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Privacy

Your privacy is critically important to us. At Joystack, we have a few fundamental principles:

  • We are thoughtful about the personal information we ask you to provide and the personal information that we collect about you through the operation of our services.
  • We store personal information for only as long as we have a reason to keep it.
  • We aim to make it as simple as possible for you to control what information on your projects is shared publicly (or kept private) and permanently deleted.
  • We aim for full transparency on how we gather, use, and share your personal information.

Below is our Privacy Policy, which incorporates and clarifies these principles.

This Privacy Policy applies to information that we collect about you when you use:

  • Our websites (including joystack.com and subdomains);
  • Our other products, services, and features that are available on or through our websites (for example, the discussion forums, the server list); and
  • Other users’ projects that you manage as a team member, while you are logged in to your account with us.

This Privacy Policy also applies to information we collect when you apply for a job or staff position at Joystack or one of our subsidiaries. Throughout this Privacy Policy we’ll refer to our websites, mobile applications, and other products and services collectively as “Services.” And if you’d like to learn more about which Joystack company is the controller of information about you, take a look at the section below on Controllers and Responsible Companies.

Below we explain how we collect, use, and share information about you, along with the choices that you have with respect to that information.

Information We Collect​

We only collect information about you if we have a reason to do so — for example, to provide our Services, to communicate with you, or to make our Services better. We collect this information from three sources: if and when you provide information to us, automatically through operating our Services, and from outside sources. Let’s go over the information that we collect.

Information You Provide to Us​

  • Basic account information: We ask for basic information from you in order to set up your account. For example, we require individuals who sign up for a joystack.com account to provide an email address and password, along with a username or name — and that’s it. You may provide us with more information — like your address and other information you want to share — but we don’t require that information to create a joystack.com account.
  • Public profile information: If you have an account with us, we collect the information that you provide for your public profile. For example, if you have a joystack.com account, your username is part of that public profile, along with any other information you put into your public profile, like a subdomain, servericon, motd or an “About Me” description. Your public profile information is just that — public — so please keep that in mind when deciding what information you would like to include.
  • Payment and contact information: If you buy something from us or earn revenue through your site, we’ll collect information to process those payments and contact you. If you buy something from us — a subscription to a joystack.com plan, a Pro-rank, individual Domain or gold you’ll provide additional personal and payment information like your name, credit card information, and contact information. We also keep a record of the purchases you’ve made.
  • Content information: You might provide us with information about you when you create and upload content in / to your projects (for example worlds, plugins, files and associated metadata like the name of the item and when it was created).
  • Communications with us: You may also provide us with information when you respond to surveys, communicate with our support team about a support question, post a question in our public forums, or sign up for a newsletter. When you communicate with us via form, email, phone, joystack.com support chat, or otherwise, we store a copy of our communications (including any call recordings as permitted by applicable law).
  • Applications: If you apply for a job with us — awesome! You may provide us with information like your name, contact information, resume or CV, and work authorization verification as part of the application process.

Information We Collect Automatically​

We also collect some information automatically:

  • Log information: Like most online service providers, we collect information that web browsers, mobile devices, and servers typically make available, including the browser type, IP address, unique device identifiers, language preference, referring site, the date and time of access, operating system, and mobile network information. We collect log information when you use our Services — for example, when you create or make changes to your servers on joystack.com or join it.
  • Usage information: We collect information about your usage of our Services. For example, we collect information about the actions that project administrators and users perform on a project using our services — in other words, who did what and when (e.g., [joystack.com username] deleted “[world]” at [time/date]). We also collect information about what happens when you use our Services (e.g., page views, support document searches, features enabled for your server, interactions with dashboard and other parts of our Services) along with information about your device (e.g., screen size, name of cellular network, and mobile device manufacturer). We use this information to, for example, provide our Services to you, get insights on how people use our Services so we can make our Services better, and understand and make predictions about user retention.
  • Location information: We may determine the approximate location of your device from your IP address. We collect and use this information to, for example, calculate how many people visit our Services from certain geographic regions.
  • Stored information: We may access information stored on your mobile device or computer via our mobile apps or the browser. We access this stored information through your device operating system’s permissions. For example if you upload a world or a plugin you will give us permission to access and upload it to our servers.
  • Information from cookies & other technologies: A cookie is a string of information that a website stores on a visitor’s computer, and that the visitor’s browser provides to the website each time the visitor returns. Pixel tags (also called web beacons) are small blocks of code placed on websites and emails. Joystack uses cookies and other technologies like pixel tags to help us identify and track visitors, usage, and access preferences for our Services, as well as track and understand email campaign effectiveness and to deliver targeted ads.

