fpsclassico gdpr

[adminless]

please first let me start just briefly saying that, in my opinion, the EU Regulation 2016/679, the General Data Protection Regulation, or in short just the gdpr, is probably one of the biggest messes in the history of the world wide web (internet). while for the most part I fully agree and support its principles and overall goals I find its final implementation unrealistic, lacking in proportionality and, ultimately, that it doesn't even appeal to the public interest it even refers itself but rather mostly to those (interests) of the big corporations and high profile public actors, particularly, when it comes to its "internet" implementation. I mean, at least I know that it doesn't reflect my interests and I'm not saying this as a sysadmin or as someone with a interest here as none of these services have any commercial purpose nor fpsclassico is any kind of "business". I'm just saying this as a end user here and the reality about the gdpr is that, as far as I know and have seen, after more than two years of this regulation in force at the time of writing I don't find the "internet" any "better" or just more "secure" than what it was before. I don't think it have really brought any meaningful changes to the internet but rather it just normalized the use of the same user tracking techniques and technologies that were in use at a very high trade-off in user experience/accessibility on both ends as well as casting overall mistrust over the industry. so my thoughts on the gdpr are that the European Union Commission would do better in spending their money (i.e. my taxes) on education, actual infrastructure and real technologies and techniques that would place the European Union on a better technological and business position than on regulations, prisons and lawyers to undermine current technologies as well as "fair", well known, established, practices.

ok that being said now when it comes to the gdpr implementation at the "fpsclassico" services is pretty straightforward, no data and/or technology/technique that isn't essentially intrinsic to provide such service under secure and functional/quality standards is collected and/or processed/deployed. in particular, none of the fpsclassico web services utilizes cookies whatsoever with the exception of this forum and the webchat. the forum utilizes cookies to store your settings/notifications as well as your userid and sessionid in order to keep you logged which are all essential uses. the webchat as well store your settings on your browser local cache which is also another essential use. you can always remove such cookies/cache at anytime you want from your browser settings (refer to your respective browser manual for instructions) as well as from the sites themselves as showed on the attached screens. also remember that if cookies/settings are such a big deal for you, you can always simply navigate fpsclassico trough a incognito/private browser session and noting will be stored further than that session. in addition to cookies the forum also make use, optionally, of registered user accounts which require a valid email for authentication. the email validation is required as a basic effort to prevent fake accounts (ex. bots/spammers) which I understand pose a much higher threat to the end user security/privacy than the fact of having to provide one valid email of yours here as well as obviously provide basic functionality (ex. reply/threads notifications/account recovery). for other than that, unless eventual "force majeure" notices, like a potential site/domain/server change/incident or similar, your email will not be used for absolutely anything else. in particular fpsclassico does not do any kind of "newsletters", advertisements or cross sells at all as well as, needless to say, that your email, as well as any other kind of potential data collected through these services, won't be sold to or just even shared with any third party. despite that whoever still don't feel, or eventually can't (ex. doesn't have one), give his email here can still make a limited use of the forum and even communicate with other users through the unregistered guests and/or multilingual sub-forums. on the other hand for those that do chose to register as a basic security/privacy advice it's always a best practice to pick a username/in-game nick different from that of your email account as well as obviously keep your password strong and secure at all times.

when it comes to external services and/or sites that may also be accessed/used through fpsclassico, following the same policy as on the previous point, the goal is try to reasonably keep them at the bare essential minimum. that being said there's also some instances when third party services are used/accessed here however this is never "hid" or by any other means simply obscured, this is always presented straight forward as much as possible thus in such cases please refer to the final gdpr/privacy declarations of such providers. in particular, this forum makes use of the google reCAPTCHA service in its v2 invisible version for guest and account/login authorization as well as, although I look forward hosting and providing most media in-house, still YouTube for users videos and footage on some threads. the google reCAPTCHA service is used instead of a in-house captcha due to its vastly superior and proven quality and, also, because given the fact that the site frequently display YouTube videos as well as a large part of the traffic comes from android based devices that per extension both things also fall under the same google policies, it wouldn't make much sense otherwise. as on previous point, I find that making use of a captcha service from google seems like a much lesser threat to the end user security and privacy than is to run a website with a weak one. for reference, you can read the google privacy policy here, and if someone has any problems with this you can just register on the forum from a private and/or public browser and complete the google captcha once there and then simply continue to use the site normally with your login from your main computer. provided that you skip the clearly identified video related threads you won't encounter any more google stuff on this forum and even so many browsers already have YouTube anti-tracker settings/protections that you can additionally use for that matter nevertheless. to a lesser extend also keep in mind that as being a users forum it allows for images to be hotlinked from external sites though this generally poses a lesser threat and I'll still put a serious effort in keeping it clean and moderated anyways.

