Privacy policy
What we store, why, for how long, and how to get rid of it. Written to be read, not skimmed past.
In short: the website keeps the details you give it to run your account. The Windows app, once released, will send your account daily counts of blocked requests plus your settings and a device name. It will never send the pages you visit, your searches or your browsing history. We do not sell data, we do not run advertising and we do not use analytics cookies.
Contents
- Who we are and what this covers
- What the website stores
- What the Windows app will send
- Accountability emails
- Emails we send you
- Cookies and third parties
- How we use this information
- Who can see it
- How long we keep it
- Deleting your account
- Security
- Children and family use
- Your choices and rights
- Changes to this policy
- Contact
1. Who we are and what this covers
Syndicor ("Syndicor", "we", "us") operates the website at syndicor.io and is building a Windows application that blocks pornographic and other adult content. This policy covers both: the website and account system that exist today, and the desktop app as it is designed to work when it is released. Where the app is not yet available, the sections about it describe what it will do; we will update this page if the released version differs.
2. What the website stores
Account details
When you register we store your username, your email address, a hash of your password (we never store the password itself; it is hashed with PHP's standard password hashing), your account key (the SYN-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX code the app signs in with), your role (member or administrator), your account status, whether and when you confirmed your email address, and the times your account was created and last changed.
Security tokens
Email confirmation links, password reset links and "Stay signed in" cookies each rely on a random token. We store only a hash of each token, with its expiry time, so a copy of our database could not be used to confirm an address, reset a password or sign in.
IP addresses and activity records
- The IP address you registered from and the IP address and time of your last sign-in.
- Rate-limit counters keyed by IP address (and by account for sign-in attempts) so that logins, registrations, verification resends, password resets and contact-form messages cannot be hammered. These counters only hold a number and a timestamp and expire within a day.
- An audit log of security-relevant events: registration, sign-in, password and email changes, account deletion and administrator actions. Each entry records the action, the account it concerned, the time and the IP address.
Contact messages
If you use the contact form we store the name, email address, subject and message you typed, the IP address it was sent from and, if you were signed in, which account sent it, so that we can reply and keep a record of the conversation.
Web server logs
Like every website, the server that hosts Syndicor keeps standard access logs (IP address, requested address, browser identification, time) and error logs for troubleshooting. These are not combined with your account data and are rotated by the hosting provider.
3. What the Windows app will send
The app does its filtering on your PC. It talks to your account for exactly three reasons: to prove it belongs to you, to keep your settings in sync, and to show you on the dashboard that protection is on. When released it will send:
- Device information: a device name (the one you give it, or the Windows computer name), the Windows version, the app version, the time it last checked in and the IP address it checked in from.
- Block counts: for each day, the number of requests that were blocked, grouped by category (for example "adult"). A count, not a list.
- Your protection settings: your custom block and allow lists, the safe-search options you turned on, the cooldown you chose for pausing or uninstalling, and the accountability partner address if you set one, so the same settings apply on every PC you sign in to.
- Update checks: requests for the latest block-list version and app version. These carry the device's sign-in token, nothing about your browsing.
It will never send the addresses of pages you visit or that were blocked, page titles, search terms, browsing history, screenshots, keystrokes, file names or the contents of anything on your screen. There is no way to turn such reporting on, because the app is not built to collect it.
4. Accountability emails
You can optionally name an accountability partner by email address. If you do, the partner receives a weekly summary: how many requests were blocked on your devices that week, whether protection stayed on the whole time or was paused, and the device names involved. The summary never includes URLs, search terms or any other detail of what was visited. You must have the partner's agreement before adding them; the partner can ask us to stop the emails at any time, and you can remove them from your settings at any time.
5. Emails we send you
We send account emails only: confirming your email address, resetting your password, a notice when your password is changed, a short welcome once your address is confirmed, and a reply when you contact us. We do not send marketing email; account emails are transactional only, and there are no newsletters or announcements. Every email comes from [email protected] and replies go to [email protected].
