Privacy Policy

Last updated:

Who we are

Asustin Networks runs a small set of websites and apps:

This policy covers what they all share: the servers, the network, the logs and signing in, and what the blogs at asustin.net do. Some apps have a policy of their own for what they do on top, like asust.in’s and Cloud’s.

We don’t sell data, show ads or use third-party trackers.

Cloudflare

Every site is served through Cloudflare, which protects it from attacks and speeds it up. Your requests pass through Cloudflare’s network on their way to our servers, so Cloudflare handles them on our behalf, under its own privacy policy. Cloudflare also tells our servers which country a request comes from.

Server logs

Like almost every web server, ours keep a log of each request:

  • the time.
  • your IP address and the country it’s in (provided by Cloudflare).
  • the address requested, including anything after a ?.
  • the page you came from (the referrer).
  • your browser’s User-Agent.

We use them to keep the sites secure (to spot attacks and block abuse), to fix problems, and to see how much traffic each site gets.

Logs are kept on the servers for 14 days. A copy is stored in Cloudflare R2, our storage provider, for 90 days, and then deleted.

Traffic reports

From those logs we build internal traffic reports: visits per site, pages, countries, browsers and referrers. In the reports, IP addresses are anonymized and the part of addresses after a ? is removed. Only people we’ve given access can see them.

Accounts and signing in

Some of our apps need an account, and so does writing on the blogs. Accounts live on sso.asustin.net, our own sign-in service on our servers. It stores:

  • your name, e-mail address and password (as a secure hash, never the password itself).
  • your two-factor methods and passkeys, if you set any up.
  • a record of your sign-ins, for security.

Password resets and e-mail verification happen there too, so the e-mails about them come from sso.asustin.net.

You can also sign in with your Google or Microsoft account. If you do, they tell us your name, e-mail address and profile picture, and an ID for your account. We never see your Google or Microsoft password. Google or Microsoft will also know you signed in to Asustin Networks, under their own privacy policies.

When you sign in to a blog, it gets your name and e-mail address from sso.asustin.net and keeps them in your profile there. You can see and edit your profile at any time, except your username, and the site’s administrators can see and edit it too.

Your account stays until you ask us to delete it.

Comments

When you leave a comment on a blog, we keep what you write in the comment form, plus your IP address and browser User-Agent, to help catch spam. Comments and their details are kept for as long as the post exists, so we can recognize your next comments and approve them without making them wait for moderation.

A hash of your e-mail address (a string made from it, from which it can’t be read back) may be sent to the Gravatar service to see if you have a profile picture there, under Automattic’s privacy policy. Once your comment is approved, your profile picture is shown with it.

Media

If you upload images to the blogs, avoid ones with location data in them (EXIF GPS): anyone can download them and read it.

Embedded content from other websites

Posts may include content from other websites, like videos, podcast players or posts. Embedded content behaves just as if you had visited that website: it may collect data about you, use cookies, add its own third-party tracking and watch how you interact with it, more so if you have an account there and are signed in.

Cookies

We only use cookies the sites need to work, and none of them track you:

  • Signing in: a cookie keeps you signed in, on sso.asustin.net and on each app. On the blogs, it lasts two days, or two weeks if you choose to stay signed in, and signing out removes it. One sign-in covers every blog, on asustin.net and its subdomains. If you write on the blogs, WordPress also uses cookies to remember how you’ve set up its dashboard (for a year) and which post you last edited (for a day).
  • Comments: if you choose to, your name, e-mail address and website are saved in cookies for a year, so you don’t have to type them again next time.
  • Choices: a few cookies remember things like the language you picked and light or dark mode.

E-mail

The sites send e-mails, like sign-up verification and password resets, through an e-mail delivery service, which delivers them on our behalf.

Backups

Our databases are backed up every day. Backups are deleted after 30 days, so data you delete disappears from them within that time.

Where your data is

Our servers are rented, in Germany. Logs and backups are stored in Cloudflare R2, in Europe. Cloudflare handles requests in whichever of its data centers is closest to you.

Why we’re allowed to use it

We use server logs and comment details for our legitimate interest in running and protecting the sites, account data to provide the accounts you ask for, and the comment cookies only with your consent.

Your rights

You can ask for a file with the personal data we have about you, including what you gave us, and you can ask us to correct or delete it. Write to [email protected]. We may keep some data when we have to, for administrative, legal or security reasons. Server logs are only linked to an IP address, not to a person, so we usually can’t tell which ones are yours.

You can also complain to a data protection authority where you live.

Changes

We may update this policy. The date at the top says when we last did.

Contact

Asustin Networks · [email protected]