other than that, the webchat service also make use of the external embedly service in order to enhance the user experience by presenting previews of posted links. in practice, this should only cloak/proxy YouTube videos and tumblr images as well as parse web sites headers. for reference the privacy policy for the embedly service can be read here though anyways is a optional service you can disable at any time just by unmarking the "show inline images previews" box of the webchat settings as show on the attached screens if you want/it bothers you. ultimately keep in mind that any external software you may use to access and use these services, like for example but not only limited to, operative system, games, irc clients, voip clients, ftp clients, browsers, download managers, it's bound to its own privacy policies and its your responsibility, if you feel like it it, to refer and stay in touch with them for more info. in particular, note that the privacy policy that bounds the Quake III Arena game by current zenimax company can be read here and that ultimately as a Quake III Arena mod that also applies, to some extend, to the UnFreeZe mod as well as the other provided Quake III Arena fpsclassico servers. in practice, the provided ioq3v6-UnFreeZe or fpsclasico packages functions pretty much as a stand alone game provided that you own Quake III Arena though for consistency, as well as potentially legal reasons, it still retains the, unnecessary and no longer really active/used, original Quake III Arena authorization ancient function that still communicate with zenimax servers. for the most part this does not only doesn't really pose any serious threat that it may even be potentially positive, as well as legal, to let the current Quake III Arena right holder know that the game is still active first hand though if someone has some concerns with this, you can just locally null route the dns authorize.quake3arena.com to get rid of that and the game will continue to function just fine anyways.

additionally the new steam forum tab to currently monitor the fpsclasico steam based servers (quake live and csgo) is provided by the external monitoring site gametracker instead of being hosted in-house as the master service. in the future for better functionally I might as well host it in-house however at the moment for consistent I'll just run that externally. again gametracker is a site that has been running around for longer than I've been running servers without major issues/concerns and their privacy policy can be read here if necessary so this shouldn't be either a problem beside you can simply just skip that tab. as for the funds received through the paypal service to help run these services they obviously fall through the paypal use terms you can read here. in that sense know that for in app transactions I only receive the username of the sender and for gateway payments the name along with a contact email. I will not use any of those points of contact for other purposes that confirming the successful reception of the funds sent nor I'll disclose any transactions with any third party other than anonymously posting them here along with any notes you might want to add that doesn't allow to track you. this declaration also applies to the terms of the sdlioq3a app provided in the google play store app meant to serve a engine to run idtech3 based games like for example but not only limited to the Quake III Arena modded packages provided within this site following manual installation as detailed in the app description.

finally in addition with all that mention that, at the time of witting, no other person than me has legal access rights to the fpsclassico servers as well as any potential data stored in them. in particular, note that other than the qualified employees of the respective servers hosting companies nobody, not even me, have physical access to the servers and even so "they", the servers hosting company qualified employees, are only granted meaningful access to the servers (if needed) under my explicit and express command. also make sure than when accessing the servers as well as configuring/setting them I'm fully committed in putting a serious effort in ensure their security and privacy as well as provide a bug free and enjoyable/positive final user experience to the best of my ability. quite frankly, not really because out of fear of imprisonment or legal retaliation otherwise but mostly for my own direct interests in keeping them running and in good condition. in consequence of this it will be solely for these purposes that I'll log, or at least, I'll can potentially log if deemed necessary, and analyze any kind of server data.