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What do we collect, what gets shared, and why?
We collect a variety of information in order to operate our community effectively and efficiently. It is therefore our duty to provide a privacy policy regarding our data collection, storage, and sharing practices, in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
We keep all the following information indefinitely (unless otherwise stated), or until you request its removal. Please note that data regarding any ban, mute, and/or warnings will not be removed, as per our processing rights in Article 6(1)(a) & Recital 49 of GDPR. In our whitelist application form, stored by Discord in our private #applications channel:
We store your Discord username, so that we can easily contact you outside of the game servers if required.
We ask you for your Reddit username, if you have one. This is optional and is done in order to give us more context on the type of person and player you are before being whitelisted.
We ask you for the servers you are applying for. While you are whitelisted on every server if accepted, this is done so that we have can assign you relevant channels in Discord and see which servers are our most popular.
If applying for one of our Minecraft servers, we ask for your Minecraft username. This allows us to whitelist you on the servers and lets us associate your Mojang UUID with your Discord account.
We store how you were referred to the community. This allows us to better understand how people are finding our community, and in the case of a friend referring you, offers an alternative way for us to get in touch if we cannot reach you on your Discord account.
We store your stated reason for joining our community. This is primarily kept so that we can make sure friends are not copy-pasting their reasoning as an easier way of gaining access to the server.
We ask you about any prior bans you have received from servers. This helps give us some context for the type of player that you are, as well as being a reference point for us if you are banned from our servers for any offence against their rules.
We ask you for your age. This is so that we can set our expectations for player maturity as well as to uphold, to the best of our knowledge, that all Discord members are over the age of 13 and therefore within Discord’s Terms of Service.
A copy of application form data is also stored on our dedicated server as part of the application bot's files. This allows us to correct information on applications if needed.
On our dedicated server, hosted by Ionos in the United States: Game Servers
We log your username, IP address, and the times that you have connected and disconnected from the server. We use this information to ensure that the server is working properly, so that we can track how heavily our server is used, and so that we can track intrusion attempts or abuse.1 This is also used to chart player activity in our monitoring tools, which is done using the Plan plugin.
We log every command that you run on the server. We use this to track intrusion attempts or abuse, and to offer technical support on commands to users.1
We log everything you say in our in-game chats, including private messages. Admins can see this information in real time. We use this to review player, moderator, and admin behaviour, as well as for safeguarding of players against bullying, etc.1
We log your characters progression and history, including every block, item, and tile entity you interact with on the server. We use this to track abnormal player behaviour such as griefing, stealing, cheating, duping, or other exploits.
1 These logs are also stored in private staff channels in Discord. All staff Discord accounts are secured with 2 Factor Authentication. Discord Bots
We log chat messages, including edits and deletes, for up to 48 hours. Staff may manually request a copy of these logs and store the copy indefinitely.
We log any pings of roles and users for up to 7 days, in order to provide the /whopingedme functionality.
We log members joining or leaving the Discord. We also store a list of their Discord roles, to allow restoration of these roles when a user leaves and rejoins. 1
We store the whitelist application form data, as part of the application bot files.
We store the necessary data for our features, when provided by user input. For example, reminders require your Discord ID, provided message, and how often these reminders should repeat.
We store the number of messages that new members send, as well as the last time each user sent a message, in order to provide the 'Snacker', 'Inactive', and 'Megaphone' role functionalities.
1 These logs are also sent to a private staff channel in Discord. All staff Discord accounts are secured with 2 Factor Authentication. Server accounts
We store a username, a client name, and email address for those who have user accounts for our server panel. This is done so that accounts are unique, identifiable, and recoverable. Providing your real information here is entirely optional, but the panel requires a value for these fields.
We store a username and Discord ID as part of user accounts for our server panel, for those who use the /gamenight bot functionality to create temporary servers. This is done to prevent users from hosting multiple servers at once, and make subsequent uses of /gamenight faster by skipping account creation.
