Yep, just like almost every other place you visit online (or have randomly ended up on the mailing list of) we've needed to update our Privacy Policy to fit in with the GDPR. However In the spirit of the GDPR, we've opted for a plain-English privacy policy, rather than a legalese one. 

We run the site as a community resource and not to make money, therefore we try and do right by our users when it comes to privacy, currently we collect information about you to allow us to effectively run the site and for a better user experience and we don't sell it to third parties, we don't send mass mailings, the site only sends update notifications if you have selected to and you can unselect it at any time. You do have to give us a small amount of data (a valid email address or a link to a social media profile) and we will automatically collect some info from you (ip address, timezone etc) but it's just the minimum we feel we need to not make using the site a terrible experience.

Northern Horder Ltd reserves the right to share your personal details including but not limited to your name, email address and IP address with external parties on request. This includes but is not limited to legal requests and requests from the police. Northern Horde Ltd will not share data with any external party for financial gain except as outlined in this policy. 

The exception are the adverts, in theory we don't collect that data, the space on page is sub-let to Google, they put the advert in it and they (we assume) are collecting no end of tracking data from them.

We do use cookies to provide a better user experience,  either solely on a per session basis or to maintain user preferences. We have more info on cookies at https://www.brfcs.com/cookies

Log files are maintained and analysed of all requests for files on this website's web servers. Log files do not capture traditional personal information but do capture the user's IP address , which is automatically recognised by our web servers.

We also collect anything you add to your profile or anything you choose to post on the forum, but that should hopefully be obvious. This stuff we class as public data (as anyone can view the forum without restriction) not personal data, it's all optional, if you want to keep it private don't add it / post it (though you can remove it later.).

We don't collect or buy-in personal data from outside the site for use in marketing.

We don't have a set retention period on any personal data, under GDPR you have a right to have it removed. Unless you tell us otherwise, this will simply be a case of removing your account from our systems, this includes private messages but does not include public messages (although the personal information about the owner normally shown next to posts will no longer exist). As we don't have a set retention period, consider it "indefinitely", we have active users and posts from over 15 years ago and we think this is a good thing.

Only admins and backroom staff of the site (which can be viewed here - https://www.brfcs.com/staff/ ) can access your personal data, not moderators,  authors or other users, except for the information you choose to display on your public profile (such as display name).  The other exemption is the people who are responsible for keeping the web hosting infrastructure up and running.

The data itself is currently held in France (which is inside the EU for the geographically challenged), with disaster recovery options in the UK/Ireland.

Finally, because the USA has some specific legislation around marketing to under 13 year olds, we took the decision (like most social media sites) to never collect or maintain information at our website from those we actually know are under 13, and no part of our website is structured to attract anyone under 13.

The GDPR whilst a pain for people like us who run websites (especially those who do it for free, for the good of the community) is great for you as users as it gives you a boat load of new rights and an expectations that your data will be treated in the right way.  For more info see https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-the-general-data-protection-regulation-gdpr/individual-rights/ This includes your right to have your data removed and your right to remove consent from us using your data (which in our case, is pretty much the same thing) and your right to lodge a complaint with the ICO (but please, talk to us first, we do want to do the right thing with your data).

BRFCS.com is owned by a limited company, Northern Horde Ltd, which may seem odd for a community resource, but it allows us some level of personal legal protection. However, it does mean we have a legal obligation to to provide postal contact data (though, we much prefer email) - BRFCS.com (C/O Egan Roberts) , Manor Court, Salesbury Hall Road, Ribchester, Lancashire, PR3 3XR. However you'll normally get a much quicker response by emailing admin@brfcs.com (as multiple people receive those emails). 

Finally, Thank You for reading this far, we doubt very few will, but as you did, feel free to tweet @brfcsdotcom and let us know. It will make a very dull process seem slightly less pointless.

Third Parties

Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a web analysis service provided by Google Inc. (“Google”). Google utilizes the Data collected to track and examine the use of this website, to prepare reports on its activities and share them with other Google services.
Privacy Policy

Spam Defense
The IPS Spam Defense Service passes the email address and IP address of the registering member to the service to determine the likelihood a registering account is a spam source.
Privacy Policy

Invisible reCAPTCHA
This site uses a CAPTCHA to ensure humans are performing certain actions. The CAPTCHA provider may set a session cookie and get information about your internet browser and device accessing this website.
Privacy Policy