6. Cookies and third parties
The website sets at most two cookies, both first-party and both essential:
| Cookie | Purpose | Lifetime |
|---|---|---|
syndicor_session | Keeps you signed in while you move between pages and protects forms against cross-site requests. | Until you close the browser or sign out. |
syndicor_remember | Set only if you tick "Stay signed in". Signs you back in on your next visit. | 30 days, or until you sign out. |
There are no analytics cookies, no advertising cookies and no third-party tracking of any kind. Because the only cookies are essential, there is no cookie banner to click away.
One third party is involved in showing you the site: the fonts are loaded from Google Fonts. Your browser requests the font files directly from Google's servers, which therefore see your IP address and the request, under Google's privacy policy. No other content on the site is loaded from anyone else's servers.
7. How we use this information
- To run your account: signing you in, confirming your address, resetting your password, linking the app to you.
- To keep the service safe: blocking brute-force attempts, locking an account for 15 minutes after 5 failed sign-ins, investigating abuse.
- To show you your own information on the dashboard, including whether protection is on and how much has been blocked.
- To reply when you write to us.
We do not sell or rent personal information, we do not build advertising profiles, and we do not use your data to train anything.
8. Who can see it
- Us. Site administrators can see account details (username, email, status, sign-in times), the audit log and contact messages through the admin area, in order to support you and keep the service running. Administrators cannot see your password.
- Our hosting provider. The website, database and outgoing email run on a managed hosting account. The provider stores the data on our behalf and does not use it for its own purposes.
- Email in transit. Emails we send pass through the usual mail servers between us and your provider.
- Legal requirements. We will disclose information if a court or law enforcement validly requires it, and we will tell you unless we are legally prevented from doing so.
We do not share personal information with anyone else.
9. How long we keep it
| Information | Kept for |
|---|---|
| Account details, settings, devices and block counts | As long as your account exists. |
| Email confirmation tokens | 48 hours, then they expire. Replaced whenever a new link is requested. |
| Password reset tokens | 60 minutes, single use. |
| "Stay signed in" tokens | 30 days, or until you sign out or change your password or email address. |
| Rate-limit counters | Up to one day. |
| Audit log entries | Up to 12 months. |
| Contact messages | Until the conversation is closed and the message is archived or deleted by us, at most 12 months after the last reply. |
| Server access and error logs | Rotated by the hosting provider on its normal schedule, typically within weeks. |
10. Deleting your account
You can delete your account yourself at any time from the account page: type your username and password and confirm. The deletion is immediate and removes your account row and everything attached to it: confirmation and reset tokens, "Stay signed in" tokens, linked devices, app sign-in tokens, protection settings and block counts.
Two things outlive deletion for a limited time: audit log entries (which reference the deleted account by number, not by name, except the original registration entry which records the username) are kept for up to 12 months for security purposes, and copies in routine backups expire as the backups are rotated. Contact messages you sent are kept as correspondence under the retention above and can be deleted on request.
11. Security
The site is served over HTTPS only. Passwords are hashed, never stored; tokens are stored as hashes; sign-ins are rate limited and an account locks for 15 minutes after 5 failed attempts; changing your password or email address signs out every other session; every form is protected against cross-site request forgery; and the database and private configuration live outside the web root. No system is perfectly secure, so if you believe you have found a vulnerability please email [email protected] before publishing it and we will respond as quickly as we can.
12. Children and family use
You must be 18 or older, or a parent or guardian acting for a minor, to create an account. If you install the app on a child's PC under your account, the device name and block counts from that PC are stored against your account in exactly the same minimal form as for your own PC: counts and settings, never the pages visited. We do not knowingly collect personal information directly from children; if you believe a child has created an account, contact us and we will remove it.
13. Your choices and rights
- You can change your email address and password on the account page, and delete the account there too.
- You can ask us for a copy of the information we hold about you, ask us to correct it, or ask us to delete things we hold outside your account (such as contact messages) by emailing [email protected]. We will confirm your identity through the email address on the account before acting.
- Depending on where you live, data-protection laws (such as PIPEDA in Canada or the GDPR in Europe) may give you further rights, including the right to complain to a privacy regulator. Nothing in this policy limits those rights.
14. Changes to this policy
When we change this policy we update the date at the top. If a change affects what we collect from the app or how we share information, we will also email account holders before it takes effect. The current version is always at https://syndicor.io/privacy.php.
15. Contact
Questions about privacy, requests about your data or anything else in this policy: email [email protected] or use the contact form.