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Privacy Policy⚓︎

Thank you for using FreeFlarum. This document will inform you about what data FreeFlarum holds about users that have signed up for FreeFlarum. It is important for FreeFlarum to be as open to its users as possible. Hopefully, it will cover most of the answers that you might have, however should anything be left unanswered, you are free to contact FreeFlarum at anytime.

Note that this document is primarily oriented towards FreeFlarum's privacy practices. It explains them in a rather non-formal way, for everyone to understand. Although there may be some mentions of Flarum's privacy policy (as it follows a similar document structure), please be sure to also read the complete Flarum Privacy Policy for a full set of privacy practices that are being used by both parties.

Information that FreeFlarum collects⚓︎

None of the records that FreeFlarum holds about its visitors and/or users were, are being or will ever be sold to third parties by FreeFlarum under any circumstances.

During signup⚓︎

When you first signup at the main FreeFlarum website https://freeflarum.com, you will be asked to enter the following details:

  • Forum tag: Your desired forum name. This will be used in your forum's initial URL (a subdomain that FreeFlarum owns, can be changed) and also as an internal, unique identifier of your forum;
  • Your E-mail address: This is the main source of contact that FreeFlarum uses (read below);
  • The parent domain of your forum: This will be the initial parent domain of your forum. You can only choose between subdomains that are owned by FreeFlarum;
  • Forum template: The forum template that you want to start with. This information is discarded after the sign up process is finished, e. g.: it is not stored anywhere;
  • Captcha: This is a third-party widget provided by hCaptcha to confirm that the forum creation is being requested by a human. hCaptcha's Privacy Policy applies during this process, make sure to read it.

Your E-mail address⚓︎

FreeFlarum uses your E-mail address only for the purposes to contact you about important updates about your forum:

  • When your forum is created, FreeFlarum will send you a welcome E-mail with a password reset link that you can use to log into your admin account. Password reset links are valid for 24 hours - after that time passes, it is possible to request a new password reset link through Flarum's "Forgot password?" function (read below);
  • When your forum is taken offline due to being inactive, very active or too active (e. g.: it is unused or generates too much load for FreeFlarum's server to handle, respectively), FreeFlarum may send you an E-mail that informs you about this. You can read more about FreeFlarum's Fair Use Policy and how FreeFlarum handles inactive/very active forums here;
  • By a FreeFlarum staff member to personally inform you of other concerns that cannot be handled by FreeFlarum's system automatically (e. g.: your forum violates FreeFlarum's Terms and Conditions).

E-mail addresses that are collected by FreeFlarum have never been, are not and will never be used for purposes such as marketing, newsletters, advertisements, spam or other forms of generally annoying E-mails that are usually sent to users' mailboxes without their prior consent. We only send you important updates (read above), which means that because of this, it is impossible to unsubscribe from FreeFlarum's E-mail notifications.

Information that FreeFlarum holds about its forums in its database⚓︎

FreeFlarum's database stores the following records:

  • Forum tags: Personal, unique, user-chosen names of forums that are used to identify a particular forum;
  • E-mail addresses of forum owners: E-mail address that you used during the sign up process at FreeFlarum's main website https://freeflarum.com. Changing your Flarum forum's admin account E-mail address does not change the address that FreeFlarum uses internally. If you'd like to perform a change of the E-mail address that FreeFlarum has saved in its database, please contact FreeFlarum. This E-mail address is used for the purposes explained above (e. g.: to inform forum owners about their forum's updates);
  • The date and time of your forum creation: This is used by FreeFlarum to identify for how long was your forum online, and for FreeFlarum's system to calculate whether your forum should be archived of inactivity or not (read above, or here);
  • Your forum's status: Can only be one out of 3 possible values - online (your forum is up and accessible), offline (your forum was archived by FreeFlarum due to inactivity, too much activity or it violated FreeFlarum's Terms and Conditions) or destroyed (your forum was destroyed and can no longer be reactivated). This is used merely just as an internal flag to maintain proper structure and functionality of FreeFlarum. You can read more about inactive forums and FreeFlarum's Fair Use Policy here;
  • Your forum's custom host: If you have CNAMEd your domain to FreeFlarum, connecting it to your forum, FreeFlarum will store the linked host in its database to maintain its proper functionality;
  • Parent domain: This is similar to custom host (read above), except it is being used to identify which one of FreeFlarum's available parent domains a forum uses. It may also contain the parent domain of the subdomain that you have linked to FreeFlarum (read above);
  • Server IP: Currently unused. At the moment, all values of this record for all forums equal to the current IP of FreeFlarum's server. It will be used in the future, after FreeFlarum upgrades to a multi-server architecture, allowing forums to be hosted all around the world & to speed up loading times for visitors located far away from FreeFlarum's current server;
  • Created IP: The IP address that was used during the forum signup process. It is used by FreeFlarum to safeguard the service against potential fraud, spam and DDoS attacks;
  • Donated amount: The cumulative amount of euros that the forum had donated in order to support FreeFlarum, as is explained here. It is used during FreeFlarum and Flarum's runtime to calculate what perks should the forum receive;
  • Whether the forum is protected: Can be yes or no. Protected forums cannot be archived or removed by FreeFlarum, regardless of other factors (such as inactivity, too much activity or donor status). This usually includes forums that are required for FreeFlarum's proper functionality, but it may also include chosen user forums based on the prior approval of an user request by a FreeFlarum staff member;
  • Whether the forum was noticed about being very active: Can be yes or no. It is used interally by FreeFlarum to determine, whether an alert should be sent to forum owner to their E-mail address about their forum being very active (these alerts are sent only once). You can read more about very active forums and FreeFlarum's Fair Use Policy here;
  • Whether the forum is an "OG Donor": "OG donors" are all donors that have donated before the FreeFlarum U1-2022 update (summer update, released near the end of August, 2022). These donors may receive additional perks, so this value is used internally by FreeFlarum to determine whether than can really happen;
  • Removal reason: The reason why the forum was removed (if it was removed). This message will be rendered in the E-mail notification about forums that have been archived or destroyed. It will be stored for the purposes to make moderation and providing support easier for a FreeFlarum staff member.

