Privacy Policy

Greetings, the good people of the world! This privacy policy ("the Privacy Policy" or "the document") for <www.lemmy.world> ("we," "us," "our," "the website," "Lemmy.World," or "LW") describes how and why we might collect, store, or use your information when you use Lemmy.World, such as when you:

  • Visit our website at <www.lemmy.world>
  • Engage with us in other related ways, including any events

Questions or concerns?

Reading this Privacy Policy will help you understand your privacy rights and choices. If you do not agree with all of our policies and practices, please do not use the website. If you still have any questions or concerns, please contact us at [email protected].

Personal information you disclose to us

We collect personal information that you voluntarily provide to us when you register on the website, express an interest in obtaining information about us or the website, or otherwise when you contact us.

Personal information provided by you

The personal information that we collect depends on the context of your interactions with us and the website, the choices you make, and the features you use. The personal information we collect may include the following:

  • email addresses
  • usernames
  • passwords

Sensitive information

We do not process sensitive information.

All personal information that you provide to us must be true, complete, and accurate, and you must notify us of any changes to such personal information.

Information automatically collected

Some information — such as your Internet Protocol (IP) address and/or browser and device characteristics — is collected automatically when you visit the website.

We automatically collect certain information when you visit, use, or navigate the website. This information does not reveal your specific identity (like your name or contact information) but may include device and usage information, such as your IP address, browser and device characteristics, operating system, language preferences, referring URLs, device name, country, location, information about how and when you use Lemmy.World, and other technical information. This information is primarily needed to maintain the security and operation of Lemmy.World, and for our internal analytics and reporting purposes.

View our Cookie Policy https://legal.lemmy.world/cookie-policy/

The information we collect includes:

  • Log and Usage Data. Log and usage data is service-related, diagnostic, usage, and performance information our servers automatically collect when you access or use our Services and which we record in log files. Depending on how you interact with us, this log data may include your IP address, device information, browser type, and settings and information about your activity in the Services (such as the date/time stamps associated with your usage, pages and files viewed, searches, and other actions you take such as which features you use), device event information (such as system activity, error reports (sometimes called "crash dumps"), and hardware settings).

We process your personal information for a variety of reasons, depending on how you interact with Lemmy.World, including:

  • To facilitate account creation and authentication and otherwise manage user accounts. We may process your information so you can create and log in to your account, as well as keep your account in working order.
  • To save or protect an individual's vital interest. We may process your information when necessary to save or protect an individual’s vital interest, such as to prevent harm.

If you are located in the EU or UK, this section applies to you.

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and UK GDPR require us to explain the valid legal bases we rely on in order to process your personal information. As such, we may rely on the following legal bases to process your personal information:

  • Consent. We may process your information if you have given us permission (i.e., consent) to use your personal information for a specific purpose. You can withdraw your consent at any time.
  • Legal Obligations. We may process your information where we believe it is necessary for compliance with our legal obligations, such as to cooperate with a law enforcement body or regulatory agency, exercise or defend our legal rights, or disclose your information as evidence in litigation in which we are involved.
  • Vital Interests. We may process your information where we believe it is necessary to protect your vital interests or the vital interests of a third party, such as situations involving potential threats to the safety of any person.

If you are located in Canada, this section applies to you.

We may process your information if you have given us specific permission (i.e., express consent) to use your personal information for a specific purpose, or in situations where your permission can be inferred (i.e., implied consent). You can withdraw your consent at any time.

In some exceptional cases, we may be legally permitted under applicable law to process your information without your consent, including, for example:

  • If collection is clearly in the interests of an individual and consent cannot be obtained in a timely way
  • For investigations and fraud detection and prevention
  • For business transactions provided certain conditions are met
  • If it is contained in a witness statement and the collection is necessary to assess, process, or settle an insurance claim
  • For identifying injured, ill, or deceased persons and communicating with next of kin
  • If we have reasonable grounds to believe an individual has been, is, or may be victim of financial abuse
  • If it is reasonable to expect collection and use with consent would compromise the availability or the accuracy of the information and the collection is reasonable for purposes related to investigating a breach of an agreement or a contravention of the laws of Canada or a province
  • If disclosure is required to comply with a subpoena, warrant, court order, or rules of the court relating to the production of records
  • If it was produced by an individual in the course of their employment, business, or profession and the collection is consistent with the purposes for which the information was produced
  • If the collection is solely for journalistic, artistic, or literary purposes
  • If the information is publicly available and is specified by the regulations

We do not sell or disclose user data under any condition, unless required by relevant data protection authorities, any other law enforcement authorities, or if the account owner requests the data themselves.

