Disclaimer: cooperativehousing.eu is under construction and is being brought online to allow participants in an international alliance of cooperative housing organisations to experiment with the technical and functional capabilities offered by a collection of sophisticated and versatile open source packages. While security and privacy concerns have been taken seriously during setup of this website, no guarantees can be given during this testing phase that the data and content provided by subscribers will at all times be properly protected and preserved. As a user, please do bear this in mind when using this website.
The domain cooperativehousing.eu has been registered by @Rob as a courtesy in anticipation of the formal establishment of a pan-European network for community-led cooperative housing organisations. He has drafted this privacy policy, the terms of service and a proposal to handover ownership after the formal establishment of a legal entity for this international community.
A user account is required to engage in forum discussions. General use guidelines apply to this forum. Besides publicly visible discussion topics this forum also provides private spaces for working groups.
All data will be stored on servers in Europe implementing multilayered security methods and granular restrictions differentiating between appropriate levels of access for users ranging from anonymous site visitors to site administrators.
Personal data will be collected and stored in order to allow subscribers to find and communicate with each other using the internet applications that are part of this digital platform. Throughout all services within this internet domain the platform stores several types of contact information (email, IP address, hardware identification) and usage history (i.e. level of engagement on the forum ) for authentication and authorization purposes, the detection of possible identity theft, and the repression of spam bots and fake accounts. User data will not be sold to third parties and only shared to the extend that is needed and legitimate within the terms of a service agreement with external service providers like email delivery or translation services.
The external service providers are specified within this post regarding technical design choises. Those choices may still change, but will always be made in accordance with the general values and principles of platform design specified here. Within the actual testing phase subscribers are encouraged to review and comment on those design principles and choices. Some privacy aspects might be subject to change when legitimate and desired by the community of subscribers.
Subscribers making use of the digital platform may request that all data and content provided by them shall be erased c.q. anonymized by site administrators.
Probably one of the best ongoing safeguards for respecting the privacy of the users of this platform is to implement the proposed ownership structure for this digital platform. Let’s get this right collectively!