Privacy Policy

Draft!

IP and host information
When you connect to a server on the Internet, that server receives the IP address associated with your connection. This is true regardless of whether you're loading a web page, playing an MMO, or connecting to SkipIRC.

IRC traditionally displayed users' full IP addresses or hostnames. In recent years there's been a trend towards only displaying partial addresses. SkipIRC does this (as well as allowing decorative hostnames to be displayed instead.) Unredacted hostnames and IPs are only visible to network staff.

IP information is shared with the following external entities:


 * If a user breaks the law or otherwise commits a severe rule violation, SkipIRC staff may notify their ISP and/or law enforcement as appropriate. For transparency, I'll note that there are <5 ISP notifications per year and ~1 law enforcement contact. Note that "ISP" is interpreted broadly here; for someone connecting from a school computer, the school may be their ISP.
 * If a user in an SCP-affiliated channel is found to be underage, their IP may be reported to an SCP Foundation admin for purposes of banning them from the wiki.

Some IP/host information is stored in the NickServ database. This may be deleted by dropping one's NickServ account. Information is also stored in server logs, which are only accessible to network administrators and are retained indefinitely. Finally, when a user's IP is banned, the ban obviously contains their IP information.

Email addresses
Users must provide an email address to register a nick. Email addresses are only viewable by SkipIRC staff unless a user chooses to make that information public with the command, in which case the email address will be publicly viewable. (For an example of this, see.

SkipIRC does not share or sell email addresses. We don't routinely send out emails but may notify users who were affected by a network issue once the issue is resolved. We do reserve the right to send an all-users announcement email if we deem it necessary but don't currently have any plans to do so.

Age information
Users may be asked for their current age, to ensure compliance with network rules. This information is not stored in a database, although individual operators may and often do log conversations. If a user in an SCP-affiliated channel is found to be underage, this information may be shared with an SCP Foundation admin and/or SCP Foundation chat staff as necessary.

Additional information sharing
SkipIRC may share information when needed to comply with local laws. As we have users around the world, it's not practical to provide an exhaustive list of jurisdictions and laws.

Gender and Pronoun Information
If provided, this information will be public. Users may clear this information at any time. Type  and   for more information. Dropping a NickServ account will also remove this information.

Real names
For historical reasons, one of the user-specified fields in IRC is referred to as "real name." Don't put your real name there. We don't need or want to know.