We may use cookies and similar tracking technologies (like web beacons and pixels) to access or store information. Specific information about how we use such technologies and how you can refuse certain cookies is set out in our Cookie Policy.

We will only keep your personal information for as long as it is necessary for the purposes set out in this privacy notice, unless a longer retention period is required or permitted by law (such as tax, accounting, or other legal requirements). No purpose in this notice will require us keeping your personal information for longer than the period of time in which users have an account with us.

When we have no ongoing legitimate business need to process your personal information, we will either delete or anonymize such information, or, if this is not possible (for example, because your personal information has been stored in backup archives), then we will securely store your personal information and isolate it from any further processing until deletion is possible.

We have implemented appropriate and reasonable technical and organizational security measures designed to protect the security of any personal information we process. However, despite our safeguards and efforts to secure your information, no electronic interaction over the internet or information storage technology can be guaranteed to be perfectly secure, so we cannot promise or guarantee that hackers, cyber criminals, or other unauthorized third parties will not be able to defeat our security and improperly collect, access, steal, or modify your information. Although we will do our best to protect your personal information, transmission of personal information to and from Lemmy.World is at your own risk. You should only access the website within a secure environment.

We do not knowingly solicit data from children under 18 years of age. By using the website, you represent that you are at least 18 or that you are the parent or guardian of such a minor and consent to such minor dependent’s use of the website. If we learn that personal information from users less than 18 years of age has been collected, we will deactivate the account and take reasonable measures to promptly delete such data from our records. If you become aware of any data we may have collected from children under age 18, please contact us at [email protected].

In some regions (like the EEA, UK, Switzerland, and Canada), you have certain rights under applicable data protection laws. These may include the right (i) to request access and obtain a copy of your personal information, (ii) to request rectification or erasure; (iii) to restrict the processing of your personal information; (iv) if applicable, to data portability; and (v) not to be subject to automated decision-making. In certain circumstances, you may also have the right to object to the processing of your personal information.

We will consider and act upon any request in accordance with applicable data protection laws.

If you are located in the EEA or UK and you believe we are unlawfully processing your personal information, you also have the right to complain to your Member State data protection authority or UK data protection authority.

If you are located in Switzerland, you may contact the Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner.

Withdrawing your consent: If we are relying on your consent to process your personal information, which may be express and/or implied consent depending on the applicable law, you have the right to withdraw your consent at any time. You can withdraw your consent at any time by contacting us by using the contact details provided in the "Contact Us" section below.

However, please note that this will not affect the lawfulness of the processing before its withdrawal nor, when applicable law allows, will it affect the processing of your personal information conducted in reliance on lawful processing grounds other than consent.

Account Information

If you would at any time like to review or change the information in your account or terminate your account, you can:

  • Log in to your account settings and update your user account.
  • Contact us using the contact information provided.

Upon your request to terminate your account, we will deactivate or delete your account and information from our active databases. However, we may retain some information in our files to prevent fraud, troubleshoot problems, assist with any investigations, enforce our legal terms and/or comply with applicable legal requirements.

Cookies and similar technologies:

Most Web browsers are set to accept cookies by default. If you prefer, you can usually choose to set your browser to remove cookies and to reject cookies. If you choose to remove cookies or reject cookies, this could affect certain features or services of our Services.

If you have questions or comments about your privacy rights, you may email us at [email protected]. View our Cookie Policy

Most web browsers and some mobile operating systems and mobile applications include a Do-Not-Track ("DNT") feature or setting you can activate to signal your privacy preference not to have data about your online browsing activities monitored and collected. At this stage no uniform technology standard for recognizing and implementing DNT signals has been finalized. As such, we do not currently respond to DNT browser signals or any other mechanism that automatically communicates your choice not to be tracked online. If a standard for online tracking is adopted that we must follow in the future, we will inform you about that practice in a revised version of this privacy notice.

