Privacy Policy

This privacy policy covers how XNL Future Technologies collects, stores, uses and discloses information about users of it’s platform(s) and/or websites. This privacy policy applies to this website, along with related projects, products, publications and services offered by XNL Future Technologies that link to this privacy policy. This privacy policy does not apply to websites, applications, projects, products or publications that either display, include or link to different privacy statements.

Comments

When visitors leave comments our the site(s) we collect the data shown in the comments form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection and to keep the platform a safe place for everyone. For your own safety and to comply with our privacy (and safety) terms, it is not allowed to post any personal identifiable information in comments, this includes but is not limited to: Your email address, phone number(s), home addresses, bank accounts or anything alike.

When leaving a comment your Gravatar image (if set) will also be shown next to your comment.

User Uploaded Media

If you upload images (where applicable) to our website(s), you should remove all embedded location data (EXIF GPS) included included in the images. Visitors on our website(s) can download and extract any location data from such images on our website(s) if you don’t remove it and thus identify your location or at least the location where you’ve taken the photo.
TIP: You can use any search engine like Google for example and search ‘remove exif data‘ to learn how you can remove this data. A warning though: DO NOT use ‘online-upload-and-remove’ services! Because then you are still ‘sharing’ the exif data with such services!

Furthermore you should never upload any photo’s or images which can reveal any other personal information about you or anyone else, this includes but is not limited to: Street addresses, identifiable buildings (like houses), screenshots of GPS or ‘maps’ locations, faces, documentation like letters, shipping labels or anything else which can potentially identify you or anyone else.

Embedded content from other websites

Articles, project and product pages or (forum) posts on our website(s) may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.

These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website. We however have implemented a technique which tells YouTube not to place cookies which will track users and such. However because we’ve noticed that they do still place some cookies, it is necessary for you to allow ‘advertising cookies’ to be able to see YouTube videos on our websites.

If however a user on for example our forum has posted embedded content which does not use this system, this embedded content might still behave as explained above.

What information do we collect and store

When visiting/using our website(s) and/or our platform(s) we (our servers automatically) collect the following information:
– Your (public) IP Address (This is basically what every website does and ‘how the internet works’, we are only using this information for security purposes and nothing else).
– What browser you’re using (to optimize the site output for your browser so that the websites can be displayed correctly).

When creating an account on our platform(s) we collect the following information about you:
– Email Address (for login, password resets and to contact you when required)
– Your username/’nickname’, which is the name how you are being displayed at comments, reviews and posts for example.
– Your password (which is stored in a way so that we (our administrators) can not read or use it), more information and tips about using secure password and keeping your data save can be found on our Account Security Tips page.

And any other possible (optional) data you might enter to complement your public website or platform account page(s). This can include, but not limited to: Your company’s name, a link to your twitter profile, a link to your own (company) website etc. However information in this category is and will be optional and is always shown publicly on your profile and can be removed or edited at anytime from within your account (with the exception of usernames, these can not be changed after registration). Website administrators can also see and edit the entered information (with the exception of your password).

NOTE: Verified users with an XNL Verified Account are NOT able to change their twitter link or own website link themselves! You can read more about this on our XNL Verified Account (XVA) page.

When downloading from our pages we collect the following information:
If you are logged-in and download something from our website(s) or platform(s), the download will be linked to your account and stored in your download history (which can be viewed by you in your account page). This ‘data’ will be kept by the system for two years, after which it will automatically be anonymized. This data can for example be used by you as an ‘order-history’ to easily find data like drivers, datasheets and other data related to the download(s). But also by us when we for example have to notify users about an important (security) update regarding the project, product or file(s).

Whether you’re logged-in or not we collect the IP address which requested downloads of files from our system(s), this is purely used for security purposes and will will never be used for anything else than security related matters.

Next to this we also use either database records or cookies to remember the contents in your ‘download cart’, this is purely used/implemented for your convenience (so that you later on can continue where you’ve left off, without losing any ‘work’), and will be in no way used by us to ‘track you’ or contact you in any way.

If you have connected your Patreon account with our website we might store some additional data (required by the official Patreon plugin) which will be explained a little further on in the Patreon section of this privacy policy.

