What Documenting Reality collects, why, who can see it, and what you can do about it.
A plain-English summary. The numbered sections below are the full policy.
Documenting Reality ("DR", "we", "us") is a privately owned website and discussion forum at documentingreality.com (the "Site"), run by its owner and administrator. You can reach us at chris@documentingreality.com.
This policy explains what information we collect from visitors and members, how we use and share it, and the choices you have. It applies to everything on the Site, including our payment gateway at gateway.documentingreality.com and the emails we send. It is part of our Terms of Service; by using the Site you agree to both. It does not cover other websites that we link to or that link to us.
Like most websites, we automatically record technical information about your visit: your IP address, details of your browser and device, the pages you view and when, and the page that referred you. We also use a script that derives an identifier from your browser and device characteristics and stores it in a cookie. It helps us count free views for visitors, tie activity to an account, and detect scraping, ban evasion and duplicate accounts; it is used only by us. We keep security logs of activity on the Site, and our security provider records connection data as part of protecting it.
We do not accept credit or debit cards, so we never see card numbers. When you pay with cryptocurrency through our gateway we record the invoice and its status and link the payment to your account; cryptocurrency transactions are themselves public on the relevant blockchain. If you pay by another method arranged by email, we see whatever that service shows us and keep that correspondence. Gift voucher purchases and redemptions are recorded against the accounts involved.
The Site uses cookies and similar browser storage to keep you logged in, remember your settings and which threads are new to you, store the device identifier described in Section 2, remember which promotion you clicked and whether advertising was displayed, help detect duplicate accounts, and measure traffic through Google Analytics. Our security provider, Cloudflare, also sets cookies for bot protection and for the verification widget on the login page. Most of these cookies are set by us; the analytics and security cookies are set by those providers under their own policies.
You can block or delete cookies in your browser settings, but the Site needs cookies to log you in, so most member features will stop working without them. We do not currently respond to "Do Not Track" or Global Privacy Control browser signals.
We use Google Analytics 4 to measure traffic and how the Site is used. It records page views, the device and general location derived from your IP address, and events such as searches made on the Site, clicks on our promotions, sign-ups, checkouts and completed membership purchases. Completed purchases are reported to Google by invoice so that sales are counted correctly; we do not send your name, email address or username. Google processes this data under its own privacy policy. You can opt out with Google's browser add-on.
The advertising shown to non-paying accounts is our own: promotional cards, membership reminders and short video intros served from our servers. We do not run third-party advertising networks, and no advertiser receives information about you from us. Some promotions link to other websites and are labelled as sponsored; once you click through, that site's privacy policy applies.
A forum is a public place. Please assume the following can be seen by anyone, including people who are not members, and can be copied, quoted, indexed and archived by others:
Member profile pages and the list of who is online are visible only to logged-in members. You can hide yourself from the online list with the "invisible mode" option in your User Control Panel. Your email address is never displayed to other members. Private messages are visible only to the sender, the recipients and, as explained in Section 2, site administration.
We do not sell, rent, trade or share your personal information with advertisers, data brokers or anyone else for their own marketing. We share information only in these situations:
Your information is stored on servers operated for us by hosting and backup providers, and some of it is processed by the other service providers described in Section 7. These providers operate in various countries, so your information may be stored or processed in a country other than the one you live in, where privacy laws may differ from your own. By using the Site you consent to this.
All traffic to the Site is encrypted in transit, and the Site sits behind Cloudflare's firewall and bot protection. Passwords are stored hashed, and access to member data is limited to the Site's administrator and, to a much smaller extent, its moderators. No website can promise perfect security, so please use a unique password here and tell us immediately if you think your account has been compromised. If a breach affects your personal information we will notify you as the law requires.
Email us from the address registered to your account and we will, after verifying it is you: tell you what personal information we hold about you and give you a copy; correct anything that is wrong; or close your account. When an account is closed we remove the profile and stop using the email address, but posts remain under a generic name and we may keep logs and records needed to enforce our Terms, prevent abuse, complete payments or comply with the law. Requests to remove particular posts are handled as described in the Terms of Service. We answer within 30 days.
We process your information to provide the Site under our Terms, for our legitimate interests in running, securing and improving the Site and enforcing its rules, to comply with legal obligations, and with your consent where we ask for it (such as optional emails). You have the rights to access, rectify, erase and port your data, to restrict or object to processing, to withdraw consent, and to complain to your local data-protection authority. We do not have a representative in the EEA or UK; contact us by email to exercise any right.
We do not sell personal information or share it for cross-context behavioral advertising, and we do not use it for automated decisions with legal effects. You may request access to, correction of, or deletion of your information as described above, and we will not treat you differently for doing so.
The Site is for adults only. You must be at least 18 years old to use it, and we do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 18. If we learn that an account belongs to a minor we close it and delete the account details. If you believe a minor is using the Site, email us.
Posts on the Site may contain links to, and images or media loaded from, other websites. When your browser loads content from another site, that site receives your IP address and may set its own cookies. We do not control those sites, and this policy does not apply to them. The same is true of the sponsored links described in Section 5 and of any payment service you use.
We may update this policy as the Site changes. The current version is always at this address, with the "last updated" date at the top. For significant changes we may post an announcement on the forum or email registered members. Continued use of the Site after a change means you accept the updated policy.
Privacy questions, data requests and legal correspondence all go to the site administrator:
Every message is read personally, so please allow a little time for a reply.