Privacy Policy: Guarding Your Digital Presence
At TheWyrd.net, we believe in transparency and respect for your digital self. This policy explains what information we gather and how we use it, ensuring your journey with us is clear and secure.
Who We Are
Welcome to TheWyrd.net! You’ve found us at https://thewyrd.net.
Comments: Your Voice, Your Data
When you share your thoughts by leaving comments on our site, we collect the details you provide in the comment form. We also note your visitor’s IP address and browser’s user agent string. This helps us distinguish genuine interactions from unwanted spam.
Gravatar & Your Profile Picture: To check if you’re using Gravatar, we send an anonymized string created from your email address (a hash) to their service. You can review Gravatar’s privacy policy here. Once we approve your comment, your profile picture becomes visible to the public, appearing right alongside your contribution.
Media: Watch Your Location Tags!
Planning to upload images to our site? Please be mindful: avoid uploading photos that include embedded location data (EXIF GPS). Any visitor to TheWyrd.net can download images and extract this location data directly from them.
Element Chat: Your Conversations, Your Sanctuary
Our Wyrd Element homeserver is a fortress of privacy. We host it ourselves, and crucially, it’s not connected to the broader Federation of homeservers. This isolation ensures maximum privacy for your conversations. For specific details on how Element itself handles your data within the app, we recommend consulting the official Element privacy policy.
Cookies: Your Digital Breadcrumbs
Cookies help us remember you and make your experience smoother.
Commenting Convenience: If you leave a comment, you can choose to save your name, email address, and website in cookies. These handy little files mean you won’t have to re-enter your details every time you comment, lasting for a full year.
Login Flow: When you visit our login page, we set a temporary cookie to see if your browser is cookie-friendly. This one’s purely functional, contains no personal data, and vanishes as soon as you close your browser.
Persistent Login: Once you log in, we deploy several cookies to remember your login information and your screen display preferences. Login cookies stay for two days, while screen options cookies last for a year. If you select “Remember Me,” your login will persist for two weeks. Don’t worry, logging out removes these login cookies immediately.
Article Edits: Should you edit or publish an article, your browser will save an additional cookie. This cookie holds no personal data; it simply indicates the post ID of your recently edited article and expires after just one day.
Embedded Content from Other Websites: Bridging Worlds
Sometimes, articles on our site feature embedded content like videos, images, or other articles from external websites. It’s important to understand: When you interact with this embedded content, it behaves exactly as if you had visited the other website directly.
These external sites may collect data about you, use their own cookies, and embed additional third-party tracking. They might also monitor your interaction with their content, especially if you have an account and are logged in to their service.
Who We Share Your Data With: When Necessary
We generally keep your data close, but there are specific instances:
- Password Resets: If you request a password reset, your IP address will be included in the reset email. This helps verify your request.
How Long We Hold Onto Your Data: Our Digital Memory
- Comments: If you leave a comment, we retain the comment itself and its associated metadata indefinitely. This intelligent system allows us to recognize and automatically approve any follow-up comments you make, saving them from getting stuck in a moderation queue.
- Registered Users: For anyone who registers on our website (if user registration is active), we securely store the personal information you provide in your user profile. You retain full control: all registered users can view, edit, or delete their own personal information at any time (with the exception of their username, which remains fixed). Naturally, our website administrators also have the ability to see and edit this information for site maintenance and support.
Your Rights Over Your Data: Digital Sovereignty
You maintain strong control over your data with us:
- Data Access: If you have an account on this site, or have left comments, you can easily request an exported file containing all the personal data we hold about you, including any information you’ve provided directly.
- Data Erasure: You also have the right to request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. Please note, however, that this request does not include any data we are legally or administratively obliged to keep for security or legal purposes.
Where Your Data Is Sent: Spam Patrol
Your comments undergo a watchful eye. Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service to ensure our community remains clean and genuine.