Who on our team has access

Some members of our team have access to the information you provide us. The main administrator and founder of the XNL Future Technologies platform is the only one whom usually has access to all data required to run and maintain the platform.

Possible officially assigned moderators of the platform have limited access to the information stored on our platforms. This for example includes access to your email address for situations where this might be required to provide you with moderator assistance. In case of a serious ’emergency situation’ where it for the main administrator is no longer possible to maintain the platform(s), which can for example be situations like but not limited to: Incapacitation (either due to hospitalization or otherwise), serious illness or even death, we have an internally (non-disclosed) procedure to pass on the main administration to another internally designated person to notify our users (most likely through an public post), and to (in a worst case scenario) terminate the platforms and destroy all stored data.

Patreon features in this website

In order to enable you to use this website with Patreon services to for example gain access to ‘early access content or ‘patreon only content’, we save certain functionally important Patreon information about you in the database of this website if you log in with Patreon.

These include your Patreon user id, Patreon username, your first, last names and your vanity name. Additionally, the id of your campaign at Patreon and your campaign’s Patreon URL are also saved.

The data shared by the Patreon features on our website(s) are determined by the official Patreon plugin, If it was up to us we would only need your email address, patreon username, your patreon campaign(s) and/or subscriptions at Patreon. We however will not be able to see your patreon password for example.

If you request that your data be deleted from this website, this data will also be deleted and Patreon functionality will not work. You would need to register on this website and log in to this website with Patreon again in order to re-populate this data and have Patreon functionality working again.

License key Registrations

When you have unlocked license, project, product or serial keys as one of the rewards of being a Patreon Member, you will also have to enter one or two fields (depending on the type of unlocked licenses) which contain your ‘Patreon Edition Registration Name‘ and/or you ‘Professional and Business Edition Registration Name‘. These fields are used to generate your License/Product Keys. However if you do enter your real/full legal name or company name for example, this information will of course also be stored in the database. To ensure maximum privacy, we’ve made sure that these are two extra fields in our database which will only be used by the license key system. And thus the information entered (and stored) in these fields will only be used to generate your license keys and will not be used anywhere else on the website(s) or within our platform(s).

Payment and/or donations

Data regarding payments and/or donations will be kept as long as we are obliged to keep for administrative or legal (like tax) purposes.

We accept donations through PayPal. When processing donations or payments, some of your data will be passed to PayPal, including information required to process or support the donation or payment, such as the purchase total and billing information.

Please see the PayPal Privacy Policy for more details.

The same applies for Patreon and pledging to our Patreon and/or platform(s), when becoming a patreon member and/or when pledging to our patreon page, some of your data will either be passed to Patreon and/or passed from Patreon to our server(s).

Please see the Patreon Privacy Policy for more details.

How long we retain your data

If you leave a comment, make a forum post or place a review, this comment, forum post or review and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognize and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue, and to make sure that the content posted by you can be helpful or informative for other visitors in the future.

We however do reserve the right to ‘redact’ a comment, post or review if it’s contents might be considered inappropriate, violates our Community Guidelines or if we notice that you have posted (possibly) harmful personal identifiable information. It is however expected that you understand that you shall not post such personal information on our platform(s), this includes both your own personal data and that of other people.

If you create an account, your account will be kept in our system for a maximum of 5 years of inactivity, after which it will automatically be removed and any possible identifiable data linked to it will be (irreversible) anonymized. We’ve decided to use a maximum period of 5 (written: Five) years, for your convenience in regards of finding datasheets, drivers, documentation etc of previously downloaded projects or products, to gain access to files you’ve downloaded in the past and to retain access to possible (software) licenses tied to your account. The reason that we’ve decided to go for a ‘long’ period of five years is due to the fact that it would not be right to our users to just ‘bluntly’ delete your licenses if you have had an ‘hobby sabbatical‘ for let’s say two years for example.

This information can also be used to send you important updates about possible downloads you’ve made, for example when we’ve encountered a critical bug, or security flaw in drivers or software for example.

