Privacy Information
This notice describes how The South Pacific forum, or TSP for short, collects and uses personal information. This notice also provides information about the legal rights individuals have concerning their personal information and how you can exercise those rights.
Jump to:
- What is TSP?
- Who is responsible for data collected about me?
- How does TSP collect data about me?
- Does TSP sell my personal information?
- What personal information does TSP collect, and why?
- Does TSP use personal information for marketing purposes?
- How can I make choices about data collection?
- Where does TSP store data about me?
- Does TSP comply with the EU General Data Protection Regulation?
- Does TSP comply with the California Consumer Privacy Act?
- Where can I access data about me?
- How can I change or erase data about me?
- Does TSP make automated decisions based on data about me?
- Does TSP share data about me with others?
- How can I contact TSP about privacy?
- What if this privacy notice changes?
What is TSP?
TSP is a volunteer community of like-minded people from the online game NationStates (https://www.nationstates.net). The community exists across multiple platforms, including:
- NationStates, an online political simulation game,
- Discord, an online text, video, and audio chat platform,
- TSP Encyclopedia, an online wiki,
- and these online forums.
Who is responsible for data collected about me?
TSP’s volunteer administrators are the responsible parties, or controllers, for the data we collect and process for our own purposes.
How does TSP collect data about me?
TSP collects data about you:
- when you browse these forums
- when you create and use an account on these forums or TSP Encyclopedia
- when you post, send private messages, and otherwise participate in any service operated by TSP
- when you visit any website under the thesouthpacific.org domain
- when you correspond via email to any address ending in @thesouthpacific.org
TSP does not buy or otherwise receive data about you from data brokers.
Does TSP sell my personal information or share it to serve behavioral advertising?
No, TSP does not sell personal information or share it with third parties for the purpose of cross-context behavioral advertising.
What personal information does TSP collect, and why?
TSP collects data about visits to forums and to its websites.
When you visit one of TSP’s websites or these forums, whether you have an account or not, we use cookies, server logs, and other methods to collect data about what pages you visit and when.
TSP uses data about how you use the website to:
- optimize the forum, so that it’s quick and easy to use
- diagnose and debug technical errors
- defend the forum and TSP’s websites from abuse and technical attacks
- compile statistics on forum and topic popularity
- compile statistics on the kinds of software and computers visitors use
TSP usually stores the data identified above for just a few weeks. In special circumstances, like extended investigations about technical attacks, TSP may preserve log data longer, for analysis. TSP stores aggregate statistics about use of the forum, but those statistics don’t include data identifiable to you personally.
TSP collects forum account data.
Many features of these forums require a forum account. For example, you require an account to post and reply to topics.
To sign up for a forum account, TSP requires your name, a user name, and an e-mail address.
TSP uses your account data to identify you on the forum and to create pages specific to you, such as your profile page. TSP publishes your account data publicly on your profile page.
TSP uses your e-mail address to:
- notify you about posts and other activity on the forum
- reset your password and help keep your account secure
- contact you in special circumstances related to your account
- contact you about legal requests, like DMCA takedown requests
You may provide additional data for your account, like a short biography, your location, or your birthday, on the profile settings page for your account. TSP makes that data available to others who can access the forum. You don’t have to provide this additional information, and you can erase it at any time.
TSP stores your account data as long as your account remains open.
TSP collects data about posts and other activity on the forum.
TSP collects the content of your posts, plus data about bookmarks, likes, and links you follow in order to share that data with others, through the forum. TSP publishes your activity publicly.
TSP also collects data about private messages that you send through the forum. TSP makes private messages available to senders and their recipients, and also to forum administrators.
TSP stores your posts and other activity as long as your account remains open.
TSP collects data from third-party social media providers.
TSP offers the capability to register an account and log in with certain third-party social media providers (e.g. Discord). These third-party social media providers may provide information, such usernames, email addresses, and other personal information you provide to them. We recommend consulting these third-part social media providers’ privacy notices for information on what data they collect, store, and share.
TSP does not collect sensitive personal information.
TSP does not intentionally collect or process sensitive personal information, such as government identification numbers, information on racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, genetic data, biometric data, health data, or any of the special categories of personal data specified by the GDPR.
TSP uses cookies.