Please note that the above server data is also included in our server backups, which are stored and physically secured by the admins on devices external to the dedicated server, as well as encrypted in our Backblaze backups.
1 These logs are also sent to a private staff channel in Discord. All staff Discord accounts are secured with 2 Factor Authentication. What we share with our community members
Ban and punishment information. In the interest of privacy, we will only share this when transparency around these bans is requested by the community at large, or information about the bans is being misrepresented. This shared information can include any evidence used to justify our decision, including conversations in private channels.
Discord/Minecraft names. This is shared when players need to contact other members either ingame or on Discord.
Logged activity. This is shared to provide context around player actions and behaviour, for example their messages or any CoreProtect data pertaining to them.
In-game chat messages. These are logged to Discord channels such as #ingamechat, which are accessible to all whitelisted members.
What we share with others Other communities
Banned players. We may share information about banned players (their Discord name and/or Minecraft UUID and last known name, and a brief reason why they were banned) with the owners and admins of other Minecraft servers, most commonly those within the HermitCraft community. This information is shared so that servers can pay additional attention to players who have been banned from other servers in the community.
Mojang / Microsoft
Our Minecraft servers are online servers, meaning that every time you log in, your Minecraft and/or Microsoft account is authenticated by Mojang. Mojang will therefore be made aware that you have logged into our server, and at what time.
We prevent, via plugins, any chat messages being shared with Mojang or Microsoft through the Player Reporting tool introduced in 1.19.2. The only exception to this is our vanilla 'snapshot' server, or any servers created using the /gamenight temporary servers (unless the host manually adds a plugin to mitigate it).
Discord
Any conversations or media sent in our public or private channels, as well as the logs stored in our Discord server (as referenced above) are stored by Discord themselves. This data then falls under their own privacy policy.
We do not share any other information with any third party. What others may share Recorded footage and streams
Members playing on our servers can record or stream their perspectives, which may include your in-game words and actions, and audio if you are in a voice call with them. As an additional courtesy, we expect members to give at least five minutes warning in our in-game chats before they begin streaming. The exception to this is any events organised in advance in our #announcements and #gamenight Discord channels. Gamenight server logs
Our gamenight servers feature custom Log4J configuration to avoid member IP addresses appearing in the server logs. Owing to the freedom our gamenight servers offer, methods remain where members could modify the server further and revert the logging to the default Minecraft settings. We strongly discourage any such modifications to these server settings. Your rights
The data we keep about you is your data. Under GDPR Articles 12 - 22, you have certain rights regarding data protection and transparency. We apply these rights to every single member, not just those situated in the EU. These rights are as follows:
The right to be informed
Your first right is that we tell you about the data we keep about you, and what your rights are. This is the very basis of this privacy notice.
The right of access
You have the right to know what information we have about you, so that you can check if we’re using it properly. Get in touch with the staff team to arrange to see your data.
The right to rectification
If what we know about you is wrong, you have the right to correct it. Please contact the staff team if you feel that any of your data that we hold is incorrect.
The right to erasure
This is your right to be forgotten. If you don’t want us to have your personal information anymore, you can ask us to remove it. Any data regarding bans, mutes, and warnings will not be removed in order to enforce these punishments, as per our processing rights in Article 6(1)(a) & Recital 49 of GDPR.
The right to restriction of processing
If you think something is going wrong, you can ask us to stop doing anything with your data for a while - even deleting it - while you or we investigate it.
The right to data portability
You have the right to take your data and use it elsewhere, in a common and open, structured format that a computer can use. If you want to do this, get in touch and we’ll find out the best way to do this for you.
The right to object
You may, at any point, object to our processing of your personal information on grounds relating to your particular situation. Any such objection should be made to the staff team, who can be contacted via the Etho Discord.
Rights in relation to automated decision making and profiling
While you have various rights relating to profiling and automated decision-making, we simply do not engage in either of these activities.
Last Updated: 22nd May 2023 | Previous Privacy Policy Updates