HOLYFRAG
Privacy policy
Last updated:
This notice explains how HolyFrag uses personal information on holyfrag.com and the HolyFrag forum. Public discussions are designed to be readable, searchable and shared. Your account email, private reports and saved topics are not public.
Who is responsible
Lukasz Czapiewski, based in the United Kingdom, operates HolyFrag and is the controller of the personal information described here. Contact: hello@holyfrag.com.
This notice covers our website and forum. Discord, social networks, sign-in providers and other services you choose to visit have their own privacy notices. We do not copy Discord conversations into the forum.
Information we use
Account and sign-in information: your email if you use email sign-in or your provider supplies it, display name, optional biography, language preference, account dates, linked provider and provider account ID, sign-in link records and sign-in sessions. We also store moderator permissions and any account suspension.
Terms acceptance: for new registrations, we record the date and time of acceptance, the version of the terms and community rules presented, and the language used. We use this record to document the conditions under which the account was created. We do not add an IP address to this acceptance record.
Participation information: topic titles, posts and replies, their original language and translations, uploaded files and file metadata, saved topics, topic-read dates, notifications and whether you have read them. Moderation records include reports, reasons, decisions and the model and policy used for AI review.
Technical information: request and security logs can include IP addresses, requested URLs, request times, browser or client information, errors and request identifiers. We use this information to deliver pages, diagnose faults and prevent abuse. We do not sell personal information or add advertising trackers.
Contact correspondence: when you email us, we receive your sender address, any name you provide, message subject and content, and any attachments you choose to send. We keep information about the request, our response and outcome, and any proportionate identity-verification information needed to handle it safely. Do not send unrelated personal information or sign-in credentials.
Why we use it and our legal bases
Providing your account and the features you request — signing in, publishing contributions, saving topics, showing notifications and editing your profile — is necessary to perform our agreement with you (contract). For email registration, an account is created when you accept the terms and request the sign-in link; email verification is required before access is granted. Requesting a sign-in link without registering does not create a new account.
Keeping a safe, reliable community — including security logs, rate limits, fraud prevention, moderation, handling reports, human appeals and service troubleshooting — relies on our legitimate interests in protecting members and operating the service. Translating discussions and making public discussions searchable also serves our legitimate interests in an accessible, useful bilingual community. We consider the effect on people and provide ways to object or seek review. Responding to ordinary enquiries also serves our legitimate interest in helping people use the community. Account-service requests may be necessary to perform our agreement, and handling statutory data-rights requests and the records required for them relies on legal obligation. Keeping a record of terms acceptance serves our legitimate interest in documenting the conditions of membership and resolving related questions or disputes.
If we display community presence, our legitimate interest is helping members find active conversations and understand community activity, with the visibility control described below. Optional third-party content is loaded at your request and, where consent is required for its storage or access technologies, with your consent. Optional Google Analytics uses your consent, as explained below; it is separate from our legitimate-interest processing for security and community activity. Refusing analytics does not prevent browsing or using an account. We use information to meet applicable legal duties when the basis is legal obligation.
Browsing public pages does not require an account. To create an account you must provide a working email address or an identity from an available sign-in provider. Without that information we cannot sign you in. A biography is optional; do not include sensitive personal information or someone else’s private information in your profile, posts or files.
Public profiles, search engines and AI clients
Published discussions, translations, display names, profile biographies and public profile activity can be read without signing in. Search engines and other people can index, quote, copy or share public pages. Avoid publishing anything you would not want to be public; removing it from HolyFrag cannot guarantee removal of copies held by others.
Where available, our public, read-only MCP interface lets external AI clients list spaces, search topics and read published discussions that have completed translation. It can return post text, displayed author names, public category and count information, timestamps, canonical page links, source language and translation flags. It does not provide account emails, private reports, pending or hidden content, or file contents, and cannot post or change anything. Public text may include attachment references, but these do not grant access to files: downloads still require sign-in.
The MCP interface does not use member cookies or itself call an AI provider. The person using an external client decides which public information that client requests; that client and its AI provider may process and retain it under their own terms. Ordinary server logs and per-IP limits still apply to MCP requests.
Uploaded files
Files attached to topics and replies require sign-in. Apart from the author and moderators, members can access a file only when the associated content is published and translation-ready. A signed-in member may still download and share a file, so this is not confidential storage.
Uploaded images are resized when necessary and re-encoded as WebP with embedded metadata removed. Other file types can retain the information and metadata you put in them. Review files before uploading. Our AI text review does not inspect file contents; submissions with attachments are referred for human review.
