Cookies and data protection

1. Who is responsible

The controller of your data is truthtether. You can reach us with all questions about data protection by email at [email protected]. This is our only contact detail.

2. Which data we process

• Account data: username, email address, your password in protected form and, if you give it, your phone number.
• Profile data you choose to add, such as name, pronouns, description, status and images.
• Content: posts, comments, events, communities, friendships, follows, reports and the images and files you upload.
• Technical data: IP address, browser and device information and the time of requests, which our servers and our providers need to deliver the platform and keep it secure.
• Usage data from Google Analytics: anonymous page-view counts always, and fuller statistics linked to a cookie identifier only if you accept (see section 5).

We do not sell your data and we do not use it for advertising.

3. Why we process it, and on what basis

• To provide your account and the features of the platform (Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR, contract).
• To protect the platform from bots, abuse and attacks, with the Cloudflare captcha, and to enforce our terms (Art. 6(1)(f), our legitimate interest in a safe platform).
• To handle reports and to comply with legal obligations (Art. 6(1)(c) and (f)).
• To measure how the platform is used with Google Analytics: with your consent for the full version (Art. 6(1)(a)), and, without it, in a cookieless mode that stores nothing on your device (Art. 6(1)(f), our legitimate interest in knowing whether the platform works).

You must be at least 18 years old to use truthtether, so we do not knowingly process data of minors.

4. Who helps us (processors)

• Cloudflare, Inc., R2 storage: the images and files you upload are stored in Cloudflare R2, an S3-compatible object storage. Files are handed out with time-limited signed links.
• Cloudflare, Inc., Turnstile captcha: when you sign up or log in, a Cloudflare captcha checks that you are a person. For this, Cloudflare receives technical data of your browser and your IP address.
• Google Ireland Limited / Google LLC, Google Analytics: statistics about the use of the platform. Google receives your IP address and browser data; we do not enable advertising features or share the data for advertising.

Cloudflare and Google may process data in countries outside the European Economic Area, including the United States. Such transfers rely on the EU–US Data Privacy Framework where the provider is certified, and on the standard contractual clauses of the European Commission otherwise.

5. Cookies, local storage and analytics

truthtether does not use cookies for sign-in. We store the following in your browser:

• Strictly necessary (no consent needed): your sign-in token, so you stay logged in, and your answer to the consent banner.
• Preferences: settings such as the colour theme, only if you accept optional storage.
• Analytics, with your consent: if you choose “Accept all”, Google Analytics sets its own cookies (_ga, _ga_*) to recognise returning visitors and see which pages are used.
• Analytics, without consent: if you choose “Essential only” (or have not answered yet), Google Analytics runs in a cookieless mode. It sets no cookies and stores nothing on your device; Google only receives anonymous pings (page, time, approximate region, browser type) that cannot be tied to you across visits. Choosing “Essential only” also removes analytics cookies set before.
• Cloudflare captcha may set or read a small amount of data in your browser to tell people from bots.

You can withdraw your consent at any time by clearing the site data of truthtether in your browser; the banner then asks you again.

6. How long we keep data

Account data, profile data and content are kept as long as your account exists and are deleted with it. Technical logs are kept for a short time for security and then deleted. Data we must keep by law, or need to handle a report of illegal content, is kept only as long as that requires.

7. Your rights

You have the right to:

• access the data we hold about you and receive a copy (Art. 15),
• have wrong data corrected (Art. 16),
• have your data deleted (Art. 17), see the notice above,
• restrict the processing (Art. 18),
• receive your data in a common format (Art. 20),
• object to processing based on our legitimate interest (Art. 21),
• withdraw a consent at any time, without affecting what was done before.

Write to [email protected] to use these rights. If you think we process your data unlawfully, you also have the right to complain to the data protection authority of your country of residence, work or of the place of the suspected infringement.

8. Security

We protect your data with encrypted connections, protected passwords and signed, time-limited access to files. No system is perfectly secure; if a breach puts your rights at risk, we tell you and the authorities as the law requires.

9. Changes

We update this text when our processing changes. The date at the top shows when it last changed; important changes are announced on the platform.