Privacy Statement for the Ansible Community Forum

Scope of This Notice

This Privacy Statement is intended to describe the Ansible Community’s privacy practices and provide information about the choices you have regarding the ways in which information collected by the Ansible Community is used and disclosed. For convenience, the Ansible Community Team is referred to in this document as “ACT”.

Our Commitment to Privacy

Your privacy is important to us. To better protect your privacy, we have provided this Statement explaining our information practices and the choices you can make about the way your personal information is collected, used and disclosed.

The Information We Collect

This Privacy Statement applies to all information collected by or submitted to the Forum, including personal data. “Personal data” is data that can be used to identify an individual.

ACT collects personal data when:

  • you register on the forum
  • you participate in the forum by reading, writing, and evaluating the content shared here

Publicly Available Personal Data

In keeping with the open nature and spirit of the Ansible Community, some personal data attached to this forum is made public by default (if defined). Specifically:

  • your first and last name
  • your timezone
  • your Matrix/IRC nickname
  • your GitHub ID
  • your geographic location
  • your group affiliations

These fields are optional, you are not required to enter them. If you have previously entered any of these, you can opt-out of displaying this information publicly in your Forum Account Preferences and removing the data.

Using (Processing) Your Personal Data

Any of the information we collect from you may be used in one of the following ways:

  • To personalize your experience — your information helps us to better respond to your individual needs.
  • To improve our site — we continually strive to improve our site offerings based on the information and feedback we receive from you.
  • To send periodic emails — The email address you provide may be used to send you information, notifications that you request about changes to topics or in response to your user name, respond to inquiries, and/or other requests or questions.

Sharing Your Personal Data

Unless you consent, ACT will never process or share the personal data you provide to us except as described below.

ACT may share your personal data with third parties under any of the following circumstances:

  • Your publicly available personal data in the forum account system, as described above, is accessible by anyone unless you, as the account holder, opt out as already described in this Privacy Statement.
  • As required to provide the forum service, and for e-mail processing (as a consequence of uses already described in this Privacy Statement).
  • As required by law (such as responding to a valid subpoena, warrant, audit, or agency action, or to prevent fraud).
  • For research activities, including the production of statistical reports (such aggregated information is used to describe our services and is not used to contact the subjects of the report).

Receiving E-Mail

ACT (via the forum) may send you e-mail about your account, to inform you of important upcoming events (e.g. votes, conferences), or in response to your questions. For your protection, ACT may also contact you in the event that we find an issue that requires your immediate attention. ACT processes your personal data in these cases to fulfill and comply with its contractual obligations to you, to provide the services you have requested, and to ensure the security of your account.

Cookies and Other Browser Information

The forum’s online services automatically capture IP addresses. ACT uses IP addresses to help diagnose problems with our servers, to administer our website, and to help ensure the security of your interaction with our services. Your IP address is used to help identify you and your location, in order to provide you data and content from our services as quickly as possible. It is in ACT’s legitimate interest to maximize the efficiency and effectiveness of its services for all users.

As part of offering and providing customizable and personalized services, the forum uses cookies to store and sometimes track information about you. A cookie is a small amount of data that is sent to your browser from a Web server and stored on your computer’s hard drive. The forum’s use of Cookies is covered by CDCK here

Generally, we use cookies to:

  • Remind us of who you are and to access your account information (stored on our computers) in order to provide a better and more personalized service. This cookie is set when you register or “sign in” and is modified when you “sign out” of our services.
  • Estimate audience size. Each browser accessing the forum is given a unique cookie that is used to determine the extent of repeat usage and usage by a registered user versus by an unregistered user.

If you do not want your personal information to be stored by cookies, you can configure your browser so that it always rejects these cookies or asks you each time if you accept them or not. However, you must understand that the use of cookies may be necessary to provide certain services, and choosing to reject cookies will reduce the performance and functionality of the site. Your browser documentation includes instructions explaining how to enable, disable or delete cookies at the browser level (usually located in the “Help”, “Tools” or “Edit” facility).

Our Commitment to Data Security

The forum is hosted by CDCK and relies upon their practices and processes. See their privacy policy for details.

The forum Administrators are given training on appropriate management of the forum, and Two Factor Authentication is required for Administrators as an additional step against account attacks.

Public Forums Reminder

Please remember that any information that is disclosed in the Forum category areas becomes public information. Exercise caution when deciding to disclose your personal data. Although we value individual ideas and encourage free expression, ACT reserves the right to take necessary action to preserve the integrity of these areas, such as removing any posting that is vulgar or inappropriate. It is in ACT’s legitimate interests to provide all users an accurate record of data and content provided in the public forums it maintains and uses; to maintain the integrity of that data and content for historical, scientific, and research purposes; and to provide an environment for the free exchange of ideas relevant and constructive to the development and propagation of open source software.

Our Commitment to Children’s Online Privacy

Out of special concern for children’s privacy, ACT does not knowingly accept online personal information from children under the age of 13. ACT does not knowingly allow children under the age of 13 to become registered members of our sites. ACT does not knowingly collect or solicit personal information about children under 13.

In the event that ACT ever decides to expand its intended site audience to include children under the age of 13, those specific web pages will, in accordance with the requirements of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), be clearly identified and provide an explicit privacy notice addressed to children under 13. In addition, ACT will provide an appropriate mechanism to obtain parental approval, allow parents to subsequently make changes to or request removal of their children’s personal information, and provide access to any other information as required by law.

About Links to Other Sites

This site contains links to other sites. ACT does not control the information collection of sites that can be reached through links from the forum. If you have questions about the data collection procedures of linked sites, please contact those sites directly.

Your Rights and Choices in the EEA

Where the EU General Data Protection Regulation 2016/679 (“GDPR”) applies to the processing of your personal data, especially when you access the website from a country in the European Economic Area (“EEA”), you have the following rights, subject to some limitations, against ACT:

  • The right to access your personal data;
  • The right to rectify the personal data we hold about you;
  • The right to erase your personal data;
  • The right to restrict our use of your personal data;
  • The right to object to our use of your personal data;
  • The right to receive your personal data in a usable electronic format and transmit it to a third party (also known as the right of data portability); and
  • The right to lodge a complaint with your local data protection authority.

If you would like to exercise any of these rights, you may do so by contacting ACT. Please understand, however, the rights enumerated above are not absolute in all cases.

Where the GDPR applies, you also have the right to withdraw any consent you have given to uses of your personal data. If you wish to withdraw consent that you have previously provided to the forum, you may by contacting ACT. However, the withdrawal of consent will not affect the lawfulness of processing based on consent before its withdrawal.

How to Access, Modify or Update Your Information

The forum gives you the ability to access, modify or update your personal data at any time. You may visit your preferences and make changes to your login information (change your password), your contact information, your general preferences and your personalization settings. If necessary, you may also contact us and describe the changes you want made to the personal data you have previously provided by contacting ACT.

If you wish to remove your personal data from the forum, you may contact the ACT and request that we remove this information from the forum.

How to Contact Us

If you have any questions about any of these practices or ACT’s use of your personal information, please feel free to contact by contacting ACT, or by mail at: Ansible Community Team c/o Red Hat, Inc. - 100 East Davie Street Raleigh, NC 27601

ACT will work with you to resolve any concerns you may have about this Statement.

Changes to this Privacy Statement

ACT reserves the right to change this policy from time to time. If we do make changes, the revised Privacy Statement will be posted on this site. An announcement post will be made whenever this privacy statement is changed in a material way.

This Privacy Statement was last amended on Aug 14, 2023.