Privacy

404Mods, run by 404 Development (404development.com), runs 404mods.com and its Discord servers. This page says what we keep about the people who use them. We keep what the site needs to work and to stay safe, and we don't sell any of it or use it for advertising.

When you sign in, we log your IP address, the country Cloudflare places it in, your browser's user agent and the ID in a device cookie. While you stay signed in, we log them again when your address or browser changes, and each time you upload a file, a screenshot or a gallery image, file a report or reply on one. Nothing is logged for a visitor who isn't signed in. We keep the log for as long as you have the account, and it's deleted with it, unless the account is banned or suspended at the time: then the log stays, so that deleting an account isn't a way around a ban. It's used to catch ban evasion, stolen accounts and one person running several, by comparing the addresses and devices accounts were used from; a match is a reason for a person to look, and nothing is done to an account automatically. Only admins can read it, and each time one does is recorded. It's in your data download. Cloudflare, which the site runs on, keeps its own request logs for its own window.

The site sets four cookies, and none of them follows you anywhere else:

• the session cookie, which keeps you signed in;
• the device cookie, set when you sign in: a random ID that tells us two sign-ins came from the same browser, and nothing else;
• the theme cookie, which remembers light or dark.

Traffic is measured with Cloudflare Web Analytics, which uses no cookie and stores nothing that identifies a visitor. There are no advertising or social-media trackers on the site.

What you make stays for as long as you leave it up. Everything else has a window, after which it's deleted:

These companies hold some of it on our behalf. The database is stored in the United States.

Your public profile, your mods and your comments are public: anyone can see them, and search engines can index them.

Connecting another account to your profile is optional. We ask each service for the least it will give, keep no way to act as you there, and send it nothing about you.

Removing a connection in your settings deletes what we kept of it. You choose whether each one shows on your profile.

If you show a song, album or playlist from Spotify, your profile first shows a plain card from us. Nothing is loaded from Spotify until a visitor presses Listen here, and then Spotify's own player loads on the page. Spotify can then see that visitor's IP address and set its own cookies, under Spotify's privacy policy. The player never starts playing by itself. The cover is shown from Spotify's picture servers.

• A copy of your data. In your account settings, “Download your data” builds a file of what your account holds, ready in minutes and linked for 7 days.
• Correction. Your settings cover everything you can change yourself. For anything else, ask.
• Deletion. Deleting your account in the same settings signs you out everywhere. An admin can restore it for 15 days if you ask; after that it's gone.
• Anything else. Write to privacy@404mods.com. Only admins read that inbox, and we answer within 30 days.

A request that arrives by email is checked against the address on the account before anything is sent, never against what the message says about itself.

• Your comments show as from [deleted user], but their text stays where a conversation depends on it.
• Your mods, albums and collections go with the account, apart from a mod with co-authors, which passes to the co-author who joined it first.
• The moderation log keeps its rows, which hold account IDs rather than personal details.
• Warnings from the last 2 years stay tied to the Discord account, and return if it signs up again.
• Anything already in a backup leaves when that backup expires.

The site isn't for anyone under 13. Your date of birth is asked once, when the account is made, and an account never exists below that age. If we learn that an account belongs to someone younger, it's deleted along with what it posted, and nothing about it is kept afterwards. To tell us about one, write to privacy@404mods.com.

We hand over nothing about anyone without a valid order from a jurisdiction that binds us, and nothing beyond what the order asks for. The person it concerns is told, unless the order forbids that. The one exception is an emergency involving a risk to someone's life, which is answered first and reviewed afterwards. Every request is recorded, including the ones we refuse.

When this policy changes, the date at the top of this page changes with it, and a change that affects what we keep or who holds it is announced on the site. Questions go to privacy@404mods.com.