Privacy Policy
The Freethought Forum is committed to protecting the privacy of its members. We receive a small amount of personal information during the registration process and have access to more from your participation in the community.
Email addresses
Registration at FF requires an active email address. The address is visible only in the Admin Control Panel to which only the Administrators have rights. We do not sell or in any other way disseminate email addresses. The only way your mail can be generally known is if you choose to reveal it to the indiscreet in private or if you post it in public. Please be advised that search engine spiders and data miners might harvest any publicly posted email addresses for any number of dubious (most likely spam-related) purposes.
By default, your profile is set to receive admin emails and to display the email option. Emails sent via the link in your profile
do not reveal your actual address, but rather utilize a vBulletin email template. You may deselect both of these options thereby disallowing any public means of email contact; however, the Admins do reserve the right to email you if necessary.
Date of Birth
In order to ensure that the FF is COPPA compliant, we ask for full birth dates at registration. This information is retained solely in the ACP. It is
not added to your profile automatically.
If you choose to fill in the birthday field in your user profile, all registered board members will be able to see it there as well as on the
Calendar and in the footer of the main forum index on the happy day itself. You may opt to leave out your birth year in the profile field, and thereby get all the birthday love without revealing the vital statistics.
IP Addresses
Every time you access the FF, vBulletin logs your
IP address. This information is accessible only to the Admins both through a link on every post and in an extra column in
Who's Online and
will not for any reason be publicly revealed.
It is possible to mask an IP address by using various proxy/spoofing services, but there is no guarantee that this will be effective. The software as currently configured can detect proxies and recognize the IPs they are attempting to mask. Again, this information will be used for administrative purposes only and will not be publicly revealed.
Cookies
The FF uses
cookies to customize your board experience: i.e., mark certain threads read, remember the last post you've read in any given thread, remember your login information. If you'd prefer not to have any FF cookies deposited on your hard drive, uncheck the "Remember Me?" option in the login field. To delete cookies that have already been accepted, simply log out and all FF cookies will be cleared.
Aggregate Information
The Freethought Forum collects certain kinds of non-personal information about users (eg, browser make and model, operating system, country of origin of Internet service provider) for statistical purposes, but only in an aggregate form. Individual users cannot be identified.
Posting Personal Information
You may of course post any of your own personal information, but please keep in mind when doing so that the Internet is a wild and woolly place and you never know who might be taking notes. Any identifying information (eg, name, home address, telephone number) reprinted without express permission
will be deleted on sight. Please report any such postings by clicking the "report bad post" icon (
) on the post in question.
Private Messaging
Private messages, like all content of online message boards, are stored in the database. There is no simple method to access this information which is why it is to all intents and purposes private. However, if required by law, the Administrators could scour the database and retrieve any of the data therein demanded on a search warrant or subpoena, including private correspondence. Outside of that highly unlikely scenario, PMs will only be seen by the sender and receiver.
Private Chats
Private chats cannot be seen by anyone else in the public rooms; however, the Administrators have access to complete chatlogs of
all the rooms, including private ones. We will neither read nor produce any private chatlogs for third party perusal unless under legal constraint.
The Long Arm of the Law
If law enforcement requests that we provide any of your personal information, we will comply upon receipt of subpoena or court order or one of those
Law & Order style warrants that show up just when the detectives have exhausted their panoply of dilatory tactics. Any personal information you've posted publicly will of course be as freely available to any legal entity as it is to everyone else.
If you have any questions or concerns about any of these issues, please feel free to contact either
viscousmemories or
myself via PM or post in the Administrative forum. Thank you and stay safe.