Authenticating at FreeFlarum⚓︎

In order to authenticate at FreeFlarum for purposes of forum moderation, your Flarum forum's admin account's password hash will be compared against a hashed version of the password that you entered at FreeFlarum's website during the login process at https://freeflarum.com/settings/login. This ensures that FreeFlarum does not necessairly store additional hashed versions of passwords and minimizes the risk of a data breach (since passwords are not stored in a central database - read above).

  • You may change your Flarum forum's admin account password from Flarum's interface. To do this, navigate to your Flarum's forum admin profile settings, then click on the "Change password" button;
  • To request a new password for your forum's admin account in case you forgot the old password, navigate to your forum while logged out (you can visit it in private browsing/incognito mode, if your browser supports such feature), click on the "Login" button in top-right of your forum's header navigation, then click on the "Forgot password?" link in the bottom of the login modal. You will be asked to enter your E-mail address, which is the address that currently belongs to your admin account. If all went well, a new E-mail should arrive with a new password reset link that you may use to continue your forum setup process;
  • All passwords of your Flarum forum's users are hashed using bcrypt. This entire process is handled by Flarum and its internal libraries and components, and FreeFlarum has no influence over how passwords are generated and stored by Flarum internally.

Access tokens are created after a successful login to FreeFlarum's website, and they are stored in a separate table in FreeFlarum's internal database. They include the following records:

  • Forum tag: The tag of the forum that the access token belongs to;
  • Token: The access token itself, a string of random characters and numbers;
  • Created at: Date and time when was the access token created at;
  • Expires at: Date and time when the access token expires, can be nothing for permanent validity;
  • User agent: The user agent of the browser that created the access token
  • Has elevated permissions: Whether the access token has elevated permissions or not.

Does FreeFlarum use cookies?⚓︎

Yes, for the purpose of storing access tokens, which are fetched by FreeFlarum's server to authenticate the user (read above). This cookie is marked as "HttpOnly" for security reasons, and therefore can't be accessed by JavaScript.

Other cookies may originate from third-party services that can't be influenced by FreeFlarum (read below). Cookies managed by FreeFlarum are strictly used only to maintain its proper functionality, and were not/are not/will not be used for marketing purposes.

FreeFlarum and log files⚓︎

FreeFlarum retains log files of its system libraries for no more than 1 year. Some of these records include information about every request that was made to FreeFlarum's server, which may include (but is not limited to): request's IP address, request method, request URL, etc...

Third-party services & software used by FreeFlarum⚓︎

The following third-party services are being used by FreeFlarum:

  • Cloudflare, for proxying requests made to the main FreeFlarum website and forums that are using one of the available FreeFlarum domains, to guard the service against attacks and other potential internet threats;
  • hCaptcha, for protecting the forum registration form at the main FreeFlarum website (https://freeflarum.com);
  • IcoMoon, for graphics (in form of icons) rendered on the main FreeFlarum website.

FreeFlarum does NOT use tracking services, tracking snippets, tracking programs or other third-party services that harvest the visitor's data for marketing or advertisement purposes.

For more information about FreeFlarum and its internal workings, please refer to FreeFlarum's about page.

Information that Flarum collects⚓︎

The logic of FreeFlarum and Flarum operates in two isolated and primarily independent environments. Additional information may be collected by Flarum and/or its extensions and held at FreeFlarum's server - however, FreeFlarum has no direct control over this.

For details about Flarum's privacy policy, please refer to the complete Flarum Privacy Policy and/or the privacy policy of Flarum extensions that are being used at FreeFlarum, if they have any.

This document was last updated on the 12th of July, 2024