and interact with most websites and services delivered via the Internet, when you visit our Websites, and IRC network, we gather certain information and store it in log files. This information may include but is not limited to Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, client version string, browser type, system configuration information, and locale.

Information collected from cookies. We may use cookies for a variety of purposes, which are pieces of data your browser stores and sends back to us when making requests. We use this information to improve your experience and to improve the quality of our services. For more information on how you can disable cookies, please see "Your Choices" below.

How we use information about you

We only process personal information in a way that is compatible with and relevant to the purpose for which it was collected or authorized. As a general matter, for all categories of data described above, we may use the information to:

• Provide, operate, maintain and improve our Websites and Services;
• Enable you to access and use our Websites and Services;
• Send you transactional messages, including responses to your comments, questions, and requests; provide support; and send you technical notices, updates, security alerts, and support and administrative messages;
• Analyze trends, usage, and activities in connection with our Websites and Services for the purpose of monitoring performance and optimization;
• Protect the safety of DareNET and our users, which includes addressing abuse, and enforcing our Terms of Service, Community Guidelines, and other policies;
• Develop new features and services.

Notice to UK and EU residents

Please note that "personal information" as referenced in this Privacy Policy means "personal data" as that term is defined under the European Union ("EU") General Data Protection Regulations ("GDPR") and its United Kingdom ("UK") GDPR counterpart.

If you are an individual from the European Economic Area ("EEA"), UK, or Switzerland, please note that our legal basis for collecting and using your personal information will depend on the personal information collected and the specific context in which we collect it. We will collect personal information from you only where: (a) we have your consent to do so, (b) we need to process the information to provide you the service, including to operate the service, or (c) where processing is in our legitimate interests (which is not overridden by your data protection interests).

You aren't required to provide any information to us, but, if you don't, you won't be able to use certain features of our services. If you no longer wish to use DareNET services, then you may delete your account.

How information about you is shared

We work with other third parties ("Service Providers") to help us provide the service, such as server hosting providers. These Service Providers may only process information pursuant to our instructions and in compliance with both this Privacy Policy and other applicable security measures.

We may also share information with others in the following circumstances:

• When we are compelled by law;
• When we have a good-faith belief sharing is necessary to prevent death or serious physical harm to someone.

Except as outlined above, we will never share or reveal your personal information to a third party. If we believe a legal request to be too broad, we will seek to narrow it. Where possible, we will notify users about a legal request for their personal information.

Notice to California Residents. We do not sell, rent, or share personal information with third parties as defined under the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 (California Civil Code Sec. 1798.100 et seq.), nor do we sell, rent, or share personal information with third parties for the direct marketing purposes as defined under California Civil Code Sec. 1798.83.

Chat logs

We do not keep records of your conversations, nor do we provide a chat logging service; however, please be aware that most IRC clients provide logging capabilities. Anyone in the channels you are in might do so and publish those conversation logs (and some channels may be actively logged by bots or users on those channels). If you have questions about this, we encourage you to ask other users in the channel you're concerned about. In general, you should assume that everything you say on IRC that is not in a private message may be potentially recorded by other users and possibly published somewhere. In the case of private messages and channels, you're depending on your trust with the person(s) you're sending a message to will not share it.

International information transfers

We maintain servers around the world and your information may be processed on servers located outside of the country where you live. Data protection laws vary among countries, with some providing more protection than others. Regardless of where your information is processed, we apply the same protections described in this policy.

Whenever we transfer personal information originating in the EEA, the UK, or Switzerland outside the EEA, the UK, or Switzerland, we do so on the basis of the EU standard contractual clauses.

Retaining your information

We keep your account information until you delete your account with us. When we delete your account, your personal information is purged from our active data storage within seven days, and from all backups after a maximum of 90 days.

We keep any log and analytics information for approximately one week.

Your choices

As a DareNET user, you have choices about how to protect and limit the collection, use, and disclosure of information about you.

Accessing and changing your information

You can access and change certain information through the DareNET services.

To change or remove your profile information, visit the settings page.

To view or change IRC-specific account settings, see /msg N HELP SET on IRC.

To view or change IRC-specific channel settings, see /msg C HELP SET on IRC.

Deleting your account

You may permanently delete your account at any time from the settings page.

Controlling the use of cookies

Our Websites may use "cookies". We treat information collected by cookies as non-personal information; however,  we do consider IP addresses or similar identifiers as personal information and treat them as such. Similarly, to the extent that non-personal information is combined with personal information, we treat the combined information as personal information for the purposes of this Privacy Policy.

Most web browsers are set to accept cookies by default. If you prefer, you can usually choose to set your browser to remove or reject first-party and third-party cookies. Please note that if you choose to disable first-party cookies for our Websites, this could affect the availability and functionality of some features.

Information security

We take reasonable steps to protect information we receive from you from loss, misuse, or unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration, and/or destruction. We have put in place appropriate technical and administrative measures to safeguard and secure your information, and we make use of privacy-enhancing technologies such as encryption. We routinely review our information collection, storage, and processing practices.

Children

DareNET services are not offered to children whose age makes it illegal to process their personal information or requires parental consent for the processing of their personal information under COPPA, GDPR, or other local law.

We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13 years or under the applicable age limit (the “Age Limit”). If you are under the Age Limit, please do not create an account, use our services, and do not provide any personal information to us.

If we learn that we have collected the personal information of a child under the Age Limit, we will take reasonable steps to delete the personal information. This may require us to delete the DareNET account for that child.

Changes to this policy

We may change this Privacy Policy from time to time. If we do, we will let you know by revising the date at the top of the policy. If we make a change to this policy that, in our sole discretion, is material, we will provide you with additional notice (such as adding a statement to /blog, the front page, or sending you a notification). We encourage you to check back regularly and review any updates. The most current version will always be available at https://www.darenet.org/privacy.

Contact us

If you have any questions about our Privacy Policy, please contact us at privacy@darenet.org or through our contact form.