In Short: If you are a resident of the United States of America, you are granted specific rights regarding access to your personal information.

What categories of personal information do we collect?

We have collected the following categories of personal information in the past twelve (12) months:

CategoryActivity CollectedCollected
A. IdentifiersContact details, such as IP address, email address, and account name, User alias, passwordsYes
B. Protected classification characteristics under state or federal lawGender and date of birthNO
C. Commercial informationTransaction information, purchase history, financial details, and payment informationNO
D. Biometric informationFingerprints and voiceprintsNO
E. Internet or other similar network activityBrowsing history, search history, online behavior, interest data, and interactions with our and other websites, applications, systems, and advertisementsNO
F. Geolocation dataDevice locationYES
G. Audio, electronic, visual, thermal, olfactory, or similar informationImages and audio, video or call recordings created in connection with our business activitiesNO
H. Professional or employment-related informationBusiness contact details in order to provide you our Services at a business level or job title, work history, and professional qualifications if you apply for a job with usNO
I. Education InformationStudent records and directory informationNO
J. Inferences drawn from collected personal informationInferences drawn from any of the collected personal information listed above to create a profile or summary about, for example, an individual’s preferences and characteristicsNO
K. Sensitive personal InformationNO

We will use and retain the collected personal information as needed to maintain the website or for:

  • Category A - As long as the user has an account with us
  • Category F - As long as the user has an account with us

We may also collect other personal information outside of these categories through instances where you interact with us in person, online, or by phone or mail in the context of:

  • Receiving help through our support channels;
  • Participation in events; and
  • Facilitation in the delivery of our website and to respond to your inquiries.

Will your information be shared with anyone else?

We may disclose your personal information with our service providers pursuant to a written contract between us and each service provider.

We may use your personal information for our own internal purposes, such as for undertaking internal research for technological development and demonstration. This is not considered to be "selling" of your personal information.

We have not disclosed, sold, or shared any personal information to third parties for a business or commercial purpose in the preceding twelve (12) months. We will not sell or share personal information in the future belonging to website visitors, users, and other consumers.

Australia and New Zealand

We collect and process your personal information under the obligations and conditions set by Australia's Privacy Act 1988 and New Zealand's Privacy Act 2020 (Privacy Act).

This privacy policy satisfies the notice requirements defined in both Privacy Acts, in particular: what personal information we collect from you, from which sources, for which purposes, and other recipients of your personal information.

If you do not wish to provide the personal information necessary to fulfill their applicable purpose, it may affect our ability to provide our services, in particular:

  • offer you the products or services that you want
  • respond to or help with your requests
  • manage your account with us
  • confirm your identity and protect your account

At any time, you have the right to request access to or correction of your personal information. You can make such a request by contacting us by using the contact details provided in the section "HOW CAN YOU REVIEW, UPDATE, OR DELETE THE DATA WE COLLECT FROM YOU?"

If you believe we are unlawfully processing your personal information, you have the right to submit a complaint about a breach of the Australian Privacy Principles to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner and a breach of New Zealand's Privacy Principles to the Office of New Zealand Privacy Commissioner.

Republic of South Africa

At any time, you have the right to request access to or correction of your personal information. You can make such a request by contacting us by using the contact details provided in the section "HOW CAN YOU REVIEW, UPDATE, OR DELETE THE DATA WE COLLECT FROM YOU?"

If you are unsatisfied with the manner in which we address any complaint with regard to our processing of personal information, you can contact the office of the regulator, the details of which are:

The Information Regulator (South Africa)

General enquiries:

[email protected]

Complaints (complete POPIA/PAIA form 5)

[email protected] & [email protected]

We may update this privacy notice from time to time. The updated version will be indicated by an updated "Revised" date and the updated version will be effective as soon as it is accessible. If we make material changes to this privacy notice, we may notify you either by prominently posting a notice of such changes or by directly sending you a notification. We encourage you to review this privacy notice frequently to be informed of how we are protecting your information.

You have the right to request access to the personal information we collect from you, change that information, or delete it. To request to review, update, or delete your personal information, or if you have questions or comments about this privacy policy, you may e-mail us at [email protected].