HTTP cookies are small bits of data that websites, like Discourse forums, send to your computer when you visit. When you return to those websites, your computer sends the cookies on your computer back to the website.
thesouthpacific.org uses these cookies:
| Name | Essential | Expires | Purpose |
|---|---|---|---|
| _ga | No | 2 years | distinguishes users for Google analytics |
| _gcl_au | No | 2 months | Google advertising conversion tracking |
| Yes | Session | remembers your e-mail as you create an account | |
| destination_url | Yes | Session | helps redirect you to your requested page after logging in |
| sso_destination_url | Yes | Session | helps redirect you to your request page after single sign on |
| authentication_data | Yes | Next Page View | temporarily stores user information during login flows |
| theme_key | Yes | Forever | remembers your theme personalization if you don’t tick “Make this my default theme on all my devices” |
| cn | Yes | Next Page View | temporarily stores notification read state |
| _bypass_cache | Yes | Session | allows the server-side cache to be bypassed during login flows |
| _t | Yes | 1440 Hours | remembers who you are when you log in |
| _forum_session | Yes | Session | associates an ID, and other security-related information, with your browsing session |
| dosp | Yes | Next Page View | enables client denial of service protection, a security protection |
| __profilin | No | Session | used by software developers to bypass rack-mini-profiler |
Because TSP utilizes Google Analytics, we also use cookies from Google. Refer to Google’s page on Google Analytics cookies for the latest details.
Does TSP use personal information for marketing purposes?
TSP does not use personal information for marketing purposes.
How can I make choices about data collection?
You can make choices about how data about you is used on the settings page for your account.
Most web browsers let you make choices about whether to accept cookies, for specific websites or more generally. aboutcookies.org has instructions for many different web browsers. youronlinechoices.eu and aboutads.info have more information specifically about cookies used for advertising.
These forums do not respond to the Do Not Track HTTP header.
Where does TSP store data about me?
TSP stores your data from these forums and TSP Encyclopedia in a data center located in the United States and managed by DigitalOcean.
Does TSP comply with the EU General Data Protection Regulation?
TSP respects privacy rights under Regulation (EU) 2016/679, the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Information that GDPR requires TSP to give can be found throughout this privacy notice, including information on the rights of data subjects.
What are my rights under the GDPR?
The GDPR provides the following rights with respect to personal information about you that we collect or process:
- the right to access your personal data
- the right to rectification of inaccurate or incomplete personal data
- the right to erasure of your personal data
- the right to data portability
- the right to restrict the processing of your personal data
- the right to object to certain processing of your information, including automated decision-making and direct marketing
- the right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority
Information on how to exercise these rights is provided throughout this notice and linked above. While TSP strives to make these rights easy to exercise on your own through your account settings, for more complicated inquiries the best option will be to contact us.
Does TSP comply with the California Consumer Privacy Act?
TSP is not presently a “business” for the purposes of the CCPA and does not operate as a for-profit entity in any jurisdiction.
Where can I access data about me?
You can see your account data at any time by visiting your account page on the forum. Your account page also lists your posts and other activity on the forum.
Your account activity page also includes a link to download all of your activity in standard comma-separated values format.
If you do not have account with us but have a data access request, please contact us.
How can I change or erase data about me?
You can change your account data at any time by visiting the profile settings page for your account. You may also close your account on the settings page for your account. Closing your account starts a process of erasing or anonymizing TSP’s records of data you provided for your account. Forum administrators can also erase and anonymize accounts.
Depending on the settings for a particular category on these forums, you may also be able to edit, anonymize, or erase your posts. When you edit posts, TSP will keep all versions of your posts. Forum administrators can view old versions of posts, and optionally make them visible to other forum visitors.
Does TSP make automated decisions based on data about me?
TSP classifies posts as spam automatically.
TSP uses data about your posts and other activity on many forums to make automated decisions about whether your posts to these forums are spam. When Akismet decides that a post is likely spam, the forum refuses to accept the post.
If you think a post has been wrongly blocked or removed, contact an administrator. They can override the decision that a post was spam.
TSP uses data about posts and activity to set trust levels automatically.
TSP uses data about your posts and activity to award you badges and calculate a trust level for your account. Your trust level may affect how you can participate in the forum, such as whether you can upload images, as well as give you access to moderation and management powers in the forum. Your trust level therefore reflects forum administrators’ confidence in you, and their willingness to delegate community management functions, like moderation.
If you think your trust level has been set incorrectly, contact an administrator. They can manually adjust the trust level of your account.
Does TSP share data about me with others?
TSP shares account data with others as mentioned in the section about account data.
TSP shares data about your posts and other forum activity with others as mentioned in the section about forum data.
TSP may share personal data with the service providers we use in order to host our websites, deliver content, secure our services, store data, and provide support. These service providers include:
TSP may share personal data with NationStates staff or other NationStates regions for use in identity tracking, for forum security and rule enforcement purposes.
How can I contact TSP about privacy?
You can send questions, requests, and complaints to:
For complaints under GDPR, European Union users may lodge complaints with their local data protection supervisory authorities.
How can I find out about changes?
This version of TSP’s privacy questions and answers took effect July 8, 2022.
TSP will post the next version at Privacy - The South Pacific. TSP may change how it announces changes in future versions.
In the meantime, TSP may update its contact information without announcing a change. Please refer to Privacy - The South Pacific for the latest contact information at any time.