If an period of five years of inactivity has passed you will lose all access to the account and the content (including licenses) assigned to it. This is something we have to do to comply with Privacy Laws like the GDPR for example. Just logging-in (without the need to download, purchase, comment or post anything) will be sufficient to protect your account from deletion again.

Twitter buttons and twitter feed

Our website(s) use plugins for the Twitter social networking service. You can recognize these plugins by the ‘Twitter Bird’ logo. You can see the Twitter logo’s/branding here: https://about.twitter.com/en_us/company/brand-resources.html. When you access an page on our website(s) which contains a Twitter plugin (like for example the ‘Tweet Button‘), your browser will create a direct link between our website(s) and the Twitter servers. The plugin content (like the button/image or Twitter feed) is then transferred directly from Twitter to your browser and integrated into our page(s).

This also automatically informs Twitter that you (your browser) have visited the respective page(s) on our website, even if you do not have a Twitter account or if you are not currently logged in to your twitter account(s). This information (including your IP address) is transferred by your browser directly to a Twitter server, where it is stored. If you are logged in to your Twitter account while visiting our website(s), Twitter will associate your visit to our website with your Twitter account. If you interact (directly or indirectly by for example viewing the Twitter feed) with the Twitter plugin, or for example click on the Tweet button, this information will also be transferred directly to a Twitter server and stored.

When “tweeting through a tweet button” on our website, the Tweet will appear on your Twitter timeline and be visible to your Twitter followers and, if your Tweets are public, to other users. For information on the purpose and scope of data collection and processing by Twitter, as well as your rights and options for protecting your privacy, please refer to Twitter’s privacy policy: https://twitter.com/privacy.

If you do not want Twitter to associate the data it collects via our website(s) you can either disallow the social media cookies (which will also disable the twitter buttons and twitter feed), or you can (if you do accept the social media cookies) log out of Twitter before visiting our website(s) to prevent Twitter from associating the data with your Twitter Account.

XNL Future Technologies Polls

Whenever we host polls on our website, these will only be available to registered and logged-in users. Some polls might even be restricted to patreon’s only. The data which is stored within our poll system is only your user ID (not your username), a ‘database link’ to the poll and your vote choice. We don’t use cookies or so for polls on our own main website. And other users are not able to see what your vote was/is.

NOTE: This section only covers the polls on our own website and/or blog, and does for example not cover any polls on for example Twitter or Patreon (IF we ever use them on those platforms). For the privacy policy and the data which is kept about you in regards to polls on other platforms and websites, you should always check the privacy policy of that website and/or platform.

When and how do we contact you

We send emails in the event of a giveaway (in which you’ve participated) where you might have been elected as one of the winners. We will not sent you an email when you register on our website(s). We will send you an email when you request a password reset. We can also decide to send all users whom have downloaded a certain project, product or file an email, if we noticed that this is absolutely necessary for example in the following but not limited to situations: in regards with security issues regarding a project, product or download, important/critical (driver or software) updates or any other reason in regards to downloaded ‘items’ which we deem urgently enough to ‘bother you with’ (so no, NOT with “you really need to see this updated feature” emails).

Next to this we might also offer several other opt-in email subscriptions for possible future events, giveaways, product updates or releases etc. These (where applicable) will always be opt-in (as in you need to turn these on yourself in your account settings) and you can at all times opt-out of these subscriptions.

We will also notify users if we believe their privacy has been compromised, if it is within our power to do so. For example, if we discover a user’s account information has been exposed elsewhere on the web, or if we are compelled to disclose information to law enforcement.

Who do we share your data with

If you request a password reset, your IP address will be included in the reset email which will be sent to the email address you’ve entered or the email address which belongs to the username you’ve entered. This also means that if you for example (either purposefully or by accident) enter the username or email address of another user instead of your own, that this user will receive a password request notification with your IP address in it. This is purely for security reasons so that we can for example process possible complaints about passwords ‘hack or guess attempts’ and to block certain IP addresses if we receive multiple complaints or notice multiple requests from the same IP address.

In the event of you winning a giveaway, price or ordering a product we might need to process your home, business and/or billing address. Your address will then be used to process the invoice (if applicable) and for processing the actual shipment itself. If we for example ship directly from one of our suppliers, sponsors or manufacturers we will need to share certain personal details which might include your email address, your first and last name, your birth-date (to ensure that you are allowed to enter a giveaway for example), your home/billing address and/or your phone number.

