Data
Functional only
PBCA/PRIVACY
No trackers, no banners, no surprises.
Pen-Based Computing Alumni runs on the data a community site genuinely needs and nothing more: what a web server records to deliver a page, and the account details you choose to share when you join.
There are no analytics, no advertising, and no cross-site tracking — so there is nothing to consent to. Plus, you will never see a cookie pop-up here.
What we
collect.
Functional data
Standard request information, retained briefly.
IP address, browser user-agent, the page requested, and the referring page. This is the same information any web server records by default. We use it to serve pages, keep you logged in, rate-limit abuse, and diagnose errors. Access logs rotate on a short schedule. We do not sell this data and we do not share it.
Your account
What you choose to share when you join.
Your name, email address, and whatever profile details you decide to add. Membership is by invitation, so your account sits inside a known community rather than the open web. Your email address is never shown publicly; your profile, direct messages, and group activity are visible only to other signed-in members. We do not sell any of it, and we do not share it with anyone outside the site. Posts you make in the public forums are a separate matter — see below.
What's
public.
Open to the world
Every forum post is part of the public record.
The forums are where the oral history of pen computing is set down for good. Every forum post and reply is readable by anyone on the open web, signed in or not — that is the whole point of putting the history here. Only contributing is restricted: posting is by invitation, because membership follows the museum record. Reading is open to everyone, everywhere. Your profile, direct messages, and group activity are not public — they stay inside the community.
Licensed CC BY 4.0
Free to quote, share, and build on.
Everything posted in the forums is published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license (CC BY 4.0): anyone may copy, quote, translate, and build on it — for any purpose, including commercial use — as long as the source is credited. Contributing a forum post means publishing it to the world on those terms. The license is irrevocable, so while you can remove your own posts and profile from the site at any time, copies others have already saved or quoted cannot be recalled.
What we
don't do.
NT
No tracking
No Google Analytics. No Meta Pixel. No Hotjar, LinkedIn Insight, or similar trackers. No advertising cookies. No cross-site tracking. No browser fingerprinting. We do not build profiles of visitors, and we do not compile a marketing list from this site.
NB
No consent banners
The only cookies we set are the functional ones that keep you signed in and your session secure. We do not set advertising or tracking cookies, so there is nothing to ask your permission for — and you will never have to dismiss a cookie-consent pop-up to read a page.
Your
choices.
Your account is yours
You can edit or remove your profile details and posts at any time from your account. Ask us to close your account and we will delete your personal data; the server access logs holding your IP have already rotated away on their own short schedule.
Requests and questions
Any data question, request, or correction — email [email protected] and we’ll respond directly.