Privacy policy

1. Who is responsible for your data

The data controller is the operator of QNAP Forum (forum.qnap.net.pl). The forum is a non-commercial community project run out of passion. For anything concerning your data, reach us via the contact form.

2. What data we process

• Account data — username, e-mail address, password (stored only as an irreversible cryptographic hash), registration date.
• Content — posts, private conversations, profile content. Everything you voluntarily publish yourself.
• Technical data — IP address, browser identifier (User-Agent), server logs. Collected automatically with every connection, as on any website.
• Connected accounts (optional) — if you sign in e.g. via Discord, we receive from the provider only the identifier and basic profile data needed to link the accounts.

Providing account data is voluntary, but without it you cannot register. You can read the forum without providing anything at all.

3. Why we process it, and on what legal basis

• Running the forum — maintaining your account, publishing content, notifications (Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR — performance of the service agreement).
• Security and order — protection against spam, bots and abuse, moderation, enforcing the terms, service statistics (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR — our legitimate interest).
• Legal obligations — where the law explicitly requires something of us (Art. 6(1)(c) GDPR).

We make no automated decisions producing legal effects about you and we do not profile you for marketing purposes.

4. Cookies

We use cookies that are strictly necessary for the service to work plus cookies remembering your preferences: session identifier, a security token protecting against CSRF attacks, the "stay logged in" function, and your chosen style and language. Without them the forum simply does not work — which is why, under the law, they require no consent. We use no advertising cookies.

Additionally: the registration form is protected by Google reCAPTCHA (anti-bot filter), traffic to the site passes through Cloudflare (attack protection and acceleration), and visits are counted by the analytics tools described in section 5.

You can delete or block cookies in your browser settings at any time — but expect logging in and some features to stop working.

5. Analytics

We measure traffic with our own self-hosted Matomo instance running on our server — that data never leaves our infrastructure. We also use Google Analytics 4 in a privacy-oriented configuration (Google states GA4 does not log IP addresses). Statistics exist solely so we know what gets read and whether the service runs well — we do not link them to your account or use them for advertising.

6. Who we share data with

We do not sell or rent anyone's data. To anyone. Only the technical providers without whom the service would not run have access, and only to the necessary extent:

• our server infrastructure provider (European Union),
• Cloudflare — as the protective layer of the site it processes visitors' IP addresses (transfers outside the EEA safeguarded by standard contractual clauses),
• Google — solely for reCAPTCHA and Google Analytics, as described above.

We disclose data to public authorities only where the law explicitly obliges us to.

7. How long we keep data

• Account — until you delete it.
• Posts — indefinitely (see section 8 for why).
• Technical logs — up to 90 days, unless an abuse case is being investigated.
• Backups — on rotation, overwritten automatically.

8. Your posts are public — and will stay that way

The forum is a public, open knowledge base built by the community over many years. Everything you publish is visible to everyone, indexed by search engines and may be quoted with attribution. Think before you post — do not paste serial numbers, addresses, passwords or configuration files containing credentials. The internet does not forget, and we cannot undo someone having read something.

After account deletion your posts remain on the forum — what we remove is their link to your personal data (author anonymisation). We do this because ripping half the answers out of thousands of discussions would destroy the knowledge base everyone relies on — this is our legitimate interest and the interest of the whole community.

Automated bulk downloading of forum content (scraping) and using it to train AI models without our permission is prohibited — details in the terms and rules.

9. Your rights

Under the GDPR you have the right to: access your data and obtain a copy of it, rectification, account deletion, restriction of processing, objection to processing based on legitimate interest, and data portability. Exercise them via the contact form; we respond without undue delay, at the latest within one month.

If you believe we process data unlawfully, you may lodge a complaint with the President of the Polish Data Protection Authority (UODO, uodo.gov.pl). We would appreciate you writing to us first — most matters can be resolved with a single message.

10. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy, e.g. when the law or the tools we use change. Significant changes will be announced on the forum. Continued use of the service after a change means you have taken note of it.

Last updated: 29 July 2026.