However in the event we might be required to process such data we will notify you in advance and explain for what purposes the information is required. You can then check the privacy policy of the ‘shipment partner’ we are using and determine if you agree to the fact that we need to share your information and/or data with them. If you agree with their privacy policy and the fact that we would need to share certain data about you with them, you will then get back in touch with us to provide us the required details (do NOT send us these details before you also agree with their privacy policy). After we’ve received your personal details required for the order or shipment we once more will get in contact with you to confirm that you agree that we will share your details with the ‘shipment partner’, In this email we will request you for confirmation once more that you agree that we will share your personal details for the processing of the current order or giveaway. In this email you will need to confirm that you allow us for one time to share your personal/address details with for example JLCPCB to process your ‘won price’. In this email you will have to list which information we are allowed to share, this email CAN and MAY NOT contain your actual private information like address and such. So you will for example reply with an email like:

I [WEBSITE Username],
Give XNL Future Technologies permission to share the following previously provided personal information about me with [Sponsor/Supplier name here] in regards with my [won price/order here]:
– My first and last name
– My Birth-date
– My home/billing addres
– My Email Address

The reason why we have such a ‘complicated’ procedure for this is to ensure maximum control and assurance over your private details. After we’ve processed the information as needed and/or requested we will remove your personal details from our system(s). We will then only keep the permission you’ve provided us with (which doesn’t hold any personal details) in our system for our records.

If you however in the future order anything or win a price/giveaway again, we will (unfortunately) have to require you to go through, the ‘whole process’ again. This due to the fact that we don’t store any personal information about you like your home/billing address, birth-day, phone number etc on our servers and/or systems. We will not ever do this and will not comply to any request to do so anyway either. This is in the best interest of your privacy and to comply with the GDPR.

Legal reasons to share your information

We will share your information with third parties and/or authorities in very specific circumstances. If we sell all or part of our platform(s), or are otherwise involved in a similar event, we may transfer your information as part of that transaction. In addition, there are certain other situation where we must share your information either to protect our rights, to further our legitimate (legal) interests, or to comply with a legal obligation to which we are subjected. We will share your personal information when we believe in good faith that:

• a subpoena or warrant is issued, or we receive any other legitimate government agency request to produce information.
• we need to share the information in order to enforce or protect our own rights, for example, to respond to and resolve third-party claims, complaints, or legal situations.
• we need to address a security or technical issue within our website (an example of this would for example (but not limited to): If we discover in our log’s that your IP Address has made ‘dozens’ of attempts to breach our database(s) and thus the data in these databases could be at risk, then we might have to pass said IP Address and these log’s to either authorities and/or an external investigation/security agency.
• when sharing the information (for example with authorities) is necessary to prevent harm to others or others’ property, or yourself, especially in emergency situations.

Google AdSense Advertisements

On our platform(s) we use two types of advertisements, one being through the Google AdSense program, and the other one our own XNL Direct Sponsor Advertisement program (which will be explained further on).

For the Google AdSense advertisements we use several techniques in an attempt to assure maximum privacy for you as visitor of our website. Including for example sending an so called additional setting parameter telling Google to only show Non Personalized ads (NPA’s) and by always sending an TFUA tag to apply restricted data processing. This should force Google AdSense to refrain from collecting or using any personal and/or privacy related information about our visitors. And thus this should also force Google AdSense to only show non-personalized advertisements, which should in no way be related to your past internet searches or internet behavior. A quote from the Google AdSense Documentation states the following:

“When using this feature, a TFUA parameter will be included in the ad request. This parameter disables personalized advertising, including remarketing, for that specific ad request. It also disables requests to third-party ad vendors, such as ad measurement pixels and third-party ad servers.”

https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/9009582?hl=en (22-02-2022)

Despite this (in an attempt to ensure maximum privacy for our visitor) we still require you to enable the advertisement based cookies setting if you would like to allow us to show advertisement by Google AdSense on our platform(s). This for example due to the following statement made in an article regarding the Google AdSense program:

“Although non-personalized ads don’t use cookies or mobile ad identifiers for ad targeting, they do still use cookies or mobile ad identifiers for frequency capping, aggregated ad reporting, and to combat fraud and abuse. Therefore, you must obtain consent to use cookies or mobile ad identifiers for those purposes where legally required, per the ePrivacy Directive in certain EEA countries.”

https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/9007336?hl=en (22-02-2022)

Further more we strongly recommend you to review the following information and privacy policy’s in regards to the Google Adsense program before allowing Google AdSense advertisements on our platform(s):

Information article from Google in regards to Non-Personalized ads.
Google AdSense TFUA Restricted data processing tag
How Google uses data when you use our partners’ sites or apps

Direct Privacy disclosure quote in regards to Google AdSense Advertisements on our platform(s)

“have and abide by a privacy policy that clearly discloses any data collection, sharing and usage that takes place on any site, app, email publication or other property as a consequence of your use of Google products. The privacy policy must disclose to users that third parties may be placing and reading cookies on your users’ browsers, or using web beacons to collect information as a result of ad serving on your website.

To comply with this disclosure obligation with respect to Google’s use of data, you have the option to display a prominent link to How Google uses data when you use our partners’ sites or apps.”

https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/10502938 (22-02-2022)

XNL Direct Sponsor Advertisement program

Our XNL Direct Sponsor Advertisement Program does not collect any data nor will we ever share any data about our users in regards to our XNL Direct Sponsor Advertisement Program with our direct sponsors or advertisers.

These advertisements and it’s images and/or banners are completely hosted on our own platform, and are only allowed to be graphical images like (but not limited to) JPG and PNG files, or in cases of animated banners we would also allow GIF files to be used. However due to the fact that we will not allow direct sponsors or advertisements using the XNL Direct Sponsor Advertisement program to place flash, silverlight, scripts, in-line or embedded content it will not be possible for these direct sponsors or advertisers to place ‘hidden trackers’ or ‘tracking pixels’ for example. The only data we might share with direct sponsors or advertisers using our XNL Direct Sponsor Advertisement program might (be up-on request) a global visitors number, and the total number of registered members on our website and/or platforms. We will not share any personal and/or identifiable information with said XNL Direct Advertisers. We will for example not share: Your email address, username or any other information which you have entered on your profile (either private or public).

XNL Direct Sponsor Advertisements are however allowed to have a referral link or identifier so that they can see how many users have actually clicked on their link. Which means that if you click on that link that they will be able to see that you’ve been directed to their website due to clicking on their advertisement on our website. You will often see this at many websites which looks something like this: ‘&ref=xnlft‘ or ‘&referral=xnlft‘. If a XNL Direct Sponsor Advertisement uses a referral link we will even show this near this advertisement, this is not required but we decided to do so for transparency.

If this is a “problem” for an advertiser or direct sponsor in regards to deciding if they would like to place advertisements on our website(s) and/or platforms, then this is their problem. We value the privacy of our visitors and our members, and expect the same of our direct sponsors and advertisers. The rules and terms we’ve set for our XNL Direct Sponsor Advertisements are quite strict to be in the best interest of our users and can be viewed at our Advertising page at all times.

Do note that once you click on such advertisements that you will be redirected to the page or URL of the advertiser, from there you should always check any concerns you might have in their privacy policy. We also advise to always read the terms and conditions when ‘responding’ to (or clicking on) an advertisement, ‘time-limited-deal’, ‘special offer’ or any of the alike.

What rights you have over your data

If you have an account on this site, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes. Neither does this include for example comments, forum posts or reviews. In most circumstances data like comments, reviews and forum posts will be kept on-record online for informative purposes for future visitors and/or references. If however there might be a ‘greater cause’ or important reasons (to you) why such post does need to be removed (for example due a (either resolved or not) conflict, possible ‘career issues’ due to (incorrect) statements you’ve made, or any other ‘major impacting’ reason why you might need said post to be removed, then you can always contact us and we will investigate in this matter and see what we can do for you.