Avatars are optional and visible without signing in, beside your name and on your profile. We resize them, remove embedded metadata and store the processed image. You can replace or remove your avatar in Edit profile; the previous stored image is deleted.
Translation and moderation with AI
We currently use Anthropic to translate and review forum text. The application also supports OpenAI as an alternative provider; we will update this notice if the active provider changes. Topic titles, posts and replies, including any personal information, links or upload references you put in the text, are sent for translation. Moderation receives the source and translated text. Account email fields and private reports are not included in these AI requests.
We store the original text, translations and moderation outcome. AI can make mistakes. A submission may be approved automatically only when the review meets our high-confidence threshold; uncertain cases and attachments go to human review. AI does not reject posts, suspend accounts or decide appeals. You can ask a person to review a translation or moderation decision using the contact page.
We do not use your submissions to train our own AI models. Using translation or moderation is not a grant of permission to train general-purpose AI. Providers may keep request data under their service and security terms; we do not promise zero retention by a provider.
Community activity and your visibility
Where the presence feature is shown, signed-in visits to ordinary forum pages update one latest-activity timestamp, at most once a minute. It is enabled by default. We do not use it to track anonymous visitors or create a history of every page you read.
The online list shows up to 30 display names and profile links, plus any remaining count, for visible, unsuspended members active in the last five minutes who still have a valid sign-in session. Aggregate activity counts show distinct visible, unsuspended accounts active in the past 24 hours and 30 days; those counts may include people who have since signed out. The display refreshes when the page loads.
In Edit profile, turn off “Show when I’m around” to remove your account from the list and counts. This clears the stored activity timestamp and stops further presence recording. Turning it back on starts fresh. A later qualifying visit overwrites the previous timestamp. The 24-hour and 30-day display windows are not deletion periods: there is currently no automatic age-based purge of that timestamp.
Optional Google Analytics
If analytics is enabled, we use Google Analytics 4 with your permission to understand visits, returning browsers and engagement with the website and forum, and to improve the service. We rely on consent for this measurement. Our analytics code does not load Google’s tag or send analytics requests before you choose “Allow analytics”. It stays off if you reject it or no valid measurement ID is configured.
After consent, Google receives browser identifiers from analytics cookies, technical browser and device information, and measurement data about the pages you visit. Requests to Google expose your IP address, which Google may use to derive approximate location. We send only sanitised page classifications, a generic page title and language; website referrers are reduced to their origin, and forum referrers are not sent. Website measurement is limited to the homepage and public legal pages. Forum measurement uses normalised public routes and excludes private pages and actual topic titles and IDs. We exclude URL query strings and fragments, search text, post content, member names, account identifiers and sign-in tokens from the fields our integration sends. We do not use a signed-in account ID as an analytics User-ID.
Our integration disables Google signals and advertising personalisation and does not grant advertising storage or advertising user-data consent. Analytics is optional and does not affect account access. The choice is shared between the main website and forum on holyfrag.com; the shop has separate controls. Google may process analytics information outside the UK or EEA, including in the United States, under the applicable Google service and data-processing terms.
Use “Cookie settings” and choose “Reject analytics” to withdraw consent. This stops future measurement by our integration and removes the Google Analytics cookies it can access; a loaded tag is unloaded by reloading the page. It does not delete information already received by Google. Browser-cookie expiry is not the retention period for Google’s server records: that depends on the configured Analytics property and Google’s applicable terms. Contact hello@holyfrag.com for applicable retention information or a data-rights request.
Who receives information
Authorised moderators and the operator can access information needed to run the community, handle reports and answer requests. Public information is also available to visitors and the external clients described above.
Our service providers include Railway for application, database and volume hosting; Cloudflare for website delivery, network protection and private R2 file storage; Postmark for transactional sign-in emails; and Anthropic for the AI processing described above. We share the information needed for their role. Legacy files may remain in the application’s protected disk storage.
We use Sentry (Functional Software, Inc.) to diagnose production errors on the forum and website. Reports contain the error class, code file and line references, time, deployment version, and browser or server runtime details. Our configuration removes account details, request content, cookies, query strings, free-form error messages and interaction breadcrumbs before sending reports; it does not record sessions or collect performance traces. Sentry receives the network connection, including its source IP address, to deliver the report. This troubleshooting serves our legitimate interest in keeping the service reliable and is separate from optional analytics. Our Sentry projects are hosted in the United States.
If you choose Google, Steam or X when offered, that provider processes the sign-in and we store its name and your provider account ID. Google may supply a name and verified email; X supplies available identity fields such as your name; Steam supplies your Steam ID. We do not store provider access or refresh tokens. These providers control their own account and sign-in services.
