Privacy and Cookie Policy

Last Modified: 2021-01-08  

The FOSS Torrents Privacy and Cookie Policy was last updated on January 8th, 2021.

Philosophy

Your privacy is very important to us. At FOSS Torrents we are committed to gathering as little personal data as possible, ideally and in mosts cases, no data at all, and when data is gathered to protecting and respecting it.

Guiding Principles

Here are our key principles when it comes to privacy:

  • Your data belongs to you.
  • We respect your rights, in particular your rights to access and modification of your data.
  • We do not look at personal data as an asset, but as a liability.
  • We only store personal data when it is needed, either for our services to operate properly, or to comply with the law.
  • We want as little of your personal data as possible. For most of the services and products we provide, we do not need to know anything personal about you. We try to reduce the amount of data we gather as much as possible.
  • We are transparent about data collection and use. If anything isn't clear or satisfactory, please contact us and we'll help and/or fix the issue.
  • We do not store contact information for marketing purposes.

Privacy Policy

Introduction

What is herein referred to as "products" is a set of Internet websites, products and services operated by Free Open-Source Software Torrents (“FOSS Torrents”, “we” or “us”), a company establish in Canada. This privacy policy describes what information we collect, how we use that information, and what options you have to control your personal information.

We sometimes need to process your personal information in order to provide our products. By using our products you confirm that you have read and understood this privacy policy. If you do not want us to collect or process your personal information as described herein, you have several choices including limiting the information we collect on you, or not using our products.

By using these products, you acknowledge that FOSS Torrents will use your information in Canada and in any country where FOSS Torrents operates. This privacy policy complies with the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Please be aware that the privacy laws and standards in certain countries, including the rights of authorities to access your personal information, may differ from those that apply in the country in which you reside. We will transfer personal information only to countries to which we are permitted by law to transfer personal information and we will continue to ensure that your personal information is appropriately safeguarded.

Collected Data

This section details what data is gathered an how it is collected.

Server and Website Information

We tend to build our tools from scratch in order to respect your privacy, but we also need to rely on a few products. FOSS Torrents uses server software such as Nginx which receive and record networking information sent by your computer and your browser or mobile device when you visit our websites. This information may include your Internet Protocol (IP) address or unique device identifier. This information is stored in secure logs and is collected automatically.

Torrent Clients

We use the Transmission-CLI and Transmission Web Interface to seed torrents. Such tools may display your Internet Protocol (IP) address to us, but we do not track nor collect in any way those addresses.

Google Adsense

Authorized third parties such as Google Adsense place cookies as described in our Cookies Policy. We use this information to serve you certain advertising content.

Google Analytics

FOSS Torrents uses Google Analytics for pages which URL starts with fosstorents.com/. The information collected is anonymized and is used by FOSS Torrents to have a rough idea of how successful each project release is.

Your Rights

You may change or correct your account settings. Most of the data we collect is voluntary and your choice entirely to provide us or not. You may remove certain optional information that you no longer wish to be publicly displayed. You may also request the permanent deletion of your account, in which case all personal information collected on you will be removed (except, in some cases your IP address required for security purposes, site maintenance, and spam protection).

In accordance with the GDPR, you also have the right to data access and portability (including the right to obtain and download a copy of the personal data you provided to FOSS Torrents), data correction (the ability to update the personal data we collect and display on you, in many cases via your account settings), data deletion (where FOSS Torrents will delete personal information stored on you, which we are not required by necessity to maintain), and the ability to have us stop processing your personal data (with certain exceptions as may be necessary). Please also be aware that in order to provide some of these data choices to you, we may need to first verify your identity. We will make reasonable efforts to verify your identity, however if we are unable to do so, we reserve the right to refuse such a request in keeping with data privacy and information security principles.

Data Security

All records containing personal information are considered to be proprietary and are afforded confidential treatment at all times. FOSS Torrents is committed to the safety and security of your personal data and the information that you share with us and with the public. We treat your personal safety and safety from harassment as top organizational priorities. At FOSS Torrents we consider it necessary to pursue these legitimate interests in order to keep our community, you and your information safe from spam, harassment, intellectual property infringement, identity theft, and the scraping and unlawful collection of your information.

Cookie Policy

How Does FOSS Torrents use Cookies?

A cookie is a small piece of text that allows a website to recognize your device and maintain a consistent, cohesive experience throughout multiple sessions. If you use the our websites, third parties will use cookies to track and monitor some of your activities, and store and access some data about you, your browsing history, and your usage of the FOSS Torrents websites.

This policy describes how third parties use cookies and how you can exercise a greater degree of control over cookies. Please keep in mind that this may alter your experience with our platform, and may limit certain features.

Advertising

In the pass, we have been using Google Adsense to provide advertising and help fund our project.

On all websites using Adsense (including FOSS Torrents), Google use cookies to track your web activity and to guess what commercial products you're most likely to be interested in. This information is then used by Adsense to provide personalized adverts to you.

In late April 2021, we switched our ads provider to EthicalAds whom offers a service that doesn't track the user in order to provide the best ad experience.

In their documentation, they stipulate that your IP address might be stored in their database for a few days. This is part of a mechanism that ensure the publishers that there ads is only seen by users from specific countries. They say that your IP will be remove from their database after a few day.

Analytics

On URLs which start with fosstorrents.com/, we use Google Analytics to measure the number of visits and have a rough idea of how successful new projects are.

Google Analytics use cookies to provide us with this information.

What Information is Collected on me via Cookies?

There are cases when visiting our site and/or using our platforms in which we may receive certain information through the use of cookies. This data will generally not include personally identifying information about you.

Third Party Cookies

Third party services such as Google Adsense and Analytics provide their own policies:

How do I Restrict Cookies?

You can adjust the settings on your internet browser and choose from the available Cookies setting to best meet your preferences. While setting options may vary from browser to browser, you can generally choose to reject some or all cookies, or instead to receive a notification when a cookie is being placed on your device. For more information, please refer to the user help information for your browser of choice. Please keep in mind that cookies may be required for certain functionalities, and by blocking these cookies, you may limit your access to certain parts or features of our sites and platforms.

You can opt out of personalized advertising from Google by visiting Ads Settings and aboutads.info.

Finally, while cookies are set for varying durations on your device, you can manually delete them at any time. However, deleting cookies will not prevent the site from setting further cookies on your device unless you adjust the settings discussed above.

Copyright Material

We are fortunate to have access to an incredible community, but most of the art work doesn't belong to us and we only intend to use it as promotional purposes for each projects. This art belongs to the respective projects.

Free-to-Use Art

We have used / are using some are that are free-to-use but which require attribution.

Contact Us

Please contact us if you have any questions, comments, or concerns regarding privacy, personal data, policies or cookies.

Our representative for all data privacy matters is Mr Cajetan Bouchard and can be reach at cajetan (dot) bouchard (at) gmail (dot) com.