Information We Collect from Other Sources​

We may also get information about you from other sources. For example, if you create or log in to your joystack.com account through another service (like Google), we’ll receive information from that service (e.g., your username, basic profile information, friends list) via the authorization procedures for that service. The information we receive depends on which services you use or authorize and what options are available. Third-party services may also give us information, like mailing addresses for individuals who are not yet our users (but we hope will be!). We use this information for marketing purposes like postcards and other mailers advertising our Services.

How and Why We Use Information​

Purposes for Using Information​

We use information about you for the purposes listed below:

  • To provide our Services. For example, to set up and maintain your account, host your projects, backup and restore your projects, provide customer service, process payments and orders, and verify user information.
  • To ensure quality, maintain safety, and improve our Services. For example, by providing automatic upgrades and new versions of our Services. Or, for example, by monitoring and analyzing how users interact with our Services so we can create new features that we think our users will enjoy and that will help them create and manage gameserver projects more efficiently or make our Services easier to use.
  • To place and manage ads. For example, to place ads on your dashboard or projects created under the free-tier and to understand the performance of these ads.
  • To market our Services and measure, gauge, and improve the effectiveness of our marketing. For example, by targeting our marketing messages to groups of our users (like those who have a particular plan with us or have been users for a certain length of time), advertising our Services, analyzing the results of our marketing campaigns (like how many people purchased a paid plan after receiving a marketing message), and understanding and forecasting user retention.
  • To protect our Services, our users, and the public. For example, by detecting security incidents; detecting and protecting against malicious, deceptive, fraudulent, or illegal activity; fighting spam; complying with our legal obligations; and protecting the rights and property of Joystack and others, which may result in us, for example, declining a transaction or terminating Services.
  • To fix problems with our Services. For example, by monitoring, debugging, repairing, and preventing issues.
  • To customize the user experience. For example, to personalize your experience by serving you relevant notifications and advertisements for our Services, recommending content, and saving your preferences in design and language.
  • To communicate with you. For example, by emailing you to ask for your feedback, share tips for getting the most out of our products, or keep you up to date on Joystack; texting you to verify your payment; or calling you to share offers and promotions that we think will be of interest to you. If you don’t want to hear from us, you can opt out of marketing communications at any time. (If you opt out, we’ll still send you important updates relating to your account.)
  • To recruit and hire new team members. For example, by evaluating job applicants and communicating with them.

A note here for those in the European Union about our legal grounds for processing information about you under EU data protection laws, which is that our use of your information is based on the grounds that: (1) The use is necessary in order to fulfill our commitments to you under the applicable terms of service or other agreements with you or is necessary to administer your account — for example, in order to enable access to our website on your device or charge you for a paid plan; or (2) The use is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation; or (3) The use is necessary in order to protect your vital interests or those of another person; or (4) We have a legitimate interest in using your information — for example, to provide and update our Services; to improve our Services so that we can offer you an even better user experience; to safeguard our Services; to communicate with you; to measure, gauge, and improve the effectiveness of our advertising; and to understand our user retention and attrition; to monitor and prevent any problems with our Services; and to personalize your experience; or (5) You have given us your consent — for example before we place certain cookies on your device and access and analyze them later on.

