Privacy of tchncs

Quick note on language

This document aims to be simple and accessible, in order to be understood correctly by users of this service, who usually are no lawyers and an international audience. It is not made from or for lawyers and adoption of it is on the adopters own risk. It also is not written by a natively english speaking person. tchncs.de is a service from and in Germany.

Contribute to this document

As always, users are more than welcome to contribute to these sites. Please contact us in the tchncs.de Communityroom or via tchncs.de/contact

1. Location of tchncs and its authorized personnel

tchncs.de uses servers in Germany and Finland to provide its services. For media uploads of the Matrix service, a datacenter in the Netherlands is being used. Only your admin Milan is authorized to access data on the servers and uses disk-encryption on all of them.

2. 3rdparties

You might be using a client that uses services not hosted by tchncs.de, such as:

• Jitsi video webconferencing, from the videocall feature or from the integration manager (usually riot.im, now known under the name Element)
• The Integration-Manager itself (usually hosted by Matrix.org)
  this provides widgets and bots for rooms, which usually are able to access your messages and files of the room if activated.
• The Identity server (Matrix.org)
• The Keyserver (Matrix.org)

3. Federation

You might be participating in rooms and spaces of other servers (similar to communicating with different email providers) or in local rooms and spaces with users from other servers. tchncs.de cannot control in guaranteed manner, how these providers might handle messages and uploads provided by you over federation.

4. Data we collect

The webserver as well as the Matrix homeserver collects data for moderation and logging/debuggin purposes. This data includes:

• Your IP-Address
• Your http-referrer (the site you are coming from)
• Your used software, such as Client/Browser/Device
• When you were active most recently

5. Bridgeing

Some rooms are using bridges to connect with non-Matrix networks such as IRC, Discord or Telegram. When a room uses such a bot or appservice, messages and media are copied to the connected networks. tchncs.de is not responsible nor able to guarantee control over data shared to those platforms.

6. Data expiry

Most data you provide expires on this homeserver:

• Messages and uploads: 1 year
• Webserver logs: 7 days
• Synapse logs: 4 days
• IP-address logged by the Matrix homeserver: 7 days
• Last time you have been seen: 7 days

7. Data processing

Collected data by our webserver (when using the Element Webclient of tchncs.de or accessing the Matrix homeserver of tchncs.de), such as your IP-Address might be used in case of debugging issues or for moderation purposes.

8. Data deletion

If you so wish, you may use your client to delete your account completly from our server. This action is GDPR-compilant and cannot be reverted. In such an event, only your username will remain to prevent impersonation and errors with federation.

If you decide to redact a message, users on our server will be unable to read its contents. We can't however guarantee that this request is honoured by remote servers and services.

9. Data export

You may request or correct personal data stored on our servers. Depending on your client used, you may be able to export needed information such as Chathistory without contacting us.

10. Cookies

3rdparties mentioned above (and below) may place cookies needed to provide parts of their features or more. In case of a web-client, you can control these by using your browsers settings. Otherwise please mind the privacy and/or cookie-policy of the application you are using our service with.

11. Google ReCaptcha

In order protect the server from at least some amount of bots, new users need to use the Captcha provided by Google. Existing users will not be prompted with any captcha. When prompted with the Captcha, you might share your IP with Google, also cookies by Google might be used. You can prevent such cookies with your browser configuration.

12. Changes of this document

This document might be updated over time. In such an event, the homeserver will notify its users. In order to continue using it, they must read and agree the new version of this document.