description: I encourage you to read the whole document. It's not particularly long or difficult to understand.
subtitle: What's being done with your data?
permalink: /privacy/
cover: /assets/posts/privacy.png
---
# Privacy Policy
This will hopefully be the briefest "legal" document you've ever read as well as the most readable. If you need additional information [let me know](/contact) and I'll add it.
## IP Address
Some applications (Gitea, Mastodon, Mumble, XMPP) collect your IP when you register. At the moment, that information is kept indefinitely. However, I'm working on either completely disabling it or setting something up that will periodically delete stored IP addresses. When I do, this document will be updated accordingly.
If you don't want me to have that information to begin with, just use [Tor Browser](https://www.torproject.org/).
## Email Address
When you register for a service using an email address, that is obviously collected. You can control whether it's a real one or not. Even though I can see them for services like Gitea and Mastodon, I don't care and won't send you unsolicited mail.
**Note:** whatever address you use for git is visible in commits.
## Browser Fingerprint
Your web browser communicates uniquely identifying information to all websites it visits by allowing the site to know details about your operating system, browser information, plugins installed, fonts installed, screen resolution, and [much more](https://panopticlick.eff.org/). I don't care about that either and, if some services do collect that for their own use (I'm 99% sure none of them do), I'm not going to look at it ¯\\_(ツ)\_/¯
## Usage and storage of collected information
**For most services:** Whatever data is collected is stored on one server in Germany and won't be shared with any third parties whatsoever.
**For Nextcloud:** Whatever data is collected is stored on one server in my living room and won't be shared with any third parties either. User's files are encrypted at rest so they wouldn't be of any use if someone hacked my server and stole them. I do have the encryption key so I *could* decrypt and view your files. I'm not going to bother with that though because I don't have any interest in looking at your personal stuff. That's your business and I won't invade your privacy.
* Website/DNS-over-HTTPS gateway's NGINX logs are disabled.
To elaborate on Unbound's verbosity, if you have it installed, you can run `man unbound.conf`, search `verbosity` and read it yourself. More human-readably . . .
There's no warranty, no uptime assurance, etc. so I recommend using multiple [resolvers](https://wiki.lelux.fi/dns/resolvers); that also improves privacy because the DNS queries are spread across multiple providers
I do live in the US; I have three servers here, one in Germany, and another in Luxembourg. If, for whatever reason, I'm compelled by law enforcement to give up your email, IP address, or any other information, I will even though *I don't want to*. As such, I do whatever I can to make sure *I don't have that information*. If I don't have it, I can't share it.
To mitigate invasions of privacy like this, use a throwaway email address for registration, such as one from [anonbox](https://anonbox.net/) if you want a temporary address or [cock.li](https://cock.li/) for something a bit more permanent. Also provide a [fake name](https://fakena.me/fake-name/) and use the service from behind [Tor](https://www.torproject.org/) or a VPN. Rather than a VPN, however, I *strongly* recommend using Tor across all devices. They have an [Android version](https://www.torproject.org/download/#android) now and there's another browser they recommend for iOS called [Onion Browser](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/onion-browser/id519296448). I don't use iOS so I can't say whether or not it's any good, just that the Tor Project recommends it.
