PokéCommunity Privacy Policy

Policy for how we collect and process your personal information on PokéCommunity and our services.

Welcome to PokéCommunity!

This is how we handle information we learn about you from your visit to PokéCommunity. What information we receive and use depends on what you do when you visit our site.

1: Overview

The PokéCommunity collects data from each visitor to the site and uses it to help us best serve content to readers. Some of that data is collected automatically from all guests and members, while other information is provided to us by members during the sign-up process and as they fill out their profile on the site. Please take the time to read through this policy in full to understand how we obtain and use your data and what options you have to control this use. If you have any questions or concerns after reading this, feel free to contact us using one of the methods listed at the end of this document.

2: Data We Collect

During your use of PokéCommunity to browse, view, or participate in conversations between our members or view news, we may collect certain information from you.

Information you provide to us

You do not have to create an account to access basic service features such as browsing threads or reading information. If you choose to create an account, you will need to provide us with personal data. This personal data identifies, or could reasonably be used to identify, you as an individual. Depending on which service you use, we may collect different information about you. This personal data includes:

• An account username, used to identify you on PokéCommunity, which is always public, but you may choose to use a pseudonym;
• Contact details, such as your email address; and,
• Other personal data, such as your date of birth and gender.

You are responsible for the content of your posts and contributions to our site and services, so be careful not to reveal any sensitive information. If you ever need to edit a post, the previous text will be retained for up to 30 days before being automatically deleted. If you want to permanently delete a post, contact an administrator and they will be happy to help you.

Information we collect automatically

For operational purposes, for all visitors to PokéCommunity and its associated services, we collect the name of the domain and host from which you access the internet (for example, verizon.net or princeton.edu) and its associated internet protocol (IP) address; the browser software you use and your operating system; the date and time you access our site; and the internet address of the website from which you linked directly to our site.

3: How We Use Data

We use this information to measure the number of visitors to the different sections of our site(s), to track usage, and to help us make our site more useful. Your contact details are used to verify access to your account and as a means for us to send you information about the community.

Occasionally we will publish some user data outside of this website, such as announcing contest winner usernames on our social media accounts or highlighting threads and posts on Discord or other off-site platforms. If you are included in such a post and wish for it to be removed, contact an administrator. In the case of a sponsored competition, we may share details such as username or email address of winners with the sponsor and by entering the contest, you opt-in to have your information shared with the sponsor. A contest of this kind will always be clarified in its announcement and rules.

4: About Local Device Storage (including the use of “Cookies”)

Websites, including PokéCommunity, use your device’s local storage to store information used to provide enhanced functionality to their users, often in the form of cookies. The ability to store data on a user’s device helps website providers with understanding how people use a website, remembering a user’s login details, and storing website preferences.

A “cookie” is a small text file that a website can place on your computer's hard drive in order to collect information about your activities on the site or to make it possible to remember your settings and login status. The cookie transmits this information back to the PokéCommunity server which, generally speaking, is the only computer that can read it. If you want to know when this happens, or to prevent it from happening, you may set up your browser to warn or reject when a website attempts to store a cookie on your local storage.

We use Google Analytics to analyze the use of our website. Google Analytics gathers information about website use by means of cookies. The information gathered relating to our website is used to create reports about the use of our website. Google's privacy policy is available at: https://www.google.com/policies/privacy/

What PokéCommunity stores using local device storage:

• For non-account holders, PokéCommunity uses a unique, expiring cookie that keeps track of a “session” to keep track of threads that you’ve viewed, which generally expires when the browser is closed. PokéCommunity also uses a cookie to track the last time you’ve visited the site, in order to help accurately flag content you may not have read. Cookies may also be used to store certain site preferences such as “light mode” and “dark mode” page layouts and “themes”.
• For account holders, sign-in information is kept to allow PokéCommunity to authenticate you and allow similar data for non-account holders to be stored on your account. Certain site preferences may still be stored via cookies.

5: Choice and Access

For individuals residing in the United States, the Freedom of Information Act and the Privacy Act of 1974 provides you certain rights to obtain personal information about you from our records. For individuals residing within member states of the European Union, your rights to access and consent to the usage of your data are provided by the General Data Protection Regulation 2016/679.

We offer all users some control over the privacy of the information associated with their account. Users may choose which optional elements of their profile will be filled out, such as location, interests, friend codes, and more.

They may also choose which elements of their profile will be visible to whom, with options ranging from all guests and registered users, registered users only, to users in one's friend list. Users may also choose which user information appears with each of their posts on the forum. After registration, it is optional to display age and date of birth to the public or to other users.

Only staff have access to extended personally identifying information, such as your IP address, and this is only for the purpose of moderation. They also have the ability to see private profile fields, such as date of birth and visitor messages, also for the purpose of moderation.

In very limited circumstances, we may be required by law to disclose information you submit to our attorneys or law enforcement.

6: Advertising Privacy Statement

This Site is affiliated with CMI Marketing, Inc., d/b/a CafeMedia ("CafeMedia") for the purposes of placing advertising on the Site, and CafeMedia will collect and use certain data for advertising purposes. To learn more about CafeMedia's data usage, click here www.cafemedia.com/publisher-advertising-privacy-policy

A cookie is a file containing an identifier (a string of letters and numbers) that is sent by a web server to a web browser and is stored by the browser. The identifier is then sent back to the server each time the browser requests a page from the server. Cookies may be either "persistent" cookies or "session" cookies: a persistent cookie will be stored by a web browser and will remain valid until its set expiry date, unless deleted by the user before the expiry date; a session cookie, on the other hand, will expire at the end of the user session, when the web browser is closed. Cookies do not typically contain any information that personally identifies a user, but personal information that we store about you may be linked to the information stored in and obtained from cookies.

By using this Site, you consent to the use of such cookies and the sharing of data captured by such cookies with our advertising partners, Google, and our other third party partners. You can view, delete or add interest categories associated with your browser by visiting: https://adssettings.google.com. You can also opt out of the network cookie using those settings or using the Network Advertising Initiative's multi-cookie opt-out mechanism at: http://optout.networkadvertising.org. However, these opt-out mechanisms themselves use cookies, and if you clear the cookies from your browser your opt-out will not be maintained.