We have created this privacy statement in order to demonstrate our firm commitment to privacy. The following discloses our information-gathering and dissemination practices for this website.
IP addresses
We use your IP address to help diagnose problems with our server and to administer our website. All posts in our forums and comments to articles have an associated IP address recorded. This IP address is never shown to other users and it is only collected to help us to prevent unsolicited posting to our forums (see Spammers below) or other breaches of our Forum Usage Guidelines (FUG).
Personal information
All users have their user name, country and registration date in our User List. This list is only visible to other registered users. The email icon allows users to send private messages between them, but neither the sender's nor recipient's email addresses are disclosed. If the user requires privacy, an option is available on the user settings page to hide the user name from this list and prevent other users from contacting via those private messages.
Your name will only be shown to other users. If you don't want your name and/or location being know, you can leave those fields empty.
Our site's registration form requires users to give us the required contact information (such as their email address) and optional personal and demographic information (such as name, address, phone number, city and country).
Search engines will index your public user profile page, but your name will not appear on search results.
Cookies
Our site uses cookies to keep track of your login. Cookies are simple data files that store information. We do not install any program on your computer while visiting our site. The information stored in the cookie file is used to maintain the login information if the user decides to use our auto-login feature. If you do not use the auto-login feature the cookie is cleared when the browser is closed. We also store a randomly generated value that allows our site to prevent the hijacking of forms and controls.
Email addresses
We use the user's email address to send forum notifications such as replies to their posts. Users can opt out of these notifications at any time by clicking a link in those emails. Users can set a profile option to default to subscribe to these forum notifications or not. Users can also opt-in or opt-out of individual discussions when posting a reply. Users can also subscribe to subforums and receive notifications when a new discussion is posted.
Users have access to a page to stop all those forum notifications and can use this at any time.
If the user opts-in, we use the contact information (email address) from the registration form to send any important information regarding its registration with Geekzone. Email addresses are kept to allow us to prevent users from creating multiple accounts.
Spammers
If spam is found in our forums the associated account is banned and certain information (username, email address and IP address) is submitted to Stop Forum Spam, a third-party database service tracking such activities. We do not submit any other information and we do not submit information if a user account is banned for reasons other than spam. We also use this service to identify spammers and deny registration or access to our forums.
We use the Cloudflare CDN services. Cloudflare may at any time present visitors with a request for information before giving access to our site. This request for information is generally presented when Cloudflare has reasons to believe the visitor is using a compromised browser or system, act like a spammer or a bad actor in general. This request for information is automated and no information is automatically exchanged between us and Cloudflare. We manually add IP address ranges to Cloudflare from time to time to prevent known spammers from accessing our website.
Advertisement
In the course of serving advertisements to this site, our third-party advertiser server may place or recognize a unique cookie file. We use Publift and Google AdSense to serve ads when you visit our Web site. Ads can be hosted by Google DoubleClick, Tribal Fusion and other networks. These companies may use information (but not including your name, address, email address or telephone number) about your visits to this and other Web sites in order to provide advertisements on this site and other sites about goods and services that may be of interest to you.
More specifically Google, as a third-party vendor, uses cookies to serve ads on this site. Google's use of DART cookies enables it to serve ads to your users based on their visit to your sites and other sites on the Internet. Read these pages for more information: How Google uses information from sites or apps that use our services and Google's Privacy Terms for more information.
External links
This site contains links to other sites. Geekzone is not responsible for the privacy practices or the content of such websites.
Third party services
We use services from the following providers to monitor, manage and/or monetise our site:
Use of Perspective API
We use Perspective, a Google service, to score posts in our forums. The score is automatically calculated for all posts in all sub-forums. The score is used to determine if further involvement by our moderators is needed. Posts are submitted as part of the API request but no further information is sent. We do not disclose users' names, IP addresses, emails or any other PII when using the API.
Subscriptions
We use PayPal to manage recurring subscriptions. When a visitor subscribes to our services all personal information as well as credit card information is provided by the user directly to PayPal. We do not receive the credit card information nor store such information in our database.
Privacy Act 2020
We are also bound by the New Zealand Privacy Act 2020 to make sure your personal information is not disclosed to third parties. More information can be obtained from the Office of the Privacy Commissioner.
Reporting a breach or vulnerability
You can email security@geekzone.co.nz to report a breach or vulnerability. You can send an anonymous email and if you need to encrypt the content you can use information from our security.txt file.
The following sections apply if you decide to complete ID Verification.
Data privacy and usage
Personal Information is collected and handled in accordance with the New Zealand Privacy Act 2020. You can find a summary listing the Privacy Principles here.
This data is collected with the intention to confirm a user's identity so that we can safely allow users to utilise the online platform offered through Geekzone. The Personal Information collected is available to ID-verified Geekzone administrators and moderators for the exercise of their roles. No Personal Information collected through this ID verification process is disclosed to third parties, including other Geekzone users.
Providing Personal Information is not a requirement to use the online platform offered by Geekzone. Positive ID verification will grant users easier access to some areas of the online platform that are deemed sensitive e.g. marketplace ("Offers/Wanted" sub-forum) where transactions between members may occur. In some situations, at the discretion of moderators or by automatic means a positive ID verification may be required and some services will be withheld until positive ID verification is provided.
Personal Information disclosure
Under the Privacy Act 2020 your Personal Information may be disclosed to third parties in specific situations (Privacy Act 2020 Principle 11):
• disclosure is one of the purposes for which the organisation got the information
• the person concerned authorises the disclosure
• the information is to be used in a way that does not identify the person concerned
• disclosure is necessary to avoid endangering someone’s health or safety
• disclosure is necessary to uphold or enforce the law.
You can find a summary of Principle 11 here and appropriate section in the Privacy Act 2020 here.
Data collection
Personal Information is collected by Persona Identities, Inc. (540 Howard St, San Francisco, CA, USA) on behalf of Sohosolutions Ltd (214 Main Road, Tawa, Wellington, 5028, New Zealand). Collected Personal Information is stored by Persona Identities, Inc. You can check their security statement here and their privacy policy here.
Contact regarding your Personal Information
You can contact Sohosolutions Ltd directly for anything related to your Personal Information. You can do so via Private Message within Geekzone or via email to privacy@geekzone.co.nz.
Last update: 1 May 2023