Sharing Information​

How We Share Information​

We share information about you in limited circumstances, and with appropriate safeguards on your privacy. These are spelled out below, as well as in the section called Ads and Analytics Services Provided by Others:

  • Subsidiaries and independent contractors: We may disclose information about you to our subsidiaries and independent contractors who need the information to help us provide our Services or process the information on our behalf. We require our subsidiaries and independent contractors to follow this Privacy Policy for any personal information that we share with them.
  • Third-party vendors: We may share information about you with third-party vendors who need the information in order to provide their services to us, or to provide their services to you or your site. This includes vendors that help us provide our Services to you (like payment providers that process your credit and debit card information (Paypal), fraud prevention services that allow us to analyze fraudulent payment transactions, cloud storage services, postal and email delivery services that help us stay in touch with you, customer chat and email support services that help us communicate with you; DNS & Domain providers which allow us to create (sub)domains for you. Those that assist us with our marketing efforts (e.g., by providing tools for identifying a specific marketing target group or improving our marketing campaigns, and by placing ads to market our services); those that help us understand and enhance our Services (like analytics providers); those that make tools to help us run our operations (like programs that help us with task management, scheduling, word processing, email and other communications, and collaboration among our teams); other third-party tools that help us manage operations; and companies that make products available on our websites, who may need information about you in order to, for example, provide technical or other support services to you. We require vendors to agree to privacy commitments in order to share information with them.
  • Legal and regulatory requirements: We may disclose information about you in response to a subpoena, court order, or other governmental request.
  • To protect rights, property, and others: We may disclose information about you when we believe in good faith that disclosure is reasonably necessary to protect the property or rights of Joystack, third parties, or the public at large. For example, if we have a good faith belief that there is an imminent danger of death or serious physical injury, we may disclose information related to the emergency without delay.
  • Business transfers: In connection with any merger, sale of company assets, or acquisition of all or a portion of our business by another company, or in the event that Joystack goes out of business or enters bankruptcy, user information would likely be one of the assets that is transferred or acquired by a third party. If any of these events were to happen, this Privacy Policy would continue to apply to your information and the party receiving your information may continue to use your information, but only consistent with this Privacy Policy.
  • With your consent: We may share and disclose information with your consent or at your direction. For example, we may share your information with third parties when you authorize us to do so, like when you connected your projects with social media or a server list service, when you invite team members or through our other sharing features.
  • Aggregated or de-identified information: We may share information that has been aggregated or de-identified, so that it can no longer reasonably be used to identify you. For instance, we may publish aggregate statistics about the use of our Services, or share a hashed version of your email address to facilitate customized ad campaigns on other platforms.
  • Published support requests: If you send us a request for assistance (for example, via a support email or one of our other feedback mechanisms), we reserve the right to publish that request in an anonymized manner in order to clarify or respond to your request, or to help us support other users.

We have a long-standing policy that we do not sell our users' data. We aren't a data broker, we don't sell your personal information to data brokers, and we don't sell your information to other companies that want to spam you with marketing emails.

We show ads on some of our users’ projects as well as some of our own, and the revenue they generate lets us offer free access to some of our Services so that money doesn’t become an obstacle to starting your own game server projects. Currently we use third parties to provide these ads.

Information Shared Publicly​

Information that you choose to make public is — you guessed it — disclosed publicly. That means information like your public profile, your servers message of the day (MOTD), your servericons, playercounters and other content that you make public on your projects, as long as you don't restrict them using whitelists.

How Long We Keep Information​

We generally discard information about you when it’s no longer needed for the purposes for which we collect and use it — described in the section above on How and Why We Use Information — and we’re not legally required to keep it. For example, we keep web server logs that record information about a visitor to one of Joystack’s websites or servers, like the visitor’s IP address, browser type or game version, and operating system, for approximately 30 days. We retain the logs for this period of time in order to, among other things, analyze traffic to Joystack and investigate issues if something goes wrong.

Security​

While no online service is 100% secure, we work very hard to protect information about you against unauthorized access, use, alteration, or destruction, and take reasonable measures to do so. We monitor our Services for potential vulnerabilities and attacks.

