Privacy Questions and Answers

This notice describes how Blender Artists collects and uses data about you.

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What is Blender Artists ?

Blender Artists is a free to use forum for the Blender 3D community. It is operated by Veldhuizen Interactive, who also operate BlenderNation.

How does Blender Artists collect data about me?

Blender Artists collects data about you:

  • when you browse the site
  • when you create and use an account on the site
  • when you post, send private messages, and otherwise participate in the forum

Blender Artists does not buy or otherwise receive data about you from data brokers.

What data does Blender Artists collect about me, and why?

Blender Artists collects data about visits to forums.

When you visit Blender Artists, whether you have an account or not, the forum uses cookies, server logs, and other methods to collect data about what pages you visit and when.

Blender Artists uses data about how you use the website to:

  • optimize the forum, so that it’s quick and easy to use
  • diagnose and debug technical errors
  • defend the forum from abuse and technical attacks
  • compile statistics on forum and topic popularity
  • compile statistics on the kinds of software and computers visitors use

Blender Artists usually stores data about how you use the forum in identifiable form for just a few weeks. In special circumstances, like extended investigations about technical attacks, Blender Artists may preserve log data longer, for analysis.

Blender Artists collects account data.

Many features of Blender Artists require a forum account. For you need an account to post and reply to topics.

To sign up for a forum account, Blender Artists requires your name, a user name, and an e-mail address.

Blender Artists uses your account data to identify you on the forum, and to create pages specific to you, like your profile page. If the forum is public, Blender Artists publishes your account data. If the forum is access-restricted, Blender Artists makes your account data available to everyone who can access the forum, according to the forum administrator’s configuration.

Blender Artists uses your e-mail address to:

  • notify you about posts and other activity on the forum
  • reset your password and help keep your account secure
  • contact you in special circumstances related to your account
  • contact you about legal requests, like DMCA takedown requests

You may provide additional data for your account, like a short biography, your location, or your birthday, on the profile settings page for your account. Blender Artists makes that data available to others who can access the forum. You don’t have to provide this additional information, and you can erase it at any time.

Blender Artists stores your account data as long as your account remains open.

Blender Artists collects data about posts and other activity on the forum.

Blender Artists collects the content of your posts, plus data about bookmarks, search activity, likes, and links you follow in order to share that data with others, through the forum. If the forum is public, Blender Artists publishes your activity. If the forum is access-restricted, or access restrictions apply to the specific post, Blender Artists makes your activity available only to users permitted to see it.

Blender Artists also collects data about private messages that you send through the forum. Blender Artists makes private messages available to senders and their recipients, and also to forum administrators.

Blender Artists stores your posts and other activity as long as your account remains open.

How can I make choices about data collection?

You can make choices about how data about is used on the settings page for your account. When a forum uses access restrictions that vary by category, you can choose who will see your post by choosing the appropriate category.

Blender Artists does not respond to the Do Not Track HTTP header.

Where does Blender Artists store data about me?

The BlenderNation server is hosted in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

Does Blender Artists comply with the EU General Data Protection Regulation?

Blender Artists respects privacy rights under Regulation (EU) 2016/679, the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Information that GDPR requires Blender Artists to give can be found throughout this privacy notice. So can information about specific rights, like access, rectification, erasure, data portability, and objection to automated decision-making.

Where can I access data about me?

You can see your account data at any time by visiting your account page on the forum. Your account page also lists your posts and other activity on the forum.

Your account activity page also includes a link to download all of your activity in standard comma-separated values format.

How can I change or erase data about me?

You can change your account data at any time by visiting the profile settings page for your account. Forum administrators can also anonymize accounts.

You are also be able to edit, anonymize, or erase your posts. When you edit posts, Blender Artists will keep all versions of your posts. Forum administrators can view old versions of posts, and optionally make them visible to other forum visitors.

Does Blender Artists make automated decisions based on data about me?

Blender Artists classifies posts as spam automatically.

Blender Artists uses data about your posts and other activity on many forums to make automated decisions about whether your posts are spam through a service called Akismet. When Akismet decides that a post is likely spam, the forum refuses to accept the post.

If you think a post has been wrongly blocked or removed, contact an administrator of your forum. They can override the decision that a post was spam.

Blender Artists uses data about posts and activity to set trust levels automatically.

Depending on how administrators of your forum configure the forum, the forum may use data about your posts and activity to award you badges and calculate a trust level for your account. Your trust level may affect how you can participate in the forum, such as whether you can upload images, as well as give you access to moderation and management powers in the forum. Your trust level therefore reflects forum administrators’ confidence in you, and their willingness to delegate community management functions, like moderation.

If you think your trust level has been set incorrectly, contact an administrator of your forum. They can manually adjust the trust level of your account.

Does Blender Artists share data about me with others?

Blender Artists shares account data with others as mentioned in the section about account data.

Blender Artists shares data about your posts and other forum activity with others as mentioned in the section about account data.

Blender Artists does not sell or give information about you to other companies or services. However, Blender Artists does use services from other companies. The companies behind those services may collect data about you on their own, for their own purposes. Some of these services may be used to collect information about your online activities across different websites. All of these services are based in the United States.

Service Privacy Notice Description
Akismet https://automattic.com/privacy/ reduces spam posts on some forums
Google Analytics https://www.google.com/analytics/terms/ Compiles visitor statistics. You can opt out of Google Analytics using a browser extension.
Digital Ocean https://www.digitalocean.com/legal/privacy/ Hosts the BlenderNation webserver and database.
Amazon Simple Email Service https://aws.amazon.com/compliance/gdpr-center/ Handles our outbound email
Google AdSense https://policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites Google AdSense places context or user-interest based advertisements on the pages. You can choose to disable personal ad-targeting on their ad settings page.
Apple Push Notification Service https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/ Sends push notifications to users of the Discourse iOS app.
Google Cloud Messaging https://policies.google.com/privacy Sends push notifications to users of the Discourse Android app.

Other individuals and companies may also reuse data about you that Blender Artists publishes, such as your posts to public forums.

How can I contact Blender Artists about privacy?

You can send questions and complaints to:

Veldhuizen Interactive
[email protected]

For complaints under GDPR more generally, European Union users may lodge complaints with their local data protection supervisory authorities.

How can I find out about changes?

This version of Blender Artists’s privacy questions and answers took effect May 25, 2018.

Blender Artists will post the next version at https://blenderartists.org/privacy. Blender Artists may change how it announces changes in future versions.

In the meantime, Blender Artists may update its contact information without announcing a change. Please refer to https://blenderarists.org/privacy for the latest contact information at any time.