If you ask to load the Discord widget on the main website, your browser contacts Discord and it receives technical information such as your IP address. Following a social or external-service link also connects you to that service. We may disclose limited information where required by law or reasonably necessary to address unlawful activity or protect someone’s rights and safety.
If you allow enabled analytics, Google also receives the measurement information described in the analytics section. Refusing analytics does not affect sign-in with Google: these are separate choices.
Cloudflare Email Routing forwards incoming contact messages to a Google Gmail mailbox that we use to receive, manage and reply to correspondence. These services process the sender and recipient addresses, message content and any attachments as needed for delivery and mailbox functions. This is separate from Postmark’s transactional sign-in emails and from optional Google Analytics or Google sign-in.
International processing
Our Railway application is hosted in the United States, in its US East (iad) region. Cloudflare operates a global network, and our email, AI, sign-in and optional analytics providers may process information in the United States and other countries. This can involve transfers outside the UK or European Economic Area.
Our hosting, delivery, email and AI providers publish data-processing terms with provisions for international transfers, including standard contractual clauses and the UK Addendum where applicable. The applicable protection depends on the provider, destination and service. Contact hello@holyfrag.com for the destinations and safeguards applicable to your data, or a copy of relevant safeguards. We do not imply that all processing stays in the UK or EU.
How long information is kept
We keep account and participation records while they are needed to provide the service and preserve the discussions you participate in. When an account is closed or you request deletion, we assess what can be deleted, anonymised or retained, considering other participants’ rights, active reports, security needs and legal duties. Account closure does not automatically erase every contribution; contact us to discuss particular content or personal information.
Moderation, report and security records are retained according to the seriousness of the issue, whether an investigation or appeal remains open, repeated-abuse prevention and applicable legal requirements. Logs and backups follow the relevant infrastructure lifecycle. We do not promise a fixed deletion period for these categories: request a review if you believe information is no longer needed.
For provider registration, a temporary server-side confirmation holds the accepted versions, time, language and chosen provider while sign-in completes. It expires after 10 minutes and is deleted when used or when the provider reports a failed or cancelled sign-in. Expired confirmations are removed by the next hourly cleanup.
Sign-in sessions expire after 30 days. Email links are single-use and expire after 15 minutes; an expired link cannot sign you in, but expiry does not itself delete its database record. Removing an attachment from a contribution makes it unclaimed; the daily cleanup removes unclaimed uploads older than seven days. Attached files remain while needed with their contribution.
The presence timestamp follows the controls described above. There is no general automatic account, report or expired-login-record deletion job. Requests for deletion and export are handled manually; these are not self-service account settings.
We keep contact and rights-request correspondence for as long as needed to answer the request, complete relevant follow-up, document how it was handled and meet applicable legal duties. The criteria include whether the matter is still open, the seriousness of the issue, a related complaint or dispute, and the need to demonstrate compliance. We do not retain identity-verification material longer than needed for that purpose. Contact us for a review if you believe a correspondence record is no longer necessary.
Your choices and rights
You can edit your display name, biography and language in your profile, and change presence visibility if that feature is available. For access to your personal information, a copy or portable export where applicable, correction, deletion, restriction or an objection to processing, email hello@holyfrag.com. You do not need to be signed in. Explain your request and identify the account or content concerned; do not send passwords or sign-in links.
Rights depend on the applicable law and basis for processing. You may object to processing based on legitimate interests, and may withdraw consent for consent-based processing at any time without affecting earlier lawful use. For optional Discord content, use its hide or disable control to stop further loading, or close the page. Use “Cookie settings” to reject optional analytics or withdraw an earlier analytics choice.
We may ask for proportionate information to verify identity and protect someone else’s data. We respond without undue delay, normally within one month for data-rights requests. If the applicable law allows extra time for a complex request, we will explain the reason and expected timing. We will explain any lawful refusal and how you can challenge it.
You may complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) in the UK, the President of the Personal Data Protection Office (UODO) in Poland, or your local data protection authority. You do not have to contact us before complaining.
Children and changes to this notice
HolyFrag is not intended for young children. Members must meet applicable age and capacity requirements and the requirements of their sign-in provider. If you believe a child supplied information in breach of those requirements, contact us so we can review and remove it where appropriate.
We will update this notice when our practices change and show the update date above. For material changes affecting members, we will provide an appropriate notice before the change takes effect where required. Read the cookies policy for browser storage and optional external content.