Choices​

You have several choices available when it comes to information about you:

  • Limit the information that you provide: If you have an account with us, you can choose not to provide the optional account information, profile information, and transaction and billing information. Please keep in mind that if you do not provide this information, certain features of our Services — for example, features that carry an additional charge — may not be accessible.
  • Limit access to information on your mobile device: Your mobile device operating system should provide you with the option to discontinue our ability to collect stored information or location information via our mobile apps. If you choose to limit this, you may not be able to use certain features, like geotagging for photographs.
  • Opt out of marketing communications: You may opt out of receiving promotional communications from us. Just follow the instructions in those communications or let us know. If you opt out of promotional communications, we may still send you other communications, like those about your account and legal notices.
  • Set your browser to reject cookies: At this time, Joystack does not respond to “do not track” signals across all of our Services. However, you can usually choose to set your browser to remove or reject browser cookies before using Joystack’s websites, with the drawback that certain features of Joystack’s websites may not function properly without the aid of cookies.
  • Close your account: While we’d be very sad to see you go, you can close your account if you no longer want to use our Services. Please keep in mind that we may continue to retain your information after closing your account, as described in How Long We Keep Information above — for example, when that information is reasonably needed to comply with (or demonstrate our compliance with) legal obligations such as law enforcement requests, or reasonably needed for our legitimate business interests. In practice most of your data will be deleted shortly after closing your account while transaction & tax related documents will have to be retained up to 10 years after.
  • Delete data in your account: You can delete files that you uploaded into your Joystack account.

Your Rights​

If you are located in certain parts of the world, including California and countries that fall under the scope of the European General Data Protection Regulation (aka the “GDPR”), you may have certain rights regarding your personal information, like the right to request access to or deletion of your data.

European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)​

If you are located in a country that falls under the scope of the GDPR, data protection laws give you certain rights with respect to your personal data, subject to any exemptions provided by the law, including the rights to:

  • Request access to your personal data;
  • Request correction or deletion of your personal data;
  • Object to our use and processing of your personal data;
  • Request that we limit our use and processing of your personal data; and
  • Request portability of your personal data.

You also have the right to make a complaint to a government supervisory authority.

California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA)​

The California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”) requires us to provide California residents with some additional information about the categories of personal information we collect and share, where we get that personal information, and how and why we use it. The CCPA also requires us to provide a list of the “categories” of personal information we collect, as that term is defined in the law, so, here it is. In the last 12 months, we collected the following categories of personal information from California residents, depending on the Services used:

  • Identifiers (like your name, contact information, and device and online identifiers);
  • Commercial information (your billing information and purchase history, for example);
  • Characteristics protected by law (for example, you might provide your gender as part of a research survey for us);
  • Internet or other electronic network activity information (such as your usage of our Services, like the actions you take as an administrator of a joystack.com site);
  • Geolocation data (such as your location based on your IP address);
  • Audio, electronic, visual or similar information (such as your profile picture, if you uploaded one);
  • Professional or employment-related information (for example, your company and team information if you are a Happy Tools user, or information you provide in a job application); and
  • Inferences we make (such as likelihood of retention or attrition).

You can find more information about what we collect and sources of that information in the Information We Collect section above. We collect personal information for the business and commercial purposes described in the How and Why We Use Information section. And we share this information with the categories of third parties described in the Sharing Information section. If you are a California resident, you have additional rights under the CCPA, subject to any exemptions provided by the law, including the right to:

  • Request to know the categories of personal information we collect, the categories of business or commercial purpose for collecting and using it, the categories of sources from which the information came, the categories of third parties we share it with, and the specific pieces of information we collect about you;
  • Request deletion of personal information we collect or maintain;
  • Opt out of any sale of personal information; and
  • Not receive discriminatory treatment for exercising your rights under the CCPA.

Contacting Us About These Rights​

You can usually access, correct, or delete your personal data using your account settings and tools that we offer, but if you aren’t able to or you’d like to contact us about one of the other rights, scroll down to “How to Reach Us” to, well, find out how to reach us. When you contact us about one of your rights under this section, we’ll need to verify that you are the right person before we disclose or delete anything. For example, if you are a user, we will need you to contact us from the email address associated with your account. You can also designate an authorized agent to make a request on your behalf by giving us written authorization. We may still require you to verify your identity with us.

