Our user base has grown over the years, which led to a collection of personal data. Functionality for the participants of FreeSoftwareShop is often cookie based. We rely on third parties for advertisement and web statistics. These companies gather information from internet users to improve their products and suit them for their user's needs. Their policies and strategies change over time. These are just a few reasons why you deserve a look into our privacy policy.About us and our website
Information and communication technologies play a fundamental role in the FreeSoftwareShop project and on our freesoftwareshop.org website. We are based in the Netherlands, Europe. Our main activity is sharing information on and knowledge of free and open source software via the internet. This is done by using and developing free and open source software. Acquiring personal and/or private data is not an objective and not a requirement to make that possible. But there are a few exceptions. You can access and use our website anonymously, without disclosing your personal data.
Our website enables you to communicate with other visitors and users, including posting information to be accessed by others. When you do so, other visitors may collect this data. And last but not least, our website makes use of third party services. These web service providers may collect personal data about our visitors.
Personal Data Collection
We automatically log internal data (web statistics) from the people and bots visiting our website. This is done for technical administration of the website. This technical data contains IP-adresses, browsers and operating systems used by our visitors. We don't use external information from other sources, such as public records or bodies, or private organisations. Our web statistics software does try to map IP-adresses to their corresponding geographical location (geocoding1), including deduction of the language their computer use.
From time to time, we offer subscriptions to our visitors. FreeSoftwareShop users are able to contribute, post information, ask questions and set their personal preferences. When creating a FreeSoftwareShop account, a user chooses a personal account name and password. Furthermore, an email account is required for authentication. These personal data are stored in our database. Only the account name is visible publicly. The passwords are stored encrypted for future logins. The emailaddresses are stored to be able to send the password again, in case a user forgot their password and asks us to resend it. Users decide themselves wether to hide their email address from other users and visitors, or to show their email address publicly. Users can opt in voluntarily to receive a news digest by email periodicly. We do not disclose your personal data to our subsidiaries or other organisations.
After logging in, users receive two FreeSoftwareShop cookies on their computer. One cookie contains information to recognise the user again on future visits. This is for conveniense only, allowing a user to login automatically next time, if they decide not to log out. The second cookie contains the user's chosen preferences, allowing a user to set browser/computer specific preferences. Both cookies are stored encrypted. We do not use cookies to store personal data nor do we link non-personal information stored in cookies with personal data about specific individuals. We do not knowingly collect personal data from children, and we do not take specific steps to protect the privacy of children who disclose their personal data to us. Users can get an overview of personal data stored on their personal user pages.
We may collect and use personal data for the additional purpose of selecting users who make a positive or negative contribution to the FreeSoftwareShop project. This selection is based on user pertinence, a numeric value which is related to a user and is publicly visible.
We have implemented security policies, rules and technical measures to protect the personal data that we have under our control from unauthorised access, improper use or disclosure, unauthorised modification and unlawful destruction or accidental loss. All our participants and data processors, who have access to, and are associated with the processing of personal data, are obliged to respect the confidentiality of our visitors' personal data. We ensure that your personal data will not be disclosed to State institutions and authorities except if required by law or other regulation.
The FreeSoftwareShop privacy policy is based on OECD Privacy Guidelines. More precisely: For the Protection of Privacy and Transborder Flows of Personal Data Guidelines, UN Guidelines for the Regulation of Computerized Personal Data Files Adopted by General Assembly resolution 45/95 of 14 December 1990. The FreeSoftwareShop project and it's participants are voluntarily committed to a self assessment procedure.
Third party web services
We use third party advertising companies to serve ads when you visit our website. These companies may use information (not including your name, address, email address, or telephone number) about your visits to this and other websites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services of interest to you. If you would like more information about this practice and to know your choices about not having this information used by these companies, visit the Network Advertising Initiative (NAI). They offer a cookie based opt out feature to prevent NAI member ad networks collecting data from you. FreeSoftwareShop only allows NAI member ad networks to serve ads on our sites.
Currently, the following third party web services are in use by the FreeSoftwareShop project:
- Google AdSense
- Google Analytics
- This is a web based tool for presenting and analysing web statistics of the usage of our website. Google uses cookies to optimise3 the functionality of this product.
If you have an enquiry or concern about our privacy policy, please contact JJan, FreeSoftwareShop's project manager.
The FreeSoftwareShop Team
Last update: 21 March 2009
1 If you don't want websites on the internet to geocode your location, we suggest using Tor, a tool/network to enhance your anonimity.
2 On 8 April 2009, Google plans to extend their context based ad selection. Instead of selecting ads for a web page based on the content of the web page/site only, the relevance and selection will be based on data which Google collected by other means, possibly other websites someone visited before, content in Google's Gmail, content indexed by Google's desktop search, etc. Because this data collection could be cause for concern for some people, FreeSoftwareShop chose to opt out of this feature. Visiting FreeSoftwareShop web pages will not add to the data Google collects from you for these purposes.
3 Due to the upcoming changes2 in Google's privacy policy, we're currently evaluating if using this service is enough cause for concern to our users and visitors. We are currently scanning alternative open web analytics services and products.
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