If you however request us to remove your account details in a event where you might for example have been banned (blocked from accessing our platform(s)) due to severely violating our community guidelines or terms and conditions for example, then chances are slim that we will actually be able to process you data removal request completely. We will then however remove all linked orders/downloads and licenses, but the entire account removal would most likely be denied. This due to the simply fact that we would then have to exercise our right to retain the data for security purposes for both our platform and our other users. Otherwise such data removal requests would be prone to abuse by (harmful) users which are just appealing to this right to get themselves ‘unbanned’ again. This in turn could then pose a serious security thread to our platform(s), our users and our community.

You can request an export of your personal data or request an data removal procedure by using our contact form and contacting us directly. NOTE: Make sure that you are logged-in to your account when doing so! ANY request considering your personal data will not be processed by ‘just claiming’ you are said user!

Merchandise shop

The XNL Future Technologies Merchandise shop is hosted by Spreadshirt.nl. In our ‘shop portal/manager’ we CAN see which products have been sold and for what amount(s), we can see the order numbers, and the country and zip code they have shipped to. Any other data including but not limited to: Your name, address, phone number, payment details, email address, username etc are not visible and/or accessible for us. Despite that the information they do show is already anonymized (because for us it’s impossible to identify you just by your country and zip-code), we would have liked to see an option to ‘opt-out’ completely of this data, but this isn’t possible due to legal, administrative and tax obligations. We will however (despite this information being anonymized) never use this data ourselves other than for strictly necessary situations (like for example but not limited to: Administrative and tax purposes or any other legal obligation).

Please make sure to read their privacy policy before creating an account or ordering anything.
This shop uses a lot more data processing and analytics services than we ever will use, so keep this in mind please!

For more information in regards of our merchandise shop(s) (non privacy policy related) please see our Merchandise Shop Information page.

Cookies

We use several cookies on our platform(s) and/or websites, these cookies are used so that the website ‘knows’ that you are currently logged in for example. Some cookies are used for settings (which for example remember your cookie consent settings). We call these cookies ‘Necessary cookies’, without these cookies the website basically would just not function properly at all.

Then there are also other types of cookies which for example can be used for analytics, site-performance, marketing and more of the alike. We personally always try to use as minimal cookies as necessary, it is however possible that embedded content on one of the pages, on our forum or blog posts might place cookies when interacting with it (YouTube video’s for example tend to do this). We personally do not use any trackers, advertisement counters, invisible pixels or ‘tracking cookies’, nor will we accept to place them on request for example. But like mentioned earlier: External (or externally embedded) content might (out of our control) place (additional) cookies when using, or accessing this content. By clicking on the ‘Manage Cookies‘ tab/button at the bottom of our page, you can view what each cookie and/or categories does (or might do). We have included a system where you can actually disable most content per platform to give you maximum control over your privacy.

Children’s Online Privacy Protection

Our website(s) is not intended or directed at individuals under the age of 16. We do not knowingly collect or keep any information of children under the age of 16. If we discover it, we’ll delete it as soon as possible.

Your data safety

We use reasonable measures to secure our website(s) and any private information you submit to us against loss, tampering, unauthorized access, and other malicious acts. For example, we use SSL (and always try to force HTTPS) connections when possible to protect your data while it is in transit (for example login data and while entering forms). Next to this we also try to keep different sections of our platform(s) separated. This for example means that you have to create a new/another account when using features like our forum, or (if you have editorial access) our wiki. The databases of these different platform sections will all run in their own (isolated) environment, meaning that through normal means of communication it should be impossible that one section (the forum for example) will be able to get information from the other section (the main platform for example).
However, no data transmission over the Internet is guaranteed to be completely secure, so we cannot completely guarantee the security of any data. You use our services at your own risk, and are responsible for taking reasonable measures to secure your password, information, and account.

Privacy Policy Updates

We may modify or update this privacy policy from time to time to reflect changes in our platform(s) or websites or to comply with international compliance regulations. When any changes in this policy occur, we will update the ‘Last Update’ date at the bottom of this page, and when required by law we will inform you upon your next visit either upon login or request you to renew your consent by invalidating your previously given consent and presenting you with an ‘Privacy Policy Change Notice’ on the consent form.

Last Updated: 26-09-2022