Controllers and Responsible Companies​

Joystack’s Services are accessible worldwide. Generally, the “controller” is the Joystack company that entered into the contract with you under the Terms of Service for the product or service you use. The chart below explains the current controllers for processing your personal information. We use the term “Designated Countries” to refer to Australia, Canada, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Russia, and all countries located in Europe (including the UK and ROI).

If you reside inside or outside of the Designated Countries:

Stack Internet Ltd.
Phoenix Business Centre, The Penthouse
Old Railway Track, SVR 9022
Santa Venera, Malta
E-Mail: [email protected]
Tel: +356 2778 0102

How to Reach Us​

If you have a question about this Privacy Policy, or you would like to contact us about any of the rights mentioned in the "Your Rights" section above, please contact us through our web form or via eMail. These are the fastest ways to get a response to your inquiry.

Other Things You Should Know​

Transferring Information​

Because Joystack’s Services are offered worldwide, the information about you that we process when you use the Services in the EU may be used, stored, and/or accessed by individuals operating outside the European Economic Area (EEA) who work for us, other members of our group of companies, or third-party data processors. This is required for the purposes listed in the How and Why We Use Information section above. When providing information about you to entities outside the EEA, we will take appropriate measures to ensure that the recipient protects your personal information adequately in accordance with this Privacy Policy as required by applicable law. These measures include entering into European Commission approved standard contractual arrangements with entities based in countries outside the EEA. You can ask us for more information about the steps we take to protect your personal information when transferring it from the EU.

Ads and Analytics Services Provided by Others​

Ads appearing on any of our Services may be delivered by advertising networks. Other parties may also provide analytics services via our Services. These ad networks and analytics providers may set tracking technologies (like cookies) to collect information about your use of our Services and across other websites and online services. These technologies allow these third parties to recognize your device to compile information about you or others who use your device. This information allows us and other companies to, among other things, analyze and track usage, determine the popularity of certain content, and deliver ads that may be more targeted to your interests. Please note this Privacy Policy only covers the collection of information by Joystack and does not cover the collection of information by any third-party advertisers or analytics providers. Specifically we use:

  • Google Adsense with personalized Ads On our websites and in the dashboard we use Google Adsense with personalized Ads. Google AdSense is an advertising service provided by Google Ireland Limited. This service uses the “DoubleClick” Cookie, which tracks use of this Application and User behavior concerning ads, products and services offered. Users may decide to disable all the DoubleClick Cookies by going to: Google Ad Settings. Place of processing: Ireland – Privacy Policy – Opt Out - Privacy Shield.

  • Cloudflare Analytics & CDN Cloudflare is a traffic optimization and distribution service provided by Cloudflare Inc. The way Cloudflare is integrated means that it filters all the traffic through all web applications, i.e., communication between this website and the your browser, while also allowing analytical data from this website to be collected. Personal Data processed: Protocol information, requests; various types of Data as specified in the privacy policy of the service. Place of processing: USA - Privacy Policy - Privacy Shield.

Third-Party Software, Plugins and Services​

If you’d like to use third-party plugins, worlds or other third-party software or services, please keep in mind that interacting with them may mean providing information about yourself (or your users) to those third parties. Please note that if you use the third-party service or grant access, your data will be handled in accordance with the third party’s privacy policy and practices. We don’t own or control these third parties, and they have their own rules about information collection, use, and sharing, which you should review before using the software or services.

Privacy Policy Changes​

Joystack may change its Privacy Policy from time to time. Joystack encourages visitors to frequently check this page for any changes to its Privacy Policy. If we make changes, we will notify you by revising the change log below, and, in some cases, we may provide additional notice (like adding a statement to our homepage or on the forums or sending you a notification through email or your dashboard). Your further use of the Services after a change to our Privacy Policy will be subject to the updated policy

That’s it! Thanks for reading.

Change log​

  • February 19, 2021: Initial Version.

Attribution & License​

This policy is based on a modified version of an Automattic “Legalmattic” document and is available to use and repurpose under a Creative Commons Sharealike license.